US terror designation of Muslim Brotherhood threatens all civil society

London — The United States’ decision to designate the Egyptian, Jordanian and Lebanese branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organisations - including Foreign Terrorist Organisation and Specially Designated Global Terrorist designations under U.S. law - represents the logical and foreseeable outcome of counter-terrorism and national security legislation that vests the state with sweeping powers over political and civic life. 

For years we have warned that national security and counter-terrorism frameworks are tools to imperil basic freedoms, stifle dissent, and shut down legitimate civic and political organisations. Our analysis in Criminalising Non-Violent Organisations, published in 2014,  and related submissions to the UK Government’s review of the Brotherhood clearly set out how these mechanisms set out the blueprint for targeting broad swathes of Muslim civil society. This policy trajectory proves those concerns were well-founded.

This policy mirrors longstanding demands from authoritarian regimes - notably those responsible for the mass incarceration and repression of political opponents - to press Western governments into adopting blanket bans on groups that present a political challenge to their autocracy. At the same time, it reflects the persistence of virulent Islamophobic narratives within the current U.S. administration that see Islam as an existential threat that must be repressed and restrained.

The expansion of “terrorist” labels to include complex, non-violent, and socially embedded organisations signals a dangerous shift - wherein the next step will be the mass criminalisation of large swathes of Islamic institutions, NGOs and speakers by alleging tenuous or ideological connections to one of the Islamic world’s most historically significant Muslim civic movements, The Muslim Brotherhood. This is not a theoretical concern, as expansive designation regimes have already been used in states like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to suppress dissent and justify broad repression. In Western contexts, the same trajectory is now visible - from attempts by public officials in Texas to brand organisations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as “terrorists”, to revelations in the Abu Dhabi Files showing coordinated efforts to securitise Muslim civil society, and ongoing political moves in the UK to revive calls for the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood.

They set a precedent that even peaceful civic organisations can be swept up in counter-terrorism frameworks - a precedent that will be actively exploited both by despotic regimes to legitimise the arrest, torture and collective punishment of their political opponents, and in Western states to justify the vexatious targeting of Muslim organisations and community leaders. Taken together, this represents a wholesale assault on Muslim civil society and independent political organising, deliberately engineered to make conditions for Muslims harder across the board.

Anas Mustapha, Head of Public Advocacy at CAGE International, said: 

“What we are witnessing is the convergence of authoritarian demands from regimes that jail their populations en masse, and a counter-terrorism infrastructure in the United States that is fundamentally built on Islamophobic assumptions about Islam and Muslims. The logical next step is the wholesale criminalisation of Islamic institutions and civil society, justified by loose and often fabricated allegations of association with one of the world’s largest Muslim movements.” 

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