On 23 April 2025, the Jordanian Interior Minister, Mazen al-Faraya, announced that all activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in the country were banned. This decision came after the arrest of 16 people suspected of preparing terrorist operations on Jordanian soil. While the police claimed the suspects were all members of the organisation known as the Muslim Brotherhood, the latter denied any involvement in the alleged “conspiracy”.
The authorities’ decision to ban the Brotherhood is part of a broader regional dynamic. Amman is following the lead of Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Cairo, all of which banned the Muslim Brotherhood in the wake of the “Arab Spring”. The announcement of the ban, following a dissolution order in 2020 which did not work, came at a moment when King Abdullah II was making a surprise trip to Saudi Arabia.
While the matter appears settled and is related to a wider discussion on the banning of the Brotherhood which goes beyond Jordan and beyond even the Middle East, the case of Jordan is actually quite ambivalent. The ban against the movement does not include its political wing the Islamic Action Front (IAF), which, as elsewhere in the Arab world, is more or less loosely connected with the Brotherhood. The long-term implications of the Jordanian decision will therefore depend on the definition, restrictive or lax, which the authorities intend to apply.
Loyalty to the regime
Founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood was originally a charity. In that country it gradually grew into a political party, advocating an ideology which placed Islam at the heart of its political activism. At first, its creation was mainly a response to criteria particular to Egyptian society in the inter-war years. However, the movement took on a regional character as the consequence of two factors. On one hand, the forced exile of its membership, as a result of the repressive measures taken by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser; and on the other, the growing politicisation of the Arab middle classes, especially around the Palestine question and the struggle against Western domination.
In the 1950s, the party began to spread. It gradually became implanted in several national contexts, particularly in Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. In Jordan, the movement began to take root as early as 1945. Its evolution in the political arena was mainly built around the Palestinian question. That cause held a key position in the Brotherhood’s rhetoric, which associated the State of Israel with a continuation of Western imperialism, denounced from the movement’s very inception. The expulsion of the Palestinians from their villages with the Nakba of 1948, then Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank in 1950, enabled the Brotherhood to broaden its social base.
After the defeat of the Arab countries in 1967, the rising strength of armed Palestinian factions weakened the Jordanian monarchy. The Brotherhood distanced itself from these left-wing revolutionary groups in order to escape repression. This loyalty to the regime allowed it to develop in such sectors as education and trade-unionism to the point of making an official entrance into politics in 1989. Through its association, and at a time when political parties were still officially banned, it directly supported candidates in the country’s first free legislative elections. They won 25 % of the seats.
Boycotting the 1993 election
This episode marked the Brotherhood’s estrangement from the State. Indeed, as it gradually became a structured force opposing the Hashemite regime, the Brotherhood’s history was marked by episodes of political repression. Their 1989 victory was perceived as a threat by the then monarch King Hussein (1952-1999) who decided to change the electoral law in order to limit the weight of the IAF, which had been created in 1992. As a consequence of this move, the party decided to boycott the 1993 election. The political confrontation with the authorities escalated in 1994 when Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel.
During the first years of the reign of King Abdullah II, who acceded to the throne in 1999 and adopted an overtly anti-Brotherhood policy, the movement was torn by strong inner tensions provoked by an effort to refocus on exclusively domestic issues. In 2015 these led to a split, accelerated by the Jordanian authorities who, in a post Arab Spring context which saw the Brotherhood repressed in most of the region’s countries, tried to prevent its progression.
In the 2016 election, a more “nationalistic” line took hold and contributed to the ad hoc constitution of a Reform Alliance (Tahaluf al-Islah) made up of members of IAF, independent personalities and representatives of the nationalist left. The party’s slogan “Islam is the solution” was abandoned in favour of “Rebirth of the homeland, dignity for its citizens”. The coalition became the largest opposition block in parliament, with 15 seats out of 130, while the branch of the Brotherhood that had split off and was opposed to the alliance won only three. However, this election revealed what looked like a definite loss of popularity among the population of the Palestinian refugee camps. At the same time, the Jordanian authorities carried on with their repressive tactics, using the Covid-19 pandemic as a pretext for curtailing demonstrations and political gatherings.
