On September 17, 2001—less than a week after the horrific September 11 attacks, during which nineteen jihadist terrorists murdered approximately 3,000 innocent people—U.S. President George W. Bush stood at a press conference alongside several Muslim leaders in Washington. He quoted verses from the Quran, declared that “Islam is peace,” and insisted that women wearing headscarves should feel comfortable walking outside their homes in America. The surreal scene included another striking fact: one of the men standing beside Bush, Nihad Awad, led the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim lobbying organization in the United States. The organization maintains ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and, years later, the FBI designated it as “a Hamas front organization and part of its support network in the United States.”

How did this reversal of the narrative arise, one in which Muslims in the United States became the primary victims of the September 11 attacks? And how did the Muslim Brotherhood come to stand so close to the president of the world’s greatest power? The Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology, known as “political Islam” or “Islamism,” now advances through numerous organizations and even states such as Qatar and Turkey. That ideology poses a genuine civilizational threat to the West, to Israel, and to the Jewish people. Yet the West struggles to confront it because it appears to operate according to norms and laws that the West holds sacred. To understand why, and to propose possible courses of action, the discussion must start at the beginning: with the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood nearly a century ago.

“Islam, the Solution”

Almost a century has passed since the Muslim Brotherhood emerged in Egypt under the leadership of a young teacher named Hassan al-Banna. As the following will explain, al-Banna sought to develop a social and religious ideology to address the vacuum left by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and he ultimately founded a worldwide popular movement. The movement’s influence would spread far beyond the borders of the Land of the Nile, topple governments, and present a fundamental challenge to the rival civilization of the West.

In 1924, the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, made a decision that symbolized the end of the Ottoman Empire and the longstanding Islamic world order: the abolition of the caliphate, an institution that had continued without interruption for 1,300 years. That decision formed another link in a chain of secular reforms that followed the Ottoman Empire’s defeat and partition after the First World War.

The caliph serves as the successive heir to Islam’s founder, the Prophet Muhammad. One of the central reforms Muhammad introduced during the seventh century CE, as part of his effort to establish his new religion throughout the world, united the Arabian Peninsula under a single political authority for the first time. That unification sought to undermine the tribal social structure and place religion at the center of the new nation’s identity, which Muhammad called the Muslim ummah. After Muhammad’s death in 632, the leaders of the ummah assumed the title Khalifat Rasul Allah (“Successor to the Messenger of God”), a title that later contracted in various languages to (Caliph). The caliph’s role called for succeeding the Prophet of Islam in the political and military leadership of the Muslim ummah and of the empire it would later conquer, as well as in its religious, symbolic, and spiritual leadership. Although the office attracted considerable criticism over 1,300 years and different claimants sometimes held the title simultaneously in different parts of the world, the office retained profound symbolic significance. It served as a kind of pope who reminded Muslims of periods of historical greatness, linked them to the founder of their faith in the seventh century, and formed part of the everyday political landscape for millions of Muslims throughout the world. That significance grew especially strong after the Muslim Ottoman Empire consolidated its rule and the title “Sultan-Caliph” came to designate its sole ruler.

This vast empire ruled over all the cities holy to Islam and, at its height, stretched from the homeland of the Prophet of Islam to the gates of Vienna. Beyond that, the empire also carried a powerful symbolic role in Muslim theology: the defeat of Constantinople and the collapse of the Eastern Christian Empire, the Muslim world’s principal rival. Traditional Islamic interpretation viewed that victory as a clear fulfillment of a Quranic prophecy; that is, the Ottomans brought about the fulfillment of a divine prophecy that established Islam across vast regions of the world. From that followed the immense drama surrounding the empire’s fall and the abolition of the title held by its ruler.

Similar to many Muslims of his generation, al-Banna witnessed the collapse of the empire and the abolition of the caliphate. Those bitter defeats continued a chain of humiliations that, in the eyes of many Muslims, had begun with the arrival of the modern European empires on the shores of the Middle East, the imperial conquests, and the capitulation agreements that granted privileges to foreign subjects at the expense of the local population. Alongside those developments, al-Banna encountered the enormous gap between a “decadent” and “infidel” Western civilization that nevertheless achieved great success and the local civilization in which he lived. The gap between Western and Islamic civilization, together with the abolition of the caliphate, left the Muslim world with a political, social, and leadership vacuum. Various movements then arose and sought answers to new questions: How could the “infidel” West gain the upper hand and even control developments in Muslim countries? What political and personal reform did Muslims now require in the absence of a large, unifying Muslim state?

Al-Banna founded one of those movements. He named it Jama’at al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin, the Society of the Muslim Brotherhood. His answer to the questions troubling his generation took the form of the slogan al-Islam huwa al-hall: “Islam Is the Solution.” Islam, in his view, offered the remedy for every social, political, and identity crisis. Through his movement, which combined reactionary and reformist elements, al-Banna sought to establish a revival movement in which Islam, as he interpreted it, would become the ideological, social, political, and identity foundation of every Muslim. He believed that the Muslim ummah had declined because it had severed itself from those ancient and pure values. Returning to them would secure for the Muslim world and for Muslims the same progress and success that the West had achieved and would restore Islam’s past era of glory, greatness, and dominance. Al-Banna also coined the slogan that would become the Brotherhood’s rallying cry: “Allah is our objective, the Messenger (Muhammad) is our example, the Quran is our constitution, jihad is our way, and shahada (‘testimony,’ or becoming a martyr) is our highest aspiration.”

The Islam that the Muslim Brotherhood sought to establish reflected, in their view, the “purest” possible form of the faith, an Islam modeled on the Prophet’s golden age. Muslims regard the Prophet as the most perfect human being on earth, immune to sin, whose every action, statement, and approval provides a model of conduct pleasing to Allah. The Brotherhood drew inspiration from the Prophet’s political, social, and religious order without completely rejecting the spirit of the age. Instead, they adapted Islamic values to modernity and to contemporary political realities (unlike Salafi-jihadist movements, which rejected modernity altogether, as the following will explain below).

