The long-ignored file on Trump’s desk: the Muslim Brotherhood

The wide presence of political Islamists, especially members of the Muslim Brotherhood, all over media and decision-making bureaus in the United States, has become a disturbing issue. During his electoral campaign, four years ago, President Trump vowed to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as an international terrorist organization. This promise was highly applauded not only by American voters, but also by major Arab states that suffered hell on the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Here we are, four years later, approaching the end of Trump’s first term, while the Muslim Brotherhood has not been designated as a terrorist organization, yet. Rather, the radical Islamist group and its figures are gaining more power over decision-makers, being elected as lawmakers, leading American public opinion through media, bullying American jewish students at university campuses with a ridiculous BDS campaign, and leading women marches against Trump, nation-wide.

One can hardly blame the Trump administration for not fulfilling the promise of controlling the evil spelled by political Islamists on the world through the power of State Department's designation. Sadly, the main guilty party, in this messy situation, is the liberal democrats, who are unconditionally and widely opening their reputable media institutions, civil society organizations, think tanks, and even government and congress offices to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamists rising influence over Washington, DC is mostly correlated to the blind war waged by liberal democrats against President Trump, more than it has to do with the unexplainable American leftists’ tolerance with political Islamists’ ideology, which dictates “jihad against non-Muslims” and “sabotaging the West from within” to build their own Islamic Caliphate system.

Understandably, Trump’s victory in 2016 elections, threatened the democrats to the core. It was not only threatening to the liberal values they believe in, but also to their supremacy in the American political system. It seemed like surrendering their long-held seats to the “obnoxious” tide of populism. In an attempt to handle the new reality, the American leftists, who control most of media and civil society in the United States, started to act in a completely illogical manner.

For example, big part of why the American leftists hate the Egyptian President El-Sisi and tend to neglect or lower-tone his positive achievements in Egypt and the Middle East, is that President Trump likes him and calls him “a friend!” That, perhaps, explains why the American leftists are opening their large and prestigious media stations for members of the Muslim Brotherhood to falsely represent themselves as Egyptian or Arab political opposition groups, and thus speaking against, not only Arab leaders that the leftists dislike because they are friends with President Trump, but also against the Trump administration, too!

This illogical behavior by liberal democrats, coupled with generous donations from Qatar to their media outlets and think tanks, created a deep system of polarization in Washington, DC, over years. That disturbing state deeply threatens the well-being of the exemplary American domestic political system and the effectiveness of American foreign policy.

Nevertheless, the biggest harm the democrats, mostly blinded by hate towards Trump, are causing to their country and the entire world is their insistence to stand in the way of Trump’s administration’s attempts to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as an international terrorist organization. Every time a step is taken by the administration in that direction, the democrats rise against Trump accusing him of being “Islam-phobic” or “recklessly destroying” US affairs with other countries, like Qatar and Turkey.

Despite that opposing force by the democrats in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, the US State Department managed to designate a number of armed factions of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations; e.g. Hamas in Gaza, and Hasm and Liwa Al-Thawra in Egypt. However, one can merely consider these designations as soothing pills given by the tied hands of the Trump administration to its Arab allies interested in fighting political Islamism, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates.

As the end of Trump’s first term is approaching, amidst an endless congressional debate on impeachment, followed by brutal battle over the presidential elections in 2020, it has become unclear whether the Trump administration is willing or is still capable of taking a stride towards fulfilling the electoral promise of designating the Muslim Brotherhood as an international terrorist organization. One can only hope this may happen, although “hope is the privilege of the weak!”

Director; Liberal Democracy Institute