[Congressional Bills 114th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 2230 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

<DOC>






114th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                S. 2230

To require the Secretary of State to submit a report to Congress on the 
     designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist 
                 organization, and for other purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                            November 3, 2015

   Mr. Cruz introduced the following bill; which was read twice and 
             referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
To require the Secretary of State to submit a report to Congress on the 
     designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist 
                 organization, and for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist 
Designation Act of 2015''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS; SENSE OF CONGRESS.

    (a) Findings.--Congress finds the following:
            (1) Multiple countries have declared the Society of the 
        Muslim Brothers (commonly known as the ``Muslim Brotherhood'') 
        a terrorist organization or proscribed the group from operating 
        in their countries.
            (2) In 1980, following a wave of assassinations targeting 
        government officials and the June 16, 1979, massacre of 83 
        military cadets in Aleppo, the Government of Syria--
                    (A) banned the Muslim Brotherhood from the country; 
                and
                    (B) made membership in the organization punishable 
                by death.
            (3) In a February 14, 2003, court decision, the Russian 
        Supreme Court--
                    (A) described the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist 
                organization; and
                    (B) banned the organization from operating in 
                Russia.
            (4) In 2013--
                    (A) an Egyptian court banned the Muslim Brotherhood 
                from Egypt; and
                    (B) the Government of Egypt officially declared the 
                Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.
            (5) The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia designated the Muslim 
        Brotherhood as a terrorist group on March 7, 2014.
            (6) The Cabinet of the United Arab Emirates has published a 
        list of terrorist organizations, which includes the Muslim 
        Brotherhood and its local affiliates.
            (7) On March 21, 2014, the Foreign Minister of Bahrain 
        backed the terrorist designations of the Muslim Brotherhood by 
        the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
            (8) The Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in Egypt in 
        1928 by Hassan al-Banna, remains headquartered in Egypt but 
        operates throughout the world.
            (9) The Muslim Brotherhood's long-standing motto includes 
        the following: ``Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our 
        leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the 
        way of Allah is our highest hope. [Allah is greater!]''.
            (10) Hassan al-Banna, in a book entitled ``The Way of 
        Jihad'', taught--
                    (A) ``Jihad is an obligation from Allah on every 
                Muslim and cannot be ignored nor evaded. Allah has 
                ascribed great importance to jihad and has made the 
                reward of the martyrs and fighters in His way a 
                splendid one. Only those who have acted similarly and 
                who have modeled themselves upon the martyrs in their 
                performance of jihad can join them in this reward.''; 
                and
                    (B) ``Jihad [means] the fighting of the 
                unbelievers, and involves all possible efforts that are 
                necessary to dismantle the power of the enemies of 
                Islam including beating them, plundering their wealth, 
                destroying their places of worship and smashing their 
                idols.''.
            (11) Hassan al-Banna also taught that ``it is the nature of 
        Islam to dominate, not to be dominated'', and thus that the 
        mission of Islam, as interpreted and executed by the Muslim 
        Brotherhood, must be ``to impose [Islamic] law on nations and 
        to extend its power to the entire planet''. While al-Banna's 
        plan for accomplishing this mission was multifaceted, it 
        centrally incorporated training for and the execution of 
        violent jihad-terrorist operations.
            (12) In Richard P. Mitchell's 1969 book on the history of 
        the Muslim Brotherhood, entitled ``The Society of Muslim 
        Brothers'', Professor Mitchell explained al-Banna's teachings 
        on violent jihad: The certainty that jihad had this physical 
        connotation is evidenced by the relationship always implied 
        between it and the possibility, even the necessity, of death 
        and martyrdom. Death, as an important end of jihad, was 
        extolled by al-Banna in a phrase which came to be a famous part 
        of his legacy: ``[T]he art of death''. ``Death is art''. The 
        Koran has commanded people to love death more than life. Unless 
        ``the philosophy of the Koran on death'' replaces ``the love of 
        life'' which has consumed Muslims, then they will reach naught. 
        Victory can only come with the mastery of ``the art of death''. 
        The movement cannot succeed, al-Banna insists, without this 
        dedicated and unqualified kind of jihad.
