Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order on Monday designating one of the US’s most prominent Muslim groups, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, as a “foreign terrorist organization,” becoming the second high-profile Republican governor to do so in recent weeks.
As with the ban imposed last month by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, DeSantis’s order also named the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt, as a foreign terrorist organization. Hamas began as the movement’s Palestinian arm.
The Florida executive order’s text accuses the Muslim Brotherhood of supporting terror, being linked to Hamas and opposing American values. And it accuses CAIR of being tied to the Brotherhood and of having its own links to terrorism.
“[T]he Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamist ideology is irreconcilable with foundational American principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the order says, adding that the group “supports a network of chapters and affiliated political entities and front organizations that engage in terrorism or funnel money to finance terrorist activities.”
It adds that “members of the Muslim Brotherhood created Hamas in 1987, the primary goal of which is the destruction of the State of Israel and the eradication of Jews in their historic homeland of Judea and Samaria,” the biblical term for the West Bank.
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CAIR, it says, “was founded by persons connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.” It adds that “individuals associated with CAIR have been convicted of providing, and conspiring to provide, material support to designated terrorist organizations.”
Supporters of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood take part in a protest in the village of Sweimeh, near the Jordanian border with the West Bank, on May 21, 2021 (Khalil MAZRAAWI / AFP)
The Florida order instructs agencies to take action to prevent CAIR from receiving any state contracts, employment or funding. CAIR has challenged Abbott’s declaration in federal court as an unconstitutional effort to punish the organization simply because of its views. CAIR was expected to announce a separate lawsuit against Florida later on Tuesday.
“From the moment Ron DeSantis took office as Florida governor, he has prioritized serving the Israeli government over serving the people of Florida,” CAIR said in a statement on Monday. “Like Greg Abbott in Texas, Ron DeSantis is an Israel First politician who wants to smear and silence Americans, especially American Muslims, critical of US support for Israel’s war crimes.”
It added, “We look forward to defeating Governor DeSantis’ latest Israel First stunt in a court of law, where facts matter and conspiracy theories have no weight.”
CAIR was founded in 1994 and has chapters in nearly two dozen US states. It says that it has a consistent record of opposing terror groups, and condemned violence against civilians in the days following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage, launching the war in Gaza.
But weeks later, the group’s executive director, Nihad Awad, praised the October 7 attack.
“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on October 7,” Awad said.
Nihad Awad, executive director and co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), speaks outside the White House in 2021. (AP/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades)
DeSantis’s action comes weeks after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the US secretaries of state and treasury to consider whether certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood should be designated as terror organizations.
“The order’s ultimate aim is to eliminate the designated chapters’ capabilities and operations, deprive them of resources, and end any threat such chapters pose to US nationals and the national security of the United States,” read a statement from the White House.
Trump’s announcement spurred Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pledge that Israel will complete its own process of outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood.
That declaration, in turn, led Ra’am party leader Mansour Abbas to accuse the premier of “trying to steal the election” due to take place next year, in light of the links between Ra’am’s parent movement and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Abbas has repeatedly denied that his party is connected to the Brotherhood. This week, Abbas said that the party will separate from the religious council that it is linked to and establish its own institutions. The move appeared to be aimed at distancing the Islamist political party from hardline Muslim organizations in order to boost its legitimacy among Zionist Israeli parties.
Jacob Magid contributed to this report.
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