Ted Cruz Introduces Bill That Would Designate Muslim Brotherhood as Terrorist Organization
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has reintroduced a bill that would designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization.
Fellow GOP Sens. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Pat Roberts of Kansas cosponsored the bill, which is called the “Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act.”
In a statement on Dec. 2, Cruz said the measure would hold the group accountable for financing and promoting radical Islamic terrorism around the world.
“I am proud to reintroduce this bill and to advance America’s fight against radical Islamic terrorism,” the senator said. “I commend the current administration’s work calling terrorism by its name and combatting the spread of this potent threat, and I look forward to receiving the additional information this new bill requests from the Department of State.”
Cruz underscored that many Muslim allies of the United States have labeled the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, and the U.S. should follow suit.
“Many of our closest allies in the Arab world have long ago concluded that the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist group that seeks to sow chaos across the Middle East,” he said. “I will continue working with my colleagues to take action against groups that finance terrorism.”
Inhofe agreed, saying in a statement that the Muslim Brotherhood foments hatred of Christians, Jews and other Muslims while funding deadly terrorist acts around the world.
“Since the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Brotherhood affiliated groups have consistently preached and incited hatred against Christians, Jews, and other Muslims while supporting designated radical terrorists,” he said. “I am proud that under the Trump administration we continue to call out and combat radical terrorism and I am glad to join my colleagues today in reintroducing this legislation. We must continue to condemn Foreign Terrorist Organizations and hold them accountable for the evil they perpetrate.”
Cruz has long urged the State Department to make this designation. He first introduced the bill in 2015 under former President Barack Obama and then reintroduced it in 2017.
Predictably, opponents of the bill have played the “Islamophobia” card, insisting that such labeling is bigoted. Some apologists even insist that while the Muslim Brotherhood once embraced terrorism, it’s moving away from that.
“Although the group was previously engaged with operating under violent tactics to secure its objectives, it currently rejects the use of violence and seeks to be more involved in the mainstream political process,” the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, an Islamic advocacy group, said on its website.
The ISPU claimed that labeling the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization would “make America less safe” and was part of “an ongoing attempt to vilify Muslims, cripple Muslim American civil society, and feeds into the Islamophobia industry.”
In 2018, Cruz blasted the Obama administration for running interference for radical Islam, pointing out that the “Muslim Brotherhood does not hide that they are a terrorist organization.”
The senator made the statements during a speech at the ACT for America’s 10th annual national conference.
“You know, we live in an era of political correctness,” Cruz said. “But during the Obama regime, it was beyond political correctness. It was an Orwellian double-speak.”
He then slammed “the willful blindness of the Obama administration to radical Islamic terrorism” with its revisionist whitewashing of terrorist attacks.
“What we’ve heard, among others, is a DHS whistleblower who explained the Department of Homeland Security had edited or deleted over 800 records to remove references to ‘jihad’ or ‘Muslim Brotherhood.’ Simply to delete them,” Cruz recounted. “And it was a purge directed by the White House in writing. And they used that word ‘purge.'”
The senator went on to say, “The men and women here know the Muslim Brotherhood’s motto is ‘Jihad is our way and dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.’ This is who some in the press and some in the political world urge us to think of as a ‘moderate’ group.'”
He also pointed out that Egypt, a Muslim-majority country that was the birthplace of the Muslim Brotherhood, had labeled the group a terrorist organization, so it was high time for the U.S. to do so in light of the cabal’s links to terrorist attacks.
“Egypt has already designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, perhaps because they have seen firsthand what that terror looks like, and the slaughter that it can produce,” Cruz said. “We need that same clarity.”
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