            (13) This philosophy pervaded the Muslim Brotherhood's 
        prioritization of training for combat. Professor Mitchell 
        observed that it was ``the tone of the training which gave [the 
        Muslim Brotherhood] its distinctive qualities'', adding: ``If 
        the Muslim Brothers were more effectively violent than other 
        groups on the Egyptian scene, it was because militancy and 
        martyrdom had been elevated to central virtues in the Society's 
        ethos.''. Its literature and speeches were permeated with 
        references identifying it and its purposes in military terms. 
        Al-Banna told members again and again that they were ``the army 
        of liberation, carrying on your shoulders the message of 
        liberation; you are the battalions of salvation for this nation 
        afflicted by calamity''.
            (14) Al-Banna's blueprint for revolution anticipated a 
        final stage of ``execution'' at which point the battalions the 
        Muslim Brotherhood had trained would ``conquer . . . every 
        obstinate tyrant''. This violent ideology continued to be part 
        of the Brotherhood's indoctrination in standard membership 
        texts, such as Sayyid Qutb's ``Milestones'' and Fathi Yakan's 
        ``To Be a Muslim''.
            (15) In Muslim Brotherhood organizations and chapters 
        throughout the world, including in the United States, al-
        Banna's originating philosophy continues to be taught.
            (16) In its earliest days, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood 
        established a terrorist wing, referred to as the ``secret 
        apparatus'', which conducted bombings and assassinations 
        targeting foreigners and government officials. The 
        assassinations by the Muslim Brotherhood of Judge Ahmed Al-
        Khazinder Bey in 1947 and Prime Minister Mahmoud Al-Nuqrashi in 
        1948 prompted the first ban on the organization in Egypt.
            (17) The United States has previously designated global 
        elements of the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist 
        organizations, including--
                    (A) the terrorist group Hamas, which self-
                identifies as ``one of the wings of the Muslim 
                Brotherhood in Palestine'', which was designated as a 
                foreign terrorist organization by President William J. 
                Clinton on January 23, 1995, by Executive Order 12947, 
                and by Secretary of State Madeline Albright on October 
                7, 1997, under section 219(a) of the Immigration and 
                Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1189(a)); and
                    (B) the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood's Lajnat al-
                Daawa al-Islamiya (``Islamic Call Committee''), which 
                was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by 
                President George W. Bush on September 23, 2001, by 
                Executive Order 13224 and by Secretary of State Colin 
                Powell on January 9, 2003, under such section 219(a).
            (18) Lajnat al-Daawa al-Islamiya was designated as a 
        foreign terrorist organization for--
                    (A) being a financial conduit for Osama bin Laden 
                and Al-Qaeda;
                    (B) funding terrorist groups in Chechnya and Libya; 
                and
                    (C) including Al-Qaeda operations chief Khalid 
                Sheikh Mohammed and World Trade Center bomber Ramzi 
                Yousef as leaders with the organization.
            (19) Militias of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood recently 
        joined forces with United States designated terrorist 
        organizations, particularly Ansar al-Sharia, as part of the 
        Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries and Libya Dawn forces 
        fighting against the military forces of the internationally 
        recognized Libyan government.
            (20) Individual Muslim Brotherhood leaders have been 
        designated by the United States as Specially Designated 
        Terrorists, as authorized under the International Emergency 
        Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) and initiated 
        under Executive Order 13224 (September 23, 2001), including 
        Shaykh Abd-al-Majid Al-Zindani, a leader of the Yemeni Muslim 
        Brotherhood's Al-Islah political party, who was designated by 
        the Secretary of the Treasury as a specially designated 
        terrorist on February 2, 2004. The designation states that al-
        Zindani has a ``long history of working with Bin Laden, serving 
        as one of his spiritual leaders'', in addition to his 
        activities in support of Al-Qaeda, including recruiting and 
        procuring weapons. Al-Zindani was also identified in a Federal 
        lawsuit as a coordinator of the October 2000 suicide attack 
        targeting the USS COLE in Aden, Yemen, that killed 17 United 
        States Navy sailors, including personally selecting the 2 
        suicide bombers. In September 2012, al-Zindani reportedly 
        called for his supporters to kill United States Marines 
        stationed at the United States Embassy in Sana'a, Yemen.
