When America was attacked at Pearl Harbor in 1941, and on September 11, 2001, Americans understood the threat because it was immediate, violent, and unmistakable. But what happens when a radical ideology, political Islamism, operates patiently over decades, seeking influence rather than immediate military victory?
That is the challenge we face today: an Islamist ideological threat that too many American leaders fail to recognize, much less confront.
Political Islamism may be one of America’s most underestimated challenges of the 21st century. It can operate in plain sight within democratic institutions, using the language of religious freedom, civil rights, and political advocacy to advance an illiberal agenda. Americans are often reluctant to scrutinize Islamism for fear of being accused of anti-Muslim prejudice or Islamophobia.
Yet Islamism is a political ideology that seeks to organize society and government according to its strict interpretation of Islamic law. Two views of Islamism have emerged in the West: that it is indistinguishable from Islam itself, or that because much of it operates nonviolently, criticism of Islamism is inherently an attack on Islam. Neither is accurate. Many Muslims, including Sunni and Shi’ite friends of mine, have themselves been persecuted by Islamists.
The Muslim Brotherhood is the most influential Sunni Islamist movement. Its famous slogan, “Islam is the solution,” captures a non-Western ideology that views Islam not simply as personal faith but as the foundation for society, law, and government.
The Brotherhood’s objective is to Islamize all societies over time and bring political and social institutions into conformity with its extremist interpretation of Islam. It does not view Islam solely as an individual’s private faith, as many non-Muslim Westerners do, but as the only legitimate legal and political framework for a state.
That is why several Muslim-majority governments, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates, have treated the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to their political order. Egypt illustrates the stakes.
Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood won elections after Hosni Mubarak’s 2011 overthrow, only to be removed by the military in 2013 following massive demonstrations. Had the Brotherhood governed more effectively and consolidated power, the Arab world’s most populous country might today resemble a Sunni Islamist version of Iran.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s intellectual origins also matter. Hassan al-Banna founded the movement in Egypt in 1928 in opposition to Western political and cultural influence. Later ideologues, such as Sayyid Qutb, developed a far more revolutionary view of the West.
A long-term strategy
For Americans, one of the most revealing documents appeared decades later. In 1991, Mohamed Akram, a Muslim Brotherhood figure in the United States, authored the Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America.
Later introduced as government evidence in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing case, it described the Brotherhood’s work in America as a long-term “civilization-jihadist” process aimed at transforming Western society from within.
The Holy Land Foundation case offered a rare window into Islamist networks in America. Federal prosecutors convicted foundation officials in 2008 of providing material support to Hamas. CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, was named by prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator.
CAIR’s history deserves scrutiny. Founders Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad participated in a controversial 1993 Philadelphia meeting involving members of a US-based Hamas support network. Critics argue that CAIR’s origins and radical connections deserve scrutiny rather than dismissal as “Islamophobia.”
For example, CAIR’s 9/11 educational materials emphasize Islamophobia, while giving far less attention to al-Qaeda’s jihadist ideology that motivated the murder of nearly 3,000 people. Questions have also been raised about the financing of CAIR’s Washington headquarters by a bank co-owned by Iran, Qatar, and Turkey.
Foreign funding and influence
Foreign funding advancing Islamist influence presents another challenge.
Qatar, enriched by enormous natural-gas reserves, has fostered extensive political, educational, and diplomatic influence in the West, while supporting relationships with Islamist movements, some of which have been designated as terrorist organizations by the US, including Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Qatar Foundation International has financed Arabic-language instruction, teacher training, and cultural programs in American schools. QFI says these programs promote language and cultural understanding. Yet Qatar’s extensive and unprecedented financial relationships with American universities and other institutions raise legitimate questions about how much influence an Islamist authoritarian state can have on impressionable American minds.
The larger issue extends beyond Qatar. Why should any authoritarian foreign government – whether Qatar, China, or another state that does not guarantee American standards of religious freedom, speech, and press freedom – be permitted to influence American K-12 or university education?
A QFI-supported Arab-culture program at P.S. 261 in Brooklyn drew controversy after an “Arab World” map omitted Israel and labeled it “Palestine.” In Texas, a publicly funded charter-school network, Manara Academy, has faced criticism for alleged connections between individuals associated with the school and Islamist organizations.
Washington has begun confronting the broader Islamist question. In November 2025, US President Donald Trump ordered his administration to consider terrorist designations for specified Muslim Brotherhood branches. In January 2026, the Treasury designated the Egyptian and Jordanian branches as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists” for material support to Hamas, while the State Department designated the Lebanese branch as both a foreign terrorist organization and an SDGT.
It is only a beginning. America must expose Islamist networks, cut off foreign funding and terrorist connections, and protect US institutions before that influence becomes too deeply entrenched to uproot.
Texas and Florida have gone further. Gov. Greg Abbott designated the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organizations, while Gov. Ron DeSantis designated both as terrorist organizations under a December 2025 executive order.
Time to act
My recommendation goes even further: foreign-government funding of American education, from kindergarten through universities, should generally be prohibited outside carefully regulated scientific and medical research. At a minimum, every dollar of foreign-state funding should be publicly disclosed and subjected to rigorous oversight from an independent commission.
Americans should not allow accusations of Islamophobia to shut down legitimate scrutiny of political Islamism, foreign financing, and ideological influence within American institutions.
The First Amendment protects religious freedom and political advocacy, including ideas most Americans reject. But those freedoms should not prevent legitimate scrutiny of radical ideological movements seeking to exploit democratic institutions to advance fundamentally illiberal objectives.
Europe demonstrates how difficult radicalization and failed integration can become when cowardly governments wait too long to confront them. In my view, Europe is likely lost to Islamism, certainly over the next 50 years.
Fortunately, America still has time to confront the Islamist challenge. The question is whether the US will not only recognize the threat, but also be willing to act on it before it becomes entrenched.■
Dr. Eric R. Mandel is the director of MEPIN, the Middle East Political Information Network. He briefs members of Congress and their foreign policy aides, and the State Department.