The 1991 Brotherhood’s Memo About the Grand Jihad to Destroy the U.S.
In 2004, FBI agents searched a basement in Annandale, Virginia, belonging to Ismail Elbarasse – a Muslim Brotherhood operative under surveillance for his ties to Hamas military leader Mousa Abu Marzook. There, they recovered a document from May 1991, written in Arabic by Mohamed Akram of the Brotherhood’s Shura Council in North America.
Akram’s “Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America”[1] simply explained the goal of the Brotherhood’s American project. “The process of settlement,” Akram wrote, “is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’”:
“The Ikhwan [Muslim Brothers] 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… God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
On page 12 of the memorandum, there is a list of 29 “organizations of our friends” in the U.S. to carry out the settlement process. The memorandum entered the federal record in 2007 as a government exhibit in United States v. Holy Land Foundation, the largest terrorism-financing prosecution in American history. Each of the 29 entities have been documented in subsequent litigations, FBI investigations, and academic research as having genuine, traceable Brotherhood lineage.
The defenders of those organizations have argued that the memorandum was the private fantasy of a single ideologue, that the listed organizations were named without their consent, and that whatever Brotherhood ties existed in the founding generation have long since been outgrown.
But the same handful of names recurs across the boards from 1963 and until now. The financial infrastructure built in the 1970s still provides fertile ground for radicalization and extremism. This has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt by the network’s extremist and violent rhetoric in the months and years following the Hamas-led October 7 attacks.
The network described in the 1991 memorandum has recently become the subject of intensified scrutiny due to the Trump administration’s November 2025 executive order designating three foreign Brotherhood chapters as FTOs and SDGTs, alongside similar state-level designations in Texas and Florida. Despite these designations, the Brotherhood’s U.S. infrastructure remains intact in nearly every operational respect.
The Founding Cell in the U.S.
Almost all of the 1991 memorandum’s network was founded by the same small group of men. The Muslim Students Association (MSA) was incorporated in 1963 at the University of Illinois by Jamal Barzinji, Ahmad Totonji, and Hisham al-Talib. The three were Iraqi Kurdish Brotherhood members who arrived as foreign students and became “members and leaders of the IKHWAN.” Along with Ahmed Elkadi (whose father-in-law Mahmoud Abu-Saud was a senior Brotherhood figure in Egypt), they founded the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) in 1973. [2]
The same cell also founded International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT) in 1977 at a Lugano, Switzerland conference hosted at the home of Youssef Nada, whom the U.S. Treasury would later designate a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.[3] The Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS) was founded in 1972 by Ismail al-Faruqi and Abdulhamid AbuSulayman, both IIIT co-founders, with Barzinji, Totonji, and al-Talib on the AMSS board. The Islamic Medical Association of North America (IMANA) was founded in 1967 at the MSA annual meeting as an explicit “branch of the MSA.” IMANA is listed as part of the U.S. Brotherhood infrastructure on the Council’s own organizational spreadsheet.[4]
A letter[5] from November 19, 1991, links this founding cell to designated terrorism. Then-IIIT president Taha Jabir al-Alwani wrote to Sami al-Arian, telling him that he and his colleagues consider al-Arian and the PIJ to be “a part of us.” Al-Arian is a former University of South Florida professor who was convicted in 2006 of conspiracy to provide services to the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
The letter is crucial evidence because it shows the founding cell of the American Brotherhood describing itself as part of a designated foreign terrorist organization, while transferring money to fund its operations. Between them, the men went on to lead five of the organizations listed in the 1991 memorandum.
Yusuf al-Qaradawi was the intellectual and spiritual leader of the entire enterprise until his death in 2022. His money built the original headquarters of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) in Plainfield, Indiana. At a Toledo, Ohio conference in 1995, Qaradawi stated: “Conquest through Da’wa, that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America.”[6]
The Indiana Hub of Terror
The heart of the network is located on a single piece of land in Plainfield, Indiana, where ISNA’s headquarters sits on property owned by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). The Fiqh Council, the Brotherhood’s Islamic law interpretation body, operates out of the same P.O. box as ISNA. Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA) operates as a department of ISNA on the same campus. American Trust Publications (ATP) and Islamic Book Service (IBS), both listed in the 1991 memorandum, operated for decades from Plainfield as NAIT divisions. Essentially, every functional layer of the network – finance, organization, jurisprudence, youth recruitment, publishing – is co-located in Indiana.[7]
Since NAIT is considered a religious institution, it is not required to file an IRS Form 990. By NAIT’s own description, the property portfolio it controls is worth hundreds of millions of dollars; its 50th anniversary announcement claims trustee status over more than 400 mosques and Islamic institutions across the U.S. and Canada.[8]
Federal courts established that NAIT was a member of the Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee. The court order in United States v. Holy Land Foundation states that “during the early years of the Occupied Land Fund (OLF), later renamed the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, OLF raised money and supported Hamas through an account held with ISNA and NAIT,” and that some checks deposited into that account were “made payable to ‘the Palestinian Mujahadeen,’ which it describes as the original name of Hamas’s military wing.” Hundreds of thousands of dollars moved through that account to Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook and to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s Islamic Center of Gaza. A 1993 Philadelphia wiretap of a Brotherhood Palestine Committee meeting captured participants discussing the use of “ISNA as official cover” for Hamas-linked activity.
