This could live more than one place—like Islam in the US or Europe—but given the genesis of the Muslim Brotherhood, I’ll drop it here:
King Abdullah and the Islamists
As the Arab Muslim world moves forward, the West is going backwards.
Jordanian police close the entrance of a Muslim Brotherhood headquarter in Amman after the announcement of banning the society in the country on April 23, 2025. Photo by Salah Malkawi/Getty Images.Jordanian police close the entrance of a Muslim Brotherhood headquarter in Amman after the announcement of banning the society in the country on April 23, 2025. Photo by Salah Malkawi/Getty Images.
MELANIE PHILLIPS
Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column for JNS. Currently a columnist for The Times of London, her new book, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West and Why Only They Can Save It, is published by Wicked Son and can be purchased on Amazon. To access her work, go to: melaniephillips.substack.com.
A remarkable situation is fast developing in which the West is becoming more Islamist—the term for Islamic holy war extremism—than the Arab Muslim world itself.
This week, Jordan banned the extremist Muslim Brotherhood. All Brotherhood offices there have been closed, and its assets will be confiscated, shortly after 16 of its members were arrested in an alleged armed plot against the kingdom.
The authorities found weapons and explosives being stored in residential areas and transported across Jordan; secret missile-manufacturing facilities that could have produced up to 250 short-range missiles; and “training and recruitment operations” linked to the group.
Hamas, the Brotherhood’s armed wing, praised the alleged plot as an “initiative” by young Jordanian men conscious of the “continued genocide in Gaza.”
The Brotherhood has long been banned in Egypt, where it originated, and in the United Arab Emirates. The ban by Amman is extremely significant and not without danger for Jordan’s King Abdullah, who is permanently threatened by his substantial and restive Palestinian Arab population.
The Muslim Brothers are powerful enemies against whom he has preferred, until now, not to act. However, the Islamist group has been exploiting public anger over the war in Gaza by leading street protests denouncing the government for co-operating with Israel, with which it has had a peace treaty since 1994.
Six months ago, two Jordanian Brotherhood members tried to mount a cross-border raid near the Dead Sea but were shot and killed by Israeli forces. The incident occurred shortly after the group made significant parliamentary election gains amid anger at Israeli actions in Gaza.
Jordan is also worried about a potential Iranian connection with the Brotherhood, especially given Tehran’s increased attempts to destabilize the kingdom through violent cross-border smuggling of weapons and drugs.
Yet the West is even now choosing to ignore or even deny the threat to itself from the Islamist group.
The Brotherhood is a global organization that works in the shadows to conquer the West for Islam. Its tactics are to use a combination of terrorism, infiltration of democratic processes and maintaining a high birth rate among Western Muslims.
Amjad Taja, a counter-extremism analyst from the UAE, has observed of the Brothers’ strategy: “They operate schools, gyms, universities and charities freely. These groups can turn a son against his mother, instill hatred for one’s own people, burn national flags, incite religious conversion and encourage attacks on teachers … their goal is moral collapse.”
The Islamist group’s aims were laid out explicitly in Brotherhood documents discovered during the 2008 Holy Land terrorism trial in Texas. These described its work in America as “a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
Nevertheless, successive U.S. administrations have ignored the threat from the Brothers and other radical Islamists, whose activities and influence have become ever more extensive and brazen.
At a ceremony to mark the start of Ramadan last month, Andre Sayegh, the mayor of Paterson, N.J., boasted that Paterson “embraces and appreciates Islam” so much so that the Muslim call to prayer could now be heard in the city. “Paterson is the capital of Palestine in the United States of America,” he declared.
To “celebrate” Arab Heritage Month, the mayor of Chicago draped himself in a keffiyeh alongside representatives of the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR). This body was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land trial; its founder has openly defended Hamas, and its national executive director called the Oct. 7 massacre “exhilarating” and “energizing.”
Islamic radicals have been prominent in the repeated street demonstrations in support of Hamas and against America. At Yale University, demonstrators chanted, “We will honor our martyrs.”
In Dearborn, Mich., a demonstrator declared: “This American Empire must fall. There are people here both young and old who are going to be willing to fight and put their lives and everything they can on the line to bring these empires down.”
And the United States continues with its perverse love-in with the Arab Gulf state of Qatar, the founder and protector of Hamas that aims to establish a global caliphate.
In France, which has long struggled with Islamic extremism, the government warned last year that the Muslim Brotherhood plays a major role in disseminating Islamist separatism aimed at “building a counter-society.”
The French minister of justice, Gérald Darmanin, has described it as a “vicious organization” that aims to “gradually bring all sections of society into the Islamic matrix.”
Bertrand Chamoulaud, head of France’s National Directorate for Territorial Intelligence, has explained that the Brotherhood’s infiltration “affects all sectors: sports, health, education,” and so on. The Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, has said political Islam seeks to convert society “in small steps: in associations, businesses and even sometimes our local authorities.”
Yet while France is at least identifying the problem, Britain is going the other way. Despite official reports detailing the threat posed by the Brotherhood, successive governments have refused to ban it. Instead, the Labour government under Sir Keir Starmer is steadily crumbling under the pressures of Islamization.
It’s planning to give teeth to the term “Islamophobia,” which it is feared will introduce an Islamic blasphemy law through the back door. “Islamophobia” is a term invented by the Brotherhood to quash all criticism of Islam or the Muslim world. In France last year, Darmanin said the concept was key to the organization as “it covers their primary strategy, that of victimization.”
The Starmer government is preparing to suppress necessary criticism of the Muslim world at the very moment that the Islamization of Britain is getting out of hand.
A survey carried out last year by the Henry Jackson Society think tank found that some 40% of British Muslims thought it would be “desirable” to form an exclusively Muslim political party. In fact, Muslim sectarian politics have already arrived in the United Kingdom. In last year’s general election, five independent members of Parliament were elected on a “Gaza Palestine” platform.
Last month, 20 predominantly Labour MPs and members of the House of Lords wrote a letter to the prime minister of Pakistan demanding that he fund the construction of an airport in Mirpur.
In Wycombe, a town in southern England, pro-Hamas activists have been telling Muslims in an online campaign video that in next week’s local municipal elections, they should support whichever candidate would back a boycott of Israeli goods.
At the start of the video, text that appears beside a Palestinian flag reads: “Think before you vote! It’s clear who is supporting genocide and subservient to their masters. Don’t sell your soul as Allah sees everything.”
Amjad Taja, the Emirati analyst, has warned that Britain risks becoming a “global power base” for radical Islamists. The UAE has banned 19 organizations related to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Eight of these organizations are headquartered in the United Kingdom.
The Brotherhood, he says, uses freedom of speech as a cover for promoting antisemitism and supporting Hamas in its genocidal war against Israel. “In Saturday Islamist schools in London, Birmingham and Manchester,” he said, “children are being taught global jihad against Jews and Christians, with Holocaust denial as part of the curriculum.
“On London’s streets, the flags of terrorist groups are flown to protest against the war in Gaza, the police happily explain on social media that ‘jihad’ on a flag means struggle, not war, and thousands of people are prepared to stand alongside Hamas terrorists and those sympathetic to ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
“All this is happening while the Gulf countries are rolling back ultra-conservatism, banning religious police, allowing women to drive, encouraging the arts, live music and promoting English in schools so children are worldly and equipped to go for the opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t.”
As the Arab Muslim world takes steps towards the light, Britain and other nations in the West are sliding into darkness.
https://www.jns.org/king-abdullah-and-the-islamists/
