Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) is set to introduce legislation that would formally designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, financially crippling the global Islamist group and sanctioning its violent offshoots worldwide, according to a copy of the bill obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2025 adopts “a new modernized strategy” for designating the organization, which preaches terrorism against Israel, the United States, and Western governments, a fact sheet the Cruz team has distributed to Senate offices states.
While past legislative efforts focused on the organization’s nebulous global operation, the new bill employs a “bottom-up” approach that systematically sanctions the Muslim Brotherhood’s violent branches around the world. The bill centers on active terrorist organizations, creating a legal framework to designate the Muslim Brotherhood writ large as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).
Previous efforts failed, the Cruz fact sheet reads, “because not all Muslim Brotherhood branches are currently violent and would therefore meet the criteria for designation.” The new bill, set to be introduced on Tuesday, instructs the secretary of state to “catalog Muslim Brotherhood branches that are designated as terrorist groups and designate additional ones that meet relevant criteria—and mandates the designation of the global Muslim Brotherhood for its support to those terrorist groups.”
This approach, congressional sources told the Free Beacon, draws from President Donald Trump’s successful 2017 bid to sanction Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which employs tactics similar to those used by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Trump administration created the legal justification to designate the IRGC as an FTO by targeting the group’s violent affiliates.
The governments of Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates have already designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. White House and congressional officials during Trump’s first term began laying the groundwork to sanction the Muslim Brotherhood’s global affiliates, but a formal designation never materialized. Momentum has built over the past few months for Congress to revisit the issue with Trump back in office, as the Free Beacon first reported in June.
