Top Republican lawmaker pushes Muslim Brotherhood terror designation in US Congress

A senior US lawmaker said Tuesday that he would look to introduce legislation aimed at designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

“In the coming days, I will be circulating and re-introducing a modernized version of the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act, which I have been pushing for my entire Senate career,” Senator Ted Cruz said in a post on X.

Cruz went on to say that the Muslim Brotherhood used the Biden administration to consolidate and deepen its influence. “But the Trump administration and Republican Congress can no longer afford to avoid the threat they pose to Americans and American national security,” he added.

US President Donald Trump’s senior director for counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, called the Muslim Brotherhood “the progenitor of all modern” terror groups.

Earlier this year, Jordan became the latest Arab country to ban the Muslim Brotherhood following a sabotage plot by the group that Jordanian security agencies foiled. Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the UAE have all banned the group.

The Muslim Brotherhood is one of the region’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements, currently led by Mohamed Badie in Egypt, who is currently serving jail time after he was sentenced in 2017 to life in prison and a death sentence for planning violent attacks. Badie and 37 others were accused of conspiring to stir unrest during protests that followed the July 2013 military overthrow of Egypt’s former president Mohamed Morsi, who was a part of the Muslim Brotherhood.