Why Jordan has banned the Muslim Brotherhood

With the announcement on Wednesday 23 April by Jordanian Interior Minister Mazen Fraya that the Muslim Brotherhood organisation was now "illegal, and all its activities prohibited" in Jordan, the kingdom is officially taking its place in the club of Arab states that have banned and criminalised the group – alongside the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

It is well known that these three states have exerted enormous pressure on Jordan to follow their example with regards to the Brotherhood. While it remains to be seen whether the Jordanian authorities will follow the same harsh security approach which these states adopt against any Brotherhood presence or activity in their countries, what is certain is that the relationship between the Jordanian state and the Muslim Brotherhood will be radically changed.

It is also likely that the spaces the regime had allowed the group to operate in unofficially will shrink, if they aren't removed entirely.

All this raises questions regarding the future of the Brotherhood in the country, as well as whether the step being taken by the government is a prelude to much more significant changes, inside Jordan and across the region as a whole.

Some say this latest crackdown by the Jordanian authorities is the direct result of the recent arrest of 16 individuals, four of whom belonged to the Brotherhood. Those arrested were accused of manufacturing rockets and drones with the aim of "sowing chaos, sabotaging and causing damage within the kingdom".

The Jordanian authorities have released what they describe as the recorded "confessions" of the accused, even though none mention any intention to target Jordan (the defendants' defence team insists that these confessions are partial, misleading, and that they will challenge them in court).

According to Fraya's statement, the government decided to ban the Brotherhood and confiscate its assets after "discovering a subversive plan linked to members of the group". However, the escalation of the government's hostile stance has been building for years, even before the Arab Spring.

In practical terms, a gradual reshaping of the relationship between the state and the Brotherhood has been ongoing since King Abdullah II assumed the throne in 1999. Prior to that, since 1945, the relationship between the Hashemite kingdom and the Brotherhood, during Jordan's founding stage under King Abdullah I, and during his successor King Hussein's rule, had been characterised by a kind of mutual understanding and wish to coexist - even if these decades did witness significant moments of tension.

However, King Abdullah II came to power during a period in which the local, regional and international situation had changed dramatically. Locally, the peace treaty between Jordan and Israel (1994) had become the new reality, upending the previous status quo.

Moreover, the monarchy in Jordan had stabilised, became well established, and no longer faced a host of local or regional threats, in contrast to its situation in the fifties, sixties and seventies over the last century. It had been the target of the Jordanian nationalist and leftist movements, as well as certain Palestinian factions.

Notably, during that period, the Brotherhood had taken the side of the Hashemite monarchy, rather than its opponents, which contributed to the relative tolerance granted to their presence and activities by the Kingdom. In fact, Jordan hosted leading figures from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood who fled persecution under the Gamal Abdul Nasser regime, and likewise from the Syrian Brotherhood in the eighties who were fleeing the brutality of the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad.

On the regional front, the significant nationalist and leftist movements of the Middle East had receded by the time Abdullah II came to power. Likewise, the Wadi Araba peace treaty with Israel had redefined Jordan's role – it was no longer in confrontation with Israel but shared diplomatic ties with it.

Another pivotal event was the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq (2003) following the US-UK invasion, and the total shift of the centres of influence in the Arab world from Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus, to some of the Gulf capitals.

Furthermore, Jordan was struggling economically when King Abdullah II came to power, which led him to adopt a different approach to his father in terms of Jordan's regional role, especially in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority (PA) had by then consolidated its apparatus of self-rule in many parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

On the international front, the Cold War between the Eastern and Western blocs had ended around a decade before, following the Soviet Union’s breakup in 1991, and the US would soon declare war on what it called "Islamic terrorism", after the Al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.

It was within this wider context that King Abdullah II took the decision to expel the Hamas leadership from Jordan just months after he came to power.

The expulsion, which took place in 1999, marked the start of a period of heightened tension between the government and the Brotherhood, especially as Hamas at that time was still part of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood.

After that, there were many tense instances between the two parties, for example in 2006 when the government dissolved the Board of Directors of the Islamic Centre Society, the charitable wing of the Brotherhood, which it accused of corruption (with the government then appointing its own "temporary" directors). Even though these charges were later dismissed by the judiciary, the government maintained its control of the board.  

Then came the Brotherhood's decision to withdraw from the municipal elections in the summer of 2007 on the grounds that the government intended to rig them, further straining relations.