The Muslim Brotherhood promoted spiritual and religious goals centered on personal renewal and commitment to Islam as they understood it. The movement also pursued a clear political objective: the establishment of an Islamic state to replace the one that secular forces had erased from within, and foreign powers had destroyed from without, together with the implementation of Islamic law (sharia) as the law of the state. For that reason, scholars often refer to the Brotherhood’s ideology as “political Islam” or “Islamism” (distinguishing it from “Islam” alone through a suffix that denotes a political ideology).

Al-Banna lived during a period in which Egypt remained under Britain’s de facto control, with particular focus on foreign affairs, security, and the economy, while the British Crown also provided patronage to Egypt’s monarchy. In al-Banna’s view, that arrangement lacked legitimacy on two levels: Britain functioned as a foreign colonial occupier, and the Egyptian monarchy owed its position to that foreign rule while failing to adhere sufficiently to the Islamic values as he understood them. Against that background, al-Banna’s political doctrine becomes easier to understand. He presented it in several places and in several versions. One account, for example, quotes him instructing his followers to proceed in two stages: first, liberate the Arab homeland from foreign rule; then, “establish in that free homeland a free Islamic state that operates according to Islamic law, implements its social system, and proclaims its message (da’wah) to the people.”

In a speech delivered at the Muslim Brotherhood’s Fifth Conference in 1939, al-Banna outlined his vision for the establishment of a proper Muslim government. In his view, that goal fulfilled a central religious obligation. Achievement would come gradually. The movement would first strengthen faith among the people, then reinforce unity, and only afterward seek practical political power. At the same time, al-Banna warned that if suitable partners failed to emerge, the movement would have to act and “seize power” from any government that failed to implement Allah’s commands. The ultimate objective, in his view, called for restoring the caliphate as the symbol of Islamic unity and establishing an “Islamic League of Nations” founded on cultural, social, and economic cooperation, culminating in unity under a single imam who would serve as “the shadow of Allah” on earth. At the conclusion of the famous speech, al-Banna also warned his supporters: “The world looks to your da’wah as a call to guidance, success, and peace, so that you may save it from its afflictions. Your turn has come to lead the nations and rule the peoples.”

Muhammad Badi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s General Guide, expressed that view in more recent times. According to a 2011 letter from Badi, “Al-Banna established graduated objectives and detailed means for achieving the supreme goal, beginning with reforming the individual, then building the family, then establishing society, then forming the government, then restoring the rightly guided caliphate, and finally leading the world (ustādhiyyat al-ʿālam).”

Al-Banna regarded Western civilization as a powerful yet corrupt and hollow entity that enslaved humanity to its desires while bringing exploitative colonialism and oppression. In his view, Western civilization should withdraw from leading the world and subordinate its principles to Islam, because Western models—capitalism, communism, and Bolshevism—constituted nothing more than “failed experiments” destined for collapse. Al-Banna viewed Islam as “the solution” and the only alternative. Muslims must serve as the “guardians of humanity.” Their mission called for leading the entire world under the banner of Sharia, first through outreach and education (da’wah), and, when necessary, through military power and jihad, with the aim of replacing Western imperialism with that same Islamic ustādhiyyah (mastery), which would bring divine morality and justice to all humanity.

The Muslim Brotherhood therefore advocates da’wah above all else—a gradual form of soft influence directed toward achieving its objective—even though limited acts of violence occurred primarily during the last century. Those incidents remained marginal and anecdotal. From the Muslim Brotherhood, however, a more militant and violent current later split off, now known as Salafi jihadism, founded by Hassan al-Banna’s close disciple, Sayyid Qutb. Qutb worked as an official in Egypt’s Ministry of Education before traveling to the United States to pursue a master’s degree. He returned with deeply negative impressions of Western culture, which he regarded as decadent and morally corrupt after encountering America during the 1950s. Qutb also wrote Our Struggle with the Jews, a short work describing what he viewed as the Jews’ inherent negative characteristics and focusing on the cosmic battle awaiting Jews and Muslims at the end of days.

Qutb’s school of thought provides the ideological foundation for organizations such as ISIS and al-Qaeda. Salafi jihadism rejects the Muslim Brotherhood’s doctrine of gradual da’wah, which it considers too slow. Its supporters seek to quickly establish an Islamic state governed by Sharia through force. The movement also rejects cooperation with regimes that lack legitimacy from its interpretation of “pure” Islam, including Arab monarchies and secular governments, while calling for severe violence against Islam’s enemies. That outlook helps explain the establishment of the Islamic State in 2014 and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s self-proclamation as the caliph who would lead it.

Despite their common origin, jihadist organizations do not qualify as Muslim Brotherhood organizations. On the contrary, various jihadist groups often accuse members of the parent movement of apostasy, claiming they compromise Islamic principles. The two sides sometimes cooperate pragmatically when circumstances require it. At the same time, however, jihadist organizations also incite against the Muslim Brotherhood, accuse its members of outright apostasy, call for killing their activists because of that apostasy, and back those accusations with violent action.

Despite their common origin, jihadist organizations do not qualify as Muslim Brotherhood organizations. On the contrary, various jihadist groups often accuse members of the parent movement of apostasy, claiming they compromise Islamic principles. The two sides sometimes cooperate pragmatically when circumstances require it. At the same time, however, jihadist organizations also incite against the Muslim Brotherhood, accuse its members of outright apostasy, call for killing their activists because of that apostasy, and back those accusations with violent action.

