A member of the State Board of Education is calling for the removal of the Muslim Students Association from college and K-12 campuses.
SBOE Member Brandon Hall (R–Aledo) recently described the organization as “a coordinated, subversive effort to establish a foothold in our institutions.”
The Muslim Students Association (MSA) describes its mission as “empowering Muslim students with resources aimed at fostering character and leadership development, campus activism and da’wah (i.e., outreach), and connecting for a unified vision.”
MSA was first established in 1963 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and now “represents Muslim students in high schools, colleges, universities, and professional schools in the United States and Canada.”
Hall noted the connection between the Muslim Brotherhood and MSA’s founding as one area of concern in an article posted by The Dallas Express on Monday.
According to a 2008 Hudson Institute analysis, Muslim Brotherhood members Ahmed Totonji and Jamal Barzinji helped found the MSA, and “in its early years, the MSA distributed at its chapter meetings English translations of the writings of al-Banna, Qutb, and other Islamist ideologues. Arab Muslim members of the MSA who adopted these ideologies would then be recruited into the Brotherhood.”
The Muslim Brotherhood, along with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was declared a foreign terrorist organization by Gov. Greg Abbott in 2025, and was closely linked to Hamas in a recent U.S. Senate hearing chaired by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
The 2008 analysis also notes that the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) developed from the MSA in 1981 “to advance the cause of Islam and service Muslims in North America so as to enable them to adopt Islam as a complete way of life.”
U.S. Rep. Keith Self (R–McKinney) recently asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate ISNA for possible 501(c)(3) violations in its involvement with Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan Abdul El-Sayed. Self also noted that “a federal district court stated that the government has produced ‘ample evidence’ establishing associations between ISNA, the Holy Land Foundation, and Hamas.”
MSA has also recently come under fire online for accusations of organizing Muslim-only prayer spaces in high schools, such as Liberty High School in Frisco, and public universities, though these allegations have been denied by administrative faculty. In 2017, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a letter to Frisco ISD addressing reports that indicated a prayer room at Liberty High School was “‘dedicated to the religious needs of some students’ – namely, those who practice Islam.” Frisco ISD denied the allegations.
“The MSA is [a] front organization for the Muslim Brotherhood, which has made its subversive intentions against the United States well known,” said Hall. “Texans should take this very seriously and demand that public institutions not allow the MSA to operate on their campuses.”
Hall clarified in a post to X on Monday that he “wanted [MSA] off of K-12 campuses as well.”
MSA National has not responded to a request for comment on Hall’s calls for the organization’s removal.
