Unmasking Muslim Brotherhood Ties Inside Ohio’s Legislature

In a highly anticipated move, the Trump administration designated factions of the global Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations last month, an executive action with profound implications extending beyond the Middle East to America’s heartland. Astonishingly, a Somali-American legislator from Ohio, State Rep. Munira Abdullahi, D-Columbus, continues to serve as a national leader for the Muslim American Society (MAS), a registered nonprofit that federal prosecutors have identified as the “overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.”

Abdullahi’s involvement with MAS dates back to at least 2012, when she served as a youth director in Columbus and later as a national program director. The organization’s youth programs have been marred by scandals nationwide, including an incident in Philadelphia where children were taught songs about beheading Israeli Jews, and a fundraiser selling merchandise glorifying Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists. Upon her election to public office in 2022, Abdullahi appeared to distance herself from MAS, updating her LinkedIn profile to indicate she no longer worked for the group.

However, her ties persisted and deepened. Now heading MAS-Columbus and part of the organization’s national leadership, she leverages her elected status to host events featuring ultra-conservative preachers and pro-Hamas activists. Though MAS officially claims independence from the broader Sunni Islamist movement, a 2004 Chicago Tribune investigation exposed how its early leaders decided to conceal their Muslim Brotherhood affiliations while aiming to “convert Americans to Islam and elect like-minded Muslims to political office.”

Campaign finance records underscore this connection: in 2022, Abdullahi received a $1,000 contribution from an MAS colleague and later donated $2,400 from her campaign to MAS-Columbus.

Ties to Extremists

Housed in a northside mosque serving Columbus’ booming Somali immigrant community, MAS-Columbus has long been a hub for Muslim Brotherhood figures. Its development owes much to Salah Soltan, who later joined Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt and is now imprisoned there for inciting violence. Under Soltan’s influence, the chapter’s website hosted virulently antisemitic content, declaring “the evil within [Jews] is beyond description.” Other prominent visitors include Sheikh Mohamed Jebril, the Supreme Guide of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, who is banned from preaching in Egypt.

Abdullahi’s crowning achievement as a Sharia-savvy legislator came in August 2025 with MASCON-CBUS, her organization’s inaugural convention held in Ohio’s state capital. She spoke alongside some of America’s most extreme Islamist figures, including Osama Abuirshaid, leader of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a radical anti-Israel group under state and federal scrutiny for its alleged origins as a Hamas front.

A keynote speaker at MASCON, Imam Siraj Wahhaj, has advocated armed jihad, labeled homosexuals and non-Muslims as “Satanic,” and defended stoning adulterers. The event’s sponsors were equally troubling: platinum backer Rahma Worldwide has partnered with an Al Qaeda-linked charity in Kuwait, while Islamic Relief USA has been banned in several countries for its Muslim Brotherhood ties and denounced by the U.S. State Department for antisemitism.

Abdullahi has even brought her terror-linked associates into the Ohio statehouse under the pretext of religious accommodations. She co-hosted annual Ramadan dinners in 2023 and 2024 at the capitol with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). In recent weeks, Texas and Florida designated CAIR as a foreign terrorist organization, citing its documented Hamas connections and the prosecution of numerous CAIR officials for terrorism-related crimes.

At the 2024 dinner, guests heard from Ismahan Abdullahi, leader of MAS’s policy advocacy wing, who has called for the release of Islamist cop-killer Jamil al-Amin, defended the racist Black Panther Party, and praised the late Muslim Brotherhood icon Mohamed Morsi.

Munira Abdullahi’s rising appeal among extremists also secured her a speaking slot in November 2025 at AMP’s annual convention in Tinley Park, Illinois, notorious for featuring speakers who have glorified the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel and spouted antisemitic rants. 

Abdullahi’s Voting Record and Rhetoric

As the youngest legislator in the Ohio statehouse, Abdullahi persistently blurs the boundary between elected official and Muslim Brotherhood operative. Her radicalism surfaced early in her term when she alone voted against a resolution condemning Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. Just two days after the massacres that claimed around 1,200 lives, she posted a social media statement blaming the Jewish state for the violence and kidnappings endured by its citizens. Campaigning in 2024, Abdullahi held a virtual fundraiser featuring remarks from anti-Israel activist Sami Hamdi, whom U.S. authorities deported in October for hailing Hamas and the Oct. 7 events as a “victory” and moment of “euphoria.”

Amid escalating debates over immigration, Abdullahi promotes dangerously extreme views, arguing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have “kidnapped” illegal immigrants. She advocated for Ayman Solimon, a Cincinnati imam arrested and facing deportation for ties to al-Gam’iyya al-Shar’iyya, a suspected Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood front (though his attorneys deny the link).

With increasing political influence and firm control of Ohio House District 9, home to most of the state’s 60,000 Somali residents, Abdullahi’s trajectory as an Islamist-legislator is just beginning. Her colleagues in the Ohio General Assembly have remained conspicuously silent about her Muslim Brotherhood membership, despite the White House and at least two states labeling the Sunni extremist group a terrorist entity.

At minimum, Ohio House lawmakers should censure Abdullahi and strip her committee assignments unless she publicly renounces her MAS ties. Ideally, they should emulate Texas and Florida by proposing legislation to designate MAS as a terrorist group. Failing to act amounts to condoning an elected official’s affiliation with an organization tied to global violence and terrorism.

Benjamin Baird is the coordinator for Islamism in Politics, a project of the Middle East Forum.