The Muslim Brotherhood gathers strength

What connects the Jamaat in Bangladesh to a rift between Saudi Arabia and the UAE on Yemen, an Egyptian blogger in the UK, and an appointment by New York's new mayor Zohran Mamdani?

The flag of the Muslim Brotherhood with the words, "Allah (God) is our objective, the Prophet (Muhammad) is our leader, the Quran is our constitution, Jihad is our way, and dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope", written in Arabic.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s ideological and organizational ecosystem is regaining room in multiple theatres—from Bangladesh to Yemen to Western metropolitan politics—less as a formal, centralized ‘Comintern’ and more as a diffuse network of parties, NGOs, clerical circles and legal-activist alliances that share a common project of Islamist sociopolitical transformation. This ecosystem is gaining ground in Bangladesh through Jamaat-e-Islami, shaping intra-Gulf competition over Yemen, potentially tempting Riyadh back toward Islamist conservatives in ways that empower Qatar, and manifesting in Western ‘red–green’ alignments such as Zohran Mamdani’s appointment of a lawyer who defended an Al Qaeda operative – and politics in the United Kingdom has been in turmoil over the government bringing in an Egyptian blogger Abd el-Fattah who has been shown to have deep Islamist inclinations in his pronouncements. ​

Muslim Brotherhood as a global ecosystem

The Muslim Brotherhood, founded by Hassan al-Banna in 1928, developed a comprehensive strategy that blends dawa (religious outreach), social-welfare networks, political parties and, in some branches, armed struggle, positioning itself as a civilizational alternative to both secular nationalism and Western liberalism. Over the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Brotherhood-aligned or inspired movements entrenched themselves in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, the Gulf, North Africa, and South/Southeast Asia, often under different formal labels but with shared ideological DNA. ​

After the Arab Spring, hard repression in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE pushed much of the Brotherhood’s transnational command structure to seek refuge in Qatar and, to a lesser extent, Turkey, which now serve as central hubs for financing, media, intellectual production and safe haven for cadres. Rather than disappearing, the Brotherhood reconfigured itself: it embedded more deeply into civil-society platforms, charities, student groups and digital media, and it increasingly sought alliances with left-liberal and ‘progressive’ currents in Western capitals that share its hostility to Israel, U.S. power and status-quo Arab regimes. ​

Bangladesh’s Jamaat: a Brotherhood affiliate resurges

Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami has historically operated as the Brotherhood’s closest ideological cousin in South Asia, combining Islamist politics with a dense ecosystem of schools, charities, professional fronts and student bodies like Islami Chhatra Shibir. After independence, Jamaat opposed Bangladesh’s secular orientation and, during the 2001–2006 BNP-led coalition, gained significant ministerial influence before being banned and stripped of its registration over its role in 1971 atrocities and its rejection of secular constitutional principles. ​

The 2024 anti-quota protest wave and subsequent uprising produced a political earthquake: Sheikh Hasina went into exile, the Awami League was banned, and a vacuum opened that deeply weakened the secular-nationalist centre. The Yunus-led caretaker authority lifted the executive ban on Jamaat, and in 2025 Bangladesh’s Supreme Court restored Jamaat’s political registration along with that of Chhatra Shibir, formally returning them to the electoral field after more than a decade. ​

Recent analyses describe Jamaat as ‘rising like a phoenix,’ having quietly built a parallel power structure through Islamic banks, welfare foundations, educational networks and professional associations while it was officially outlawed. ​One detailed study noted that Jamaat leveraged “economic fundamentalism” to construct a socio-economic ecosystem that insulates its supporters and creates a constituency tied to its religiously framed economic order. ​In July 2025, Jamaat was able to stage a massive rally in Dhaka’s Suhrawardy Udyan, drawing hundreds of thousands, and framing its agenda in terms of electoral reform, national unity and Islamic values—positioning itself as a moderate, democratic actor despite its history. ​

At least three dynamics make this a significant gain for the broader Brotherhood current. Once a movement regains party registration and formal legality, it can funnel transnational funding, contest elections, and embed its cadres in the bureaucracy and local governments. ​Indian analysts note that Jamaat’s comeback creates a ‘political foothold’ for Pakistan in Bangladesh, given Jamaat’s long-standing pro-Pakistan orientation and its ideological links with wider Islamist currents. This gives the Brotherhood family additional depth in the Bay of Bengal arc. ​Commentaries in outlets like The Diplomat describe how Jamaat is trying to rebrand as an ‘Islamist left,’ blending social-justice rhetoric, anti-elite discourse and Islamic revivalism—an echo of the Brotherhood’s shift toward progressive language in parts of the Arab world and the West. ​

In civilizational terms, the Bangladeshi case illustrates the Brotherhood’s capacity to wait out repression, embed itself through parallel socio-economic institutions, and then step into a vacuum when secular-nationalist regimes exhaust their legitimacy.

