Even Egypt Gets It: Washington Named Four Brotherhood Chapters. Cairo Listed the Organization.
Egypt has permanently listed the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, then named 35 European entities for five years. The United States has designated four chapters, and still not the organization itself.
Let me ask you something, friend.
Who are the Muslim Brotherhood, really? And what do they say they want?
This month, Egypt put the organization on its terrorist list for good. Washington is still filling out the forms one chapter at a time. Before you decide which capital has it right, you should know who is being named, and what their own papers say the goal is.
As I see it, that is the whole story. The rest is paperwork.
Who they really are
Hassan al-Banna, a 22-year-old schoolteacher, founded the Society of the Muslim Brothers in Ismailia, Egypt, in March 1928. The Ottoman caliphate had been abolished four years earlier. Al-Banna preached that Islam was a total system: the mosque, the courtroom and the state.
The motto was never subtle: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."
Its leading ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, wrote that any society not ruled by God's law was living in jahiliyyah, pre-Islamic ignorance. Egypt hanged him in 1966. His book Milestones outlived him and became required reading for later jihadist movements.
From Egypt, the Brotherhood spread into national chapters and affiliates across the Arab world, then into Europe and North America through student groups, charities and councils. In 1987, its Palestinian branch launched Hamas. The 1988 Hamas charter calls the group "one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine."
The governments that know it best have acted. Syria made membership a capital crime in 1980. Egypt designated it a terrorist organization in 2013. Saudi Arabia followed in March 2014, and the UAE that November. Jordan banned all its activities in April 2025.
What they say they want
In 2004, FBI agents searching a home in Annandale, Virginia, found a hidden archive of Brotherhood papers. One, "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America," dated 22 May 1991 and written by Mohamed Akram of the group's North American Shura Council, was entered as evidence in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terror-financing trial.
The goal it names is "settlement": rooting the movement inside America through its own institutions. One of the six elements is "supporting the establishment of the global Islamic State wherever it is." Then comes the line that should end any debate about intent:
"The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers."
Ikhwan means Brothers. That is their word, not mine.
Defenders say it was one man's wish list, never adopted policy, and groups named in its attachment deny Brotherhood control. Fair enough. But Akram addressed it to the Shura Council, called it an explanation of a long-term plan the group "approved and adopted" in 1987, and a federal court admitted it.
There is an older paper. In November 2001, Swiss investigators searching the lakeside villa of Brotherhood banker Youssef Nada found an unsigned 1982 strategy document now known as "The Project." It calls for dedication "to the establishment of an Islamic state, in parallel with gradual efforts aimed at gaining control of local power centers through institutional action." Nada has denied it was a Brotherhood blueprint.
Gradual. Institutional. In 1995, at a conference in Toledo, Ohio, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, long regarded as the movement's leading cleric, told his audience: "We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through Da'wa." Da'wa means preaching.
You will hear people quote a Brotherhood line about using our own democracy against us. I could not find it in either document, so I will not put it in their mouths. I don't need to. "From within" says it. My colleague Sally-Joe dug into the memo's settlement idea and the politics of hijrah, migration, in her 2023 piece on the protests.
That is the organization at issue. Not a faith. A political movement with a motto, a strategy, and a record of spinning off armed groups. That is why it matters who names it, and who won't.
Cairo names it
On 8 November, Egypt's official gazette made the Brotherhood's place on the country's list of terrorist entities permanent. It replaced a temporary listing from December 2022 and took effect the day it appeared in print.
That is not a first-time ban. What changed is the legal basis and the clock. Under Egypt's 2015 law on terrorist entities, the listing no longer has to be renewed through the courts. It just stands.
Its activities, meetings and fundraising are banned, its premises closed, its assets frozen.
The same notice permanently placed three convicted men on a separate list of individual terrorists. Listing an organization is not the same as listing every person who ever brushed against it. Egypt's own notice treats those as different legal acts. So will I.
Then a court named Europe
On 10 November, a Cairo criminal court's Second Badr Circuit ordered 35 entities and 36 individuals onto Egypt's terrorism lists for five years. It was gazetted the same day. This one is not permanent.
