Florida has designated the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorist organisations.
Delivered in the form of an Executive Order (EO), Governor Ron DeSantis booted the Muslim Brotherhood in a post on X last week.
In that post, DeSantis said law enforcement had been “directed to undertake all lawful measures to prevent unlawful activities by these organisations.”
This includes “denying privileges or resources to anyone providing material support.”
The order rightly calls out the Muslim Brotherhood’s subterfuge and ideology as “irreconcilable with foundational American principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Pre-empting criticisms about hindering freedoms, the EO signals out MB’s incompatibility with freedom of religion.
Reasons given included MB’s “long history of engaging in or supporting violence.”
Such as, but not limited to, “political assassinations and terror attacks on civilians, for the purpose of establishing a worldwide Islamic caliphate.”
Also listed here was MB “imposing its Islamist system of belief across the globe, including in the United States.”
Reasoning out his CAIR ban, the DeSantis EO argued that the organisation was an MB proxy.
“CAIR was founded by persons connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.”
It was “created – in the words of persons affiliated with CAIR – as ‘an official U.S. cover representing the Islamic community to conceal ties to Islamic extremist groups.”
Additionally, and more damningly, the EO stated that “individuals associated with CAIR have been convicted of providing, and conspiring to provide, material support to a designated terrorist organisation.”
Making the declaration about MB and CAIR’s designation clear, DeSantis said,
“The Muslim Brotherhood and any chapter or subdivision thereof; the Council on American-Islamic Relations are hereby designated as. terrorist organisations for the purpose of this Executive Order.”
DeSantis then ordered law enforcement to carry out “all lawful measures to prevent MB and CAIR, or associates from carrying out unlawful activities in Florida.”
Tripling down, section 3 ordered a complete review of known threats, agency resources, methodology and policies that may restrict the rollout of the ban.
Coming to CAIR’s defence, legacy media appeared to spin the bans as an “Islamophobic” assault on Muslim civil rights groups.
Right on cue, The Associated Press unsurprisingly snarked, DeSantis just banned “one of the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy groups in the U.S.”
“Neither CAIR nor the Muslim Brotherhood is designated as a foreign terrorist organisation by the U.S. government,” they added.
As if coordinated – something the Muslim Brotherhood does well – AP’s apparent spin was copied and pasted across multiple news sites.
Celebrating DeSantis’s decisiveness, RAIR Foundation’s Amy Mek said, “This is about forcing these organisations to stop operating in the dark.”
Mek welcomed the EO, stating that the DeSantis administration’s findings matched their own “documented evidence of MB proxies operating in Florida.”
These groups “have been quietly shaping Sharia-aligned enclaves across the state, financed by Florida taxpayers and shielded by political naivety,” she added.
“DeSantis’s order represents the first direct response to the national security concerns raised repeatedly by RAIR, and an admission that Florida has been unwittingly subsidising the Brotherhood’s civilizational project.”
Florida’s action against Islamism also goes much further than President Donald Trump’s selective ban on some of MB’s chapters in November.
Notably, DeSantis’s MB and CAIR bans align Florida with states like Texas in a joint bid to end the slow entrenchment of Islamism in the United States.
Known as soft jihad or gradualism, the slow establishment of Islamic governance is a core multigenerational strategic goal of the Brotherhood.
DeSantis’s designation creates legislation that will stop “the creep of sharia law, in order to protect Floridians against both organisations.”
This creates an essential boundary against what ISGAP Vice President Haras Rafiq has called Tamkeen: a strategic program of settlement designed to usher in an Islamic social order – an Islamist utopia.
With these considerations in mind, banning the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t just necessary; it’s vital.
