Two days before the US midterms, Brotherhood designation is debate ammunition and still not law
A Michigan Senate candidate accused his opponent of loyalty to “terrorist groups overseas” while the bill that would designate the Brotherhood has sat untouched in House Judiciary for sixteen months.
In a Michigan Senate debate on 30 October, Republican candidate Mike Rogers said Democrat Abdul El-Sayed had links to the Muslim Brotherhood and asked: “Are you for America, or are you for these terrorist groups overseas?” The exchange was reported by CNN in an analysis piece arguing the attacks are unconstitutional; the quote is on the record from the debate, the framing is CNN’s. Election day is Tuesday 3 November. Against that, the legislative record is static. H.R.3883, the “Muslim Brotherhood Is a Terrorist Organization Act of 2025,” introduced by Rep. Nancy Mace on 10 June 2025 and referred to House Judiciary, still shows a status of “Introduced” — no action in sixteen months. What has moved has moved by executive action: Executive Order 14362, the 13 January designations of the Lebanese, Egyptian and Jordanian chapters, and the 23 July OFAC listing of UK-based senior Egyptian Brotherhood figure Mahmoud al-Abyari with three other individuals and three entities.
Europe shows the same split between resolution and statute. The European Parliament’s 8 October text, proposed by the EPP, passed 381 to 167 with 15 abstentions and calls for a coordinated strategy against “entryism” and a legal assessment of whether individuals or organisations belong on the EU terrorist list. As the Emirati outlet Erem News noted, it banned nothing and imposed no financial or criminal sanction automatically, and critics warn its loose terminology risks conflating Muslim civic activity with proven illegality. In France, resolution n° 3355 was filed on 20 October and referred to the European Affairs Committee — reported so far only by the hard-right site Frontières, uncorroborated against the Assemblée nationale docket. In Austria, Chancellor Christian Stocker’s constitutional ban on political Islam remains a declared intention with no located bill text.
Assessment: The Middle East Forum, which advocates designation, published the honest version of the problem this week: “The Brotherhood Is at Once an Organization That Can Be Designated and a Worldview That Cannot.” That is the enforcement gap stated by the prosecution. Everything else follows from it — why chapter-by-chapter listings proceed while a global designation bill rots in committee, and why European parliaments produce resolutions rather than statutes. Watch the dockets, not the declarations: the CAIR litigation in Texas, the Austrian bill text, the Assemblée nationale’s own record. And correct the Dutch figure now circulating in Arabic coverage: the March motion carried 76 of 150 seats, not 76 against 150.