Through Da’wah and the Jurisprudence of Muslim Minorities

Meaning “call,” da’wah refers to preaching or extending a “gentle” invitation to Islam and serves as the Muslim Brotherhood’s primary method of action. Today, observers commonly describe the Brotherhood’s da’wa network as a system of charitable organizations, community services, mosque sermons, control over schools, educational programs for children and youth, meals and vouchers for low-income families, and various media and public-awareness efforts. Political preaching in mosques had already served various caliphs throughout Islamic history, but this network pursues two objectives. First, it provides every Muslim with a community support system while persuading as many Muslims as possible to embrace the Muslim Brotherhood’s interpretation of Islam. Second, it projects the Brotherhood as the Muslim world’s most organized and authentic representative. The second objective carries particular importance among minority communities living outside the Muslim sphere, where success enables Muslim Brotherhood organizations to obtain official recognition from government authorities and shape relations between those communities and public institutions according to the movement’s needs and ideology.

All of this accompanies a conception of sabr—strategic patience—that looks to the long term and acts with a long-range perspective, together with pragmatism and a willingness to cooperate even with groups holding different, and at times contradictory, ideologies to advance important objectives. Since the movement’s founding, a leader bearing the title of “General Guide” has led it in Egypt, the movement’s birthplace. His ability to operate depends on the movement’s status under Egypt’s successive regimes: persecution and repression under Nasser, Mubarak, and el-Sisi; cautious openness during Sadat’s rule; and a period in power between 2012 and 2013.

Muhammad Badi holds the title of the movement’s General Guide, but imprisonment has kept him in custody since 2013. Today, the movement’s leadership remains divided among three centers: Istanbul, London, and Egypt itself, where it operates underground. Those centers face ongoing disputes over leadership and ideological questions. Alongside the political and bureaucratic leadership, religious organizations based in Qatar and Turkey provide spiritual guidance and issue religious rulings and public statements on current affairs for their followers. One example comes from the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), headquartered in Doha, Qatar, established by Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian Islamic jurist who admired Hassan al-Banna in his youth, fled Nasser’s persecution to Qatar, preached there, and shaped modern Muslim Brotherhood thought.

Nasser’s persecution of the Muslim Brotherhood during the 1950s and 1960s stemmed from his hostility toward the movement’s ambitions. Nasser, a socialist and Pan-Arab nationalist, led a secular military regime. The persecution prompted a mass exodus of the movement’s members and supporters. Some fled to Gulf states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, whose governments welcomed them and integrated them into religious and educational institutions. Others fled to European countries, where they began establishing community, religious, and educational institutions and organizing local Muslim communities around them.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s expansion into the West followed a durable model of “operational replication.” A small group of activists established a parallel network of institutions across Europe and the United States. The effort began in the 1950s and 1960s in Munich and Geneva, where figures such as Said Ramadan (al-Banna’s son-in-law), Ghaleb Himmat, and Youssef Nada used mosque-construction projects in Germany and Switzerland to transform the mosques into political centers for consolidating the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence. Those same individuals trained and financed the founding generation of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States: three engineering students originally from Iraq—Jamal Barzinji, Hisham al-Talib, and Ahmad Totonji—joined the Muslim Brotherhood’s branch in Mosul during their youth.

The activists replicated their European mentors’ method of operation by establishing local student associations that gradually developed into national umbrella organizations. They took advantage of political freedom and Western financial systems to build a “safe space” for the movement, far from persecution in the Middle East. That network produced a system of powerful umbrella organizations connected through funding, personnel, and ideology. Saudi Arabia often supplied the necessary resources. During the 1980s, the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE) emerged under the leadership of Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Around the same time, the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) took shape in the United States. Connections between Europe and North America grew stronger through organizations that presented themselves as research institutes and youth assemblies while serving as channels for transmitting Muslim Brotherhood knowledge and ideology. The result took the form of a well-organized network of organizations and activists that enabled the Muslim Brotherhood to establish itself as the official representative of Muslim communities in the West before government authorities.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s integration into Western societies accords with an important element of Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s thought, which he called fiqh al-aqalliyyat, the jurisprudence of Muslim minorities. This doctrine defines Muslim communities in the West as a “vanguard” whose mission calls for spreading Islam through da’wah and influencing the public sphere from within. According to al-Qaradawi, Muslims should integrate into their host countries and exert political and social influence in ways consistent with local rules while maintaining complete separation in matters of values, according to a model of “integration without assimilation,” to ensure that Islamic identity ultimately prevails over Western values. At the same time, al-Qaradawi viewed the Palestinian cause as a unifying issue for the entire Muslim world and even as a gateway to cooperation with Western allies. He therefore urged Muslims throughout the world to devote sustained effort to it.

While the Muslim Brotherhood operates, prospers, and gains influence in Christian Western countries, several Muslim-majority Arab states—including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan, and Egypt, some of which had previously supported the movement’s activities—have instead begun criminalizing the Muslim Brotherhood and persecuting its members. Those governments concluded that, although the movement’s members often act pragmatically and cooperate with the authorities, the movement ultimately seeks to transform the political order, rally society against it, and potentially brand the rulers as “apostates.” That irony emerged with clarity in January of this year, when reports revealed that the United Arab Emirates stopped funding university studies for its citizens at universities in the United Kingdom out of concern over radicalization and Muslim Brotherhood influence.

Other states in the region nevertheless work to promote the Muslim Brotherhood and finance its activities throughout the world, foremost among them Qatar and Turkey, alongside countries such as Algeria and Malaysia. Those governments incorporated the Brotherhood’s ideology and members into their political, religious, and educational institutions and therefore have little reason to fear Muslim Brotherhood subversion.

Alongside its organized and meticulous bureaucratic work, one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s most prominent characteristics involves decentralization. Branches in different countries operate with considerable independence while establishing organizations devoted to media, public awareness, legal representation, education, and political lobbying. In that context, one point deserves attention. At first, the Muslim Brotherhood’s organizations openly identified with the movement and even established foundations bearing the names of its founders and other prominent figures. After the September 11 attacks, however, many activists in the West chose to obscure that affiliation out of concern that authorities would identify them as terrorists because they were Muslims active in religious and social spheres.

