Lawmakers propose sweeping bill against Muslim Brotherhood after Trump letdown

The US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee voted on Wednesday to advance a bill that would designate all groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood "terrorist organisations".

The bill passed the committee with bipartisan support, with Democrats Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, Greg Stanton, Jared Moskowitz, Jim Costa, George Latimer, and Brad Schneider joining all the Republicans.

To become law, the bill needs to pass the full House of Representatives and the Senate. 

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is led by staunch Israel supporter Brian Mast. The Florida Congressman lost both his legs in Afghanistan after stepping on an improvised explosive device. He later volunteered to serve in the Israeli military and often wears an Israeli army uniform inside Congress. 

The bill is more sweeping in its language against the Muslim Brotherhood than the executive order signed by US President Donald Trump last month. It called for a review process to designate Muslim Brotherhood groups in certain countries as terror organisations.

Diehard pro-Israel voices in the US, like Laura Loomer, slammed Trump’s executive order as a letdown.

“We were all gaslit,” Loomer said.

Regional partners

Trump’s executive order did not name Turkey, for example, a Nato ally where the Muslim Brotherhood is not outlawed and has many supporters. Instead, it said the US would begin a process to examine whether to designate Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.

Jordan outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood in the spring, and Egypt outlawed it after the ousting of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013.

'The battles have been fought, and the region has moved on to a point'

- Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Baker Institute

Lebanon’s Sunni political party, Jamaa al-Islamiya, is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. Like the Shia Hezbollah, it has an armed wing, the Fajr Forces, which Israel has targeted with strikes.

The Muslim Brotherhood called US President Donald Trump’s executive order “detached from reality”. 

In a statement released by the group’s official X account shortly after the order, the Muslim Brotherhood said Trump’s allegation that the group was engaged in terrorist activity was “unsupported by evidence”. 

“The directive is politically motivated and lacks any credible legal or security basis,” the statement said, adding, “This Executive Order sets a dangerous precedent.”

“Designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organizations…undermines US national security and regional stability, and emboldens those who pushed for this outcome to justify repression, collective punishment, and economic sanctions,” the statement reads. 

Rose Kelanic, director of the Middle East programme at Defense Priorities, previously told MEE, “The Muslim Brotherhood is not a terror threat to the US,” adding, “The argument people make is that it could be a threat to Israel.”

The ranking Democrat on the committee, Congressman Gregory Meeks, voted against the bill, saying that it would hobble the US’s ability to engage with partners in the region and distort how the Muslim Brotherhood functions.

If the bill became law, he said it “would complicate the US engagement with political leaders and parties who have historic and non-violent ties to Brotherhood-affiliated movements, like in Morocco”.

He added that it “would alienate important regional partners in the Middle East, such as Qatar and Turkey”.

Arab Spring

Trump first floated designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation in 2017, when the Middle East was riven by the fallout of the Arab Spring protests.

In Tunisia and Egypt, Arab autocrats who had ruled their countries for decades fell to popular protestors. The region’s major powers split over how to deal with the movement, which saw an upswing of support for the Muslim Brotherhood. 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who is democratically elected and whose own political party goes back to a brand of Muslim populism, backed the protestors. Likewise, through its state-run news channel Al Jazeera, Qatar gave airtime to the protests.

But the ruling families of Saudi Arabia and the UAE viewed the protests as dangerous to the region and, most importantly, to their own monarchies.

The rift over populist Islam culminated in a Saudi and Emirati blockade of Qatar that Trump endorsed in 2017. It would manifest itself in proxy wars for years after, in places like Libya.

However, by the time Trump left office, the region’s main powers were trying to patch up ties. In 2021, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain restored relations with Qatar, signing the Al Ula agreement.

“The battles have been fought, and the region has moved on to a point,” Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, an expert on the Gulf at the Baker Institute, told Middle East Eye.

“There doesn’t seem to be a major Gulf dimension to this push, like there was in the first Trump term. It seems that Loomer, and some elements of the Maga base, are behind it,” he added.