US politicians consider terrorist designation for all of Muslim Brotherhood

Proposed law would expand on current proscription that applies only to some Brotherhood branches

The US Capitol building in Washington. Bloomberg

The House Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday passed along a bill to the full chamber that would compel President Donald Trump to designate the entirety of the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organisation.

If approved by Congress, and signed into law by Mr Trump, the legislation would go much further than his recent executive order that sought to proscribe only some chapters of the Brotherhood, but not all, and notably not its branches in Turkey or Qatar, countries that historically have strong ties to the group.

The proposed bipartisan legislation, backed by the likes of Republican Representative Mario Diaz-Balart and Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz, both from Florida, takes particular aim at the Muslim Brotherhood for its connections to Hamas, a group the bill describes as a Brotherhood branch.

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Mr Moskowitz told the committee that the US needed to align with regional allies in designating the group. "Our allies in the region, who know this group the best, ban them in their own countries," he said.

Representative Keith Self added: "The evidence is overwhelming, and the time to act is now. Designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation is long overdue."

A new law would require Secretary of State Marco Rubio to impose sanctions on Muslim Brotherhood members, including barring them from being granted US visas.

Mr Diaz-Balart's office did not immediately return a request for comment.

President Donald Trump shows a signed executive order. Reuters

Conservative voices have long pushed for the US to proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood and some said Mr Trump's executive order targeting the group was insufficient.

Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, said excluding Brotherhood branches in Turkey and Qatar “makes about as much sense as banning Italian food without including pasta or pizza”.

“While Qatar boasts that its Hamas residents are negotiators, [Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan helps the group’s terrorist cells plot attacks in Israel from Istanbul," Mr Rubin wrote in an opinion piece in the Washington Examiner. "Turkey has become the chief mechanism for terrorism support from Mali to Malaysia, and from Norway to Nigeria."

Laura Loomer, an influential conservative activist and writer with close ties to Mr Trump, criticised his executive order last month. “This designation is probably the weakest designation of the Muslim Brotherhood we could have ever received, as it doesn’t even apply to Qatar and Turkey,” she said at the time.

But critics fear the designation of the full Muslim Brotherhood would affect innocent people and also complicate US relations with countries that have "historic and non-violent ties" to affiliated movements.

Representative Gregory Meeks of New York called it a "backdoor Muslim ban".

"It could subject millions of people, including many Americans, many Muslims who live in my district, for example, to arbitrary and subjective determinations based on vague, indirect or tangential affiliations," he told the committee. "The language is so imprecise, this bill invites discriminatory and political targeting under the pretext of national security."

The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist political movement founded in Egypt by Hassan Al Banna in the late 1920s. It has since grown into a transnational movement, with branches and affiliates across much of the Arab and Muslim world.

Last month, the Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations were designated foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organisations by the US state of Texas.