Muslim Brotherhood Subversion Targets All of Western Civilization

Original article here

Twelve years ago, in 2013, the Gatestone Institute published an in-depth account of the Muslim Brotherhood’s infiltration operations vs. the U.S. government (written by this author). The vicious outburst of antisemitic Jew-hatred that followed the horrific Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023, centered alarmingly on America’s university campuses but also was evident in violent attacks against Jews on our streets and at their synagogues. Much of this was obviously coordinated, orchestrated, and funded by Muslim Brotherhood (MB) front groups such as the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) and others—again written about here by this author at American Greatness in May 2025. The broader implications, as noted in that piece, must lead to Hamas and Brotherhood sponsors abroad as well as here at home.

As the new Trump administration came into office in January 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi established the Joint Task Force October 7 (JTF 10-7), whose purpose is to seek justice for the victims of October 7 but also to address “the ongoing threat posed by Hamas and its affiliates” in the homeland. The Department of Justice (DOJ) also set up the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, led by civil rights attorney Leo Terrell. Clearly, the new Trump administration is aware of and determined to counter antisemitism by going after the organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood that sponsor it. However, it still seems not to have focused on nation-state sponsors, like Qatar and Turkey.

While the DOJ memos refer specifically to Hamas, President Trump’s November 24, 2025, Fact Sheet laid out his intention to designate certain Muslim Brotherhood groups abroad as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists. Notably, however, the groups so designated were (at least initially) only a select few that have actually engaged in kinetic violence (terrorism). What remains to be understood is how the Muslim Brotherhood and its myriad front groups across the world—but especially in Western Europe and the U.S.—operate, not as terrorists, but as subversives, intent upon infiltrating and suborning Western Civilization from within.

It is time for an update on the Brotherhood’s operations that are targeted not only against the U.S. Government (USG) and Western Europe, but all of our societal institutions. Here, we’ll begin with a look at how the MB works via both funding and sophisticated influence operations to penetrate and influence academia, faith groups, media, and government.

The Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial that concluded in 2008 focused on this purported ‘charitable organization’ that, in fact, was channeling millions of dollars to Hamas in Gaza. The organization itself and its leadership were convicted of providing material support to terrorism; the group was disbanded, and leaders were sent to federal prison. Hundreds of unindicted co-conspirators, while named in the case, were never prosecuted. Among them were well-known Brotherhood front groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and many more. The MB took a lesson from this case and shifted its operations to focus more intensively on infiltration and subversion, which is why the Trump administration has not designated any of these front groups to the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list. There is no law in the U.S. criminal code specifically against ‘subversion.’

The Brotherhood’s 1991 “Explanatory Memorandum,” written by Mohammed Akram, a member of the Board of Directors for the Muslim Brotherhood in North America, gives us a detailed look at the MB’s U.S. infrastructure, objectives, and modus operandi. The document, approved by the MB Shura Council and Organizational Conference, was meant for internal review by the MB leadership in Egypt but was seized in a 2004 raid on the Annandale, VA, home of the Brotherhood’s U.S. archivist, Ismail ElBarasse, and presented as evidence in the HLF trial.

This was the blueprint for Brotherhood operations in the U.S.: not terrorism, but jihad by way of ‘settlement’:

The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization Jihadist Process’ with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.

Infiltration of U.S. academic institutions began long before October 7. The Muslim Students Association (MSA), the Brotherhood’s first official U.S. front group, for example, was founded on the Champaign-Urbana campus of the University of Illinois in 1963 and is now present on hundreds of American campuses. Students for Justice in Palestine (now National SJP) is the campus branch of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a founding member of the Brotherhood’s U.S. umbrella group, the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO). Both AMP and SJP were founded by Hatem Bazian, a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. Notably, both AMP and the USCMO are close associates of the Turkish government’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood party, the AKP (Justice and Development Party). As explained in the above-mentioned American Greatness report, there is also a Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FJP) that has a national network of over 160 chapters across the U.S. (established after October 7). These are just two examples of how the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated U.S. academic institutions, posing ostensibly as mere political advocacy groups.

As urged in a Jewish News Syndicate article from December 4, 2025, legal attention must be trained on the campus activities of groups such as these that, in fact, constitute material support to FTO-listed terror organizations such as Hamas. Financial support and instruction/training in antisemitic activities that include assaulting/harassing Jewish students on campus, interfering with their ability to enter buildings or attend classes, setting up campus encampments, and occupation of university buildings should all be considered material support to an FTO such as Hamas.