Among the bodies Egypt named are the Council of European Muslims and its branches, the European Council for Fatwa and Research, the European Council of Imams, and the European Institute of Human Sciences. The list also includes organizations in Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland and a long string of other European countries.
I want this said carefully, because sloppy lists are how a serious argument gets poisoned.
This is Egypt's court, Egypt's law, Egypt's list. Reporting on the ruling has not established that every named body is a Brotherhood chapter. A gazette in Cairo is not the last word on every civic letterhead in Europe.
But Cairo was prepared to name, in public, a European network it believes is part of the problem. Washington has not.
A month earlier, the European Parliament stopped short. On 8 October it adopted a resolution on "Islamist entryism" and the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood network, 381 to 167, with 15 abstentions. It called for tighter checks on funding and for the Council to assess Brotherhood-linked entities, including possible referral to the EU terrorist list where the legal tests are met.
It was non-binding. It put no one on that list. The actual naming was left to someone else. In this case, a court in Cairo.
What Washington actually did
Now look at our side of the ledger, honestly.
In November 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14362. It did not designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a whole. It opened a process to consider *certain chapters*, starting with Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan.
On 13 January 2026, State and Treasury acted.
Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control designated the Egyptian and Jordanian branches as Specially Designated Global Terrorists for material support to Hamas. Those sanctions freeze any assets under US jurisdiction and generally bar Americans from dealing with them.
The same day, the State Department designated the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood, also known as al-Jamaa al-Islamiyah, as both a Foreign Terrorist Organization and an SDGT, along with its secretary general, Muhammad Fawzi Taqqosh.
An FTO listing is the heavier tool: material support to one is a crime. In January, only the Lebanese chapter got that label.
Then came a fourth.
On 9 March 2026, State designated the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood as an SDGT, and its FTO designation took effect on 16 March in the Federal Register, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. State said the group and its armed wing, the al-Baraa Bin Malik Brigade, had put upwards of 20,000 fighters into Sudan's war, many trained and supported by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Four chapters. Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Sudan.
Treasury called January "the first actions of an ongoing, sustained effort." It also said Hamas "is inspired by, and serves as a branch of, the Muslim Brotherhood." That is not a talk-radio line. That is the United States government, in its own designation papers.
So Washington will designate the branch, designate four national chapters, and still leave the organization those chapters belong to off the list.
The paperwork excuse
I have heard the reason, and I do not dismiss it.
The Brotherhood is a transnational network whose chapters do not always take orders from the same desk. Legal experts have warned that a blanket designation could be vulnerable in court, and that a judge knocking it down would be read as a clean bill of health.
Fine. The United States should have higher legal thresholds than a gazette. I fought under a flag that is supposed to show its work.
But I spent my Army years in logistics, and I know what a stalled convoy looks like. You do not wait for every truck in a network to paint the same bumper number before you interdict the ones running ammunition. You name the network, and you keep naming the nodes that meet the test.
January was sold as a first step. Ten months later, Cairo has named the organization, a Cairo court has named 35 European entities, and Washington is still sitting on four chapters.
That is not caution anymore. That is a chain of command that stopped at the easy paperwork.
Aim at the organization
Friend, I want this said plainly, because the cheap version of this argument always slides into the gutter.
I am not talking about Muslims. I am talking about a political organization with a doctrine, a history, and a written strategy. Ordinary people who go to mosque, raise their kids, and want no part of that project are not the target. They never should be. The Brotherhood is. Its doctrine is. Its chapters, and the fronts it hides behind, are.
Egypt is not a model democracy, and Cairo has its own reasons, some of them ugly. You can say that and still notice the gap. The question is why Washington, with better courts and a higher bar, is still behind Cairo on the one act that matters: naming the network.
Four chapters is not nothing. It is also not the job. Washington can finish the review it promised of the chapters and fronts that meet the legal test, including those operating in allied capitals behind a civic letterhead.
Aim at doctrine. Aim at organizations. Leave ordinary people out of it.
Cairo already named the organization. Washington should too. Not one chapter at a time, until someone else's gazette does the honest work for us.
And Remember:
Trust no Single Source
Trust Your Gut
and Stay Curious
Alex Knight
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