However, the relationship would reach a new level of crisis with the appointment of Hammam Saeed to the post of General Supervisor (leader) after Sheikh Salem Falahat resigned from the post after their poor results in the 2007 parliamentary elections. Former Prime Minister, Marouf al-Bakhit admitted years later, after he had left office, that the 2007 elections had seen widespread fraud and manipulation.

Saeed's arrival into the top position of the Brotherhood was a turning point in its relationship with the state – Saeed was considered one of the Brotherhood's "hawks" (the more ideologically hardline, less reformist faction within the organisation).

He also enjoyed close relations with Hamas, which had become a point of division within the Brotherhood since 1999 when Abdul Majid Thuneibat was heading the organisation, with the tension continuing during Falahat's leadership, before the separation of the two organisations was declared. Despite this, the issue of Hamas was contentious between the regime and the Brotherhood, as evidenced by the case of the 16 detainees - whose connection with Hamas has been proven.

During the Arab Spring (2011-13) the level of pent-up tension between the state and the Muslim Brotherhood grew as the latter made increased demands for reform and for some of the king's powers to be restricted. However, following the 2013 military coup in Egypt which toppled the late President Mohamed Morsi (a member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood), and the receding of the Arab Spring, the undercurrents of tension on the part of the Jordanian state towards the Brotherhood surfaced, signalling a new phase in the state's endeavours to marginalise and weaken the movement.

In 2015, state agencies sponsored a split within the Muslim Brotherhood, led by its former General Supervisor Abdul Majid Thuneibat, who officially registered a breakaway group - the "Muslim Brotherhood Society". The government then declared the parent group legally dissolved and confiscated its assets in a decision which was later backed up by the judiciary.

Despite this, the Brotherhood participated (via its political affiliate the Islamic Action Front (IAF) party) in the 2016 parliamentary elections and then in 2020, with several of its candidates winning seats.

They then took part in the 2024 elections - and their bloc massively increased when it won 28.34% of the votes, with the bloc with the next biggest vote share trailing after them at only 5.35%.

As well as this (in the state's eyes) alarming development, it appears the kingdom may well have viewed the "dissolved" group's announcement that Murad Adailah, who hails from the hawkish faction of the Brotherhood, had won the leadership position in 2024, as a message of defiance aimed at them.

In any case, it is difficult to believe that the decision to ban the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan was prompted by the 16 arrests. The organisation was certainly unaware of the activities of its four members among those detained, and even the government's accusations haven't claimed the contrary, at least so far.

Therefore, it seems clear the ban on the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan is tied to the broader national and regional context. In my view, developments are underway in both Jordan and the wider region which could reshape the country and the Middle East as we know them, with the entry point for these developments being Gaza and the West Bank…

US president Donald Trump will visit the region in May, and his visit will include stops in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. And anyone who thinks the long-touted idea of ​​an "alternative homeland" for Palestinians in Jordan is dead and buried in Israel, should get their heads checked.

Moreover, the Brotherhood, regardless of one's personal stance on them, have been one of the strongest actors when it comes to Jordan’s resilience and ability to resist such schemes.

The Middle East could be at the brink of a massive reshaping, as Netanyahu is demanding, with the support of the US, and Jordan could be at the heart of this. We should not forget Netanyahu's declaration that the Middle East will be reshaped through force and not peace, which he is now convinced is within reach, given the defeat of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the destruction of Gaza, Arab silence, and Trump's ascension to the US presidency.

On a related note, Iran appears to be in the process of signing a new nuclear agreement with Washington, which could redefine its role and influence in the region.

Additionally, there are signals that decisions may be in the pipeline which will further reset Jordan's domestic scene, in ways which could have cultural, social, political, security and/or economic ramifications. In this way, distraction may be utilised to serve as a means to achieve greater goals.

Questions remain over the future of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan after its ban. There are those who have called on the group to declare its own dissolution and to limit itself to political activity through the Islamic Action Front (IAF).

However, while there is precedent to a Muslim Brotherhood branch dissolving itself - this happened in Qatar in 1999 - it must be noted that previous experiences of forcibly dissolving the Brotherhood have not been successful in many countries, most obviously Egypt, Syria and Libya, for the simple reason that ideas cannot be uprooted by force.

I don't deny that the ideology and tenets of the Brotherhood require revisiting and renewal, but that's another story.

Osama Abu Arshid is a Palestinian writer and researcher based in Washington.

This is an edited translation from our Arabic edition. To read the original article click here.

Translated by Rose Chacko.

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.