US labels Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist group. What you need to know

The Trump administration waded into a regional debate over the Muslim Brotherhood on Tuesday, designating the Lebanese, Jordanian and Egyptian chapters of the transnational Sunni Islamist group as terrorist organisations.

The group founded in the 1920s in Egypt inspired Islamist political movements around the region.

Its ideology has been both popular and divisive in the Arab and Muslim world. The Brotherhood’s leaders say it renounced violence decades ago and seeks to set up Islamic rule through elections and other peaceful means, but some of the group’s offshoots have armed wings. Critics, including a number of autocratic governments across the region, view it as a threat.

Here’s how the group started and where it stands now.

Early days

The Muslim Brotherhood rose as a pan-Arab Islamist political movement, founded in Egypt in 1928 by a school teacher-turned-ideologue Hassan al-Banna. He believed that Islamic teachings should be the basis for governance.

In its early days, the group largely focused on providing social services, but it later turned to militancy, with an armed wing that fought against British colonialists and Israel. It was implicated in the assassination of Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud Fahmi al-Nokrashi in 1948 after he outlawed the group. Two months later, al-Banna was assassinated in Cairo.

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After Egypt’s 1952 military coup, the Brotherhood was accused of an assassination attempt against President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, who retaliated by executing prominent Brotherhood ideologue Sayyed Qutb and imprisoning thousands of other members.

The group witnessed a revival in the 1970s under then-President Anwar Sadat, who tolerated the Brotherhood and used it as a counterweight to leftist opponents. The group formally foreswore violence.

Rise and fall

During the 30-year rule of autocrat Hosni Mubarak, the Brotherhood was technically banned but also tolerated. By 2005, it had become Egypt’s strongest political opposition group, winning a fifth of the seats in parliament.

The Brotherhood rose to power following elections in Egypt a year after the 2011 popular uprising that toppled Mubarak. But the group fueled opponents’ fears that it aimed to monopolise power.

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After giant protests over Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi’s divisive rule, the Egyptian army ousted the group in 2013, crushing it in a bloody crackdown.

The authorities later outlawed the group and labeled it a terrorist organisation. Authorities under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi have cracked down heavily on Brotherhood members and those suspected of links to the group, jailing thousands.

The Brotherhood’s leader, or supreme guide, Mohammed Badie, remains behind bars in Egypt under several life sentences, the last of which was upheld in July 2021. Nearly all of the group’s senior leaders have been imprisoned or live in exile.

The spread of ideology and armed conflict

After its founding in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood developed into a transnational network with chapters across the Middle East.

Some of those have engaged in armed uprisings against their own governments or fought against Israel. In 1982, the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria staged an anti-government rebellion, launching attacks that targeted military officers, state institutions and ruling party offices.

In February 1982, then-Syrian President Hafez Assad ordered an assault on the city of Hama to quell the unrest. Between 10,000 to 40,000 people were killed or disappeared in the government offensive that left the city in ruins.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas, which launched the October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel triggering the war in Gaza, has roots in the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas was formed in December 1987 in Gaza, several days after the outbreak of the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising, against Israel. It called for armed resistance and for setting up an Islamic state in all of historic Palestine.

In its founding charter, Hamas defined itself as a Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood.

The Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Jamaa al-Islamiya (or the Islamic Group) is a Sunni Muslim political party but also has an armed wing. After the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, its armed wing joined forces with the Shiite militant group Hezbollah and launched rockets across the border into Israel.

The al-Jamaa al-Islamiya leader Mohammed Takkoush, told The Associated Press at the time that his group and Hezbollah supported different sides in regional conflicts and Syria and Yemen, but put their differences aside to fight Israel.

Regional and international divisions

Sunni regional powers Turkey and Qatar have been sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology, while other Sunni powers in the region — including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt — see the group as a threat and have cracked down on it.

Earlier this year, Jordan announced a sweeping ban on the Brotherhood that could include shutting down the country’s largest opposition party, after accusing the Islamist group of planning attacks. The monarchy banned the Brotherhood a decade ago but officially licensed a splinter group and continued to tolerate the Islamic Action Front while restricting some of its activities.

The US says its chapters in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt engage in or facilitate and support violence and destabilisation campaigns that harm their own regions, United States citizens, and United States interests.

The State Department designated the Lebanese branch a foreign terrorist organisation, the most severe of the labels, which makes it a criminal offense to provide material support to the group. The Jordanian and Egyptian branches were listed by the Treasury as specially designated global terrorists for providing support to Hamas.