On Wednesday, August 5th, Senator Ted Cruz convened a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing that all Democrat members simply skipped. Titled “Hidden in Plain Sight: Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood Network in America,” the session laid out a case that a decades-old Islamist network is still operating inside the United States—raising money, shaping high-school curriculum, influencing university campuses, local and national politics, and quietly supporting designated terrorist groups.
Three witnesses testified, and their message was consistent. The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, never treated America as just another fundraising stop. From the early 1960s onward, through groups like the Muslim Students Association, it built a long-term strategy of “civilizational jihad”—working from within to weaken Western institutions and eventually replace them with Islamic governance.
The key evidence still comes from the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial. The Holy Land Foundation, or HLF, was the largest Muslim charity in the country. Its leaders were convicted of funneling money to Hamas. FBI searches turned up internal Brotherhood documents, including the infamous 1991 “Explanatory Memorandum.” That memo openly described the group’s work in North America as a “grand Jihad,” aimed at “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.” It listed organizations that remain familiar today, including the Muslim Students Association, as part of the project. Wiretaps from a 1993 meeting of Hamas supporters in Philadelphia captured talk of deception, sabotaging peace efforts, and rewriting school curricula so American kids wouldn’t “grow up surrendering to the idea of peace with Jews.”
The hearing witnesses explained the network didn’t disappear after the Holy Land Foundation convictions. It simply rebranded. The Islamic Association for Palestine became American Muslims for Palestine. CAIR, or the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which was founded by people named as unindicted co-conspirators in the HLF case, continues to this day as a high-profile advocacy organization. Witness Arielle Klepach pointed to deceptive curricula produced by CAIR and distributed in New Jersey schools that treated the 9/11 attacks as a predictable response to US policy. In short, it was our fault. Similar relationships have been established with school districts in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Illinois.
Senator Cruz tied the domestic picture to the global one. The Muslim Brotherhood produced Hamas, influenced al-Qaeda’s thinking, and is banned as a terrorist group by several governments that once tolerated it. Treating its American offshoots solely as civil-rights organizations, he argued, ignores the paper trail from federal court.
In sum, the hearing presented the Muslim Brotherhood’s American network not as a historical curiosity or overseas problem, but as an active, multi-i-generational domestic challenge to homeland security—combining terrorism support infrastructure, ideological subversion, institutional penetration, and political influence under the protective cover of advocacy and charity. After the HLF trial, the intelligence windfall was largely left on the table. Witnesses called for renewed attention from the FBI, IRS, Treasury, and DOJ, along with consistent treatment of the network based on its own documents... rather than its public branding.
For readers, the takeaway is straightforward. A structured effort to support foreign terrorist organizations and gradually reshape American institutions has operated within the United States for decades. The documents, the trials, and the continuity of personnel are a matter of public record. Ignoring that record doesn’t make the problem go away.
Hidden in Plain Sight:
Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood Network in America
August 5, 2026
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