Last week, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned the Al-Bara’ ibn Malik Battalion, the Muslim Brotherhood’s most powerful armed wing, for fueling Sudan’s civil war, partnering with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, and sabotaging every chance for peace.
Across the Muslim world, leaders and organizations are working to reclaim faith from extremists.
Meanwhile, Senator Ted Cruz has launched a renewed call to designate the Brotherhood a terrorist organization. He has introduced similar bills for a decade, but this time — with a Republican Congress and president — he believes the political stars have aligned.
This may seem like another round in a partisan fight over foreign policy. But I know what it looks like when political Islam takes power. I know the lies it tells, the cruelty it unleashes, and the lives it destroys. That is why today, as an American Muslim woman, I support Cruz’s call.
The carnage unfolding in Sudan is proof of how far its toxic grip can reach once it is left unchecked. From Cairo to Tunis to Gaza, the Brotherhood’s fingerprints appear wherever there is bloodshed.
In Egypt, I saw it win elections in 2012 on promises of democracy, only to deliver repression. Opponents were harassed, women sidelined, and religion bent into a weapon of control. Their grip on power lasted only a year, but left lasting scars.
The same script emerged in Tunisia. Politicians linked to the Brotherhood wrapped themselves in the language of rights and reform while quietly tightening their hold on institutions. Step by step, they worked through laws, courts, and elections to entrench themselves. Outwardly it looked like democracy; in practice it was anything but.
The pattern is consistent. Since its founding in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, the Brotherhood has presented itself as a religious revival movement while becoming the most enduring Islamist network of the modern era. Its followers believe Islam should govern every corner of life — political, social, and personal. Once centered in Cairo, the movement is now dispersed, operating across borders through branches and affiliates.
One of those affiliates, Hamas in Gaza, makes the link unmistakable. Hamas was born from the Brotherhood’s ideology and methods. It is already designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, and its 2023 massacre in Israel revealed — in the most shocking, brutal terms — what that lineage produces.
Two weeks after October 7, I tiptoed through homes where families had been butchered. The smell of dried blood still clung to the walls and floors. That is a memory that will never leave me.
Nor can I forget the screams of the Yazidi women I met, who were kidnapped, raped, and sold by ISIS fighters. That, too, was borne of the Brotherhood’s poisonous ideology. The names change — from ISIS, to Hamas, to Jamaa Islamiya — but the DNA remains the same.
This is not just my conclusion. Several Arab states who know its tactics firsthand — including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Syria — already classify the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
In the U.S. and Europe, Brotherhood-linked groups have been caught laundering money, running shadow lobbying operations, and moving funds through sham “charities.” You can find its traces in classrooms, community centers, and even political movements.
Yet the debate drags on, with the U.S. opting for a piecemeal approach to the Brotherhood’s slippery, diffuse network — sanctioning violent factions like Al-Bara’ ibn Malik Battalion while leaving the parent movement untouched. We’ve been too scared of alienating U.S. allies like Morocco, where Brotherhood-linked parties hold political ground. And our courts have been overly cautious of criminalizing against political or religious association.
But now we must go beyond passing Cruz’s bill. We need a strategy to choke off the Brotherhood’s cash pipelines, reward whistleblowers, and demand transparency from organizations posing as charities. Banks, campuses, and community groups that refuse honest disclosure should not get a pass. Without such measures, the Brotherhood’s ideology will evolve unchecked, both abroad and at home.
Congress could take a number of different steps to strip the Brotherhood of the legitimacy and funding it exploits. It could add it to the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987, restricting visas and financial transactions. The State Department could designate it under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Or the Treasury could list it as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity.
But we must also recognize that Islam itself is not the enemy.
Across the Muslim world, leaders and organizations are working to reclaim faith from extremists. The Muslim World League, under Secretary General Sheikh Dr. Mohammad Al-Issa, has convened the historic “Charter of Makkah,” which laid down a set of principles which support and promote anti-extremism, religious and cultural diversity, and call for legislation against hate-motivated crimes and violence — endorsed by scholars from across the Muslim world. The MWL has stood with Afghan women and children to demand their right to an education and organized interfaith dialogues from the Vatican to Washington. Its work shows how faith can be a force for reconciliation rather than division.
Other organizations, like Nahdlatul Ulama in Indonesia — the world’s largest Muslim civil society group — have pursued similar paths, challenging extremism while promoting pluralism. Together and with their partners, they demonstrate that the Muslim Brotherhood’s vision is not Islam’s future.
I write as a Muslim woman who refuses to cede her faith to men who would weaponize it. Islam is my faith, not their ideology.
Designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization is not an attack on Muslims; it is a defense of them — alongside Christians, Jews, Yazidis, and others who have suffered from its violence.
If the United States refuses to act, it will dishonor the victims, betray the survivors, and endanger our future.
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Dalia al-Aqidi is an Iraqi-born journalist and Republican politician who fled Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1993. With 35 years’ experience, she has reported from war zones and champions counter-extremist action.