How a Muslim Brotherhood-Linked Student Group Evolved into a 162-Chapter National Network

Mock kidnapping videos at elite Virginia high schools draw attention to the Muslim Student Association's origins with Muslim Brotherhood members and its six-decade transformation

The Muslim Student Association (MSA) chapters at two elite Virginia high schools posted disturbing videos in late October 2025 showing students staging mock kidnappings, according to the New York Post.

At Langley High School and Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, MSA members filmed skits depicting students being hooded, thrown into car trunks, and dragged away in bins. Posted just weeks after MSA chapters organized “Keffiyeh Week” protests on the second anniversary of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, the videos drew swift condemnation from Fairfax County Public Schools and the Jewish community for “traumatizing” imagery mirroring Hamas hostage-taking.

The Muslim Students Association was founded in 1963 by a group which included members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement that spawned Hamas. Today, MSA National operates 162 affiliated chapters across universities and high schools throughout the United States and Canada.

The Founding: Muslim Brotherhood Members Create Student Organization

According to internal Muslim Brotherhood documents. “In 1962, the Muslim Students Union was founded by a group of the first Ikhwanis [Muslim Brothers] in North America.”

The following year, two Brotherhood members—Ahmed Totonji and Jamal Barzinji, both Iraqi Kurds, helped turn the group into a more formal organizational structure and helped established the Muslim Students Association at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in January 1963, alongside founding member Hisham al-Talib.

A 2025 report by George Washington University (GWU)’s Program on Extremism documents how “from its inception, Brotherhood members held key positions, influencing its ideology and direction.” The report describes MSA as “a sort of parallel structure of the Brotherhood, independent but, at the same time, represented an inexhaustible recruiting pool and a perfect avenue to disseminate its ideas.”

In its early years, the MSA distributed English translations of writings by Hassan al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood’s founder, and Sayyid Qutb, the Brotherhood’s most influential ideologue. According to a Hudson Institute report, “Arab Muslim members of the MSA who adopted these ideologies would then be recruited into the Brotherhood.”

The Brotherhood’s Multi-Decade Blueprint

Internal Brotherhood documents and speeches introduced in the Holy Land Foundation Trial, reveal a carefully orchestrated multi-decade strategy behind the MSA’s creation and evolution. In the early 1980s, Zeid al-Noman, an official of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood Executive Office, delivered a lecture to fellow Brotherhood members in Kansas City explaining the organization’s strategic planning process.

According to al-Noman’s testimony, the Brotherhood’s Shura Council in the U.S. approved detailed five-year plans. The 1975-1980 plan focused on “general work.” The GWU Report notes that at this time the Brotherhood, “understood that basing the movement’s activities on a student organization was limiting and that a more permanent solution needed to be found.” Therefore, the 1981-1985 plan marked what al-Noman called a fundamental strategic shift toward “the settlement of the dawa”—creating permanent infrastructure rather than relying on transient student groups.

“What the Movement should be,” al-Noman explained, “is to become a Movement for the residents.”

Image from Study, Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, published by the Hudson Institute, author Steven Merely. Credit: Global MB Research

The Organizational Pipeline

MSA founders created permanent organizations to serve Muslim residents beyond their college years. According internal Brotherhood documents as cited by the Hudson Institute, “the Muslim Students Union [MSA] was developed into the Islamic Society in North America (ISNA) to include all the Muslim congregations from immigrants and citizens, and to be a nucleus for the Islamic Movement in North America.”

The same Brotherhood members who founded MSA—particularly the “three Kurds” Barzinji, Totonji, and al-Talib—established a network of interconnected organizations including ISNA (Islamic Society of North America), NAIT (North American Islamic Trust), and IIIT (International Institute of Islamic Thought).

By 1991, this evolved into what a Muslim Brotherhood memorandum described as a 29-organization structure in America, all serving the Brotherhood’s strategic objectives. The memo listed 29 American Muslim organizations as part of the Brotherhood network, including the MSA, NAIT, ISNA, and IIT. The document stated one of the group’s goals in the U.S is too: “present[s] Islam as a civilization alternative; and supports the global Islamic state, wherever it is.”

1991 Muslim Brotherhood Memorandum Document. Credit: investigativeproject.org

MSA National Today: Scope and Structure

According to MSA National’s 2024 Annual Report, the organization now operates 162 affiliated chapters across the United States and Canada. The organization explicitly states it “serves Muslim students during their high school, college, and university careers,” marking an expansion from its original college-only focus to include younger students.

Despite being a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, MSA National does not publicly list the members of its Board of Directors on its website.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which spawned Hamas and whose members founded the MSA six decades ago, is currently under consideration for designation as a terrorist organization by the United States government.