When ISNA and NAIT moved to remove their names from the unindicted co-conspirator list in the Holy Land case, U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis declined, citing “ample evidence” of association between NAIT and Hamas, and the Fifth Circuit upheld his decision.[9] [10] In 2026, ISNA and NAIT remain as organizations whose Brotherhood and terror-finance ties have been adjudicated – not alleged – in federal court.[11]
The financial opacity that flows from NAIT’s religious-organization 990 exemption is intentional. A 1980s investigation traced millions of dollars wired into ISNA through NAIT from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Egypt, Malaysia, and Libya – flows invisible in any IRS filing because NAIT does not file. Therefore, the same religious exemption that shields a small parish church shields a multi-hundred-million-dollar real-estate trust whose current chairman, Dr. Gaddoor Saidi, is named on the HLF unindicted co-conspirator list both as a member of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and as a financial conduit for Hamas. [12] [13]
In February 2018, Saidi posted an image of Hitler and quotation captioned “Words of Great Men,” from the Egyptian satellite channel Makmalin (which is based in Turkey and broadcasts Brotherhood content). Saidi also frequently reposted content from the Hamas-affiliated Shehab News Agency. To summarize, the chairman of the trust that owns 400 mosques in America publishes Hitler quotations and Hamas content. He has not resigned or been removed from his position.[14]
Holy Land Foundation’s Legacy of Terror in the U.S.
In the 2008 United States v. Holy Land Foundation verdict, five defendants were charged with 108 guilty counts for funneling $12.4 million to Hamas.
The case also produced a list of roughly 246 unindicted co-conspirators including ISNA, NAIT, CAIR, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), and a dense roster of individual operatives. In the following years, many of the named individuals moved laterally, taking positions in adjacent network entities.
Many figures named on the HLF list remain in key positions in 2026:
- Gaddoor Saidi remains chairman of NAIT.[15]
- Jamal Badawi sits on the executive committee of the Fiqh Council.[16]
- Mohammad Qatanani, whose brother-in-law was a senior Hamas military leader, sits on the Fiqh Council’s executive committee and was a featured speaker at the December 2025 Islamic Circle of America (ICNA)–Mulim American Society (MAS) convention. In a 2017 Times Square speech, Qatanani called for “a new intifada. Intifada, intifada!” He is a sitting member of the body that issues authoritative religious rulings for the Brotherhood’s American network.[17]
- Muzammil Siddiqi sits on the NAIT board, the Fiqh Council, and is a former president of ISNA. In 1992, his mosque – the Islamic Society of Orange County – hosted Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh” later convicted of conspiring to bomb New York landmarks. Siddiqi also personally translated Rahman’s pro-jihad lecture into English in real time. [18]
- Bassam Osman, a member of the NAIT board since 1980, previously sat on the board of the Quranic Literacy Institute, which a federal court found liable in 2004 for aiding and abetting Hamas in the Boim civil case (a verdict later reversed on technical grounds); he retains his NAIT board seat.[19]
In summary, the HLF unindicted co-conspirator list was effectively a roster of the Brotherhood network’s middle-aged leadership in 2008. Eighteen years later in 2026, it is a roster of its senior leadership.
The Waqf and the Capture of American Mosques
NAIT’s mechanism for property control is the Islamic legal instrument of the waqf – a religious endowment that, in NAIT’s own words, is perpetual: once property has been deeded into the trust, “the donor cannot alter his/her intent at a later time.” NAIT explains that mosque boards may, over time, be “tempted” to change a property’s use, to use it as collateral, or to permit “un-Islamic” activity, but for NAIT Waqf Family properties, “none of such actions would be feasible.” The Islamic Centers Division – listed at number 11 on the 1991 memorandum and still operational as a service of NAIT – locks properties into the waqf.[20]
A 2025 Ohio appellate case exposed how this works in practice. In Masjid Oumar Al-Foutiyou v. NAIT, a Columbus mosque tried to sell its property. NAIT, which held a 50% interest in the property, refused. The mosque went to court, and the litigation forced the trust agreement into the public record – revealing how the Plainfield system operates. Any dispute had to be arbitrated by NAIT’s own Fiqh Committee, whose rulings the trust made “final and binding.” The property had to be used according to “Islamic Rules of Conduct and Code.” In other words: a mosque that signs into the NAIT trust gives up the ability to sell, refinance, or change how the building is used without the approval of a panel NAIT itself appoints. [21]
The above case reveals the way in which NAIT operates: it holds the deed, the Fiqh Council resolves the disputes, and the congregation has no independent recourse. The same body that issues the network’s religious rulings holds veto power over its real estate.
