Are Liberal Dems Holding Up Designating the Brotherhood as Terrorists?

Editor’s Note: On April 30, 2019, then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said that the Trump administration plans to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization is “working its way through the internal process.”

The move to designate the Muslim Brotherhood was started in 2015 by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who introduced a bill that urged the government to take such action. Clarion Project spearheaded a campaign to educate legislators and move the bill forward. 

The bill, which enjoyed bipartisan support, included comprehensive documentation about the Muslim Brotherhood‘s involvement in terrorism. It also outlined how the Brotherhood is linked to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).

“Because the Brotherhood is not designated as a terrorist group, it is able to operate within the U.S. via a network of fronts, allowing the organization to wield political and ideological influence and marginalize competing Muslim groups which don’t share their anti-Western vision,” noted Clarion Project National Security Analyst and Shillman Fellow Ryan Mauro.

The opinions below represent those of the author and not necessarily those of Clarion Project.

The wide presence of Islamists, especially members of the Muslim Brotherhood, all over media and decision-making bureaus in the United States, has become a disturbing issue. When President Trump took office, there were wide hopes that he would would designate the Muslim Brotherhood as an international terrorist organization.

This move would have been highly applauded not only by American voters, but also by major Arab states that have suffered hell at the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Here we are four years later, approaching the end of Trump’s first term, and the Muslim Brotherhood has not been designated as a terrorist organization — yet.

Rather, the radical Islamist group and its U.S.-linked organizations are gaining more power over decision-makers. Moreover, they are being elected as lawmakers, formulating American public opinion through media, bullying American Jewish students on university campuses through their ridiculous BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanction) movement against Israel and leading women marches against Trump, nation-wide.

The rising influence of Islamists over Washington, D.C. is mostly correlated to a blind war being waged by liberal Democrats against President Trump, more than it has to do with the inexplicable American leftists’ tolerance with Islamist ideology, which dictates “jihad against non-Muslims” and “sabotaging the West from within” to build their own Islamic Caliphate system.

According to a report in the Egyptian media which quotes Dr. Gabriel Soma, a scholar of international law and adviser to the president, Trump is serious about designating the Muslim Brotherhood.

Yet, one can hardly blame the Trump administration for failing to accomplish this task. Sadly, the main guilty party in this messy situation is the liberal Democrats, who are unconditionally opening up their media establishments, civil society organizations, think tanks, and even governmental and congressional offices to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Understandably, Trump’s victory in 2016 elections threatened the Democrats to the core. It was not only threatening to the liberal values they believe in, but also to their supremacy in the American political system.

To the Democrats, Trump’s victory seemed like surrendering their long-held seats to the “obnoxious” tide of populism. In an attempt to handle the new reality, American Leftists, who control most of the media and civil society in the U. S., started to act in a completely illogical manner.

For example, a big part of why American Leftists hate Egyptian President El-Sisi and tend to neglect or lower the tone of his positive achievements in Egypt and the Middle East, is that President Trump likes him and calls him “a friend.”

That, perhaps, explains why American Leftists are opening their large and prestigious media stations for members of the Muslim Brotherhood to falsely represent themselves as Egyptian or Arab political opposition groups, thus giving these Brotherhood groups a platform to speak against not only the (anti-Brotherhood) Arab leaders but against Trump as well.

This illogical behavior by liberal Democrats is coupled with generous donations from Qatar to their media outlets and think tanks to the point where the exemplary American domestic political system itself is threatened (not to mention the  effectiveness of American foreign policy).

Nevertheless, the biggest harm the Democrats, blinded by hatred towards Trump, are causing to their country and the entire world is their insistence of standing in the way of the Trump administration’s attempts to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as an international terrorist organization.

Every time a step is taken by the administration in that direction, the Democrats rise against Trump accusing him of being “Islamophobic” or “recklessly destroying” U.S. affairs with other countries such as Qatar and Turkey.

Despite this opposition, the State Department managed to designate a number of armed factions of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations; e.g. Hasm and Liwa Al-Thawra in Egypt.

As the end of Trump’s first term approaches, amidst endless congressional debate on impeachment which will be followed by a brutal battle for the presidency in 2020, it has become unclear whether the Trump administration is willing or is still capable to take the step of designating the Muslim Brotherhood as an international terrorist organization.

One can only hope this will happen, although “hope is the privilege of the weak!”

The author can be reached at The Liberal Democracy Institute.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Clarion Project column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

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