Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) reintroduced legislation to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
The bill is the latest iteration of Cruz’s decade-long efforts to impose sanctions on the worldwide network that gave rise to Hamas and other Islamist terror organizations.
Speaking on his podcast on Monday, Cruz stated that the new iteration of the legislation uses a “bottom-up” approach to defining how the Brotherhood has supported terrorism.
“The challenge and some of the pushback we got is that not every one of the Brotherhood branches is currently violent, and so each of the branches doesn’t necessarily meet the criteria for designation, and that was an argument critics used to try to block the designation,” Cruz said on the podcast.
“We start by identifying all the branches that the Muslim Brotherhood supports that are terrorist groups or that commit terrorism, and then we designate the entire Brotherhood for that support,” he said. “In other words, we build up with what is explicitly and indisputably terrorist, and then we designate the Brotherhood as a whole for supporting those terrorist groups.”
Critics of previous efforts to put the Muslim Brotherhood on the terror sanctions list have pointed out that some of its affiliates hold seats in the legislatures of countries that are friendly to the United States, including Kuwait, potentially complicating diplomatic ties.
Several countries have already outlawed the Islamist group, including Jordan, which legally proscribed the group and the promotion of its ideology in April.
Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928 with the goal of creating an Islamic state guided by Sharia law. It quickly became one of the largest political organizations in the country and spawned offshoots around the Middle East, including Hamas.
The biggest obstacle to the legislation is the objection of Senate Democrats, according to Cruz.
“I’ve had conversations today with Democrats trying to get them on board,” Cruz said on the podcast. “I think it would make very good sense for us to vote on it on the Senate floor—for John Thune to bring it up and make senators vote.”
“Most of the Democrats would be a ‘no,’” he added. “I think it’d be valuable to get them on record, force them to vote.”
Cruz said that he thinks an executive order from U.S. President Donald Trump to designate the Brotherhood as terrorists might be a more likely path forward.
Reps. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.) and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) introduced companion legislation to Cruz’s bill in the House on Wednesday.
