The U.S. is taking steps to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization after an executive order from President Donald Trump yesterday. It paves the way for a crackdown on Hamas, a recognized terrorist group that is affiliated with the Brotherhood and is infiltrating the U.S. Yet only “certain chapters” will be targeted.

Melanie Phillips calls the Muslim Brotherhood “a real and present danger to Western civilization”:

A jihadi outfit with thousands of affiliates in America, Britain and the West, its aim is to Islamize Western nations, tailoring its tactics to encompass terrorist violence, infiltration of the democratic process, and having lots of children to create Muslim majorities. It has achieved critical mass in its efforts because of the almost total absence of any pushback by Western governments.

However, U.S. law may require President Trump to prove in court that each chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood has been involved in terrorism. While it supports terrorism and the overthrow of the West, not every chapter has directly committed terrorist acts. This is why the designation is far more limited and, therefore, far less effective.

Beyond that, the Muslim Brotherhood has strong ties to Turkey and Qatar, which President Trump has been reluctant to confront.

Phillips warns that the threat the Muslim Brotherhood poses goes far beyond specific terrorist acts:

The threat is civilizational. It aims to subvert Western democratic processes—call that political jihad—and to produce Muslim majorities by mass migration and having lots of children—call that demographic jihad. It is a subversive threat on a par with, say, the Chinese Communist Party and should be treated as such (or how the ccp ideally should be treated) by declaring it and its affiliates personae non gratae and shutting them down.

The U.S. has been too weak-willed to confront this threat. That problem did not begin with this administration—it goes back decades.

Gerald Flurry warns in his booklet The King of the South:

In Leviticus 26:19, God warned that if our peoples descended into abject sin, He would break the pride of our power. And so He has! … Our nations fear to use their power—because of our sins. The “pride of [our] power” has been broken! We have seen a collapse of will and power in America. Our shameful surrender in Afghanistan was terrible proof. And though U.S. President Donald Trump has tried to reverse the damage to some degree, there is still a bigger underlying spiritual curse that weakens America on the global stage. What a terrible end to a superpower!

The terrorist nations see America’s shameful division and weakness and are encouraged to support terrorism even more. Iran and terrorists are preying on our weakness. State-sponsored terrorism exists because of America’s cowardice.

Read more about what’s ahead for the radical Islamist bloc in The King of the South.