The Muslim Brotherhood also established branches in Israel’s sphere. In 1973, Ahmed Yassin, a prominent member of the movement in Egypt, founded the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch, al-Mujamma al-Islami; later, the branch adopted the name “the Islamic Resistance Movement,” or Hamas. Within the State of Israel, Sheik Abdullah Nimr Darwish founded the Islamic Movement in 1971. During the 1990s, the movement split over several disputes, including support for the Oslo Accords and participation in Knesset elections.

Hamas nevertheless follows an unusual course compared with other branches of the parent movement, including maintaining an armed wing and limiting its activities to a particular geographic area, unlike the Muslim Brotherhood’s classical model of “soft” da’wah that crosses borders. Hamas identified itself as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in its founding charter. Its current leaders sometimes emphasize that connection and at other times distance themselves from it, depending on their interests—for example, the Muslim Brotherhood’s popularity on the Arab street. Several factors help explain this ideological departure, including political and religious conceptions of “Islam under occupation.” Hamas therefore offers an easily recognizable example of the immediate danger posed by the Muslim Brotherhood. But what about its more cautious branches?

“Civilizational Jihad” and the West

In 2004, the FBI discovered by chance dozens of boxes containing a detailed archive of Muslim Brotherhood documents. American courts later authenticated those documents as part of the evidentiary record in two major cases that exposed Hamas’s network of connections and charitable organizations in the United States and awarded damages to the family of David Boim, whom Hamas terrorists murdered in 1996. Two major organizations stood at the center of those cases: the proceedings led authorities to designate the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) a terrorist organization that maintained close ties to Hamas, while courts sentenced its senior officials to prison or ordered their deportation; and the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which authorities identified as the foundation’s media and public-awareness arm and which the court ordered to pay damages to the Boim family.

One of the documents seized and authenticated during the investigation, dated May 22, 1991, carried the title “Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal of the Jama’ah in North America”; Jama’ah meaning the Muslim Brotherhood. Muhammad Akram, a prominent Muslim Brotherhood figure in the United States during the 1990s, wrote the memorandum. The document describes itself as an attempt to interpret part of the “long-term plan” approved and adopted at a meeting of the Muslim Brotherhood’s senior council.

According to the document, the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic objective in America, approved by the Brotherhood’s Shura Council, a consultative body composed of the movement’s senior leaders, in 1987, called for “enabling Islam (tamkin) to take root in North America”; establishing an effective and stable Islamic movement under the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership that embraces the objectives of Muslims at home and abroad, works to expand the Muslim base, presents Islam as a civilizational alternative, and supports the global Islamic state.

The memorandum continues by discussing another objective of the Muslim Brotherhood: settling Islam (tawtin) wherever it exists and making it part of the local landscape. To achieve that objective, the movement must devote sustained effort as part of the “civilizational jihad responsibility” resting upon the Muslim Brotherhood’s shoulders.

According to Akram, the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States must devote itself to building institutions and organizations in a manner consistent with American culture while remaining faithful to the legacy of the founder, Hassan al-Banna, and the Prophet Muhammad. Akram divides the process of entrenchment into several stages, including the construction of mosques, Islamic centers, schools, and other institutions. Akram then turns to the memorandum’s most revealing paragraphs:

The process of establishing Islam within society constitutes a civilizational jihad in the fullest sense of the term, and the Muslim Brotherhood in America must understand that it represents one form of the greater jihad—to eliminate and destroy Western civilization from within and bring about its collapse through its own hands and the hands of the believers, so that Allah’s religion may prevail.

The memorandum argues against a view that apparently circulated among members of the Muslim Brotherhood at the time, namely, that efforts to establish Islam within American society would lead the movement to abandon its global campaign to establish an Islamic state. According to the memorandum, the successful institutionalization of an Islamic movement in America would instead provide the strongest possible support for the Brotherhood’s global project. Akram argued that several ideological nuclei already existed in the United States and that the movement needed only to organize and coordinate them across the fields of media, da’wah, education, and related activities.

The document concludes with a list of organizations identified with the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, followed by the statement, “Imagine if they all operated according to a single plan.” That heading sparked disagreement over the document’s meaning because, on the one hand, it refers to the listed organizations as “ours,” while, on the other, it acknowledges that not all of them follow the same course. Among the principal organizations listed in the memorandum appear ISNA and MSA, which the preceding discussion identified as the original nucleus of the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities in the United States, as well as the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), mentioned earlier in connection with the Boim case.

Some have attempted to cast doubt on the document’s authenticity and dismiss it as a “conspiracy theory.” Others have downplayed its significance and treated it as little more than the wishful thinking of the author, or a list of recommendations. Yet anyone who follows contemporary American society and politics cannot help noticing that several of its points have materialized before our eyes, including the rise of organizations in the fields of law, media, activism, education, and university campuses, as well as the emergence of candidates with Islamist affiliations at the forefront of American politics, from Minnesota to the mayoralty of New York City.

A prominent example of using Western institutions to advance the Muslim Brotherhood’s objectives involves suppressing criticism of Islamism. Reliance on laws prohibiting discrimination and protecting freedom of expression forms an integral part of Islamist methods. The term Islamophobia serves as a particularly effective tool for silencing criticism. Prejudice against Muslims undoubtedly exists, and such prejudice can lead to violence against innocent people, as the 2019 terrorist attack on the mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, tragically demonstrated, leaving 51 Muslims dead and 89 injured. The struggle against prejudice—whether directed at Muslims or at any other group—deserves support and carries great importance. For many years, however, the term has also obstructed substantive criticism directed at Islam, Muslims, and Islamism. Over the years, several attempts have sought to define Islamophobia, including the definition proposed by the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley:

Islamophobia consists of an artificial fear or prejudice promoted by the Eurocentric and Orientalist structure of global power… It targets a perceived or real Muslim threat by preserving and expanding existing inequalities in economic, political, social, and cultural relations while justifying the use of violence… Islamophobia reaffirms a global racial structure through which disparities in the distribution of resources persist and expand.

