The Jordanian government made a dramatic move on April 23 against the oldest opposition movement in the country when it declared the Muslim Brotherhood illegal. State officials promptly moved against Brotherhood offices—raiding facilities and confiscating records and files, and even declaring the promotion of its ideology illegal. The catalyst appeared to be the government’s discovery and foiling of an alleged terrorist plot against the kingdom, which had led to a series of arrests between 2023 and 2025 of several militant cells and a total of 16 Brotherhood members. The Minister of Interior, Mazen al-Farraya, announced the disruption of a purported scheme to attack targets in Jordan, alleging that the plot began as early as 2021.
While foreign critics of Jordan’s largest Islamist movement seemed to feel that the crackdown was overdue (as the Brotherhood is already illegal in several other Arab countries), some Jordanians viewed the move as breaking from a decades-long understanding between the state and the organization regarding the acceptable parameters for legal opposition. In the eyes of the police, intelligence, and security services, it was the Brotherhood that had violated that traditionally accepted script by crossing the reddest of red lines and potentially acting against the state itself.
But many questions remain, not only regarding the details of the plot itself, but also about the extent to which the Brotherhood as an organization was involved, if at all. This latest development followed a similar event a year earlier, when state security forces uncovered a cache of arms in Jordan, apparently from Iranian-backed Shia militias in Syria, and blamed members of the Brotherhood. At that time, the movement insisted that some members had gone astray, but that the organization itself was not involved and remained part of the loyal opposition. They had also argued that the arms were meant not for any attacks in or against Jordan but rather were in transit to support Palestinians in Gaza in their struggle against Israeli forces.
The Muslim Brotherhood and the Hashemite State
Relations between the Hashemite state and the Muslim Brotherhood have been tense for years. But this latest move was a drastic change from decades of Jordanian policy, under which the Brotherhood operated as a legal opposition movement. The movement is, in fact, just one year older than independent Jordan itself: the Jordanian version of the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1945 and the Hashemite Kingdom was established in 1946. The Brotherhood began as a licensed charity organization, with links to its counterpart in Egypt. But over the years it expanded both in membership and scope, broadening its charity wing and eventually adding a political party, the Islamic Action Front (IAF). The IAF emerged following the 1989 political liberalization process under the late King Hussein and became a licensed party in 1992. While there is overlap in membership, the Muslim Brotherhood and the IAF have maintained different leaderships and organizational structures. Both have tended to position themselves as harsh critics of regime policies, but also as elements of the loyal opposition.
The Brotherhood began as a licensed charity organization but expanded over the years in membership and scope.
There have been many moments of tension between Jordan’s Islamist movements and the state. The periods during the Arab uprisings in 2011 and more recently during the 2023-25 Israeli war on Hamas and Gaza have seen particular strain. During the 2011 uprisings, Islamist movements initially were on the ascendancy. They were key parts of revolutionary coalitions, for example, in Egypt and Tunisia, and later successfully contested elections; the Ennahda Party in Tunisia and the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt each rose to power in their countries’ first free votes in 2011-2012. Yet Islamist organizations’ primacy turned out to be short-lived, with anti-Islamist authoritarians—including President Kais Saied in Tunisia and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt—ousting from power and then repressing their country’s Brotherhood-tied movements. These moves were viewed in Jordan with significant alarm, as the country’s own Islamists feared the brutal crackdown that their counterparts in Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates had experienced. Those fears now seem to have materialized.
Previously, the Jordanian state had resisted pressures even from its own Arab allies to follow their lead and ban the Brotherhood. The group remained the largest, best organized, and oldest opposition movement in Jordan. While the state did regard Islamists with suspicion and attempted to contain and control their activities, it had stopped short of a complete ban. Still, the government did initiate a series of legal moves against the Brotherhood, in part to further divide Jordan’s Islamists between more hawkish and dovish factions.
