This week, the White House announced an executive order that called for certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood to be designated as foreign terrorist organizations.

Founded in Egypt in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood "developed into a transnational network with chapters across the Middle East and beyond," with the order noting chapters in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt that "engage in or facilitate and support violence and destabilization campaigns that harm their own regions, United States citizens, and United States interests." One such example is the military wing of the Lebanese chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, who launched multiple rocket attacks against both civilian and military targets within Israel in the aftermath of Oct. 7. Another is a senior leader of the Egyptian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood who, as the assault of Oct. 7 was ongoing, "called for violent attacks against United States partners and interests." Then there are Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood leaders who "have long provided material support to the militant wing of Hamas."

"Such activities threaten the security of American civilians in the Levant and other parts of the Middle East, as well as the safety and stability of our regional partners," the order notes.

Absolutely!

This executive order represents yet another example of the Trump administration's relentless drive to continue the decades-long battle against Islamic terrorism with the crucial understanding that this battle goes far beyond those launching rockets or carrying out stabbing attacks or donning suicide vests to massacre civilians in school buses, restaurants and shopping centers.

In "The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement" — the founding document of Hamas, itself an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood — it is made clear that jihad involves more than violence alone.

"(Hamas) hopes that all these groupings will side with it in all spheres, would support it, adopt its stand and solidify its activities and moves, work towards rallying support for it so that the Islamic people will be a base and a stay for it, supplying it with strategic depth an all human material and informative spheres, in time and in place," the 1988 document states. "This should be done through the convening of solidarity conferences, the issuing of explanatory bulletins, favorable articles and booklets, enlightening the masses regarding the Palestinian issue, clarifying what confronts it and the conspiracies woven around it. They should mobilize the Islamic nations, ideologically, educationally and culturally, so that these peoples would be equipped to perform their role in the decisive battle of liberation, just as they did when they vanquished the Crusaders and the Tatars and saved human civilization."

Our enemies — whose core ideology remains unchanged from that of the time of the Crusades — are leveraging every weapon in their arsenal in their mission to spread radical Islam across the globe and, as a consequence, eradicate Western civilization. This obviously involves bloodthirsty violence, but it also requires deep and powerful logistical networks, reliable sources of funding and platforms of propaganda. This is achieved through networks such as the Muslim Brotherhood, with whom American-based Islamist groups remain closely linked, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the fact that the Trump administration understands the true threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood (and, therefore, the reality of organized radical Islam) should be cause for celebration for anyone who values our way of life, and seeks to defeat the medieval barbarity of Islamic terrorism.

To find out more about Ian Haworth and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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