This definition does not merely portray Islamophobia as a prejudice that may lead to violence. Instead, it makes sophisticated use of neo-Marxist jargon common among academic and media elites, focusing on power structures, resource distribution, and racial frameworks in order to regulate public discourse. That language transforms “Islamophobia” into a form of hatred arising from the very nature of the Orientalist West. In doing so, it denies Western individuals—at least those seeking to uphold progressive standards—the ability to criticize Islam or even Islamism without inviting accusations of “colonialism,” condescension toward the Orient, or attempts to impose foreign values on the “indigenous” East.

One of the leading figures behind Berkeley’s Islamophobia Project actively promotes Islamism: Hatem Bazian, an American academic born in Jordan who founded the student organization Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) during the 1990s, the same organization that led the campus unrest during the war in Gaza. Bazian also leads American Muslims for Palestine, a social organization and political lobbying group founded by former IAP members. In other words, Islamist actors promote the mechanism that suppresses criticism of radical Islam while clothing it in the language of elite progressive values. This development also illustrates the phenomenon known as the “Red-Green Alliance”—cooperation between Marxist and Islamist elements seeking to weaken the West, albeit for different reasons and toward different objectives, while exploiting Western institutions and norms to advance Islamist interests.

The mechanism of suppression built around accusations of Islamophobia threatens freedom of expression and critical thought, values that lie at the very heart of the West. This trend exploits the Western Zeitgeist, with its focus on oppression and identity politics, to secure immunity from criticism for political Islam, just as Islam itself enjoys immunity from criticism in Islamist circles.

Additional threats to Western values include the radicalization of young people, their incitement against their own countries through exploitation of academic freedom, the large-scale mobilization of voters to reshape the public sphere, (such as the ban on displaying Pride flags in the city of Hamtramck, Michigan), through exploitation of freedom of association, and responsibility for the rise in antisemitism, a subject the following section will examine.

Kills Him Gently

What tools do Western states have for dealing with Muslim Brotherhood organizations and activists who generally operate within democratic rules and seek protection under the West’s cherished norms of freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and freedom of political association? At present, the available response remains extremely limited.

Several Western states have begun to recognize the threat. Yet because they have failed to connect it directly to violence or terrorism, they have largely limited themselves to fragile declarations. In May 2025, for example, portions of a confidential French government report leaked to the press. The report identified the Muslim Brotherhood as a significant long-term threat to France’s “national cohesion,” not because of violent acts but because of its “gradual erosion of secular values.” According to the published reports, the document added that Islamism spreads “from the bottom up,” emphasized the organization’s “subversive character,” and pointed to its intention to secure a series of legislative changes, particularly those concerning secularism. Although the published excerpts did not provide details, they likely referred, among other issues, to matters such as dress codes and gender segregation, which ideological French secularism may still regard as taboo. The report also identified the organization Muslims of France, which maintained direct ties to Sheikh al-Qaradawi in Qatar, as the Muslim Brotherhood’s local branch, and argued that, although its members do not qualify as “aggressive separatists,” they harbor “no less subversive intentions.”

In Germany, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution—a domestic intelligence agency established to safeguard Germany’s democratic order and prevent any slide toward totalitarianism—mentions the Muslim Brotherhood by name in its annual extremism reports yet does not specify the precise nature of the threat it poses. The agency’s official website, however, addresses “Islamic extremism and Islamic terrorism” and defines “Islamic extremism” as follows:

A form of political extremism that assumes the existence of a divine—and therefore true and absolute—order that takes precedence over orders created by human beings… Islamic extremism rests on the belief that the universal religion of Islam does not constitute a personal or private matter but should govern social life and the political order… This clearly contradicts the principles of popular sovereignty, the separation of religion and state, freedom of expression, and equal rights, all of which appear in the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany… Islamist extremists seek to abolish the free democratic basic order of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Similar voices have started to emerge in the United States. At the end of 2025, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis designated the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization and cited its support for terrorism and violence, as well as its ties to Hamas. The declaration emphasized the organization’s connection to terrorism, but DeSantis added an important point: “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamist ideology does not reconcile with the fundamental American principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness… particularly the right to religious freedom and the equal protection of the law.” Shortly afterward, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a declaration designating the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization. He referred to statements by the Brotherhood’s founder, al-Banna, calling for jihad against unbelievers, identified Hamas as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and noted that the Brotherhood seeks to impose Sharia law and institutionalize “Islam’s mastery over the world.” Here too, however, the declaration relied primarily on the connection to terrorism. The official statement issued by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in January of this year against Muslim Brotherhood branches in Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon likewise emphasized only those branches’ connections to violence and terrorism: launching rockets at Israel after October 7, inciting attacks against American forces after October 7, and supporting Hamas’s military wing.

These examples illustrate the challenging reality confronting Western democracies. Before authorities can declare an organization illegal, they must demonstrate incitement to violence, material support for a violent group, or direct involvement in violence. Even when intelligence agencies begin to identify a growing threat that undermines their countries’ civilization and effectively works toward its destruction, any organization that limits itself to “soft influence” and leaves no demonstrable connection to terrorism continues to enjoy legal and normative protection. Public officials’ reluctance to address the issue openly further compounds the problem, whether because they fear accusations of Islamophobia or because they wish to avoid offending a large and well-organized electoral constituency.

