US President Donald Trump points a finger as he delivers remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, July 31, 2025. Photo: Kent Nishimura via Reuters Connect

US President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order directing his administration to determine whether to designate certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists.

“President Trump is confronting the Muslim Brotherhood’s transnational network, which fuels terrorism and destabilization campaigns against US interests and allies in the Middle East,” a White house fact sheet said.

The order directs Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to submit a report “on whether to designate any Muslim Brotherhood chapters, such as those in Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan,” according to the fact sheet, which also orders the secretaries to proceed with any designations within 45 days of the report.

Trump’s order came hours after the White House confirmed on Monday that Trump planned to move forward with plans to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, in a move hailed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who said the Islamist group “endangers stability.”

“TRUMP VOWS TO DESIGNATE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” the White House’s social media account on X posted, above a screenshot of a New York Post headline with the same wording.

TRUMP VOWS TO DESIGNATE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION. pic.twitter.com/Zwt61sRRuI

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) November 24, 2025

The post came after Trump, in an interview with the Just the News outlet published on Sunday, was cited as saying that the “final documents are being drawn” to enact the designation. 

“It will be done in the strongest and most powerful terms,” he said.

Trump’s comments followed Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announcing last week a state-level designation of the Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as terrorist organizations.

The interview also came several months after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other Republican co-sponsors introduced a bill seeking to classify the Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). Lawmakers in the US House also reintroduced earlier this year the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act, which would direct the State Department to classify both the organization and its affiliates as terrorist entities.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in August that a federal designation was “in the works,” noting that the legal process requires examining each of the Brotherhood’s regional branches individually.

1. If finalized, the designation would mark a significant shift in US counterterrorism policy, criminalizing support for the Islamist group and potentially triggering sanctions on its global affiliates.

The Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational movement active in some 70 countries that preaches a vision of society governed by Sharia law, has made recent headlines over allegations of theft and corruption. Several Arab governments, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, have banned the Brotherhood or designated it a terrorist organization. The Hamas terror group has long been affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, drawing both ideological inspiration and even personnel from its ranks.

Counterterrorism experts argue that targeting the Muslim Brotherhood’s sprawling network is an overdue step to combat the roots of Islamist extremism. The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), a research center that has long sounded alarms about the Brotherhood, welcomed Trump’s reported commitment to the designation, saying the group has functioned as an “intellectual incubator” for jihadist movements, spreading doctrines that inspire terrorist organizations even if the Brotherhood’s official chapters claim to disavow violence.

Charles Asher Small, ISGAP’s executive director, told The Algemeiner that the Brotherhood has learned to exploit the freedoms of open societies, the values of pluralism, and rights discourse “as instruments to weaken the very system that protects them.”

Trump’s statements on Sunday “reflect a growing recognition of the scale and seriousness” of the threat of the Brotherhood, Small said, and formalizing it as a terrorist designation would mark “an essential first step” to confront the group’s presence in the United States.

But he warned that the designation should not be treated “as an end in itself.” Real progress will require “sustained, evidence-based policy, rigorous scrutiny of affiliated organizations and funding networks, and long-term investment in strengthening democratic resilience against ideological infiltration already underway.”

A report released by ISGAP last week found that Qatar has funneled roughly $20 billion into American schools and universities over five decades as part of a coordinated, 100-year project to embed Muslim Brotherhood ideologies in the US.

The 200-page report, unveiled last week in Washington, DC to members of Congress, chronicles a 50-year effort by Brotherhood-linked groups to embed themselves in American academia, civil society, and government agencies, exposing what ISGAP calls the Brotherhood’s “civilization jihad” strategy, while maintaining an agenda fundamentally at odds with liberal democratic values.

“This is not a conventional political movement. It is a transnational ideological network that has learned to mimic the language of democracy while steadily corroding its foundations,” Small told The Algemeiner.

Dalia Ziada, co-author of the report, also welcomed Trump’s comments but cautioned against complacency. 

“The Muslim Brotherhood is not just a Middle Eastern movement but an ideological export that has adapted itself to Western institutions, language, and freedoms in order to hollow them out from within,” Ziada told The Algemeiner. She added that she has “seen how its networks operate, how they marginalize moderate Muslim voices, and how state actors like Qatar amplify this project through money, media, and education.”

A US designation would be “a crucial signal of clarity,” she said, but “it must be followed by rigorous policy, real oversight of affiliated organizations, and sustained investment in protecting democratic culture.”

Netanyahu on Sunday applauded Trump’s decision “to outlaw and designate the Muslim Brotherhood … as a terrorist organization.”

“This is an organization that endangers stability throughout the Middle East and beyond,” he said, noting that Israel has already outlawed part of the movement and is working to “complete this action” soon.

The announcement could complicate matters for the Israeli Arab Ra’am party, which was part of the previous coalition led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid and is aligned with the Southern Islamic Movement — a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate seen as more moderate than its northern counterpart, which was outlawed in 2015. Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas responded to Netanyahu’s comments on Monday, saying that his party is “evaluating the legal situation.”