WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order to begin the process of designating certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist political group, as foreign terrorist organisations.

 

The order made specific mention of chapters in Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.

 

Those chapters "engage in or facilitate and support violence and destabilisation campaigns that harm their own regions, United States citizens, and United States interests," the order said.

 

The Muslim Brotherhood is a pan-Islamist organisation that was founded in Egypt in 1928 and spread to other countries in the Arab world.

 

US designation as a foreign "terrorist" group allows Washington to take punitive measures such as freezing any assets the group might have in the United States and denying entry to group members.

 

It is now up to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to complete the process of outlawing the branches named in the US president's order.

 

The Muslim Brotherhood is already outlawed as a terrorist group in some countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. More recently, Jordan banned it in April of this year.

 

Amman accused the group of manufacturing and stockpiling weapons and planning to destabilize the kingdom.

 

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has been banned since 2013.

 

In May of this year, President Emmanuel Macron of France ordered his government to draw up proposals to counter the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and its spread there.