OPINION:
The Treasury and State Department designations against three Muslim Brotherhood chapters are no foreign policy footnotes. They are warnings directed inward.
American organizations that built relationships with Brotherhood-aligned networks while assuming those ties would never matter should now reconsider that assumption.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has described the designations as “opening actions.” That language is deliberate. The move does not yet name American organizations, but it signals sequencing rather than restraint.
The State Department designated the Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, making material support a criminal offense. The Treasury designated the Egyptian and Jordanian branches as specially designated global terrorists for materially supporting Hamas.
The evidence behind those decisions has been public for years. Egyptian Brotherhood members facilitated Hamas fighters’ entry to the Gaza Strip and coordinated recruitment logistics. In Jordan, Brotherhood-connected elements were caught manufacturing rockets, explosives and drones. Jordan’s courts formally dissolved the Brotherhood in 2020.
What matters now is not only the designations but also how the administration has framed them. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations weeks ago, barring them from acquiring land in the state. State-level action has often foreshadowed federal enforcement.
Policymakers were not acting without warning. In November, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy published “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Strategic Entryism Into the United States,” documenting the Brotherhood’s doctrine of Tamkeen, or patient institutional entrenchment, drawing on authenticated internal documents including the 1991 Explanatory Memorandum and the 1982 Project. We briefed policymakers from both parties and Trump administration officials ahead of the executive order.
With the designations, the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s full sanctions regime now applies. Property is blocked. Transactions are prohibited. Foreign financial institutions face exposure to secondary sanctions. Under the 50 Percent Rule, any entity owned by a designated person to the extent of 50% or more is automatically blocked. The Muslim Brotherhood has long relied on layered structures, including charities, advocacy groups, campus organizations and long-standing partnerships. Organizations operating within those structures now face exposure they did not before.
Individual liability is real. U.S. people face fines of up to $1 million and prison terms of up to 20 years, including board members, advisers, consultants and others who received payments from designated entities or their majority-owned subsidiaries. Although sanctions do not apply retroactively, ongoing relationships must end immediately. Banks and donors are already reassessing risk after Congress extended the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s statute of limitations from five to 10 years.
To be clear, this is about Islamism, a political ideology that uses religion as a vehicle for power, not Islam itself. The Muslim Brotherhood has long blurred that distinction to deflect scrutiny.
This reckoning has been years in the making. The 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terrorism-financing prosecution in American history, resulted in convictions for funneling $12 million to Hamas. Ghassan Elashi, a founding board member of CAIR’s Texas chapter, received a 65-year sentence. Prosecutors named CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America, and the North American Islamic Trust as unindicted co-conspirators, introducing the Muslim Brotherhood’s Explanatory Memorandum and its strategy of “civilizational jihad” in North America.
The FBI cut formal contact with CAIR in 2008. The United Arab Emirates designated CAIR as a terrorist organization in 2014. None of this was hidden. Yet many American institutions behaved as if the trial never occurred. Media outlets continued quoting Brotherhood-linked organizations. Politicians appeared at their events. Universities adopted their framing. Facts tested in court were treated as inconvenient.
Internationally, the United States is aligning with decisions already taken elsewhere. Egypt banned the Brotherhood in 2013. The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain designated it as a terrorist organization. Jordan dissolved its chapter in 2020. Russia designated it in 2003. Meanwhile, Qatar remains the principal outlier and the Brotherhood’s most important enabler.
The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy estimates Qatari soft-power assets at $500 billion to $1 trillion worldwide. Qatar is the largest foreign state donor to American universities, with much of that funding unreported. Our research shows that universities receiving Qatari funding experience nearly 300% more antisemitic incidents. Al Jazeera, wholly owned by Qatar’s ruling family, promotes sanitized Brotherhood narratives in English. Al Jazeera must register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Fifty years into the Muslim Brotherhood’s 100-year plan, the network of relationships that provided it legitimacy and protection inside the United States is finally under sustained examination. These designations mark the start of that scrutiny, not its conclusion.
• Haras Rafiq is vice president for policy at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy and co-author of its recent report into the Muslim Brotherhood’s U.S. entryism.
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