The 2004 Bridgeview Mosque case in Illinois shows a similar pattern. A Chicago Tribune investigation documented how new mosque leadership – funded by $1.2 million in foreign donations from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE – pushed out the moderate founding community and signed the property over to NAIT, despite warnings from original members that “the essence of NAIT is the [Muslim] Brotherhood.” Bridgeview’s current imam, Jamal Said, is a Holy Land Foundation unindicted co-conspirator.[22]
The list of NAIT-controlled mosques tied to subsequent terrorism cases is damning:
- Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia: Anwar al-Awlaki served as imam; two 9/11 hijackers and Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan were mosque attendees; Treasury Department records describe the center as operating “as a front for Hamas operatives in the U.S.”[23]
- Islamic Society of Greater Chattanooga: NAIT purchased the property in 1997; worshipper, Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, killed five U.S. service members in 2015. Mosque fundraising had invoked Qaradawi.[24]
- Islamic Society of Boston: NAIT-controlled; Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev among worshippers; a 2014 New York Post investigation identified at least eight others connected to the mosque who were allegedly involved in terrorism.[25]
- Islamic Center of San Diego: 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi had close ties to the Center.[26]
These are the documented terrorism profiles of properties NAIT holds in trust. Each connects to a mosque whose financial structure passes through NAIT, whose religious arbitration is governed by the Fiqh Council, and whose ideological literature is supplied by ATP and IBS. This is not coincidence; it is the structure of the network.
The Generational Pipeline Targeting Americans of All Ages
The Brotherhood’s American network has, since the 1960s (long before the 1991 memorandum), operated an intentional ideological pipeline that catches Muslim Americans at successive life stages: MYNA at twelve to eighteen (over 30,000 youth served since 1985); MSA at college (~600 chapters); IMANA targeting medical professionals; AMSS, now known as the North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies (NAAIMS), the academic cohort; IIIT, through its Fairfax Institute and “Islamization of Knowledge” program, the production of new Muslim scholars who train the next generation. [27]
The youth layer has, in recent years, provided the clearest evidence that the pipeline now reaches the K-12 age groups and is being used not for theological instruction but for ideological recruitment:
- In February 2026, four representatives from ICNA’s WhyIslam division set up an unauthorized booth at Wylie East High School in Texas during school hours, distributing Qurans, Sharia pamphlets, and hijabs to female students, with no parental notification. Parents pointed out that bibles and crosses had been removed from staff offices in the same district. [28]
- In October 2025, in the weeks following the second anniversary of the Hamas-led October 7 attacks, MSA chapters at two Virginia high schools posted videos of mock kidnappings – students hooded, thrown into trunks, and dragged in trash bins. [29]
- MSA national board chair Omar Suleiman runs the Yaqeen Institute, which has produced material framing Israel through Crusader-state analogy and armed conquest as a theological solution. [30]
- In May 2024, IMANA’s vice president of the board, Dr. Azeem Elahi, posted a Macklemore song on Instagram, explicitly celebrating the April 30, 2024, occupation of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University, and pledging proceeds of the song to UNRWA.[31] UNRWA workers were found to be involved in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks.[32]
- In September 2024, Elahi appeared on stage at the 61st ISNA Convention in Dallas where he praised the “thought leaders, political and social activists who tirelessly propagate the message of the true heroes in Gaza.” [33]
- On October 15, 2023, eight days after the Hamas massacre of 1,200 Israelis, Americans, and other civilians, MYNA hosted a virtual event for 12–18-year-olds titled “What’s Going on in Palestine?” The featured speakers were political activist Linda Sarsour and Corey Saylor. The day after October 7, Sarsour blamed Israel and offered no condemnation of Hamas. She has also embraced the convicted PFLP bomber Rasmea Odeh and has called for “jihad” against the Trump administration. Saylor is the research director of CAIR – another HLF unindicted co-conspirator.[34]
- Two days after the Hamas-led October 7 massacre, a second IMANA board member, Dr. Asim Kidwai, changed his Facebook profile picture to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and subsequently shared posts claiming Israel had “tampered with evidence” at Al-Shifa hospital, undercut by declassified U.S. intelligence demonstrating that Hamas and PIJ had used the hospital for command-and-control and to hold hostages. [35]
- IMANA operates with $7.8 million in total assets, 501(c)(3) status, and nonprofit legitimacy while its leadership amplifies the messaging of designated terrorist organizations.[36]
In academia, the network’s influence is documented most clearly through the rebranding of AMSS to NAAIMS in April 2013 – five years after the HLF verdict, when AMSS’s number four position on the 1991 memorandum had become public record. The rebrand kept the leadership, mission, and operations and dropped the name. [37]
NAAIMS conferences are now cosponsored by Georgetown University, Indiana University, Temple University, the University of Maryland, Harvard Divinity School, the University of Virginia, Yale Divinity School, and Princeton University. The 2024 NAAIMS Palestine Conference – co-sponsored by Michigan State University’s Muslim Studies Program – referenced the October 7 attacks in its conference background but did not describe them as terrorism or cite the 1,200 dead or the 251 hostages taken, among them Americans.
