The Trump administration waded into a regional debate over the Muslim Brotherhood this month, designating several chapters of the transnational Sunni Islamist group as terrorist organizations.
The group's ideology is both popular and divisive in the Arab and Muslim world. The group's leaders say it renounced violence decades ago and seeks to set up Islamic rule through elections and other peaceful means, but some of the group's offshoots have armed wings. Critics view it as a threat.
Here's how the group started and where it stands now.
Early days
The Muslim Brotherhood rose as a pan-Arab Islamist political movement founded in Egypt in 1928 by school teacher-turned-ideologue Hassan al-Banna. He believed Islamic teachings should be the basis for governance.
The group largely focused on providing social services but later turned to militancy, with an armed wing that fought against British colonialists and Israel. It was implicated in the assassination of Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud Fahmi al-Nokrashi in 1948 after he outlawed the group. Two months later, al-Banna was assassinated in Cairo.
After Egypt's 1952 military coup, the Brotherhood was accused of an assassination attempt against President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, who retaliated by executing prominent Brotherhood ideologue Sayyed Qutb and imprisoning thousands of other members.
The group saw a revival in the 1970s under then-President Anwar Sadat, who tolerated the Brotherhood and used it as a counterweight to leftist opponents. The group formally foreswore violence.
A man photographs the main entrance of a Muslim Brotherhood office, sealed with official wax after it police raided and shut it down, on April 13, 2016, in Amman, Jordan.
Rise and fall
During the 30-year rule of autocrat Hosni Mubarak, the Brotherhood was banned but also tolerated. By 2005 it was Egypt's strongest political opposition group, winning a fifth of the seats in parliament.
The Brotherhood rose to power following elections in Egypt a year after the 2011 popular uprising that toppled Mubarak, but the group fueled opponents' fears that it aimed to monopolize power.
After massive protests over Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi's divisive rule, the Egyptian army ousted the group in 2013, crushing it in a bloody crackdown.
Authorities later outlawed the group and labeled it a terrorist organization. Authorities under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi cracked down on Brotherhood members and those with suspected links to the group, jailing thousands. Nearly all of the group's senior leaders are imprisoned or live in exile.
Armed conflicts
The group developed chapters across the Middle East; some engaged in armed uprisings against their own governments or fought against Israel.
In 1982, the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria staged an antigovernment rebellion, launching attacks that targeted military officers, state institutions and ruling-party offices.
In February 1982, then-Syrian President Hafez Assad ordered an assault on the city of Hama to quell the unrest. Between 10,000 and 40,000 people were killed or disappeared in the government offensive that left the city in ruins.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas, which launched the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, defined itself as a Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas was formed in December 1987 in Gaza, days after the outbreak of the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising, against Israel. It called for armed resistance and for setting up an Islamic state in all of historic Palestine.
The Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Jamaa al-Islamiya (or the Islamic Group) is a Sunni Muslim political party but also has an armed wing. After the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, its armed wing joined forces with the Shiite militant group Hezbollah and launched rockets into Israel.
A protester carries the national flag July 31, 2015, during a rally by the Muslim Brotherhood in Amman, Jordan.
Divisions grow
Sunni regional powers Turkey and Qatar were sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology, while other Sunni powers in the region — including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt — see the group as a threat and cracked down on it.
This year, Jordan announced a sweeping ban on the Brotherhood that could include shutting down the country's largest opposition party, accusing the Islamist group of planning attacks. The monarchy banned the Brotherhood a decade ago but officially licensed a splinter group and continued to tolerate the Islamic Action Front while restricting some of its activities.
The U.S. State Department designated the Lebanese branch a foreign terrorist organization, the most severe of the labels, which makes it a criminal offense to provide material support to the group. The Jordanian and Egyptian branches were listed by Treasury as specially designated global terrorists for providing support to Hamas.