            (21) Mohammad Jamal Khalifa, a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan 
        war, senior Muslim Brotherhood leader, and brother-in-law and 
        close confidant of Osama bin Laden was arrested in California 
        in December 1994 on charges related to the 1993 bombing of the 
        World Trade Center. Evidence was found at that time that linked 
        Khalifa to the planned al-Qaeda Operation Bojinka plot that 
        included the bombing of 11 airplanes between Asia and the 
        United States. He was deported to Jordan in May 1995. Prior to 
        that time he operated an Islamic charity in the Philippines 
        that was accused of funneling money to the Abu Sayyef terrorist 
        group and laundering money for Bin Laden. He was sought again 
        by United States authorities in 2007, and an Interpol bulletin 
        was issued to several United States intelligence agencies. 
        Khalifa was killed four days later in Madagascar.
            (22) Sami Al-Hajj, an Al-Qaeda member and senior leader of 
        the Muslim Brotherhood's Shura Council, was imprisoned as a 
        detainee at the Department of Defense facility at Guantanamo 
        Bay, Cuba. He was captured by Pakistani forces near the 
        Afghanistan border in 2001 and transferred to United States 
        custody. He was detained for his work as a money and weapons 
        courier for Al-Qaeda. He reportedly worked directly with 
        Taliban commander Mullah Mohammad Omar to procure weapons, and 
        met with senior Afghan Muslim Brotherhood officials in mid-2001 
        to discuss the transfer of Stinger missiles from Afghanistan to 
        Chechnya.
            (23) According to a May 1995 report by the United States 
        House of Representatives Task Force on Terrorism and 
        Unconventional Warfare, a series of conferences hosted by 
        Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood leader Hassan al-Turabi in 
        Khartoum, Sudan, during October 1994 and March to April 1995 
        featured representatives from virtually every Islamic terrorist 
        organization in the world. The conferences included 
        representatives from Iranian intelligence, Hezbollah, 
        Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and the 
        Armed Islamic Group of Algeria, and leaders from the 
        international Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim Brotherhood in the 
        Gulf Countries, Hamas (the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood), the 
        Islamic Action Front (Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood), and the 
        Ennahda Movement (the Tunisian Muslim Brotherhood). Osama bin 
        Laden was present at the conferences. The parties agreed to 
        launch a terrorism offensive beginning in 1995, with targets 
        including United States interests and personnel in the Middle 
        East and attacks inside the United States homeland.
            (24) In October 2003, Richard Clarke, former National 
        Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism for Presidents 
        William J. Clinton and George W. Bush, testified before the 
        Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs of the Senate 
        that terrorist organizations continued to operate inside the 
        United States and their connection to the Muslim Brotherhood 
        networks, stating ``Dating back to the 1980's, Islamist 
        terrorist networks have developed a sophisticated and 
        diversified financial infrastructure in the United States. In 
        the post September 11th environment, it is now widely known 
        that every major Islamist terrorist organization, from Hamas to 
        Islamic Jihad to al-Qaeda, has leveraged the financial 
        resources and institutions of the United States to build their 
        capabilities. We face a highly developed enemy in our mission 
        to stop terrorist financing. While the overseas operations of 
        Islamist terrorist organizations are generally segregated and 
        distinct, the opposite holds in the United States. The issue of 
        terrorist financing in the United States is a fundamental 
        example of the shared infrastructure levered by Hamas, Islamic 
        Jihad and al-Qaeda, all of which enjoy a significant degree of 
        cooperation and coordination within our borders. The common 
        link here is the extremist Muslim Brotherhood--all of these 
        organizations are descendants of the membership and ideology of 
        the Muslim Brothers.''.
            (25) One of the examples cited by Richard Clarke in his 
        testimony before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban 
        Affairs of the Senate was the case of Soliman Biheiri, who ran 
        an investment firm specializing in Islamically permissible 
        investments, the Secaucus, New Jersey-based Baitul Mal, 
        Incorporated, which offered a range of financial services for 
        the Muslim community, and invested in businesses and real 
        estate. According to Federal prosecutors, the shareholders of 
        Baitul Mal included al-Qaeda financier Yassin al-Qadi and top 
        Hamas leader Mousa abu Marzook, both of whom are specially 
        designated global terrorists and operated separate businesses 
        out of the offices of Baitul Mal, Incorporated and also did 
        business with Baitul Mal, Incorporated. Other Baitul Mal, 
        Incorporated investors included Abdullah bin Laden, nephew of 
        Osama bin Laden, and Tarek Swaidan, a Kuwaiti Muslim 
        Brotherhood leader. In a September 2003 detention hearing, 
        Federal prosecutors described Biheiri as ``the United States 
        banker for the Muslim Brotherhood,'' and stating that ``the 
        defendant came here as the Muslim Brotherhood's financial 
        toehold in the United States.''. Biheiri was convicted on 
        Federal immigration charges on October 9, 2003.
