The Jordanian Interior Ministry prohibited the Muslim Brotherhood, the most important opposition group in the country on Wednesday, closing its offices and confiscating its assets.
The Minister of the Interior, Mazen Al-Faraya, said that the decision was a response to a sabotage plot to which a son of one of the group’s leaders had been linked and would immediately take.
What does Jordan say about the ban on the Muslim Brotherhood?
“It was decided to ban all the activities of the so-called Muslim Brotherhood and to consider any (of his) activity a violation of the provisions of the law,” said Faraya, adding that any promoter of the group’s ideology would be held responsible by law.
“It has been proven that the members of the group operate in the dark and engage in activities that could destabilize the country,” read a declaration from the Ministry of the Interior.
“The members of the dissolved Muslim Brotherhood have falsified security and national unity and disrupted security and public order.”
The prohibition extends to everything that is published by the group.
After the announcement, the police surrounded and searched the party’s seat in the capital, Amman.
What is the Muslim Brotherhood?
The Muslim Brotherhood, who have been prohibited in many Arab countries, has been operating legally in Jordan for decades.
Its Sunni Islamist ideology and its declared objective of establishing a Caliphate under Sharia law benefit from local support in the main urban centers in Jordan.
The political branch of fraternity in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), produced important gains in the legislative elections in September, explaining anger at the War of Israel against Hamas to win 31 seats out of 138.
“The Jordanian people gave us their confidence by voting for us,” said the head of the IAF, Wael al -Saqqa at the time – although the participation rate was measured at only 32%.
Murad Adailah, the chief of the Muslim Brotherhood, said that the Victory of the IAF was based on a “popular referendum” approving the support of the group to the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The movement says that it has publicly renounced violence decades ago and now claims to pursue its Islamist objectives using peaceful means.
But the opponents argue that it is a terrorist organization and that it is listed as such in Egypt, where it is from the 1920s.
Edited by: Alex Berry