This repressive dynamic culminated in the dissolution of the Brotherhood in July 2020, at a time when, all over the region, the Brotherhood structure was in crisis and the object of political and police pressure. However this dissolution was also for show. The political arm of the Brotherhood survived, but was weakened. It lost five seats in the November 2020 election.
In 2024, the situation in Gaza provided the main issue in the parliamentary election campaign. Since 7 October 2023, the IAF had been involved in the organisation of numerous demonstrations in support of the Palestinians, frequently denouncing the Kingdom’s relationship with Israel. For example, most members of the Brotherhood publicly supported Maher al-Jazi’ s act. Several days before the election, this truck driver killed three Israeli soldiers at the Allenby Bridge border-crossing between Jordan and the West Bank, before being shot down. The Brotherhood’s capacity to mobilise around the Palestine cause resulted in a historical election triumph, winning 31 seats out of 138.
In this context, the new banning of the Brotherhood, which the authorities have justified by citing a planned terrorist attack whose details remain obscure, not only illustrates the regime’s suspicions of the movement but also the way in which regional dynamics - especially the Gaza conflict - have revived domestic tensions and threatened to destabilise Jordanian politics. It also points to the King’s determination to assert his readiness to signal his regional realignment through a more repressive policy towards the Brotherhood. After dismantling cells supposedly connected with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Jordanian authorities pointed an accusing finger at Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah in connection with the failed attack. In a filmed confession, three suspects claimed to have visited Lebanon - where there are Hamas cells - as part of the preparation for the attack.
The distancing of Hamas
Like the region’s other dynastic regimes, Jordan is obsessed by its quest for stability. Nor is that search unrelated to the development of regional social movements, perceived as vectors of internal instability. Since the outbreak of the popular protests known as the “Arab Spring”, King Abdullah II has introduced three successive electoral reforms (2013, 2016 and 2022) aimed at weakening the opposition. In this respect, the sudden collapse of the Syrian regime in December 2024, which brought to power forces close to political Islam, is potentially a new source of worry, all the more so as the Kingdom is host to some 1.4 million Syrian refugees.
Although Hamas was originally the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood, its links with the Jordanian branch have sometimes been ambivalent. When Israel arrested its founder, Ahmed Yassin, in 1989, the political bureau of Hamas was for a time exiled in Jordan. However, under pressure from the Jordanian and US authorities, and at a time when the Brotherhood was involved in a process of institutionalisation in Jordan, Hamas was obliged to leave the country in 1999. The splits within the IAF between a “nationalist” tendency and one which was more “pro-Palestinian”, completed the distancing of Hamas.
But for the Jordanian regime, the Palestine question remains a source of instability. It is still traumatised by the events of “Black September” in 1970, marked by violent clashes between the Jordanian army and armed Palestinian groups, following attempts to assassinate King Hussein. Thus the reappearance in the region since 7 October 2023 of pro-Palestinian forces endowed with military capacities constitutes for the Jordanian authorities a major source of concern. This has since been exacerbated by Israel’s violence against Gaza and the West Bank, but also against its other neighbours, Lebanon and Syria. So the fear is that the presence on Jordanian soil of movements close to, or even affiliated with, groups which Israel intends to eradicate might be considered a casus belli by the Israeli power structure, while Jordan as such has managed to stay out of the fighting.
The dangers of Donald Trump’s “Riviera” plan
On top of all that, the new US administration’s position is another source of worry for the Kingdom. The “Riviera” plan set forth by Donald Trump on 5 February 2025, proposing Egypt and Jordan as welcoming havens for displaced Palestinians, had met with a flat refusal from King Abdullah II. President Trump then explicitly conditioned US aid to Jordan on acceptance of his plan. Washington’s aid is primordial for Jordan, amounting to $2bn a year for socio-economic projects and $450m for the military sector. According to a report from S&P Global on Jordan’s credit rating published March 2025, the closure of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) - announced by the Trump administration on 28 March 2025 - alone threatened $300m of handouts to the Kingdom.
Until such time as the elements surrounding the dismantled Brotherhood cell are clarified, the timing of the Jordanian decision suggests a readjustment of its strategic position in the region. The fact remains that the announcement, insofar as it concerns an organisation which is already dissolved and does not directly affect the party that represents it, might, as in the past, have a primarily declarative significance, aimed at demonstrating Jordan’s alignment on an ever more repressive regional norm.