Texas Governor Declares CAIR/Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Organizations

Texas Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott declared CAIR and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood to be ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions in an unprece­dent­ed state-lev­el des­ig­na­tion. On 18 Novem­ber 2025, Newsweek report­ed that Abbott des­ig­nat­ed both the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions and transna­tion­al crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions in a procla­ma­tion allow­ing height­ened enforce­ment and pre­vent­ing prop­er­ty acqui­si­tion in Texas. The arti­cle begins:

Texas Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott des­ig­nat­ed both the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) as for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions and transna­tion­al crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions in a procla­ma­tion on Tues­day. “The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and CAIR have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and estab­lish Islam’s ‘mas­ter­ship of the world,’ ” the Repub­li­can gov­er­nor said in a press release. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, found­ed in Egypt in 1928, is a transna­tion­al Sun­ni Islamist orga­ni­za­tion. CAIR, a non­prof­it, is an Islam­ic civ­il lib­er­ties group that focus­es on civ­il rights and advo­ca­cy. The des­ig­na­tion giv­en by Abbott will allow “height­ened enforce­ment” against the groups and will also pre­vent both groups from pur­chas­ing land in Texas.

Read more: https://www.newsweek.com/greg-abbott-declares-major-muslim-american-group-terrorist-organization-11067436

Key Points

• Abbot­t’s procla­ma­tion des­ig­nates CAIR and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as for­eign ter­ror­ist and transna­tion­al crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions, autho­riz­ing height­ened law enforce­ment mea­sures and block­ing prop­er­ty acqui­si­tion in Texas, mark­ing an unprece­dent­ed state-lev­el esca­la­tion in polic­ing Mus­lim advo­ca­cy activities.
• CAIR respond­ed that Abbot­t’s office does not have the author­i­ty to uni­lat­er­al­ly declare Amer­i­cans or Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions ter­ror­ist groups, call­ing the procla­ma­tion a pub­lic­i­ty stunt with no basis in fact or law that advances anti-Mus­lim big­otry by defam­ing promi­nent Amer­i­can Mus­lim insti­tu­tions with debunked con­spir­a­cy theories.
• The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has nev­er offi­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed either the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood or CAIR as ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, with no leg­is­la­tion passed by Con­gress despite sev­er­al pro­pos­als, includ­ing the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Ter­ror­ist Des­ig­na­tion Act of 2025, rein­tro­duced in July.
• CAIR was found­ed in 1994 to pro­tect the civ­il lib­er­ties of Amer­i­can Mus­lims and was named an unin­dict­ed co-con­spir­a­tor in a 2007 fed­er­al case regard­ing alleged Hamas sup­port, though CAIR has con­sis­tent­ly denied ties to ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty and has suc­cess­ful­ly sued Abbott three times for First Amend­ment violations.

CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood: Examining Historical Connections and Court Evidence

The Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions presents itself as a grass­roots civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion. Yet, its found­ing by three offi­cers of the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion of Pales­tine—iden­ti­fied as part of the U.S. Hamas infrastructure—reveals deep­er con­nec­tions to Islamist net­works. Doc­u­ments intro­duced dur­ing the Holy Land Foun­da­tion ter­ror­ism tri­al estab­lished that CAIR’s founders and lead­ers par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Pales­tine Com­mit­tee of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, cre­at­ed to sup­port Hamas. A 2009 fed­er­al court rul­ing found ample evi­dence estab­lish­ing CAIR’s asso­ci­a­tions with the Holy Land Foun­da­tion, the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion for Pales­tine, and Hamas.

The U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice detailed how the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood planned to estab­lish Amer­i­can net­works to spread mil­i­tant Islamist mes­sag­ing and raise mon­ey for Hamas. FBI wire­taps from a 1993 Philadel­phia meet­ing cap­tured for­mer HLF Pres­i­dent Shukri Abu Bak­er dis­cussing how to down­play Hamas con­nec­tions while con­tin­u­ing fundrais­ing. The Jus­tice Depart­ment con­vict­ed HLF lead­ers in 2008 on charges of pro­vid­ing approx­i­mate­ly $12.4 mil­lion in mate­r­i­al sup­port to Hamas through com­mit­tees in the Pales­tin­ian territories.

Beyond court­room evi­dence, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s glob­al reach extends through ide­o­log­i­cal­ly aligned orga­ni­za­tions across more than sev­en­ty coun­tries. Deputy lead­ers have acknowl­edged these inter­na­tion­al con­nec­tions, with Egyp­t’s Deputy Mus­lim Broth­er­hood leader pub­licly con­firm­ing in 2008 rela­tion­ships between the Egypt­ian orga­ni­za­tion and CAIR. These enti­ties share Broth­er­hood ide­ol­o­gy while oper­at­ing accord­ing to local circumstances.

Exec­u­tive direc­tor Nihad Awad, one of CAIR’s three orig­i­nal founders, sparked con­tro­ver­sy in Novem­ber 2023 when he stat­ed he “was hap­py to see” Pales­tini­ans break out of Gaza on Octo­ber 7—the day Hamas killed approx­i­mate­ly 1,200 Israelis and took 240 hostages. The Biden White House sub­se­quent­ly dis­avowed CAIR. More recent­ly, CAIR set­tled a law­suit in Feb­ru­ary 2025 to avoid dis­clos­ing for­eign fund­ing sources, and a watch­dog group accused the Cal­i­for­nia chap­ter of mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing $7.2 mil­lion in tax­pay­er funds intend­ed for refugee resettlement.

Exter­nal References:
• Fed­er­al Judge Hands Down Sen­tences in Holy Land Foun­da­tion Case — U.S. Depart­ment of Justice
• The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the Unit­ed States — Steven Mer­ley, Hud­son Institute
• The Hamas Net­works in Amer­i­ca — George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­gram on Extremism

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