NAAIMS’s president, Mohammad Hassan Khalil, directs Michigan State’s Muslim Studies Program and chaired the conference. So, the same organization that al-Alwani’s 1991 letter described as institutionally indistinguishable from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, now operates through co-sponsorship arrangements with America’s most prestigious universities.[38]
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Content Distribution Chain
The network from the 1991 memorandum does not just produce institutions and personnel. It produces ideology, in mass quantity, in English, which it distributes through the largest retail platforms in the country. American Trust Publications (ATP) – listed at number 12 in the memorandum – translates and publishes the foundational texts of Brotherhood ideology. The Islamic Book Service (IBS), listed at number 14, distributes them. NAIT-controlled mosques and ISNA conventions are attended by the readers. By NAIT’s own account, ATP and IBS have together “published and sold over 2,600 book titles.”[39]
The content of those books is not difficult to establish:
- Qutb’s Milestones – The New York Times once called it the work of “the philosopher of Islamic terror,”[40] whose direct influence on bin Laden, Zawahiri, and the 9/11 conspirators is uncontested in academic literature. It declares that “Islam has the right to destroy all obstacles in the form of institutions and traditions” and that “bringing about the enforcement of Divine Law cannot be achieved only through preaching. When obstacles are put in its way, it has no recourse but to remove them by force.”[41]
- Qaradawi, whose works are published in English by ATP, is notorious for his January 2009 Al-Jazeera sermon in which he stated: ‘”Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler… This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the believers.” [42]
- Fathi Yakan’s To Be A Muslim is required reading for members of the Islamic Circle of North America because it states: “Until the nations of the world have functionally Islamic governments, every individual who is careless or lazy in working for Islam is sinful.” [43]
These texts are not hard to come by. Walmart sells Qutb’s Milestones through its third-party marketplace under the IBS imprint and the same titles are available through Amazon. ATP also produces K-12 instructional materials, including children’s textbooks with teacher guides, study questions, and worksheets.
In the 2002 Los Angeles Unified School District incident, approximately 300 English and Spanish copies of “The Meaning of the Holy Quran” – distributed by IBS – were permanently removed from school libraries after officials reviewed the antisemitic commentary. They had been there until a parent complained.[44]
The Brotherhood’s Financial Structure
It may be surprising to some, and hopefully alarming to most, that Americans’ hard-earned money supports the Muslim Brotherhood network in the United States. The financial structure of the Brotherhood network has two distinct flows. Money comes in from foreign sources and circulates internally through the Plainfield apparatus. Money also comes from American taxpayers, in the form of federal grants and subsidies that have continued despite congressional warnings.
The Brotherhood’s original funding is well-documented: $21 million from Qaradawi, Nada, and the emir of Qatar built the ISNA-NAIT Plainfield headquarters.[45] Investigations traced subsequent wires from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Egypt, Malaysia, and Libya into ISNA through NAIT – the precise figures are unrecoverable because NAIT does not file.[46] Turkey, post-2013, has emerged as an important base for the global Brotherhood’s exiled leadership; the Diyanet finances the Diyanet Center of America in Lanham, Maryland, which IIIT delegations have visited.[47]
Public money is more visible because it appears in federal records, as seen below:
- ICNA Relief USA received $10.3 million in FEMA grants between 2016 and 2018.[48]
- ICNA’s Helping Hand For Relief and Development (HHRD), a self-described “offshoot of ICNA” not on the original 1991 list – received a $110,000 USAID award in 2021. This despite the explicit objections of House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul, who pressed USAID about “credible allegations” regarding the agency’s partnership with Pakistan’s Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. McCaul also called to investigate HHRD’s reported collaboration with elements linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, also a U.S.-designated group. [49]
- NAIT received more than $10,000 across thirty-four USDA programs since 1998 for two undeveloped land plots in Boone County, Missouri – subsidies halted during the 2008 HLF trial and resumed in 2011. The U.S. Department of Agriculture makes farm payments to a religious trust whose chairman is on the HLF unindicted co-conspirator list and whose property holdings are shielded from disclosure by the religious-organization exemption.[50]
In further proof of the enmeshed nature of the network, HHRD’s CEO is Javaid Siddiqi, the former president of ICNA.[51] Additional HHRD officials hold concurrent ICNA leadership roles: HHRD board member Faizah Aslam[52] serves as secretary general of ICNA Sisters,[53] and HHRD trustee Faraz Khan[54] serves as president of ICNA’s South Central Region.[55]
A fourth figure, Anees ur Rehman, sits on ICNA’s National Shura while serving on the board of CAIR-Los Angeles and having completed a four-year term at HHRDA. Rehman thus represents and connects three entities (ICNA, HHRD, CAIR) that have direct or adjacent terror-finance allegations.[56]
Beyond the 29: Groups Spreading Radical Islam in America
The most significant strategic development in the network since 1991 has been its expansion beyond the original list. HHRD (see above), WhyIslam, and the Council of Islamic Schools in North America (CISNA) are the clearest cases. While none appear on the 1991 memorandum, all three are operationally indistinguishable from the listed organizations.