Some leaders of the Brotherhood itself later broke away to form the reformist Zamzam movement. The state seemed to encourage this, while moving against the more hawkish elements of the Islamist movement. In 2015, the government declared that it no longer recognized the Brotherhood as a legal organization, refused to renew its license, and encouraged a break between the larger and original Brotherhood (now technically illegal) and the newly recognized “Muslim Brotherhood Association.” The latter was deemed by the authorities more reformist, moderate, and importantly, entirely Jordan-focused. The new official version broke all ties with the regional Brotherhood movement, including with militant groups like Hamas. It seemed that Jordan had temporarily gone from one Muslim Brotherhood movement to two. In 2020, Jordan’s Court of Cassation took matters further, ordering the original Brotherhood to dissolve and declaring that it no longer had any legal standing in the country. Still, the movement continued to operate, albeit quietly, in dubious legal limbo and hoping to regain its prior position.
Still, in terms of actual national security threats, the state remained more vigilant about and focused on internal and external threats from Salafi Jihadist organizations such as al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State, while pursuing more of a cooptation and containment strategy toward the various wings of the Brotherhood and related Islamist groups. Unlike the more militant groups, the Brotherhood and various other Islamists practicing wasatiyya (centrism or moderation) showed every sign of wanting to work within the system, to participate in elections, to win seats in parliament, and perhaps even to assume roles as government ministers, as they had occasionally done in the past.
From Gaza Protests to Elections
The tensions surrounding Islamists and the state during the period of the Arab uprisings seemed to worsen during the 2023-present war in Gaza. In some ways, the tensions were universal, as Jordanians of every political persuasion watched with anguish and despair as the civilian death toll mounted in Gaza. The sense of inefficacy and even of rage was palpable. This soon manifested itself in a revised and diverse protest movement. The state too shared the outrage and routinely called for a ceasefire and for an end to the suffering of Palestinian civilians. While all protesters, secular and Islamist alike, agreed on these demands, they demanded that the state go further by cancelling its peace treaty with Israel and by ending military agreements that permit American troops on Jordanian soil.
Jordan’s Islamists were among the many factions taking part in marches, protests, and demonstrations during the current Gaza war. Their leaders seemed determined to avoid the fate of the Muslim Brotherhood in other Arab countries, but demonstrations at times crossed the regime’s many red lines, including by chanting in favor of Hamas or for the group’s spokesperson, Abu Obeida. Government officials even alleged that the demonstrations were not homegrown events, and were in fact initiated by Hamas. Some at the time accused the Muslim Brotherhood of working with or on behalf of Hamas and causing unrest in Jordan.
Tense relations between Hamas and the Jordanian government go back many years. Jordan expelled Hamas from the kingdom in 1999, and since then has tried to prevent any Hamas links from reappearing in Jordan. As the Gaza war has dragged on, however, state security fears increased, with officials alarmed by the prospect of increasing radicalization within Jordan itself. Yet some in the Brotherhood and across society called for the regime to reassess its prior break with Hamas and to reestablish ties as part of a united front against Israel, demands that only made state security forces more concerned.
Islamists managed to secure one of their best electoral performances in 2024.
In September 2024, under the shadow of the Gaza war, Jordan held national parliamentary elections, with full participation by Jordan’s Islamist movements including the IAF. This was significant, as Islamist boycotts of Jordanian elections had occurred in prior polls. The IAF, winning 31 of the 138 seats in parliament, felt vindicated in its decision to take part. While conservative members of parliament (MPs) won the clear majority of the legislative seats, Islamists managed to secure one of their best electoral performances ever and represented the largest party bloc in the new assembly. This is also precisely why some in the Islamist movement were shocked by the recent dramatic turn of events and the banning of the Brotherhood. IAF leader Wael Saqqa has emphasized that his organization remains a separate entity from the Brotherhood and argues that IAF’s very presence in parliament underscores its commitment as a loyal and independent political party to the law, the constitution, and Jordan.
Why Now?
So why the outlawing now? After almost 80 years of allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to operate under varying degrees of legality but to operate nonetheless, why did the state make such a drastic move now? It may be that the plot provided the pretext for the state to take a long-planned action. It may also be that the regional as well as the domestic security environment had become so alarming to security officials that prior norms and understandings no longer applied. Jordan’s dramatic shutdown of the Brotherhood has put the kingdom in sync with many of its closest regional allies—Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—so the domestic move also signals a closer alignment among these states.
