Trump plans to designate Muslim Brotherhood as "foreign terrorist organization": Report
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US President Donald Trump has announced plans to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, according to US media reports.
Speaking to the website Just the News on Sunday, Trump said the move “will be done in the strongest and most powerful terms” and added that “final documents are being drawn.”
The announcement follows a similar designation by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who recently labelled both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the self-described largest Muslim civil rights advocacy group in the US, as “foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organizations.”
Abbott also ordered investigations into alleged “sharia courts” in North Texas, claiming that unnamed tribunals were “masquerading” as legal courts and issuing orders that circumvent US law.
In response, US Muslim organizations filed a federal lawsuit against Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday, seeking to block what they called an “unconstitutional and defamatory proclamation” targeting CAIR’s Texas branch. Lena Masri, litigation director for CAIR, stated that the organization had “successfully sued and defeated Greg Abbott the last three times he tried to violate the First Amendment by punishing critics of the Israeli government,” and emphasized that CAIR-Texas would not be “intimidated by smear campaigns launched by Israel First politicians.”
According to Just the News, Trump has been considering the move since his first term in office. Governor Abbott justified his designation by claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR aim “to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world,’” adding that their efforts to support terrorism globally and subvert US laws “through violence, intimidation, and harassment are unacceptable.”
If implemented, the federal designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization would mark a significant escalation in US policy toward the group and could have far-reaching legal and political implications.