WhyIslam is a division of ICNA, formally an ICNA project housed under ICNA’s 501(c)(3) and run by ICNA’s New Jersey chapter but branded distinctly. Its functions to convert Americans to Islam. By ICNA’s own statistics, WhyIslam has received a new request for a free Quran every six minutes since October 7, 2023, and distributed over 100,000 Qurans in English and Spanish in the year that followed. The Wylie East High School incident (see above) was a WhyIslam operation.[57]
CISNA is an Islamic-school accreditation body whose bylaws explicitly state that it is affiliated with ISNA and that NAIT will hold its assets in the event of dissolution. CISNA’s Advisory Council includes Safaa Zarzour, past president of ISNA (2020-2022), formerly head of CAIR Chicago, and current Vice Chair of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, Illinois – the Holy Land Foundation-affiliated mosque whose imam Jamal Said remains an HLF unindicted co-conspirator (see above).”[58]
The Brotherhood’s official website, Ikhwan Online, reported Zarzour’s 2011 appointment to the Illinois State Advisory Council for American Muslims.[59] In an August 2014 Facebook post, he wrote: “O God, take revenge on all those who conspired against the people of Gaza… Especially the Bedouins, who are the most hardened in disbelief and hypocrisy.” [60] This is the man currently presiding over the Brotherhood’s American flagship institution and the accreditation infrastructure that credentials its K-12 educational pipeline.
Support for Grand Jihad: Hamas’s October 7 Attacks
No internal faction within the network’s institutional leadership responded to October 7 by distancing itself from Hamas-aligned messaging or by condemning the massacre (during which Americans were also killed and kidnapped) on its own terms. The network’s post-October 7 record indicates clearly that the grand jihad addressed in the 1991 memorandum is not a fringe historic idea. Jihad and terrorist acts like the October 7 attacks and 9/11 are part of how the Muslim Brotherhood network plans to carry out its goals of destroying America and the West and conquering it for themselves. They do not hide their goals, as can be seen in conference programs, convention agendas, event calendars, social media, and speech of its members.
- Just eight days after October 7, MYNA, hosted Linda Sarsour for an event on Palestine, with no condemnation of Hamas. [61]
- An IMANA board member, Asim Kadwai, changed his Facebook profile picture to the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Day 2 of the war against Hamas (see above).
- NAAIMS, at its 2024 Palestine Conference cosponsored by Michigan State, declined to call the Hamas massacre an act of terrorism in its conference materials. [62]
- At its December 2025 convention, ICNA-MAS, platformed Siraj Wahhaj,[63] an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.[64]
The Brotherhood network’s response to the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and its rhetoric throughout the period that followed, provides valuable insight as to the current ideological tendencies of its members. Had Brotherhood leadership genuinely outgrown their extremist origins and evolved into a moderate network of religious and social organizations, as many claimed, one would expect that they would condemn the massacre unequivocally, decline to platform speakers who endorse it, and refuse to amplify Hamas-aligned messaging in real time. This, however, was not the case.
Designation of the Muslim Brotherhood
In November 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14362, directing the State and Treasury Departments to assess Muslim Brotherhood chapters for designation.[65]
In January 2026, the State Department designated the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood (also known as al-Jamaa al-Islamiyah) as both a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, while the Treasury concurrently designated the Egyptian and Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood chapters as SDGTs for material support to Hamas.[66]
In the meantime, the states of Texas and Florida designated the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as FTOs in November and December of 2025, respectively.[67]
Conclusions
While the actions taken by the Trump administration and the states of Texas and Florida represent the most significant move against the Brotherhood network since the Holy Land Foundation trial, in the long term they will be insufficient. Federal designations of foreign chapters do not reach domestic 501(c)(3) entities, and state-level designations have limited reach into the federal-court-adjudicated terror-finance record.
Therefore, despite the above actions, the religious-organization exemption that shields NAIT’s hundreds of millions of dollars will not be affected. The academic partnerships that legitimize NAAIMS at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Georgetown will not be touched by Treasury designations of foreign entities. The Fiqh Council’s role in arbitrating mosque property disputes will continue. ICNA Relief’s eligibility for FEMA grants will, absent specific congressional action, continue. The HLF unindicted co-conspirator list, which courts declined to seal, has not been the basis for criminal prosecution since 2008.
Akram’s 1991 memorandum described the work of the Muslim Brotherhood in America as “settlement” – a process by which the institutions of American Muslim life would be built to permanently reflect and accomplish the Brotherhood’s worldview and goals, which includes “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.” The phenomena described in this report show that this vision is coming to fruition all around us. The institutions were built, and their legitimacy runs from the Ivy League to Walmart to Amazon. The grand jihad of the 1991 memorandum is not a historical curiosity; it is a plan of action well underway and operating in plain sight from Virginia to Indiana and California and everywhere in between.