Yemen, Saudi–UAE friction and Brotherhood leverage

Yemen has long been a laboratory for cross-cutting Islamist currents: Zaydi revivalism in the form of the Houthis, Salafi-jihadist groups like Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and the Islah party, which incorporates Muslim Brotherhood elements alongside tribal and Sunni Islamist strands. When Saudi Arabia intervened in 2015 to support the internationally recognized government against the Houthis, Riyadh treated Islah as a core partner within the anti-Houthi camp, providing backing to Islah-aligned forces in northern and central Yemen. ​

The UAE, however, has viewed Islah as effectively a Brotherhood vehicle, consistent with its broader regional doctrine casting the Brotherhood as a primary ideological enemy. Abu Dhabi therefore built and armed alternative power centres in the south, especially the Southern Transitional Council (STC), which seeks southern autonomy or independence and functions as a counterweight to Islah inside the anti-Houthi coalition. ​

Recent reporting shows that this divergence has produced acute friction. Analyses describe Riyadh backing the Presidential Leadership Council, which includes Islah representatives, while the UAE sees the STC as a bulwark against Islah’s Brotherhood-linked influence. ​In late 2025 and early 2026, UAE-backed separatist forces and Saudi-backed units clashed in southern Yemen, prompting Saudi airstrikes on separatist camps and highlighting how the anti-Houthi coalition is fragmenting along the axis of attitudes toward Brotherhood-linked Islah. ​

Another layer is the allegation—cited in counter-extremism research—that elements of Islah have at times fought alongside AQAP and ISIS in Yemen, which led Saudi Arabia to “reconsider” aspects of its support. This intertwining of Brotherhood-linked politics with jihadist theatres complicates Gulf security calculations. For the UAE, it vindicates a maximalist anti-Brotherhood line. For Saudi Arabia, it creates a dilemma: balancing tactical utility against the long-term risk of empowering an Islamist political project that could influence its own domestic space.

The Yemen file thus becomes both a proxy struggle over Brotherhood influence and a fault line in Saudi–UAE relations. That fissure, in turn, opens geopolitical space for Qatar—long the Brotherhood’s chief state patron—to present itself as an indispensable mediator and to nurture its own networks within Yemen’s Islamist and tribal landscape. ​

Saudi Arabia’s internal trajectory and Qatar’s opportunity

Saudi Arabia under Mohammed bin Salman has pursued a striking social and economic liberalization program—loosening gender segregation, allowing entertainment sectors, and curbing parts of the religious police—while simultaneously cracking down on independent Islamist mobilization, including Brotherhood-linked networks. Riyadh, alongside Abu Dhabi and Cairo, formally designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization and justified the 2017 blockade of Qatar in part on Doha’s support for Brotherhood-aligned groups. ​

Yet the kingdom’s long-term trajectory is not guaranteed to remain on this relatively 'post-Sahwa' path. Several factors could tempt a partial return toward religious conservatism, especially if socio-economic reforms stall or popular discontent grows. The Saudi state historically relied on an alliance with conservative clerical establishments; even if many clerics are now co-opted or suppressed, the sociological base for Islamist discourse remains. ​If rivals present themselves as more authentically Islamic or as champions of anti-Israel resistance, Riyadh might recalibrate aspects of its religious posture to maintain legitimacy in the wider Sunni street.

In this scenario, the Brotherhood network offers both threat and opportunity: threat, because it represents a transnational Islamist ideology not fully under state control; opportunity, because accommodations with Brotherhood-influenced actors in places like Yemen or Jordan could be instrumentalized to project Sunni leadership. Any Saudi drift back toward religious conservatism—even if still anti-Brotherhood in formal terms—would likely shift the regional Overton window in which Islamist political projects operate.

This enhances Qatar’s leverage. Research on Qatar’s ties to the Brotherhood shows that Doha has for decades treated the Brotherhood as a strategic asset. Brotherhood figures expelled from Egypt or Saudi Arabia found refuge in Qatar, where leadership circles viewed them as tools to expand influence across the Arab world. ​Qatar provided financial and media support (notably via Al Jazeera) to Brotherhood-linked movements in Egypt, Tunisia, Gaza (Hamas), Libya and Syria, cultivating an image as the patron of ‘Islamist democracy’ and revolutionary change. ​

Even after the formal reconciliation within the Gulf Cooperation Council, analyses argue that Qatar remains the Brotherhood’s principal hub, deploying a sophisticated “Islamist soft power” strategy that combines education funding, think-tank partnerships, sports diplomacy (e.g. the World Cup) and media narratives. ​

If Saudi–UAE tensions deepen over Yemen and other theatres, and if Saudi Arabia edges back to a more conservative rhetoric to shore up its domestic flank, Qatar’s bet on the Brotherhood becomes less isolated. Doha can present itself as a mediator with Islamist actors that Saudi and the UAE cannot easily reach. The ideological and media centre of gravity for Sunni Islamism, able to influence discourse far beyond its size.

