Is the Muslim Brotherhood a Terrorist Organization?

Where lies the limit between a strong ideological religious group with a history of violence and a terrorist organization? After how many violent attacks do these stop being exceptions and instead a major characteristic of the group? Can an organization that participated in and led alleged plots, assassinations and government overthrows truly change and become non-violent? These are the questions that outline the struggle of countries today when deciding whether or not the Muslim Brotherhood should be labeled a terrorist organization or a religious and political movement. 

Considered the oldest political group within the Arab world, the Muslim Brotherhood is rejected by multiple Arab countries who designate it as a terrorist organization, such as Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and even non-Arab country Russia. Founded in 1928 in Egypt by an Islamic teacher and scholar, Hassan al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood’s original goal was to find a universal Islamic system of rule. Embracing political activism, social responsibility, charitable works and social support programs, the Brotherhood seeks to serve its main support base of low-income populations. The organization’s current leader in Egypt is Mohamed Badie, who is currently in prison, serving numerous life and death sentences for, among other charges, murder, incitement of violence, support of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, vandalism and incitement to terrorism. Some of the group’s international offshoots are the Islamic Constitutional Movement in Kuwait, Tunisia’s Ennahda and Hamas in Palestine, some of whose founding members were originally in the Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood has a complicated political history within Egypt, which was only exacerbated by brotherhood member Mohamed Mohamed Morsi Eissa al-Ayyat’s, stint as president between 2012 to 2013. Morsi was nominated as a backup candidate but became the official President when Kharait El-Shater was disqualified in the elections. Through a temporary constitutional declaration in November of 2012, Morsi granted himself unlimited power, described by some as an “Islamist coup.” Soon, with accusations of repressing the freedom of press and demonstrations, major protests began in 2012 and ended in June of 2013, when now-President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi removed Morsi from office in a coup-d’état, commonly referred to as the June 30 Revolution. Presently, many of the Brotherhood’s remaining members have been accused by the Egyptian government of supporting Morsi, a criminal act in the eyes of the Sisi regime.

Since then, the government has labeled the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Sisi’s administration has implemented aggressive policies which aim to eradicate Brotherhood leadership and isolate it by spreading a narrative that links it to violent Islamism. 

Yet, the Muslim Brotherhood miraculously still prevails today. Their resilience poses a risk to Sisi’s legitimacy and the stability of the Egyptian state. Currently, the Egyptian government holds thousands of the group’s members in prison, where they often face abuse, violating international prison standards, such as the freedom from torture outlined in the Declaration of Human Rights. Other preventative measures against the organization include confiscating its assets and media censorship. Sisi believes that the ends justify the means —  it is worth suppressing a violent terrorist organization that has previously threatened political leadership for national security. However, the Brotherhood has claimed to reject violence and wishes to participate in mainstream politics. Are governments to believe that they are still a terrorist organization, or should they be treated as any other religious and political movement?

The Egyptian government justifies its classification of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization by describing it as a group with “blood on its hands,” due to their connection with Morsi, the multiple terrorist attacks orchestrated by Brotherhood members and because many offshoot organizations of the Brotherhood are jihadists. They claim that the Brotherhood’s attempts to prove it has become a non-violent organization are only a manipulative tactic to regain public and media popularity. At this point, they will once more resort to violence. Terrorist attacks led by members of the organization include the bombing of a police bus in Rashid in 2015, wounding dozens of policemen and killing four, the burning of the General Court of Fayoum Governate in Fayoum, the setting of fires at the Friends of the Bible Society building in Fayoum, storming police stations in Youssef Al-Siddiq and Tamiya, and the theft of ammunitions. 

The Muslim Brotherhood’s perennial challenge of effectively mixing religion with politics has historically ended in violence and strife, as was the case for Egypt in 2012-2013. Gamel Abdel-Gawad, a political analyst from Al-Ahram, wrote that “Egypt began to stabilize only after Al-Sisi was elected president in May 2014, and even then, the country was still forced to fight the remnants of terrorist groups and help the state stand on its feet again. Despite its defeat on June 30, 2013, the Brotherhood resumed its war against the new regime, resorting to terrorism and assassinations and launching a media war.” 

Another aspect that would justify categorizing the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization would be that many offshoots of the group are known to be violent and dangerous jihadists, such as “Liwaa al-Thawra,” “Popular Resistance,” “Helwan Brigades,” “Ajnad Misr” and “Revolutionary Punishment.” According to the Egyptian government, these offshoots did not only originate from the group but were financed and led by them. However, Sisi’s claims are disputed by other states and independent journalists. The Tahir Institute for Middle East Policy stated that “understanding the Salafist influence is important for it highlights how [Ajnad Misr] and similar [groups] that may pop up are not necessarily an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood and its ideological outlook, as the government contends.”