The enormous amounts of foreign funding pouring into American colleges and universities, especially from Muslim Brotherhood-supporting regimes like Qatar’s, should be ringing alarm bells in the halls of government… but don’t seem to be. Qatari funding reaches every level of U.S. academia, from K-12 education, providing books, curricula, and teacher training. The New York-based Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism (ISGAP) has produced important reporting on how Qatar uses the ‘soft power’ of massive financial donations to exert influence on research and teaching throughout American academia.

In a December 3, 2025, article, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) documented the way such money clearly plays a role in inserting Islamic jihad influences into the U.S. education system. According to the Department of Education’s required foreign funding disclosures, Qatar alone has “pumped upward of $6.5 billion into American colleges and universities since the early 2000s.” This is from a regime that harbors senior Hamas leadership figures in Doha, is the headquarters for Qatar-owned Al-Jazeera, and was home-away-from-home for the Egyptian Yousef al-Qaradawi, who, until his death in 2022, was the senior juridical scholar for the Muslim Brotherhood and broadcast a popular weekly TV show from Qatar throughout the Arab world.

In just one example of how such influence can be seen at elite Ivy League schools, on April 16, 2025, Georgetown University awarded Sheikha Moza bint Nasser (the mother of Qatar’s emir) its prestigious President’s Medal at a ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of Georgetown’s Qatar campus. Following the elimination of Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar in October 2024, the Sheikha had posted praise for Sinwar on her “X” account.

So far, the Trump administration has not extended its Muslim Brotherhood focus to Qatar or Turkey. Despite its record of support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar remains a major non-NATO ally of the U.S. and houses the sprawling U.S. Al-Udeid Air Force Base. Most recently, on December 3, 2025, according to a Laura Loomer “X” posting, “[m]ultiple Trump administration officials and ‘conservative’ social media influencers attended an event for the Embassy of Qatar… at the Kennedy Center…”

Conservative media has been a key target for Qatar’s foreign influence operations as well. According to a May 17, 2025, Washington Examiner report, Qatar appears to be surging its efforts to influence ‘right-wing media’ in the U.S. Citing the example of the March 2025 interview by podcaster Tucker Carlson with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the report characterized the interview as “friendly,” with “Carlson praising the country.” Other outlets reportedly targeted—not necessarily successfully—include Fox News Digital, Just the News, the New York Post, the Daily Mail, and the Washington Examiner itself.

Turkey, a NATO ally despite its Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas sponsorship, likewise has exerted considerable influence at the top levels of the Trump administration. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was warmly welcomed and praised at a September 25, 2025, White House visit. Discussions between him and President Trump reportedly focused on the sale of military equipment, trade, and global conflicts, including Gaza and Ukraine, according to an Al-Jazeera report. Although President Trump is reported to have chided Erdogan for Turkey’s continued purchase of Russian oil, he otherwise praised what he termed “a very good relationship for a long time.”

It’s unclear whether the Trump administration is focused on Turkey’s longtime support for Hamas or the fact that Hamas members are present in cells inside Turkey, where they coordinate offensive operations inside Judea and Samaria. Nor has any administrative attention seemed turned to Turkey’s 16-acre government-owned site in Lanham, Maryland, known as the “Diyanet Center of America.” The Diyanet itself is a cabinet-level department of the Turkish government for religious affairs. The Diyanet’s Lanham, MD, site is located not far from the Muslim Brotherhood’s east coast hub at the ADAMS (All Dulles Area Muslim Society) Center near Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia. ADAMS Center Imam Mohamed Magid is a regular invitee to White House National Prayer Days at the Washington Cathedral.

On a final note, it may be observed at both Christian and Jewish congregations across the U.S. that clergy and congregants alike are being targeted with Interfaith Dialogue event invitations from mosques, Islamic centers, and their leadership. Many of these are affiliated with Muslim Brotherhood figures and organizations. Deploying misinformation about the ‘peaceful’ and ‘tolerant’ aspects of Islamic doctrine, such outreach is often successful in luring unsuspecting churches, synagogues, or other religious organizations into what, in fact, is a Muslim Brotherhood-directed influence operation. As Sayyid Qutb, one of the most influential of the Muslim Brotherhood ideologues, has said,

The chasm between Islam and jahiliyyah is great, and a bridge is not to be built across it so that the people on the two sides may mix with each other, but only so that the people of jahiliyyah may come over to Islam.

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Clare M. Lopez is the Founder/President of Lopez Liberty LLC.