            (26) The fact that the international Muslim Brotherhood 
        engages in terrorism financing inside the United States was 
        attested to in February 2011 by FBI Director Robert Mueller, 
        who testified before the Permanent Select Committee on 
        Intelligence of the House of Representatives about the Muslim 
        Brotherhood's networks and agenda in the United States, 
        stating: ``I can say at the outset that elements of the Muslim 
        Brotherhood both here and overseas have supported terrorism. To 
        the extent that I can provide information, I would be happy to 
        do so in closed session. But it would be difficult to do in 
        open session.''.
            (27) In the Holy Land Foundation prosecutions--the largest 
        terrorism financing trial in United States history--Department 
        of Justice officials successfully argued in court that the 
        international Muslim Brotherhood and its United States 
        affiliates had engaged in a widespread conspiracy to raise 
        money and materially support the terrorist group Hamas. HLF 
        officials charged in the case were found guilty on all counts 
        in November 2008, primarily related to millions of dollars that 
        had been transferred to Hamas. During the trial and in court 
        documents, Federal prosecutors implicated a number of prominent 
        United States-Islamic organizations in this conspiracy, 
        including the Islamic Society of North America, the North 
        American Islamic Trust, and the Council on American-Islamic 
        Relations. These groups and their leaders, among others, were 
        named as unindicted co-conspirators in the case. The Department 
        of Justice told the court that these United States-Muslim 
        Brotherhood affiliates acted at the direction of the 
        international Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorism in a July 
        2008 court filing: ``ISNA and NAIT, in fact, shared more with 
        HLF than just a parent organization. They were intimately 
        connected with the Holy Land Foundation and its assigned task 
        of providing financial support to HAMAS. Shortly after HAMAS 
        was founded in 1987, as an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood, 
        the International Muslim Brotherhood ordered the Muslim 
        Brotherhood chapters throughout the world to create Palestine 
        Committees, who supported HAMAS with `media, money and men'. 
        The U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood created the United States Palestine 
        Committee, which documents reflect was initially comprised of 3 
        organizations: the Holy Land Foundation, the Islamic 
        Association for Palestine, and the United Association for 
        Studies and Research. CAIR was later added to these 
        organizations. The mandate of these organizations, per the 
        International Muslim Brotherhood, was to support HAMAS, and the 
        HLF's particular role was to raise money to support HAMAS' 
        organizations inside the Palestinian territories.''.
            (28) In September 2010, the Supreme Guide of the Muslim 
        Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, delivered a weekly sermon mirroring 
        the ideological themes of Al-Qaeda's August 1996 declaration of 
        war against the United States. Calling on Arab and Muslim 
        regimes to confront not just Israel, but also the United 
        States, he declared that ``Resistance is the only solution 
        against the Zio-American arrogance and tyranny.''. This 
        ``resistance'' can only come from fighting and understanding 
        ``that the improvement and change that the [Muslim] nation 
        seeks can only be attained through jihad and sacrifice and by 
        raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the 
        enemies pursue life''. He also predicted the imminent downfall 
        of the United States, saying ``The United States is now 
        experiencing the beginning of its end, and is heading towards 
        its demise.''.
            (29) Since August 2013, Muslim Brotherhood members in Egypt 
        have been killed in firefights during attacks on police and 
        military targets, and during the manufacture and placement of 
        explosives for acts of terrorism.
            (30) The August 14, 2013, clearing of Muslim Brotherhood 
        protests in Egypt resulted in attacks by Muslim Brotherhood 
        supporters targeting the Coptic Christian community. Attacks 
        included 70 churches and more than 1,000 homes and businesses 
        of Coptic Christian families torched in the ensuing violence. 
