(Washington, D.C.) — The extremist and often violent global movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood has been dealt a severe blow as five judges in a top court in the Kingdom of Jordan decreed the organization illegal.
The Brotherhood is now being dissolved and will not be permitted to compete in Jordan’s upcoming November 10th parliamentary elections that were just announced.
Sheikh Hamza Mansur, head of the Jordanian organization’s ruling council, told Agence France Presse his group would appeal the ruling.
“The Muslim Brotherhood…is a model of moderation and an important element in strengthening national unity, so dissolving it is not in the national interest,” he told AFP.
However, a growing number of Arab countries do not see the Brotherhood as a “model of moderation.” Just the opposite. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have banned the radical organization and branded them as terrorists.
Members of the Brotherhood assassinated Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat in 1981.
In 1987, Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip formed an offshoot of the Brotherhood which they named “Hamas,” with the mission of annihilating Israel off the map.
Turkey and Qatar, by contrast, actively support the Brotherhood, both financially and politically.
The Trump administration has been considering designating the group a terrorist organization – a move backed by a number of Evangelical leaders, myself included – but has not yet come to a decision.
Jordan’s decision is major development — and an encouraging one.
When I led a Delegation of Evangelical leaders to Jordan in November 2018, we urged senior officials there, including His Majesty King Abdullah II, to ban the Brotherhood. At the time, however, they were reluctant.
Senior Jordanian officials told me they have never viewed the group as moderate. They allowed it to register legally in 1946 and operate openly ever since. But this was not because its goals were compatible with Jordanian national security. Instead, they said that the objective had been to keep the Brotherhood above ground where it could be watched and monitored.
Operating as the “Islamic Action Front Party,” the Brotherhood has even been allowed to participate in elections.
“During the elections of the current 18th Jordanian parliament, candidates from the Islamic Front won 15 of the 130 seats,” reported Arab News. “New elections are expected this Fall, although no official decision or royal decree has been issued about this.”
Started in Egypt in 1928 by a radical preacher and school teacher and named Hassan al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood over the past century has spread around the globe and emerged as the world’s largest Sunni political Islamist movement.
Generally speaking, they seek to appear somewhat moderate, build public support, use the ballot box to gain control of a country and then try to turn it into a more radical regime, eventually hoping it will become part of a global Islamist kingdom, or “caliphate.”
Reacting to the collapsed of the Ottoman Empire just a few years earlier – the heart of the Islamic caliphate in the world for six centuries – al-Banna called for the reestablishment of purely Islamic control of the Middle East and North Africa and the subjection of all Christians, Jews and other non-Muslims.
Such goals – violent and globalist in nature – were clearly stated in his hundreds of books, pamphlets and speeches.
In one book, al-Banna wrote:
- “Our sincere brothers are requested to work according to the following steps….Liberation of the homeland from all unIslamic or foreign control, whether political, economic or ideological….”
- “Rebuilding the prominence of the Islamic Umma [family or nation] by liberating its lands, reviving its glorious heritage, and uniting its countries so that one Islamic Caliphate can be established….”
- “[T]he Muslim brother persists in his Jihad to achieve his goal….Thus, he will come to either of two great ends – victory or martyrdom, in the way of Allah.”
By the 1950s, its estimated the Brotherhood had some 500,000 members in Egypt.
The Egyptian military long warned its civilian leaders that if the Brotherhood were allowed to operate legally, it would eventually take over the country. The group was thus banned in Egypt for decades. During the Arab Spring uprising in 2011 and the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, the Brotherhood did rise to power.
A Brotherhood leader, Mohamed Morsi, was elected President of Egypt in 2012, calling for the establishment of all of Hassan al-Banna’s objectives.
“The Qur’an is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal,” Morsi said in a campaign speech at Cairo University.
Morsi served as president from June 30, 2012 to July 3, 2013, when he was removed from power by the Egyptian military after millions of Egyptians, terrified by the actions he and his regime were taking, took to the streets demanding his removal.
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