How the Muslim Brotherhood Built a Media Empire

Excerpt

Millions of phone screens across the Arab world light up every day with the same messages. The Muslim Brotherhood is a victim of brutal regimes, they say. Secular governments are traitors to their own people. Hamas is a legitimate resistance movement.

The outlets vary—TV shows, YouTube channels, X accounts, podcasts, and online magazines—but the messages remain the same.

Since its founding in Egypt in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood has evolved into a vast network of chapters and offshoots that operate autonomously. Though each has faced periods of both repression and resurgence, the movement has preserved and enhanced its ability to control the public narrative and spread its message. Today its media empire is diverse, diffuse, and pervasive, with no single mastermind or headquarters. The group’s ideology moves across borders through a web of seemingly uncoordinated but deeply connected channels. Together, they speak in one voice, infecting generations of Arab minds with the group’s Islamist doctrine. “Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope” is one of its slogans.

The Trump administration is currently said to be preparing to designate several of the group’s chapters as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs), something that could happen as early as Wednesday. Yet this discussion remains narrowly fixated on political structures and leaders, overlooking a pillar of the group’s survival: its seductive and deadly message.

Mariam Wahba is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow her on X and Instagram @themariamwahba.