On Nov. 24, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) directing the State and Treasury Departments to begin the process of deciding whether to designate some select branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs).
Notably, this initial executive order specifically named only three such Brotherhood branches located in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon.
In Lebanon, the Brotherhood operates as the Al-Fajr Forces, the military wing of the Islamic Group.
In Jordan it is actually represented in parliament but in April 2025, Jordanian authorities arrested a Brotherhood cell accused of smuggling weapons to Hamas in Gaza.
Egypt is where the Brotherhood was founded in 1928, with the Abdel Fattah el-Sisi regime regularly cracking down on Brotherhood activities there.
Hamas is the Gaza branch of the original Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and has been listed as a FTO since 1997.
Left unmentioned in Trump's executive order, however, are Brotherhood-supporting regimes in Qatar and Turkey even though both of these countries support Brotherhood chapters like Hamas that engage directly in terrorism.
Nor is any Brotherhood front group in the U.S. named in the Trump executive order either, given that none of them is demonstrably directly connected to any of the named branches in Egypt, Jordan, or Lebanon.
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded as a jihadist organization in Egypt in 1928.
But to be designated to the FTO list or as a SDGT, a group must be found per Section 219 of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act to be foreign; it must engage in or retain the capability and intent to engage in terrorism (which is defined as kinetic violence); and its activities must threaten U.S. nationals or the national security of the United States.
In the Trump executive order, such violence and destabilization campaigns are noted to occur in "the Levant and other parts of the Middle East," but not the United States (U.S.) itself.
Also problematic for designating the overall Brotherhood organization is the way the Brotherhood has developed over the decades into a "sprawling network of national branches, ideological allies, and autonomous affiliates that share a historical lineage but not a unified chain of command," as a Nov. 24, 2025 Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) piece by Mark Dubowitz and Mariam Wahba put it.
These characterizations and legal requirements long have stymied efforts to name the overall Muslim Brotherhood to the FTO list, given that by design, the Brotherhood has no centralized headquarters or leadership nor has it ever engaged in actual terrorism (kinetic violence) against Americans/U.S.
It would seem that recognition of these realities is what now has led the Trump administration to begin going after Brotherhood branches located abroad.
Additionally, and importantly, the focus of Trump administration efforts to go after the Muslim Brotherhood remains fixated on kinetic violence (terrorism).
Yes, the executive order's named Brotherhood branches are the most physically dangerous to U.S. and allied partners’ interests. But that doesn’t address what may be the Brotherhood's actual modus operandi (MO), which is subversion from within.
The Brotherhood's own 1991 "Explanatory Memorandum" clearly lays out what it calls the "process of settlement":
"The process of settlement is a 'Civilization-Jihadist Process' with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] 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 so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
It's critical to the survival of Western Civilization and our own American Republic that this Brotherhood's MO be understood to pose a significantly more dangerous threat than terrorism alone.
By methodically over the decades infiltrating myriad social institutions, from academia to faith communities, to government agencies in positions both appointed and elected, the media (especially social media), and more, the Brotherhood shares with communist/Marxist organizations the strategy long known as the "Long March Through the Institutions."
This strategy, attributed to the 20th Century Italian communist Antonio Gramci, and spelled out in detail in Chapter 13 ("The 45 Goals of Communism Today") of W. Cleon Skousen's 1958 book, "The Naked Communist," is both more insidious and more sophisticated than blunt force violence.
As a people, we Americans, and as Western Civilization more broadly, seem not to be well-equipped to recognize or counter subversion.
Notably, and in recognition of the First Amendment, there is no law in the U.S. criminal code against subversion as there is for sedition or treason.
We need to correct this failing to recognize the corrosive effects of subversion and soon, as we can see the influence of Islamic Law (shariah) and the rapidly-expanding effects of hijra, the Islamic practice of establishing Muslim enclaves (such as the planned EPIC City project in Texas) taking root across the U.S.
To his credit, Governor Gregg Abbott, R-Texas, has taken the lead in opening a legal investigation into the growing prevalence of Islamic courts/tribunals in his state.
As he notes in an official Nov. 19, 2025 letter to relevant Texas legal agencies, shariah (Islamic Law) is not among religious practices protected by our Constitution’s First Amendment; rather, it is in direct contravention of Article VI.
It is the Islamic movement's subversion, rather than terrorism, that most critically needs our understanding and focus.
The sooner, the better.
Clare M. Lopez is the Founder/President of Lopez Liberty LLC. Read More Clare M. Lopez — Here.
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