Western society therefore faces an ambiguous threat that seeks to uproot it without prompting the development of adequate mechanisms of defense and resilience. The gap stands out in the most clear way through the absence of legal concepts that would identify the threat and begin creating mechanisms to address it. One positive development has emerged within civil society, which has begun seeking its own response. In November 2025, shortly after the governor of Texas’s declaration against the Muslim Brotherhood, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) published a detailed report. The report examined the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic penetration of Western democracies and argued that the West indeed lacks both conceptual frameworks for understanding those challenges and threats and legal frameworks for confronting them. The report sought to conceptualize and define the Muslim Brotherhood’s “soft” threat through six categories:

1. Sophisticated nonviolent extremism:a strategy that rejects violence while steadily pursuing objectives fundamentally incompatible with democratic freedoms.
2. Institutional asymmetric warfare:the exploitation of institutional weaknesses to attack the ideological foundations of Western civilization, with a focus on cultural, educational, legal, and political institutions.
3. Civilizational challenge:the pursuit of a transformation of Western society according to Islamic principles.
4. Procedural exploitation capabilities:the systematic exploitation of democratic procedures alongside an ideological rejection of democracy’s fundamental principles, producing “autoimmune vulnerabilities.”
5. Weaponization of rights:the use of anti-discrimination laws, protections for freedom of religion, and civil liberties—originally intended to safeguard individual rights—to shield these movements from criticism.
6. Institutional capture through minority mobilization:the mobilization of small but organized minorities to achieve disproportionate institutional influence.

According to the report, the Muslim Brotherhood’s methods in North America have already produced a profound shift in the public narrative surrounding Islamism, terrorism, and the West. Moreover, the movement has succeeded in driving a long-term process of radicalization within Western society, making it more receptive to violent ideas, blinding it to the Islamist threat, and even creating a reality in which Americans confronting terrorism direct blame not at the perpetrators but at themselves, particularly at the West and its “imperialist” ambitions.

One example of the Muslim Brotherhood’s penetration into the United States appears in the activities of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Founded in 1994 as a nonprofit organization, CAIR presents itself as a grassroots Islamic movement dedicated to representing the needs of the Muslim population in the United States while providing community services and legal assistance to Muslims who believe their rights have suffered because of their identity. In practice, senior members of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), mentioned earlier as part of Hamas’s network of organizations in the United States, founded the organization. In 2008, Muhammad Habib, a senior figure in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, also acknowledged ties between the parent movement in Egypt and CAIR.

Nihad Awad, born in a refugee camp in Amman, used to work for the IAP and currently leads the organization. CAIR operates around thirty branches across the United States and generates tens of millions of dollars annually. A large share of its funding comes from sources that the organization closely guards from public disclosure. The organization’s rapid growth of influence appeared in the opening scene of this article, when Awad stood beside George W. Bush immediately after the September 11 attacks and condemned “Islamophobic attacks.” In May 2023, CAIR also joined the signatories to the Biden-Harris administration’s official U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. At the same time, the organization has spent many years endorsing candidates in local and federal elections, and in 2024 it established a lobbying organization that enables it to engage in legal, formal lobbying activities within the halls of government.

On October 8, 2023, Awad stated that he felt “happy to see the people of Gaza breaking the walls of the concentration camp on October 7 and walking freely onto their own land, where they had not been allowed to walk.” He also defended the people of Gaza’s “right to self-defense” against what he described as the “occupying power,” namely Israel. His remarks initially generated a measure of public shock, but later developments suggested that they reflected a broader process of normalizing terrorist organizations and their actions. CAIR promoted the “Uncommitted” campaign, which urged Democrats to vote in the 2024 Democratic presidential primaries by using the American equivalent of a blank ballot as a protest against Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza. This campaign offers another example of leveraging freedom of association can be leveraged to exert significant influence over domestic politics.

The penetration of the Muslim Brotherhood into academia appears most evident in the activities of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which Hatem Bazian, a figure associated with the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology, founded at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1990s. Over three decades, the organization built a nationwide network that now includes hundreds of chapters on campuses across the United States. While CAIR operates primarily within legal and governmental institutions on behalf of Muslims, Students for Justice in Palestine mobilizes large numbers of participants, many of whom do not identify as Muslims. Its method remains straightforward: recruit young people as they arrive at universities, while they still seek community, belonging, and purpose, and persuade them that “the Palestinian cause” will satisfy those needs while providing an opportunity to atone for America’s “racist history.”

SJP’s importance within the Muslim Brotherhood’s broader network indeed lies in its ability to translate a religious-political ideology into the progressive language of “social justice” and “anti-colonialism.” Through that approach, it attracts broad audiences beyond the Muslim community, illustrating what the ISGAP report mentioned earlier calls “Islamism beyond the Islamists.” The process of radicalization reached its peak immediately after the October 7 massacre, when SJP activists amplified a narrative that celebrated the massacre as a legitimate “act of resistance.” The organization led the establishment of protest encampments on campuses, organized academic strikes, declared “apartheid- and Zionist-free zones,” occupied campus buildings, and confronted police while employing tactics of intimidation and alienation against Jewish and pro-Israel students and faculty. In September 2024, the organization’s X account also called to “destroy America” and cooperated with radical and violent subversive organizations such as Unity of Fields. One of SJP’s affiliated groups in New York City, known as Within Our Lifetime (WOL), also organized demonstrations expressing explicit support for Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Islamic Republic, as well as violent protests intended to block access to the Nova Exhibition that opened in New York City in June 2024.

In both cases, the United States confronts an organized minority that makes effective use of democratic freedoms and rights while working to undermine the foundations of society and foster radicalization, violence, and the gradual normalization of terrorism among young people. These organizations share numerous points of intersection. One of the most prominent examples involves the strong support that CAIR, together with a coalition of other Islamist and socialist organizations, gave to the Muslim candidate Zohran Mamdani, who won the race for mayor of New York City. As a student, Mamdani served as the chair of an SJP chapter. Connections to Islamism have also spread beyond left-wing organizations. Influential figures on the political right, such as Tucker Carlson, have started the promotion of historical revisionism about the Second World War, the struggle against terrorism, and the nature of Israel.

Qatar and its Proxies

The Gulf emirate of Qatar appears, at first glance, as an island of pragmatism. It hosts the largest American military base in the region, holds the designation of a “major non-NATO ally,” and mediates between the West and hostile actors such as the Taliban and Hamas. Beneath that image, however, Qatar also serves as a base for Hamas’s leadership and for radical religious figures such as Sheik al-Qaradawi and the IUMS, mentioned earlier, whose members call for jihad against the West and issue religious rulings permitting suicide attacks against Israeli civilians.