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Endnotes
- Mohamed Akram, “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” Muslim Brotherhood Shura Council in North America, May 22, 1991 (Government Exhibit 003-0085, United States v. Holy Land Foundation), reproduced by The Investigative Project on Terrorism, https://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/20/an-explanatory-memorandum-on-the-general.pdf ↑
- Steven Merley, The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, Research Monographs on the Muslim World, Series No. 2, Paper No. 3 (Washington, DC: Hudson Institute, Center on Islam, Democracy, and the Future of the Muslim World, April 2009), https://www.globalmbresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/20090411_merley.usbrotherhood.pdf. ↑
- U.S. Department of the Treasury, “U.S. and Italy Designate Twenty-Five New Financiers of Terror,” press release PO-3380, August 29, 2002, https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/po3380; see also Executive Order 13224, https://ofac.treasury.gov/media/20296/download?inline. ↑
- Merley, The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, https://www.globalmbresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/20090411_merley.usbrotherhood.pdf ↑
- Letter from Taha Jabir al-Alwani (President, International Institute of Islamic Thought) to Sami al-Arian, November 19, 1991, reproduced by The Investigative Project on Terrorism, https://www.investigativeproject.org/redirect/Exhibit325.pdf ↑
- “Yusuf al-Qaradawi” (profile), The Investigative Project on Terrorism, accessed May 2026, https://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/167/yusuf-al-qaradawi. ↑
- “The Brotherhood in Your Backyard: Fiqh Council of North America,” Jewish Onliner, accessed May 2026, https://jewishonliner.org/p/the-brotherhood-in-your-backyard-fiqh-council-of-north-america ↑
- Sadia Qureshi, “Fifty Years of Preservation, Protection and Leadership,” Islamic Horizons (NAIT), October 31, 2023, https://islamichorizons.net/fifty-years-of-preservation-protection-and-leadership/ ↑
- Lorenzo Vidino, “The Hamas Networks in America: A Short History,” George Washington University Program on Extremism, October 2023, https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs5746/files/2023-10/the-hamas-network-in-america.pdf. ↑
- United States v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, et al., No. 3:04-CR-0240-G, “Memorandum Opinion and Order” (N.D. Tex. July 1, 2009), p. 15, reproduced by The Investigative Project on Terrorism, https://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/1425.pdf. ↑
- “CAIR Officials Misrepresent Court Ruling,” The Investigative Project on Terrorism, accessed May 2026, https://www.investigativeproject.org/2682/cair-officials-misrepresent-court-ruling. ↑
- “The North American Islamic Trust,” Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch, April 20, 2015, https://www.globalmbwatch.com/north-american-islamic-trust/. ↑
- “Islamic Society of North America” (research report), The Investigative Project on Terrorism, accessed May 2026, https://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/275.pdf. ↑
- Joe Kaufman, “North American Islamic Trust Chair Promotes Hamas and Hitler on Social Media,” FrontPage Magazine, October 1, 2020, https://www.frontpagemag.com/nait-chair-gaddoor-saidi-promotes-hamas-and-hitler-joe-kaufman/; See screenshot, https://imgur.com/rA8ndf0 ↑
- NAIT, “Board of Trustees,” accessed May 2026, https://www.nait.net/index.php/about-nait/board ↑
- Islam Online, “Jamal Badawi,” accessed May 2026, https://islamonline.net/en/author/jamal-badawi/ ↑
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- Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Kim Barker, Laurie Cohen, Stephen Franklin, and Sam Roe, “Hard-liners Won Battle for Bridgeview Mosque,” Chicago Tribune, February 8, 2004 (republished by The Investigative Project on Terrorism), https://www.investigativeproject.org/132/hard-liners-won-battle-for-bridgeview-mosque. ↑
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- “FEATURED: Chattanooga Shooter Attended US Muslim Brotherhood Mosque,” Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch, July 17, 2015, https://www.globalmbwatch.com/2015/07/17/featured-chattanooga-shooter-attended-us-muslim-brotherhood-mosque/. ↑
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- “Islamic Center of San Diego” (profile), The Investigative Project on Terrorism (citing Sarah Downey and Michael Hirsh, “A Safe Haven?” Newsweek, September 30, 2002), accessed May 2026, https://www.investigativeproject.org/mosques/378/islamic-center-of-san-diego. ↑
- “About Us,” Muslim Youth of North America, accessed May 2026, https://www.myna.org/about-1; “About MSA National,” Muslim Students’ Association National, accessed May 2026, https://www.msanational.org/about; “The Fairfax Institute,” International Institute of Islamic Thought, accessed May 2026, https://iiit.org/en/the-fairfax-institute-tfi/; “The Islamization of Knowledge,” International Institute of Islamic Thought, accessed May 2026, https://www.muslim-library.com/dl/books/English_Islamization_of_Knowledge_General_Principles_and_Work_Plan.pdf?__cf_chl_tk=j8l6knDaJgsBHfIO427NXYCasfjWAwuGLDLvd91kYUQ-1778500311-1.0.1.1-G7axWfpWlWFCS9uoGOyVL7ecik5LmMr2mxBz5p0bfYU ↑
