Why the Global Push to Designate Sudan’s Muslim Brotherhood as a Terrorist Organization By Hafiz

02:25 AM December, 26 2025

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Why the Global Push to Designate Sudan’s Muslim Brotherhood as a Terrorist Organization

By Hafiz Hamoda

Since its founding a century ago by Hassan al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood has undergone rapid ideological and political transformations, evolving from a moderate reformist movement into an entity intersecting with takfiri (excommunicationist) ideology and transnational terrorism. Initially focused on grassroots education and organizational rebuilding, the group’s internal fractures—particularly the influence of Sayyid Qutb, whose prison writings radicalized his worldview—laid the groundwork for extremism. In his books Milestones and In the Shade of the Quran, Qutb framed societies and governments as embodiments of "Great Jahiliyya" (pre-Islamic ignorance), framing conflict with them as an existential necessity. This ideology planted the seeds of religious exclusion and violence, providing a theoretical foundation for later armed groups.

Sudan under Omar al-Bashir became a central hub for these shifts, hosting hardline figures and offering a safe haven for cross-border militant activities. Today, this troubling legacy fuels debates over whether Sudan’s Brotherhood faction should be designated a terrorist organization, particularly amid widening allegations linking its members to terror-related operations.

In the U.S., recent moves by Congress’s Foreign Relations Committee to explore legal grounds for such a designation coincide with heightened sensitivities following attacks on American interests in Syria and Australia. These incidents have reinforced lawmakers’ convictions that the Brotherhood’s rhetoric fosters an ecosystem of extremism.

An official terror designation would have immediate ramifications: politically, by curtailing the group’s influence over Sudan’s transitional governance; and security-wise, through crackdowns on its networks and financing. This aligns with the stance of the "international quartet" (the U.S., EU, UAE, and Saudi Arabia), which has insistently excluded the Brotherhood from Sudan’s future governance framework, citing its role in stoking civil war to regain power after its 2019 ouster.

Mounting evidence of the group’s incendiary rhetoric and incitement to violence raises a pivotal question: Is supporting violence a legitimate tool for political mobilization؟ The answer is clear: The international community no longer tolerates groups that weaponize war to reclaim lost legitimacy.

Given accusations of fueling Sudan’s current conflict to claw back authority, the Brotherhood’s political demise appears increasingly inevitable—a logical conclusion for a movement that embraced confrontation with the state, society, and the world. It is the natural outcome of an ideology that viewed violence as a path to power and excommunication as a substitute for dialogue. This tragic end stands as a testament to the ruin wrought by extremist dogma.

Hafiz Hamoda
December 26, 2025

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