The House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced legislation Wednesday requiring US President Donald Trump to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, JNS reported.
The bipartisan bill, introduced by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), passed with unanimous Republican support and backing from several Democrats, including Reps. Brad Sherman (D-CA), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), and George Latimer (D-NY).
Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (D-NY) opposed the measure, warning it was overly broad and risked discrimination against Muslims while straining ties with allies such as Qatar and Turkey.
“I am also deeply concerned about the implications that this bill would have domestically,” Meeks said. “Section 2 has sweeping visa prohibitions, which amounts, to me, to be a backdoor Muslim ban. It could subject millions of people, including many Americans, many Muslims who live in my district for example, to arbitrary and subjective determinations based on vague, indirect or tangential affiliations.”
Meeks cautioned the law could be used to investigate and prosecute Muslim-Americans and Arab and Muslim civil rights groups.
Moskowitz, a co-sponsor, rejected that claim. “I don’t support a Muslim ban in this country,” he said. “I didn’t support it in the first Trump administration, but I do think it is extremely telling that Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt designated this group a terrorist organization and banned them from their countries.”
“Our allies in the region, who know this group the best, ban them in their own countries,” Moskowitz added. “But for some reason, we can’t get it done. We’ve been trying to do this for like a decade.”
The legislation comes days after Trump signed an executive order to begin designating certain chapters of the organization as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).
The order directs that “certain chapters or other subdivisions” of the Brotherhood be considered for designation, specifically mentioning Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan.
The order stated those chapters “engage in or facilitate and support violence and destabilization campaigns that harm their own regions, United States citizens, and United States interests.”
The Muslim Brotherhood sharply criticized Trump’s order, calling the move “detached from reality” and rejecting Trump’s allegations of terrorist activity as “unsupported by evidence.”
Trump’s move came days after Texas Governor Greg Abbott designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations.
The designation authorizes heightened enforcement against both organizations and their affiliates and prohibits them from purchasing or acquiring land in Texas.
Senator Ted Cruz previously introduced a bill seeking to formally designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, a move that could financially cripple the global Islamist group.
The Muslim Brotherhood has already been designated a terrorist organization by several countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.