Cruz Unveils Bill To Designate Muslim Brotherhood a Terrorist Organization
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is set to introduce a bill on Tuesday that would formally designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, reviving a long-standing conservative priority with a new, aggressive strategy.
The Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2025 aims to force the State Department to conduct a comprehensive review of all Brotherhood branches around the world and label those meeting the legal threshold as terror entities. The bill also mandates a blanket designation of the Brotherhood’s global infrastructure for providing material support to known terror groups.
Previous efforts failed because the State Department claimed not all branches were actively engaged in violence. Cruz’s approach circumvents that excuse by adopting a “bottom-up” framework: designate the violent factions and then sanction the parent organization for supporting them—similar to how President Trump successfully labeled Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization in 2019.
“America’s Arab allies have already labeled the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization,” Cruz said in a statement. “It’s time the United States does the same. Their ideological war against Western civilization has gone unchecked for too long.”
The legislation is already backed by GOP Senators Tom Cotton and John Boozman (Arkansas), Rick Scott and Ashley Moody (Florida), and Dave McCormick (Pennsylvania). Cruz’s office said allies across the Middle East—including Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia—have signaled strong support.
Under the bill, Secretary of State Marco Rubio would have 90 days to produce a detailed report identifying Brotherhood branches that meet the statutory criteria under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987. Those designations would trigger automatic sanctions, including financial restrictions and a prohibition on material support.
The legislation also seeks to designate the global Muslim Brotherhood network as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) entity, which would place a primary embargo on U.S. persons engaging in financial transactions or providing services to the group.
The Brotherhood, founded in 1928, has long sought to establish a worldwide Islamic caliphate and enforce strict sharia law. The group has links to terrorism, including its role in founding Hamas and its involvement in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
Jordan banned the Brotherhood in April, joining a growing list of Middle Eastern nations that no longer tolerate the group’s operations. Critics of the Brotherhood say it uses democratic systems to subvert them from within and maintains networks across more than 80 countries.
“The Muslim Brotherhood’s goal is global theocratic domination,” Cruz said. “We cannot allow that cancer to continue operating freely, especially with support networks in the West.”