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US president Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order to start the process of declaring certain branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organisations. The order names chapters in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan. According to the order, these branches “engage in or facilitate and support violence and destabilisation campaigns” that harm their regions, US citizens and US interests.“President Trump is confronting the Muslim Brotherhood’s transnational network, which fuels terrorism and destabilisation campaigns against US interests and allies in the Middle East,” the White House said.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a pan-Islamist movement founded in Egypt in 1928. Its founder, Hassan al-Banna, believed that returning to Islamic principles would help the Muslim world resist Western influence. A US “terrorist” designation allows Washington to freeze any assets the group may hold in the country and block members from entering the United States. The Muslim Brotherhood is already banned in several countries, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Jordan outlawed it in April this year, accusing the group of making and storing weapons and planning to destabilise the kingdom. The group, however, remains popular in Jordan and continues to operate even after a 2020 court ruling to dissolve it. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has been banned since 2013, after the military removed its leader and then-president Mohamed Morsi. The coup was led by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has remained in power since and built a close partnership with Washington. In May, French president Emmanuel Macron asked his government to draft measures to limit the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and curb the spread of political Islam in France.