Rubio Says US Moving to Designate Muslim Brotherhood as Terror Group
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the U.S. is working to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization due to its ties to Hamas and other extremists.
Senator Tom Cotton urged the IRS to investigate the Council on American-Islamic Relations for alleged connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
Rubio emphasized that the designation process is lengthy, involving a review of different branches of the Muslim Brotherhood and facing potential legal challenges.
The move to designate the Muslim Brotherhood follows bipartisan legislative efforts targeting the group, with similar designations already made by countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the United States was “in the process” of designating the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as “terrorist organisations”, according to the transcript of a radio interview published by the US State Department.
On Tuesday, Rubio appeared on a radio show hosted by pro-Trump “shock jock” Sid Rosenberg, who is based in New York, who asked him why the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR hadn’t been designated as terrorist organisations.
Rosenberg claimed, without citing any evidence, that CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood were “behind” the mayoral candidacy of Zohran Mamdani, whom he called a “psycho” and a “lunatic”.
Rubio responded that “all of that is in the works”, but added that “there are different branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, so you’d have to designate each one of them”.
He said, however, that he had expected any designation of a purported branch of the Muslim Brotherhood to be challenged in court, and that the US administration would have to show “paperwork” in order for the designation to be successful.
Last month, pro-Israel US Senator Ted Cruz introduced a bill to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation in the US.
Rubio added that the US administration had to “document and justify” any process to designate CAIR or organisations affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist groups, for fear of judges stopping the process.
“We are constantly reviewing groups to designate for what they are: supporters of terrorists, maybe terrorists themselves, whatever it may be. We haven’t done this in a long time, so it’s – we’ve got a lot of catch-up to do,” he added.
The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist organisation which was founded in Egypt in 1928. Branches were later set up in other Arab countries, including Syria, Jordan, and Sudan.
The group has largely advocated peaceful political and social activity, taking part in elections in Egypt before 2013.
A Muslim Brotherhood member, Mohammed Morsi, became Egypt’s first democratically elected president in 2012 but was overthrown by Egypt’s current president, Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, in a military coup the following year.
Since then, thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members have been detained in Egypt, with many suffering torture and abuse in custody.