That, in turn, further normalizes Brotherhood-linked currents in the wider Islamic world and gives them more strategic depth vis-à-vis secular and nationalist competitors.

The 'red–green' alliance and the Mamdani–Kassem case

The Brotherhood’s advance is not only about majority-Muslim societies. It also involves the formation of “red–green” coalitions in Western cities, where Islamist activists, Brotherhood-linked advocacy networks and parts of the far left converge on anti-imperialist, anti-Israel and anti-capitalist agendas. ​

The rise of Zohran Mamdani in New York City politics has been interpreted by some analysts as emblematic of this phenomenon, even though mainstream reporting notes that he has no known organizational connection to the Muslim Brotherhood itself. Commentaries mapping his coalition point out that his campaigns drew support from activist networks such as the Muslim Democratic Club of New York and CAIR, which some critics identify as having historical or ideological ties to Brotherhood circles, and from hard-left organizations like Democratic Socialists of America. ​And that his political ecosystem overlaps with groups aligned to Hamas and the PFLP in the Palestinian solidarity space, reinforcing an axis between radical-left and Islamist currents centred on anti-Zionism. ​

The recent controversy over Mamdani’s appointment of Ramzi Kassem as New York City’s chief counsel crystallizes broader concerns about how Islamist-adjacent legal and activist networks gain institutional footholds. Kassem is a civil-rights lawyer and academic who previously represented Ahmed al-Darbi, a Saudi Al Qaeda operative convicted for his role in the 2002 bombing of the French tanker MV Limburg off Yemen’s coast. ​

Media outlets and political opponents have labelled Kassem an ‘Al Qaeda lawyer’ because of this representation, and criticized Mamdani’s choice as elevating someone who defended a convicted terrorist to the city’s top legal post. Supporters, conversely, frame Kassem’s work as part of a principled defence of due process and civil liberties, noting his leadership of a law clinic assisting Muslim and other communities targeted under national-security policies. ​

From the vantage point of Islamist strategy, several trends are visible here. Legal-advocacy infrastructures, often centred in universities and NGOs, serve as defensive shields for Islamist and jihadist ecosystems, contesting surveillance and prosecution, and reframing them as racist or Islamophobic. ​Alliances with socialist and progressive politicians provide access to municipal and state institutions, from which discourse and policy can be influenced on issues like policing, foreign policy symbolism, and education.

While it is inaccurate and unfair to equate all civil-rights lawyering or Muslim advocacy with the Brotherhood, the presence of figures and organizations with Brotherhood-linked genealogies in these coalitions shows how the movement’s ideological project migrates and mutates in Western urban governance.

Integrated trajectory: from Dhaka to Doha to New York

Looking across these theatres, a coherent picture emerges of how the Brotherhood’s ideological world is gaining ground despite setbacks.

In Bangladesh, Jamaat’s reinstatement and mass mobilization reinsert a Brotherhood- derived party into a pivotal South Asian state at a moment of intense political fragility. ​In Yemen, the status of Islah and competing Saudi–UAE visions of how to handle Brotherhood-linked actors destabilize the coalition, offering the Brotherhood room to manoeuvre within the Sunni camp and giving Qatar additional leverage. ​In the Gulf, Qatar’s long-standing investment in the Brotherhood—through sanctuary, finance and media—is maturing into a durable soft-power architecture that shapes Islamist politics from North Africa to South Asia. ​

In Western capitals, red–green networks provide institutional channels—city halls, universities, NGOs—through which Islamist-adjacent actors influence law, policy framing and public narrative, as visible in the Mamdani–Kassem episode and surrounding activist ecosystems. ​

The Brotherhood’s resilience lies less in overt party labels than in its ability to function as a civilizational current: embedding itself in welfare and education, exploiting political vacuums, leveraging grievances against Western and regional orders, and forming opportunistic alliances—from Pakistani deep-state elements in Bangladesh to leftist councils in New York. The result is not a linear march to power but a creeping diffusion of Islamist political norms into multiple layers of global governance and society, reshaping the strategic landscape from Dhaka’s streets to Yemen’s frontlines and the corridors of Western city halls.