        During the Muslim Brotherhood protests, there were repeated 
        reports of direct incitement towards the Copts from leading 
        Muslim Brotherhood figures, and since the protest dispersal 
        this targeting of the Christian community continues in official 
        statements on Muslim Brotherhood social media outlets and from 
        its leadership. As the United States Commission on 
        International Religious Freedom has previously noted, this 
        terror campaign by the Muslim Brotherhood is not a new 
        development. Over the past decade violence by the Muslim 
        Brotherhood has been directed at the Coptic community. As the 
        USCIRF observed in its 2003 Annual Report: ``Coptic Christians 
        face ongoing violence from vigilante Muslim extremists, 
        including members of the Muslim Brotherhood, many of whom act 
        with impunity.''.
            (31) On January 27, 2015, the Muslim Brotherhood published 
        on their official Ikhwanonline.com website an announcement that 
        the organization was entering a ``new phase'' and calling its 
        followers to prepare for a ``long, uncompromising jihad'' 
        against the Egyptian government. The statement also positively 
        recalled the Muslim Brotherhood's terrorist past, including the 
        operations of the ``secret apparatus'' terror wing active in 
        the 1940s and 1950s, and the group's battalions organized by 
        Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna that fought against Israel 
        during its War of Independence in 1948.
            (32) On May 27, 2015, a group of 159 Muslim Brotherhood-
        associated scholars from 35 nations announced the publication 
        of a document endorsing violence in Egypt in response to a 
        ``war against Islam's principles.''. Specifically, Article 4 of 
        the ``Call to Egypt'' calls for ``retribution punishment'' 
        against government officials, judges, police, soldiers, 
        religious officials, and media personalities backing the 
        government. The document was affirmed by the Muslim Brotherhood 
        in an English-language statement published on their official 
        website.
            (33) A July 1, 2015, statement published on the Muslim 
        Brotherhood's official English-language website called for 
        ``rebellion'' against the Egyptian government after a group of 
        senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders were killed in a shootout 
        after opening fire on Egyptian anti-terror police who were 
        raiding the secret meeting in 6th of October City. Documents 
        reportedly recovered at the scene showed that the leadership 
        was planning acts of sabotage and attacks on police stations 
        during the second anniversary of the removal of Mohamed Morsi 
        on July 3rd.
            (34) A senior Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader, Ashraf 
        Abdel Ghaffar, gave a July 3, 2015, interview in which he 
        defended the sabotage of power stations and high voltage pylons 
        targeting Egyptian citizens by the Muslim Brotherhood as 
        punishment for support of the Egyptian government.
    (b) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that--
            (1) the Muslim Brotherhood meets the criteria for 
        designation as a foreign terrorist organization under section 
        219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1189); and
            (2) the Secretary of State, in consultation with the 
        Attorney General and the Secretary of the Treasury, should 
        exercise the Secretary of State's statutory authority by 
        designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist 
        organization.

SEC. 3. REPORT ON DESIGNATION OF THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AS A FOREIGN 
              TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.

    (a) Definitions.--In this section:
            (1) Appropriate congressional committees.--The term 
        ``appropriate congressional committees'' means--
                    (A) the Committee on Homeland Security and 
                Governmental Affairs of the Senate;
                    (B) the Committee on Armed Services of the Senate;
                    (C) the Committee on Foreign Relations of the 
                Senate;
                    (D) the Select Committee on Intelligence of the 
                Senate;
                    (E) the Committee on the Judiciary of the Senate;
                    (F) the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban 
                Affairs of the Senate;
                    (G) the Committee on Homeland Security of the House 
                of Representatives;
                    (H) the Committee on Armed Services of the House of 
                Representatives;
                    (I) the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House 
                of Representatives;
                    (J) the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence 
                of the House of Representatives;
                    (K) the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of 
                Representatives; and
                    (L) the Committee on Financial Services of the 
                House of Representatives.
            (2) Intelligence community.--The term ``intelligence 
        community'' has the meaning given that term in section 3(4) of 
        the National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. 3003(4)).
    (b) Report.--Not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment 
of this Act, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the 
intelligence community, shall submit a detailed report to the 
appropriate congressional committees that--
            (1) indicates whether the Muslim Brotherhood meets the 
        criteria for designation as a foreign terrorist organization 
        under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 
        U.S.C. 1189); and
            (2) if the Secretary of State determines that the Muslim 
        Brotherhood does not meet the criteria referred to in paragraph 
        (1), includes a detailed justification as to which criteria 
        have not been met.
    (c) Form.--The report required under subsection (b) shall be 
submitted in unclassified form, but may include a classified annex, if 
appropriate.
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