Florida designates Muslim Brotherhood and Cair as foreign terrorist organisations

Announcement comes a month after similar designation made by Texas

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made the announcement in a social media post on X. Getty Images

The US state of Florida has designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) as foreign terrorist organisations.

“Florida agencies are hereby directed to undertake all lawful measures to prevent unlawful activities by these organisations, including denying privileges or resources to anyone providing material support,” Governor Ron DeSantis said in a post on X. The designation takes effect immediately.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in the 1920s and is the largest global Islamist organisation. Several countries already consider the Brotherhood to be a terrorist group, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and Russia.

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Cair is a Washington-based Muslim civil rights organisation founded in 1994. It operates across the US.

The decision in Florida will apply only at state level, as only the Secretary of State can issue designations of foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organisations. It carries no federal immigration consequences, asset freezes or criminal penalties that accompany designations at the federal level.

Florida's announcement comes about a month after the state of Texas designated both Cair and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organisations.

Earlier this month, the House Foreign Relations Committee passed along a bill to the full chamber that would compel US 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.

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.

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.

The UK has also put the Muslim Brotherhood under “close review”, with the prospect that it could be banned from the country.