President Donald Trump’s move to designate certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters as terrorist entities on Monday highlights a critical flaw in the US approach to tackling Islamist extremism - its failure to address the role of state enablers like Qatar.
While the order targets specific Brotherhood branches, critics argue that without confronting Qatar’s longstanding financial and ideological support for the movement, the new strategy risks being ineffective in curbing its global influence.
What is the Muslim Brotherhood? How did it spread?
The Muslim Brotherhood movement was founded in Egypt in the late 1920s, when Hassan al-Banna set out a vision of integrating the Islamic religion into public life through education, charity, and socio-political organization.
Over the years, it developed into a hierarchical, complex organization with branches and local cells, alongside educational and community institutions that provided it with a broad base and significant influence.
The movement’s strength lay in its appeal to the masses to promote Islamic values, rather than in its being led by religious clerics; Banna himself was a teacher, and the current leader is trained as a veterinarian.
Governance based on the Islamic values promoted by the movement has led to its classification as an Islamist movement. Even during its time in Egypt, the movement was associated with assassinations and terrorist attacks against the Egyptian regime. This pattern has since spread to the West.
From the 1970s onward, the movement began expanding westward, especially in Europe and the United States, through waves of immigration, the establishment of mosques, community associations, charitable organizations, and student groups.
Activists from the movement created institutional infrastructures in the US and across Europe.
For instance, in the 1990s, the activities of Islamist preacher and terror supporter Yusuf al-Qaradawi at Ohio University were funded by Qatar. This pattern of Qatari money fueling and strengthening Islamist institutions has continued to shape the public arena in Western countries in general and the US in particular.
Protests, CAIR, and US landscape
In the US, recent years have seen waves of violent protests, and especially since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, they have been linked to pro-Palestinian organizations and Islamist actors operating in the country.
One of the influential movements in this context is the Muslim Brotherhood, which relies on a broad supporter base that includes many immigrants. Its activity is not merely voluntary, but is supported by a significant institutional and financial network.
Among the central bodies identified with advancing the movement’s agendas in the US is CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
During Trump's first term, calls from Republican figures to take steps limiting the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliated organizations intensified. In 2015, Congress approved a Republican bill, the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act, which required the secretary of state to examine whether the movement met the criteria for being classified as a foreign terrorist organization.
Although the bill advanced the discussion on the topic, it ultimately did not result in an official designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Experts point out that one of the main reasons for this is the movement’s fragmented nature, as it does not operate as a unified body.
On July 11, 2018, the House Subcommittee on National Security held a special hearing under the title "The Global Threat of the Muslim Brotherhood." During the hearing, the movement’s ties to terrorist groups, the extent of existing intelligence information, its political influence, and the possibility of taking official steps to designate it as a terrorist organization were discussed.
Meanwhile, conservative think tanks suggested a more targeted approach, described as "scalpel, not hammer," aimed at evaluating and classifying specific branches of the movement that could meet the criteria for terrorist activity, instead of applying a broad designation to the entire movement.
Trump's decision to implement the bill applies authorities “chapter by chapter,” focusing on specific branches rather than the entire movement. Right-wing critics in the US warn that this approach leaves loopholes for other affiliates to rebrand and evade sanctions. They also note that Qatar and Turkey, seen by opponents as key enablers of Brotherhood-linked activity, are not named in the move.
Trump's terrorism advisor, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, explained that the decree targets Muslim Brotherhood organizations operating within countries, not the countries themselves.
However, this explanation was viewed as disingenuous: organizations such as the International Union of Muslim Brotherhood, based in Qatar and considered a leading proponent of the Brotherhood's ideology (previously headed by preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi), along with its activists who spread anti-American rhetoric and even called for jihad against Israel, were not addressed in the decree.
Furthermore, under the decree, Trump stated that he would collaborate with his Middle Eastern partners to enforce the law, implying that Qatar would remain involved in the process and could ensure that branches it supports are exempt from the decree that designates them as a terrorist organization. The real concern among many in the US is that Trump's statement was more about appeasing his voters, who are dissatisfied with his extensive connections to countries promoting Islamism and terrorism, rather than addressing the root issues at home.
The author is a researcher of Qatari policy at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.