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How the Doctrine Becomes a Plan
Sharia gives heavy weight to information dominance—controlling the story, shaping perceptions, and using political and psychological warfare. In the West, this shows up as what the Brotherhood calls civilization jihad: influence operations aimed at our core institutions—politics, military, law enforcement, schools, churches and synagogues, finance, and media—with the long-term goal of subverting them to serve sharia.
This campaign is led by the International Muslim Brotherhood (Arabic: al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, or simply the Ikhwan). While other movements share similar goals—some openly violent, like al-Qaeda—the Brotherhood is the best organized and prefers patient, nonviolent methods in Western countries.
The Brotherhood operates in dozens of countries through councils and a hierarchical leadership topped by a Supreme Guide. In the United States and Europe, its work is largely carried out through groups that present themselves as mainstream, “community” or “civil rights” organizations. Internal MB writings, public bylaws, and documents introduced in U.S. court have made the core intent clear: sedition in service of sharia’s supremacy, not assimilation.
This section outlines the Brotherhood’s history, how it came to America, its aims and doctrine, who advances them, and what that looks like in practice.
What Is the Muslim Brotherhood?
Founded in Egypt in 1928, the Brotherhood set out to:
- Implement sharia worldwide, and
- Re-establish the caliphate (a global Islamic state).
The Brotherhood’s creed states:
“God is our objective; the Quran is our law; the Prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”
The MB and groups like al-Qaeda share the same end state; they mainly differ in timelines and tactics. In the West, the Brotherhood favors stealth and influence: cultivating relationships and access across government (federal, state, local), law enforcement, intelligence, the military, prisons, media, think tanks, universities, and non-Muslim faith communities—always with the strategic goal of advancing sharia.
How the Brotherhood Began
After World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed. In 1923, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk built a secular Turkey and abolished the caliphate. Many in the Muslim world saw this as a civilizational loss. One of them, Hassan al-Banna, a young Egyptian schoolteacher and imam’s son, founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 to reunify Muslims under a restored caliphate and bring all lands under sharia rule.
Brotherhood bylaws and early literature are explicit about methods:
- Build mosques, schools, clinics, charities, clubs, and social networks.
- Organize, recruit, and educate toward a sharia-based state.
- Prepare to fight “tyrants and enemies of Allah” as a prelude to establishing that state.
By the 1930s the MB had a formal structure with trained cells (“Battalions”), and by 1940 it created a secret apparatus—its military wing (often called the Special Chapter)—to conduct “special work” (covert operations).
In the 1940s the Brotherhood turned increasingly violent in Egypt, targeting officials and British forces. In 1948 a Brother assassinated Egypt’s prime minister; in 1949 Egyptian security forces killed Hassan al-Banna. After a brief legal reprieve in 1951, the MB cooperated with the Free Officers who overthrew King Farouk in 1952, then moved against Gamal Abdel Nasser once it felt strong enough. Nasser’s 1954 crackdown drove many senior Brothers into exile, helping to spread the organization globally, including into the West.
