Subversion, Not Terror: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Underlying Threat to Western Civilization

By Clare M. Lopez
Tuesday, 16 December 2025 06:49 AM EST

On November 24, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order directing the State and Treasury Departments to begin evaluating whether certain Muslim Brotherhood branches should be designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) or Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs).

The order specifically named three branches: one in Egypt, another in Jordan, and a third in Lebanon.

In Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood operates through the Al-Fajr Forces, which is described as the military wing of the Islamic Group. In Jordan, authorities arrested a cell in April 2025 accused of smuggling weapons to Hamas in Gaza. In Egypt, where the Brotherhood was founded in 1928, the government under Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has consistently targeted its activities.

Hamas, the Gaza-based faction of the original Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, has been listed as an FTO since 1997.

However, the executive order did not include countries such as Qatar and Turkey. Both nations support Muslim Brotherhood chapters that engage in terrorist activities.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 as a jihadist organization. To be designated as an FTO or SDGT, a group must meet specific legal criteria under Section 219 of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act: it must be foreign, engage in (or have the capability to engage in) terrorism defined as kinetic violence, and threaten U.S. nationals or national security.

The executive order noted that such activities occur in “the Levant and other parts of the Middle East,” but not within the United States itself.

A significant challenge for designating the entire Muslim Brotherhood is its structure: it has evolved into a decentralized network with no central headquarters or unified leadership, as described by Mark Dubowitz and Mariam Wahba in an FDD report from November 24, 2025. This organization has never engaged in kinetic violence against Americans.

The Trump administration’s focus remains on kinetic violence, but the article argues that the Brotherhood’s more insidious threat lies in subversion—its methodical infiltration of institutions over decades.

The Brotherhood’s own 1991 “Explanatory Memorandum” outlines a strategy for “the process of settlement,” describing it as a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” aimed at eliminating Western civilization from within. The document states: “The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

This subversive strategy, which involves infiltrating social institutions, government agencies, media, and more—reminiscent of the communist “Long March Through the Institutions” described in W. Cleon Skousen’s 1958 book “The Naked Communist”—presents a more profound threat than terrorism alone.

Notably, the U.S. has no law criminalizing subversion under the First Amendment, which protects religious practices but does not cover shariah (Islamic law). The growing influence of Islamic courts and enclaves, such as the planned EPIC City project in Texas, raises concerns about the erosion of American legal systems.

Governor Gregg Abbott of Texas has initiated a legal investigation into the rise of Islamic courts in his state, noting that shariah is not protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment but contradicts Article VI of the U.S. Constitution.