Even though the Muslim Brotherhood’s rightful characterization may be up for debate, it is indisputable that they have a history of violence, starting at their roots. The group’s founder, Hassan al-Banna, once said, “Jihad is an obligation from Allah and every Muslim and cannot be ignored nor evaded.” In his book “The Way of Jihad,” he wrote: “Jihad means the fighting of the unbelievers and involves all possible efforts that are necessary to dismantle the power of the enemies of Islam, including beating them, plundering their wealth, destroying their places of worship, and smashing their idols.” This ideology was followed not only during the Brotherhood’s terrorist attacks but also when they mourned the death of Osama bin Laden. Numerous clerics of the group have openly supported the violence against Coptic Christians in Egypt, as well as antisemitic behavior when discussing their views on the Holocaust. 

An Egyptian Sciences Piste, who has asked to remain anonymous, described the “atrocious” acts of terror by the Brotherhood: “words cannot describe the hate I have for them, and how they made it more complicated to get into a place of worship. Until today, before entering churches, bags are checked, you go through scanners, and they sometimes even ask for your ID (which indicates your religion).”

Most violent extremist acts and quotes come from the three years following the June 30 Revolution and have not occurred more recently. However, the Brotherhood’sHamas branch still currently participates in suicide bombings, kidnappings and rocket attacks with civilian targets, all of which the Brotherhood view as a legitimate response to Israeli occupation. Its other branches, conversely, only very loosely associate themselves with the Brotherhood and arguably cannot concretely be connected. The Egyptian media and government propagate myths about the organization being affiliated with large jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda. While some Brotherhood members quit the group in frustration with the organization’s policy on non-violence and joined groups such as Al Qaeda, the Brotherhood has repeatedly denounced the infamous jihadist group. 

Most experts outside of Egypt have agreed that the organization cannot be classified as a terrorist group. Even when the Donald Trump presidency tried to label it as such, the Trump administration could not find enough evidence. David D. Kirkpatrick from the New York Times argued that “the main international advocates for the designation are Mr. el-Sisi of Egypt and his authoritarian allies in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Alarmed that Muslim Brotherhood parties might rise to power through elections, all three governments have cracked down on the Islamists and pressed their allies to do the same. They argue that the Brotherhood’s Islamic ideology makes it a threat to the idea of the nation-state and thus a threat to the region’s stability.” As a result, whether or not it is for Sisi’s political gain, if one only looks at the present day, there is not enough proof to label the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. However, it cannot be easy to erase its history of violence. The anonymous Sciences Piste stated, “what makes it more alarming to me is how some of the churches that were bombed were ones my parents had been to throughout their childhoods, and that’s not anything they can forgive the Muslim Brotherhood for committing. I would not trust a Muslim Brotherhood-based government.”

It is logical why countries might define the Brotherhood differently based on their geographical location. Countries far from the conflict — unaffected by the group’s historical violence — would understandably be more easily ready to believe the Brotherhood has evolved. In contrast, countries with a more personal relationship with the organization who still see the psychological scars caused by the Brotherhood today would be more inclined to stay wary. Overall, the rational labeling of the group as terrorist or non-terrorist depends on how long one believes a period of non-violence must last until the group in question has definitively shifted away from terrorism. Arguably, since it has only been about half a decade in the case of the Brotherhood, it might be premature to claim that they have completely veered away from terrorism.

The Brotherhood being labeled as a terrorist organization in Egypt is enforced by Article 7 of the Terrorist Entities Law. Their meetings are banned, all of its activities have been shut down, funding is prohibited, all of the group’s assets and its members are frozen, and it cannot access any social media or express itself digitally. As a result, the Muslim Brotherhood, which has often wished to become a part of the mainstream political conversation, is strictly banned from all public activity. 

Even if some can consider these measures as unfair since the Muslim Brotherhood is characterized by most as a non-terrorist organization, it cannot be disputed that the organization stands for extreme and arguably highly dangerous and intolerant values such as a support for a totalitarian system operating under sharia law and various forms of religious discrimination. Today, the Brotherhood attempts to gradually return to the Egyptian street through its “Change Movement of the Muslim Brotherhood,” also called the “Kemalist movement,” after Muhammad Kamal, who led major terrorist operations in Egypt in 2014. Whether or not this is a prelude to violence that could once again destabilize Egyptian politics remains yet to be seen.