Patient Extremism: The Many Faces of the Muslim Brotherhood

A new phase of Islamist influence

After years of decline following the Arab Spring, the Muslim Brotherhood has reemerged — not through elections or uprisings, but through ideas, education, and institutions.
A new study by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), titled “Patient Extremism: The Many Faces of the Muslim Brotherhood” (October 2025), describes this evolution as a long-term ideological strategy:

“The Brotherhood has abandoned confrontation for infiltration — seeking to transform societies from within, one generation at a time.”

This “patient extremism” no longer calls for jihad through arms, but for a gradual cultural jihad, where control of education, NGOs, and religious discourse replaces open rebellion.

From political Islam to ideological governance

Across the Arab and Muslim world, the Brotherhood has shifted its methods — less political, more societal.
The fall of Morsi in Egypt (2013) and the marginalization of Islamist parties in the Maghreb have pushed the movement to reinvent itself as a civilizational network rather than a political party.

Its branches now invest in schools, charities, publishing houses, and online platforms — diffusing an apparently moderate message that hides a radical endgame: the normalization of an Islamic order within secular institutions.
This is not the violent Islam of Daesh, but an institutional Islamism, disguised under the language of democracy and social reform.

Qatar and Turkey: twin engines of influence

The FDD report highlights how the Qatar–Turkey axis has become the new epicenter of this ideological export.

• Qatar provides the financial and media infrastructure: Al Jazeera, Qatar Charity, and the Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue, all echoing narratives of grievance, victimhood, and “resistance.”
• Turkey, under President Erdoğan, offers political shelter and logistical support, hosting Brotherhood-linked organizations, exiled leaders, and satellite media broadcasting to the entire Arab world.

Together, they form a postmodern alliance of influence: one that does not impose Islam by force but seduces through legitimacy — positioning itself as the authentic voice of Muslim identity against the West and its allies.

A soft power confrontation with the Arab reformists

Opposite this ideological axis stand the reformist Arab states — the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Bahrain — which see in the Brotherhood not a theological challenge but a political threat.
For them, the danger lies in the Brotherhood’s ability to infiltrate societies under the guise of religion, undermining modernization efforts and regional stability.

The Emirates, in particular, promote a post-Islamist vision: coexistence, cultural innovation, and economic pragmatism as antidotes to the ideological rigidity of the Brotherhood.
Saudi Arabia, under Vision 2030, also moves away from Wahhabism toward a national identity detached from Islamist dogma — a historic rupture with its past.

This new Arab divide is not between Sunnis and Shiites, but between modernization and ideological regression.
The Brotherhood remains the ideological backbone of those who seek to preserve religion as a political instrument.

The global network: influence through respectability

In Europe and North America, the Brotherhood’s message has evolved into an even subtler form.
Its affiliated organizations — educational, humanitarian, or cultural — present themselves as interlocutors of dialogue and tolerance, while shaping a parallel discourse:
integration without assimilation, identity before citizenship, faith above law.

The danger lies not in what the Brotherhood says, but in what it normalizes — the quiet transformation of liberal societies into spaces where Islamist identity becomes untouchable, beyond criticism.

This is the “respectable extremism” described by the FDD report: not violent, but corrosive — wearing the language of peace to hollow out the meaning of secularism and universalism.

The long game of patient extremism

The Muslim Brotherhood no longer dreams of taking power tomorrow. It dreams of owning the culture in fifty years.
Its patience is its strength.
Its apparent moderation is its disguise.

What was once a revolutionary movement is now a civilizational strategy: one that seeks to make political Islam not exceptional, but inevitable.
And in this transformation lies its greatest success — and its greatest danger.

Source citation (endnote)
Based on analysis from Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), “Patient Extremism: The Many Faces of the Muslim Brotherhood,” October 27, 2025.
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2025/10/27/patient-extremism-the-many-faces-of-the-muslim-brotherhood/