- Robert Schmad, “Muslim Org Passed Out ‘Shariah’ Flyers In Public Texas High School, District Confirms,” The Daily Caller, February 3, 2026, https://dailycaller.com/2026/02/03/islamic-group-texas-high-school-shariah/. ↑
- Eric Flack, “FCPS Criticizes Muslim Student Organization Over Mock Kidnapping Social Media Videos,” WUSA9, October 29, 2025, https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/virginia/fcps-criticizes-muslim-student-organization-mock-kidnapping-social-media-videos/65-da0ffcb3-48e1-4c9e-9748-9f8c291a555f. ↑
- ” Ovamir Anjum and Omar Suleiman, “The Palestinian Struggle Through the Prophetic Lens,” Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, October 16, 2023, https://yaqeeninstitute.org/read/paper/the-palestinian-struggle-through-the-prophetic-lens. ↑
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- On the October 15, 2023 MYNA event: “ISNA Matters,” Islamic Horizons (ISNA), Spring 2024, https://islamichorizons.net/isna-matters/. On Sarsour’s background and statements: “Linda Sarsour” (profile), Canary Mission, accessed May 2026, https://canarymission.org/individual/Linda_Sarsour ; Sarah Begley, “Linda Sarsour Spoke of ‘Jihad.’ But She Wasn’t Talking About Violence,” Time, July 7, 2017, https://time.com/4848454/linda-sarsour-jihad-comments-donald-trump/ ; Peter Hasson, “Feminist Darling Will Speak At Event With Convicted Palestinian Terrorist And Immigration Fraudster,” The Daily Caller, February 9, 2017, https://dailycaller.com/2017/02/09/feminist-darling-will-speak-at-event-with-convicted-palestinian-terrorist-and-immigration-fraudster/. ↑
- Facebook, Asim Kidwai, accessed May 2026, https://www.facebook.com/asim.kidwai1. ↑
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- “American Trust Publications (ATP),” Discover the Networks, accessed May 2026, https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/organizations/american-trust-publications-atp/ . The “2,600 book titles” figure is from Sadia Qureshi, “Fifty Years of Preservation, Protection and Leadership,” Islamic Horizons (NAIT), October 31, 2023 (cited above in note 7). ↑
- Paul Berman, “The Philosopher of Islamic Terror,” The New York Times Magazine, March 23, 2003, https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/23/magazine/the-philosopher-of-islamic-terror.html ; “Sayyid Qutb” (extremist profile), Counter Extremism Project, documenting Qutb’s foundational influence on al-Qaeda founders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and on subsequent jihadist movements, accessed May 2026, https://www.counterextremism.com/extremists/sayyid-qutb. ↑
- Quotations from Sayyid Qutb, Milestones (Indianapolis: American Trust Publications, 1990), 75, 80. ↑
- “Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: Allah Imposed Hitler On the Jews to Punish Them — ‘Allah Willing, the Next Time Will Be at the Hand of the Believers,’” MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 2224, February 4, 2009, https://www.memri.org/reports/sheikh-yousuf-al-qaradhawi-allah-imposed-hitler-jews-punish-them-%E2%80%93-allah-willing-next-time. ↑
- “Promoting Radical Ideas — What ICNA Demands of its Members,” The Investigative Project on Terrorism, August 10, 2010, https://www.investigativeproject.org/2098/promoting-radical-ideas-what-icna-demands-of-its (documenting Fathi Yakan’s To Be A Muslim as part of ICNA’s required member reading curriculum). ↑
- “Islamic Book Service — Brand at Walmart.com,” Walmart, accessed May 2026, https://www.walmart.com/brand/islamic-book-service/ . For the LAUSD incident, see “Los Angeles City Schools Pull Copies of Quran from Shelves,” The Pluralism Project, Harvard University, February 7, 2002 (summarizing Los Angeles Times reporting), https://pluralism.org/news/los-angeles-city-schools-pull-copies-quran-shelves. ↑
- Steven Merley, “Extremism and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA),” Global Muslim Brotherhood Research Center, February 2007 (documenting the $21 million in seed funding from Qaradawi, Nada, and the emir of Qatar for the ISNA-NAIT Plainfield headquarters), https://www.globalmbresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/ISNA__Extremism-FINAL.pdf. ↑
- “The North American Islamic Trust,” Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch, April 20, 2015, https://www.globalmbwatch.com/north-american-islamic-trust/. ↑
- InfluenceWatch, accessed May 2026, https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/diyanet-center-of-america-dca/; “The Brotherhood in Your Backyard: International Institute of Islamic Thought,” Jewish Onliner, accessed May 2026, https://jewishonliner.org/p/the-brotherhood-in-your-backyard-international-institute-islamic-thought-iiit ↑
- Benjamin Baird and Anna Stanley, “Homeland Insecurity: Unraveling DHS Funding of Terror-Linked and Extremist Groups,” Middle East Forum, July 2025, https://www.meforum.org/press-releases/mef-report-reveals-dhs-hands-millions-to-terrorist-linked-groups. ↑
