AHA Urges U.S. Congress to Recognize the Muslim Brotherhood as a Terror Threat

AHA Foundation calls on the Trump administration and U.S. Congress to formally designate the Muslim Brotherhood and its network of affiliated organizations as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and to bar them from operating in the United States.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a transnational Islamist movement founded in Egypt in 1928. While it presents itself as a political or social reform movement, its founding ideology calls for the establishment of an Islamic state governed by sharia law. Over the past century, the Muslim Brotherhood has spawned or inspired numerous terrorist groups, including Hamas, and has served as an ideological incubator for extremist networks across the globe. 

The danger lies not only in its violent affiliates but in the nonviolent Islamist infrastructure that advances the same goals through soft power: political advocacy, religious outreach, and identity-based manipulation. Today, its legacy organizations exploit democratic freedoms across the West and within the U.S. to undermine liberal institutions and radicalize communities.

We recognize that several U.S. allies with majority Muslim populations, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Jordan, have already designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Each of these nations has recognized the active role that the Brotherhood has played in spreading radicalization and political instability in the region and around the world.

The U.S. cannot afford to ignore the twin threats posed by the Muslim Brotherhood: the ideological threat of nonviolent Islamists who exploit our freedoms to erode democratic institutions from within, and the violent threat of affiliated groups that have carried out terror attacks that have killed Americans throughout the Middle East and beyond. Brotherhood-linked networks continue to endanger global security and American interests. We urge lawmakers and the administration to take decisive action: designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and restrict its ability to operate within the United States.