Don't Put the Muslim Brotherhood on the Terrorist List

President Donald Trump’s advisers are reviewing a plan to officially designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization. While some members of the group are certainly terrorists, adding it to the official list would be a mistake.

That’s because the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t a single organization so much as a collection of loosely affiliated groups in dozens of countries, each deciding on its own policies and programs. In some places, it is purely focused on social services and humanitarian issues. In others, it is constructively engaged in politics; its Tunisian offshoot, called Ennahda, is central to the coalition now desperately trying to make that country the first true Muslim democracy. In Syria, members are battling against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.