The ban also follows last year’s sudden regime change in neighboring Syria. Jordan has been deeply influenced by events in Syria, including by receiving a massive influx of Syrian refugees since 2011, and is very concerned about border security, including infiltration by Jihadist groups, extensive drug smuggling (especially Captagon), and perceived threats from rising Iranian influence. Following the rapid collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024, Jordan moved quickly to shore up relations with the new Syria, now led by Islamist and former jihadist Ahmed al-Sharaa. Jordan’s King Abdullah II hosted the new Syrian president in Amman as early as February 2025.
Jordan welcomed the collapse of the Syrian part of the regional ‘Axis of Resistance’ that had included Syria, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Yemen’s Houthis, especially the withdrawal of Hezbollah and Iranian forces from Syria. But its concerns about Islamist movements of various types persisted. Its embrace of post-Assad Damascus was in part an attempt to gain Syrian support in securing the borders, including against militant Islamist movements. Despite concerns about the nature of the new Hay`at Tahrir al-Sham government in Syria, Jordan has been relying on a kind of revived pragmatism for Syria’s new regional politics.
As the long civil war in Syria ended, the siege of Gaza continued. And while the Hashemite state remained no fan of Hamas, concerns remained regarding the impact of that devastating conflict on Jordan’s own increasingly frustrated population. Jordanian analyst Mohanned Al-Arabiat has suggested that the state may have reached its limit in terms of competing narratives related to the Gaza war, with the Jordanian government emphasizing Jordan’s own national security and its role as the key authority in the kingdom, while the opposition promotes a “resistance” narrative prioritizing the fight against Israel and implying that anything less amounts to complicity with Israel’s military actions.
Jordan’s dramatic shutdown of the Brotherhood has put the kingdom in sync with many of its closest regional allies.
Finally, Jordan may have been influenced by the volatility of its own largest ally and foreign assistance source, as the Trump administration cut off aid even to longstanding allies, initiated tariffs across the globe, including on Jordan, which has a free trade agreement with the United States. The kingdom has been pummeled by Trump administration decisions including ending aid (again) to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and eliminating US Agency for International Development (USAID) programs across the world. Perhaps no country in the Middle East has relied more on USAID programs than Jordan. And even as the kingdom reeled from these blows from its supposed ally, Trump added an even more horrific policy proposal by urging Jordan and Egypt to accept the “transfer” of more than 2 million Palestinians from Gaza, a plan that is widely regarded as tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
In addition to such displacement of Palestinians being impossible for Jordan to manage economically, it is also a social and political nonstarter in a country that already sees itself as having to maintain a fragile demographic balance between Jordanians of Palestinian descent and those of East Jordanian and often tribal descent. In a moment of genuine unity, Jordanians across the board—government and opposition, secular and Islamist, Palestinian and East Jordanian—have opposed any forced ouster of Palestinians from Gaza. But considering the large role of Palestinian Jordanians within Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, it is possible that these too were concerns precipitating the state’s move against the organization.
As described, state tensions with the Brotherhood are nothing new. But the full-on ban has moved Jordan into unfamiliar territory. The interior minister even made clear that the ban included not just the organization and its facilities but also its ideology. The Cybercrime Unit of Jordan’s Public Security Directorate warned Jordanian citizens to be careful what they post on social media, lest they violate cybercrime laws that prohibit posting about banned groups. Yet it remains unclear what these changes mean for the IAF, whose offices were also raided but which maintains its 31 seats in parliament. It is also unclear what this meant for other forms of Islamism in the kingdom such as Jordan’s other wasatiyya-oriented and Zamzam Islamist movements and, for that matter, for non-Islamist opposition movements. At a minimum, the move by the government against the Muslim Brotherhood has made clear the intensity of the state’s own security concerns amidst a relentless series of domestic, regional, and global challenges. What remains unclear is just where Jordanian Islamists will go from here, as state and society, government and opposition, begin to navigate a new political landscape in the kingdom.
The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
Featured image credit: Facebook/Islamic Action Front
