Editor's Note: This is part one of a two-part column. "Banning the Muslim Brotherhood: A Good Start, Part 2" will be published on January 11, 2026.

In November 2025, the White House issued an executive order appearing to be part of a broader trend with global impact, banning elements of the Muslim Brotherhood and designating certain Muslim Brotherhood entities as foreign terrorist organizations. This is a good start, but to have the necessary impact, it must be widened and expanded.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna of Egypt, an extremist Muslim teacher, in response to the growing secularization and modernization of his country and other Arab and Muslim countries following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. His slogan then, which is still the guiding principle of the Muslim Brotherhood today, leaves no doubt about its extremist and dangerous views. "Allah is our objective; the Koran is our constitution; the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."

Al-Banna was such an extremist and threat that he was assassinated by Egyptian security services in the late 1940s, after two decades of organized and widespread chaos orchestrated by him and Muslim Brotherhood factions across Egypt. Their agenda and actions were clear: create economic, social, and political chaos through mass protest and disruption to dismantle the system and replace it with Sharia law and governance – in so, returning Egypt to an Islamist State.

In addition to the U.S. banning the Muslim Brotherhood and labeling it and its affiliates as terrorist organizations, it is banned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Jordan, along with Muslim Kazakhstan, Russia, Austria, Paraguay, and Kenya, and in Europe, Central America, and........

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