How in the world is it possible that the Muslim Brotherhood is not already designated as a terrorist organization? We ask because Senator Cruz looks poised to introduce legislation to force the issue. The Lone Star solon eyes a measure that would “formally designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization,” the Free Beacon reports, “financially crippling the global Islamist group and sanctioning its violent offshoots worldwide.”

A similar proposal is afoot in the House via a bill by Representative Nancy Mace. Impetus to take such action against the Islamist organization, founded in 1928 in Egypt, is waxing after President Trump’s Mideast trip in May. During the visit, America’s allies in the region voiced concerns about the group, the Beacon reports. Jordan banned the Brotherhood in April. The group is designated as terrorist by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

In the near-century since the Brotherhood’s founding, it has morphed into a “decentralized, transnational Islamist movement dedicated to the mission of establishing a global caliphate,” the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’s Natalie Ecanow explained in these pages. A government-commissioned report in France recently found that the Brotherhood threatens “the fabric of society and republican institutions.”

The Brotherhood, too, reportedly served to inspire the terrorist behind the Molotov cocktail attack against Jewish Americans at Boulder, Colorado, where one woman later died of her injuries. The accused attacker, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, reportedly praised the Islamist group on his Facebook page. The Brotherhood “doesn’t just support terrorism, it inspires it,” Ms. Mace explains, citing the group’s links to “radical Islamist movements.”

“The Muslim Brotherhood uses political violence to achieve political ends and destabilize American allies,” Mr. Cruz said in the aftermath of the Boulder attack as he prepared to introduce his bill against the group, which updates an earlier measure. He points out that the “Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Hamas, “on October 7th committed the largest one day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.”

The Brotherhood’s motto — “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope” — underscores the group’s militant roots, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has observed. The Brotherhood in the 1970s renounced the use of violence, Ms. Hirsi Ali points out, in response to a crackdown by Egypt, but only “gullible Westerners,” as she puts it, can imagine the group has constructive or peaceful intentions. 

The wishful thinking of Western liberals identified by Ms. Hirsi Ali as far back as 2011 is one reason for the delay in designating the group a terrorist organization. Some clearer-eyed thinkers, though, saw through the Brotherhood’s pretensions of supporting democracy. In 2017 Ambassador John Bolton asked: “Why doesn’t the United States get on with the business of declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization?”

Doing so, Mr. Bolton explained, “gives Qatar the excuse to go ahead and do it too, so we can cut off everyone’s funding for them, whether it’s in Egypt, the United States, or anywhere else.” Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood, some 14 years later, is still a sticking point in the Mideast, Ms. Ecanow reports, and grounds for reappraising America’s close ties with the regime at Doha. America’s air base at Al Udeid, though, complicates the picture.

In 2019, Mr. Trump weighed designating the Brotherhood a terrorist group, only to get pushback from “the Pentagon, career national security staff, government lawyers and diplomatic officials” who, per the Times, “voiced legal and policy objections.” Six years later, Mr. Cruz avers that “the Trump administration and Republican Congress can no longer afford to avoid the threat” the Brotherhood poses to “Americans and American national security.”