The US Congress is considering proscribing the Muslim Brotherhood on the basis that it is a terrorist enterprise. Such a move cannot come too soon. But the Subcommittee on National Security of the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government only began taking evidence earlier this month.

One of the most cogent witnesses it heard was Dr. Hillel Fradkin of the Hudson Institute who set out the 90-year trajectory of the MB since it was founded in Egypt by Hassan Al-Banna. The organization had been dedicated to a gradualist infiltration of the global political process aiming, like Hitler’s Nazi’s in Germany, to overthrow the established order once it won power through the ballot box. Fradkin pointed out that its triumph in Egypt had been short-lived, because MB leader Mohamed Morsi immediately sought to dismantle the political process, refused to work with other parties and directly threatened the security and stability of the state. His overthrow once again broke the MB’s power in Egypt just as Gamal Abdul Nasser had crushed it in the 1960s, executing its then leader Sayyid Qutb.

But Fradkin was wrong in part of his analysis. The subcommittee asked if the MB was a global threat. He replied it certainly wanted to be a global threat and was hostile to all forms of politics, including that of the United States. Though he referenced the way in which the terrorist organizations Al-Qaeda and Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) had grown out of the MB and admitted that its leadership was now split with some rejecting gradualism and demanding immediate violence, he did not fully point out the way in which the MB, whatever its peaceable claims, is hardwired for violence.

The tragic chaos following the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi demonstrates the role in which the MB’s superior and secret organization has been used to subvert the Revolution’s dream of a just and free society.

It is one of the lunacies of Western politicians to have concluded that the MB is somehow the polite and moderate face of Islamic extremism. The British, who once went out of their way to appease the rising power of Hitler and his Nazis, have long calculated that it was better to work with the MB and hope to influence its politics, than to shut it out and clamp down on it and all its apparently-benign sister organizations. Not for nothing did London become a refuge for violent Islamic dissidents of every hue and earn itself the nickname “Londonistan”

This purblind policy of accommodating a viper near its breast has brought down on the British a series of bloody terrorist outrages. It has also unfortunately stirred up the horror of Islamophobia, which is exactly what the MB and their terrorist admirers want.

American legislators should brand and ban the MB as a terrorist enterprise. It should also roll up its seemingly innocuous front organizations in the United States. But in acting so decisively these politicians should have a care. The MB and its many fronts have infiltrated the mainstream law-abiding US Muslim community, which has not suspected the MB’s covert involvement. In stamping out these bodies, Washington should give due regard to the sentiments of its loyal Muslims citizens and avoid clodhopping actions that could alienate opinion and allow the MB’s minions to present themselves, however perversely, as the real victims.