‘It will be done in the strongest and most powerful terms,’ the president said in an interview with Just the News on Sunday morning.
President Donald Trump said on Nov. 23 that he is planning to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, a move that he has considered since his first term.
“It will be done in the strongest and most powerful terms,” Trump said in a morning interview with Just the News on Nov. 23. “Final documents are being drawn.”
The first Trump administration started the process of designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, but did not join the other nations that have given the Islamic group that title.
On Aug. 12, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the current Trump administration had resumed the process.
Rubio was asked at the time why the Trump administration would not designate the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorist organizations.
“All of that is in the works. Obviously, there are different branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, so you’d have to designate each one of them,” Rubio said, adding that the process could spur legal challenges.
“These things are going to be challenged in court,” he said. “Any group can say, ‘Well, I’m not really a terrorist. That organization is not a terrorist organization.’”
Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928. The group is the world’s oldest and among the most influential contemporary Islamist movements, viewing Islam as a complete and all-embracing system that supersedes and oversees all corners of private and public life.
The Muslim Brotherhood “advocates a bottom-up, gradual Islamization of society that would eventually lead to the formation of a purely Islamic society and political entity,” according to George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been banned or labeled a foreign terrorist organization in several countries, including Austria, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan.
Jordan decided to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood earlier this year, with its Ministry of Interior stating, “It has been proven that members of the group operate in the dark and engage in activities that could destabilize the country.”
“Members of the dissolved Muslim Brotherhood have tampered with security and national unity and disrupted security and public order,” the ministry added.
There have been recent bipartisan efforts in the United States to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization.
By Jacob Burg