- House Foreign Affairs Committee (Chairman Michael McCaul), “McCaul Demands Answers From USAID on Alarming Failure to Address $110K Grant to Terrorist-Linked Nonprofit,” press release, January 24, 2023, https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/news/press-releases/mccaul-demands-answers-from-usaid-alarming-failure-address-110k-grant-terrorist-linked-nonprofit; H.Res. 160, 116th Cong. (introduced February 28, 2019 by Rep. Jim Banks), https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/160/text (resolution naming HHRD’s 2017 partnership with the U.S.-designated Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation and calling for investigation of HHRD’s reported collaboration with Lashkar-e-Taiba). ↑
- Perry Chiaramonte, “Islamic Group Once Tied to Terror Trial Received Thousands in Farm Subsidies, Without Growing Crops,” Fox News, January 30, 2015, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/islamic-group-once-tied-to-terror-trial-received-thousands-in-farm-subsidies-without-growing-crops. ↑
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- “About Us,” Helping Hand for Relief and Development, accessed May 2026, https://www1.hhrd.org/Get-Involved/About-Us. ↑
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- “Anees ur Rehman” (board member biography), Council on American-Islamic Relations — California, accessed May 2026, https://ca.cair.com/board-member/anees-ur-rehman/. ↑
- “WhyIslam Dawah Project,” ICNA New Jersey, accessed May 2026, https://www.icnanj.org/whyislam/; “Navigating the Crises of Our Times through Dawah,” Sound Vision, February 2024, https://www.soundvision.com/article/navigating-the-crises-of-our-times-through-dawah (citing ICNA statistics for the “new request every 6 minutes” figure and over 100,000 Qurans distributed in the year following October 7, 2023). ↑
- “ISNA’s 2020-22 Leadership Team,” Islamic Horizons (ISNA), November/December 2020, https://issuu.com/isnacreative/docs/ih_november-december_20/s/11183738 (identifying Safaa Zarzour as ISNA president for the 2020-22 term, former Secretary General of ISNA, former General Counsel and COO of Zakat Foundation of America, Superintendent of Universal Schools, and “Mosque Foundation (vice chair)”); “BREAKING NEWS: New ISNA Secretary-General Has Extensive Ties To U.S. Muslim Brotherhood,” Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch, January 10, 2010, https://www.globalmbwatch.com/2010/01/10/breaking-news-new-isna-secretary-general-has-extensive-ties-to-u-s-muslim-brotherhood/ (documenting Zarzour’s January 2010 appointment as ISNA Secretary General and his prior role as chairman of CAIR-Chicago); Joe Kaufman, “Illinois: Cook County Candidate Embraces ‘Unrepentant Anti-Semite’ Rashida Tlaib in Bid for Local Office,” Jihad Watch, March 30, 2020, https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/03/illinois-cook-county-candidate-embraces-unrepentant-anti-semite-rashida-tlaib-in-bid-for-local-office (identifying Zarzour as a board member of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, Illinois). ↑
- Web Archive, Ikwhan Online, “Advisory Council for Muslims in the State of Illinois, USA,” September 1, 2011, https://web.archive.org/web/20260225131710/https://www.ikhwanonline.com/article/90417 . ↑
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- “ISNA Matters,” Islamic Horizons, Spring 2024, https://islamichorizons.net/isna-matters/. ↑
- NAAIMS, “53rd Annual Conference — Palestine, Israel, and Questions of Free Speech and Inter-religious Relations,” North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies, October 24, 2024, https://naaims.org/53rd-annual-conference/ . ↑
- MAS-ICNA Convention 2025, Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1356582989605085&set=pb.100057601893423.-2207520000&type=3 . ↑
- New York Post, “Mamdani appears smiling, arm-in-arm with unindicted ‘93 WTC bombing co-conspirator and terrorist apologist,” October 18, 2025, https://nypost.com/2025/10/18/us-news/mamdani-appears-smiling-arm-in-arm-with-imam-siraj-wahhaj-93-wtc-bombing-co-conspirator/ ↑
- White House, “Designation of Certain Muslim Brotherhood Chapters as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists,” Executive Order 14362, November 24, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/11/designation-of-certain-muslim-brotherhood-chapters-as-foreign-terrorist-organizations-and-specially-designated-global-terrorists/ ↑
- U.S. Department of State, “Terrorist Designations of Muslim Brotherhood Chapters,” press release, January 13, 2026, https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/01/terrorist-designations-of-muslim-brotherhood-chapters/; U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Treasury and State Departments Designate Muslim Brotherhood Branches as Terrorist Organizations,” press release, January 13, 2026, https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0357 ↑
- Office of the Texas Governor, “Governor Abbott Designates Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR As Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” press release, November 18, 2025, https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-designates-muslim-brotherhood-cair-as-foreign-terrorist-organizations; Florida Executive Order 25-244, December 8, 2025, https://www.flgov.com/eog/sites/default/files/executive-orders/2025/EO%2025-244.pdf ↑
