US President Donald Trump is seeking to blacklist the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group, a far-reaching step that would place the US firmly on the side of its authoritarian allies in the Middle East.
“The president has consulted with his national security team and leaders in the region who share his concern, and this designation is working its way through the internal process,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
The Muslim Brotherhood, a nearly century-old movement born in Egypt with pockets of support across the Arab world, was designated a terrorist organization by Cairo after the military in 2013 ousted then-Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, who had roots in the movement.
Placing the Muslim Brotherhood on Washington’s list of foreign terrorist organizations would make it a crime for any American to assist the group and would ban from the US its members, who are active in political parties in several countries.
The move came three weeks after Trump welcomed Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, who has cracked down heavily on the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as other movements ranging from the Islamic State group to secular advocates.
During their White House talks, Trump praised al-Sisi for “doing a great job,” saying the US and Egypt had “never had a better relationship.”
The terrorist designation would delight al-Sisi as well, as Saudi Arabia, which despite its Wahabi ideology, disdains the Muslim Brotherhood due to its support for political change in the kingdom, including over Riyadh’s alliance with Washington.
However, targeting the movement would be a major new impediment in US ties with NATO ally Turkey, where Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pushed an Islamist foreign policy that includes support for the Muslim Brotherhood inside Egypt.
Another US ally friendly toward the Muslim Brotherhood is Qatar, with the issue becoming a key source of friction with its neighbors Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been a long-time supporter of designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group, cosponsoring legislation with fellow conservatives to take the step when he was a member of the US Congress.
The Muslim Brotherhood has emerged in the past few years as a favorite bugbear for the US far-right, with numerous social media users on Tuesday hailing Trump’s push by sharing unfounded conspiracy theories that the group had infiltrated former US president Barack Obama’s administration or was attempting to impose Shariah law in the US.
However, the proposal has seen pushback from policymakers, who have said that it is inaccurate to lump together the Muslim Brotherhood, which includes more moderate and democratic strains, with groups set on violence such as the Islamic State group and al-Qaeda.
Human Rights Watch has said that a terrorist designation would “unfairly taint anyone alleged to be linked to the Muslim Brotherhood,” meaning that people based in the US could face prosecution — or, if not citizens, deportation — for backing charities or advocacy groups accused of ties to the movement.
Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which generally backs hawkish policies in the Middle East, doubted that the whole Muslim Brotherhood could be declared a terrorist group under normal processes.
“There is near-zero likelihood of the entire network, with all its disparate parts, meeting legal criteria,” he said on Twitter. “But targeting the violent branches is certainly viable. That, in turn, can enable further designations based on financial ties.”
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