Because Qatar occupies a tiny state between the regional powers of Saudi Arabia and Iran, the ruling Al Thani family adopted a survival strategy that positions the country as an indispensable diplomatic, economic, and media asset for the world. Alongside its role as an international mediator, Qatar uses its vast natural gas reserves as a source of political leverage. For example, in May 2025, Qatar threatened to halt gas supplies to Europe unless European governments removed “progressive” regulatory restrictions related to climate policy and labor rights that hindered its business interests. Europe complied.

Qatar’s relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, which began with its reception of the movement’s exiles from Egypt during the 1960s, evolved into a tool of influence over public consciousness and steered the country toward Islamism. It therefore comes as no surprise that Qatar hosted and funded the work of Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the leading architect of the fiqh al-aqalliyyat doctrine discussed earlier, which seeks the Islamization of the West from within, and the founder of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, an organization that publishes statements against the West and in praise of jihad against unbelievers.

Qatar’s Al Jazeera network, an official arm of the government founded in 1996, serves as a principal instrument for shaping Arab public opinion along strongly anti-Israel and Muslim Brotherhood lines. Among other positions, the widely watched network supported Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, prohibited criticism of Hamas, and opposed the Abraham Accords. It expanded those efforts into the West through the AJ+ platform, launched in 2014, which targets a young, progressive audience while openly disregarding U.S. Department of Justice demands to register as an agent of a foreign government. A 2023 report by the Zachor Institute revealed that AJ+ deliberately focuses on divisive issues in the West—such as immigration, racism, and LGBT issues—as a means of undermining social cohesion. At the same time, it promotes overt political messages, including voter mobilization and calls to amend the U.S. Constitution, while the original Arabic-language channel maintains a firmly right-wing religious line.

At the same time, and even more intensively since the beginning of Trump’s second term, Qatar has also expanded its efforts within the American political right through partnerships worth hundreds of thousands of dollars with right-wing influencers and media outlets such as Tucker Carlson and Breitbart; hundreds of meetings between Qatari lobbyists and Republican decision-makers; and Qatari diplomats’ use of ‘America First’ rhetoric on social media. The strategy aims to strengthen isolationist sentiment and further weaken the relationship between the United States and Israel.

Qatari influence also penetrates deep into the West through education. Studies revealed that Qatar transferred billions of dollars to institutions of higher education in the United States. The ISGAP Institute found a direct connection between those grants and the rise of antisemitism and anti-Western values on university campuses. Qatar also participates in school curricula and funds salaries of teachers in various districts under the guise of philanthropic support for education and cultural diversity. Investigations uncovered educational materials within those curricula that erase Israel’s existence.

Qatar has also extended its influence into global politics. The scandal known as “Qatargate” in the European Parliament exposed bribery payments to senior officials in exchange for advancing Qatari interests. Similar reports emerged in the United Kingdom concerning gifts to and funding for members of Parliament and the royal family. Israel has likewise uncovered attempts to influence its political and security establishment.

This form of “soft influence,” gradual and (in most cases), entirely lawful—polishes Qatar’s reputation and distracts attention from the dangers of Islamism. With one hand, Doha’s government provides bread and circuses through sports, entertainment, and real estate. With the other, it operates, in a distinctly Muslim Brotherhood fashion, a well-developed network spanning media, education, higher education, and religion that reinforces postcolonial and anti-Western trends and, true to the Islamist pattern, also strengthens antisemitic trends, a subject the following section now explains.

The Muslim Brotherhood and Modern Antisemitism

A full discussion of the definition of antisemitism falls beyond the scope of this essay. For the present discussion, however, this essay will rely on the definition adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in 2016 and subsequently endorsed by numerous parliaments and organizations worldwide. Among other examples, the definition includes the classic demonization of Jews as greedy or as controllers of the global economy or media, Holocaust denial, and the denial of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in the State of Israel. Political Islam rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideological tradition encompasses all those elements.

The Quran distinguishes between Banu Isra’il and al-Yahud. The first term refers to an ancient monotheistic people portrayed in a neutral and, at times, even nostalgic light—for instance, through references to their election or preference above all other peoples (2:47) or to their worthiness to enter the Holy Land (5:21). They later betrayed Allah’s word, distorted their religion, sinned, and disappeared from history. The second term refers to the Jewish community of the Arabian Peninsula with whom the Prophet Muhammad concluded agreements, engaged in theological disputes, and fought. While the first group occupies a place in the Quran as a historical people, the second, al-Yahud, carries descriptions emphasizing hostility, betrayal of covenants, and arrogance. According to the Muslim understanding, no necessary genealogical or historical connection links the two groups.

In Islamic doctrine, Jewish monotheism granted Jews the status of ahl al-dhimma—people of the covenant or protected communities. Under the Pact of Umar, Jews and members of other monotheistic religions received protection in exchange for paying the jizya poll tax and accepting humiliating restrictions designed to reinforce Muslim supremacy. That status, however, does not necessarily constitute antisemitism. As the historian Bernard Lewis often remarked, “One can certainly hate and even persecute Jews without being antisemitic.” The jizya and the Pact of Umar mentioned above provide prominent examples, because they also applied to followers of other religions, who likewise encountered negative and highly critical passages in the Qur’an. The underlying rationale sought to establish Muslim supremacy and distinguish Muslims from followers of other faiths.

Scholars have indeed generally concluded that antisemitism in the European sense, attributing inherently evil characteristics and dark conspiratorial ambitions for world domination to Jews, did not form part of Islam’s original tradition. According to the scholarly consensus, classical Muslim contempt gradually developed into demonization and modern antisemitism through a process that unfolded primarily during the nineteenth century, alongside the spread of modernity and colonialism into the Middle East.

