The United States has designated Muslim Brotherhood organisations in Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan as “terrorist” groups, The Associated Press news agency reports, as Washington intensifies its crackdown on Israel’s rivals across the world.
The decision on Tuesday came weeks after President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing his administration to start the process of blacklisting the groups.
“These designations reflect the opening actions of an ongoing, sustained effort to thwart Muslim Brotherhood chapters’ violence and destabilisation wherever it occurs,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, according to AP.
“The United States will use all available tools to deprive these Muslim Brotherhood chapters of the resources to engage in or support terrorism.”
The designations make it illegal to provide material support to the groups. They also largely ban their current and former members from entering the US and impose economic sanctions to choke their revenue streams.
Established in 1928 by Egyptian Muslim scholar Hassan al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood has offshoots and branches across the Middle East, including political parties and social organisations.
The group and its affiliates say they are committed to peaceful political participation.
The Muslim Brotherhood chapter in Lebanon, known as al-Jamaa al-Islamiya, is represented in the Lebanese Parliament.
In Jordan, the group won 31 House of Representatives seats in the 2024 elections through its political arm, the Islamic Action Front.
But Amman banned the organisation last year, accusing it of links to what the Jordanian government called a sabotage plot. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood won the country’s only democratically held presidential election in 2012. But President Mohamed Morsi was overthrown a year later in a military coup and died in jail in 2019.
Cairo has outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood and launched a sweeping crackdown against the group’s leaders and members since 2013, driving the organisation underground and into exile.
Muslim Brotherhood organisations have been vocal critics of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza within their countries.
Al-Jamaa al-Islamiya in Lebanon backed Hezbollah in its “support front” in solidarity with Gaza against Israel, which culminated in an all-out war in September 2024.
After Trump’s decree in November, Lebanese Parliament Member Imad al-Hout stressed that al-Jamaa al-Islamiya is a licensed political organisation in Lebanon with no affiliation with foreign forces.
“The evaluation of any Lebanese political force is exclusively governed by the Lebanese constitution and laws, and not by external political classifications related to contexts linked to American interests and policies that support the Israeli enemy and are unrelated to the Lebanese reality,” al-Hout said in a statement.
The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood also rejected Trump’s order noting that previous administrations had declined to blacklist the group.
“The facts have not changed. What has changed is the level of foreign pressure on the United States, particularly from the UAE and Israel, to adopt policies that serve external agendas rather than the interests of the American people,” the group said in a statement in November.
“These external agendas directly contradict the ‘America First’ principle President Trump has repeatedly invoked, and reflect the troubling influence of foreign lobbying networks that seek to export their domestic political battles into US national security decisions.”
In the US and the West, right-wing activists have for years tried to demonise Muslim immigrant communities and Israel’s critics with accusations of links to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Some of Trump’s hawkish allies in Congress have been calling for blacklisting the group for years.
After Trump issued his decree to designate the Muslim Brotherhood’s branches in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan as “foreign terrorist organisations”, the Republican governors of Texas and Florida moved to crack down on the leading Muslim civil rights group in the US.
Both states designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) along with the Muslim Brotherhood as “terrorist” groups.
CAIR, which denies links to the Muslim Brotherhood, has sued them in response.
By Aljazeera
Email your news TIPS to Editor@Kahawatungu.com — this is our only official communication channel