The turning point came with the Damascus Blood Libel of 1840, which imported Christian myths of ritual murder into the heart of the Arab world. Alongside the spread of the blood libel, the success of figures such as Montefiore and Crémieux in helping the Jews of Damascus disprove the accusation paradoxically reinforced the modern image of the Jew as a “puppet master” who controls great powers and intimidates empires, even within the Arab world. Later, modern Islamist movements drew the Quran’s harshest passages about Jews into contemporary political discourse. The Quranic images of the “killers of prophets” (4:155) and the “people turned into apes and pigs” (2:65) became tools for the dehumanization of the modern Jew and of Israel. Even controversial figures from Muslim historiography, such as Abdullah ibn Saba al-Himyari, a Jew accused of creating the Sunni-Shiite schism, now appear in the writings of prominent Islamist thinkers as proof that Jews inherently “create fitna” (internal discord).

The Hadith, Islam’s body of oral tradition, has also served to promote the demonization of Jews. One of the best-known hadiths today concerns the war between Muslims and Jews that, according to the tradition, will take place near the end of days:

The Hour (that is, the Day of Judgment) will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, until a Jew hides behind stones and trees, and the stones or the trees say: “O Muslim, O servant of Allah, a Jew hides behind me—come and kill him…” (Sahih Muslim 54:103).

This hadith specifically identifies the Jews as the enemies of Islam—and, indeed, the enemies of Allah—against whom Muslims will fight at the end of days. It has enjoyed a modern revival among many Muslims and Islamists who associate it with the struggle against Zionism. Hamas quotes it in its founding charter alongside a reference to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and demonstrators have also invoked it during protests against Israel that erupted after the October 7 massacre.

Another prominent example involves the slogan, “Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews, Muhammad’s army will return,” which echoes the Battle of Khaybar in the seventh century. Although the historical context involved a specific military confrontation, modern Islamism has transformed it into a symbol of the perpetual war against Jews everywhere. Iran, which follows a Shiite model of political Islam, has even produced missiles intended for use against Israel under the name Khaybar Shekan, Persian for “Breaker of Khaybar” or “Destroyer of Khaybar.”

Additional figures from the Islamist sphere added fuel to the flames of hatred. Haj Amin al-Husseini, for example, collaborated with the Nazis and met with Hitler to assist his campaign to destroy the Jewish people. Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi likewise attracted tens of millions of viewers through his popular programs on Al Jazeera. He justified the Holocaust as divine punishment, accused Jews of plotting to seize Mecca and Medina, called upon Allah to take revenge on the “aggressive, treacherous” Jews who spread “corruption and tyranny throughout the world,” and refused to meet Jewish leaders for interfaith dialogue on the grounds that “their hands drip with blood.”

Islamists therefore took the traditional contempt for Jews that existed within Islam and infused it with modern European antisemitic themes in an Islamic guise. The tolerated, and at times even humiliated, Jew of the Middle Ages gave way to a powerful, demonic, and conspiratorial Jew. This ideology serves as one of the principal drivers behind the dehumanization of Israel and the Jewish people across the Muslim world today, as reflected in the high levels of anti-Jewish sentiment reported in public opinion surveys throughout the Middle East and within Muslim communities abroad.

Directions for Action

As mentioned above, the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology differs from that of Salafi-jihadist movements. Nevertheless, the Brotherhood’s methods prepare people to hate Israel and accept violent ideas. Quiet support and sympathetic understanding emerge before active recruitment into a terrorist organization. Those attitudes make violence against Jews easier to accept, whether on Bondi Beach in Australia, at a synagogue in Manchester, at a convention center in Washington, during a march for the hostages in Colorado, or in the communities surrounding Gaza. Nazi ideology likewise spent years cultivating hatred, delegitimization, and dehumanization among the German population, creating the conditions that enabled the local public to accept the destruction of the Jews during the war years.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s threat to Western democracies and the Jewish people derives its strength from its “soft” character. Its hidden, elusive, lawful, and “friendly” nature gives it that advantage. Does a remedy exist for this threat? The following paragraphs offer several possible directions.

First and foremost, policymakers must cultivate literacy. Israel’s elected officials, professional leadership, and security establishment should develop a thorough understanding of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology, recognize the threats it poses to Israel and to the West more broadly, and then clearly explain those dangers to the public while ensuring that the discussion remains substantive rather than populist or driven by hostility toward outsiders.

Second, Israel should designate this ideology as a foremost strategic threat and develop a comprehensive, coordinated, and multi-domain strategy to address it domestically. That strategy should encompass diplomatic, political, intelligence, educational, legal, and media and public-awareness efforts, together with initiatives to cut off the organization’s financial lifelines worldwide, particularly in Israel.

Third, as noted above, several friendly countries in the region have already recognized the danger posed by the Muslim Brotherhood and outlawed the organization. By contrast, Israel has taken only a partial step in that direction through its ban on the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, while enforcement has remained inadequate. Israel can benefit from those countries’ experience by submitting formal requests through diplomatic channels for guidance and assistance. Such cooperation would strengthen Israeli expertise and capabilities, deepen its partnerships, and, at the same time, help build a united coalition opposed to that extremist ideology.

Fourth, Israel can raise this threat to Western democracy in its dialogue with Western countries that have already recognized the challenges posed by the Muslim Brotherhood, such as Germany, France, and Austria, and propose cooperation on the issue, including efforts to prevent radicalization within the population and develop legislation concerning social media.

Finally, Israel can establish a world-renowned center for research and expertise on the dangers that Islamist ideology poses to the Jewish people and the West, while linking that work to global terrorism and the October 7 massacre, alongside and in parallel with Yad Vashem’s research center, which also examines the rise of Nazi ideology.

Israel has Muslim allies such as the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, Albania, and Morocco, and each offers an authentic Muslim vision that rejects Islamism and extremism. Almost a century after the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, one may hope that alternative Muslim visions modeled on the Abraham Accords—visions that regard Jews and the West as potential partners rather than objects of envy or hatred—will take root and provide a religious alternative for those within the Muslim public who seek a different spiritual message.

picture by: by wikimedia