Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt Following

Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, many observers in the West were heard to lament the passing of the "good old days" of the Cold War when the enemy was clearly known and its geographic borders clearly delineated. By sharp contrast, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the threats against the United States from within and without are largely from non-state actors that can wreak havoc against America and its allies with apparently virtual impunity. One group that has received a growing amount of attention from policymakers and analysts in recent years is the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt which is suspected of sponsoring such terrorist activities. This paper provides a review of the relevant literature to determine why or what conditions in Egypt allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to be successful in Egypt, a history of the organization and its founder, Hasan al Banna, and an assessment of whether the Muslim Brotherhood is in reality a terrorist organization. A summary of the research and salient findings are presented in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Despite what many Western observers might believe today, the fundamentalist Islamic ideology against the West and its culture did not first emerge in February 1998 when Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri articulated what they termed "the global Islamic front against Jews and Crusaders" (quoted in Baruch 2005 at 8). According to this author, "This one-sided conflict has deep roots that go back to 1928 when Hassan al Banna established the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in order to fight against Western influence in the Islamic community" (Baruch 8). In this regard, Sharp (2006), an analyst with the U.S. Department of State (2006), the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 to shift Egypt from its secularism and toward an Islamic government based on Sharia (religious) law and fundamental Muslim principles. Today, Sharp advises, "The Muslim Brotherhood operates as a religious charitable and educational institution, having been banned as a political party in 1954; however, many Muslim Brotherhood members run for parliament as independents" (10). During the parliamentary elections in Egypt in 2000, for example, 17 independent candidates, widely regarded as being Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers, were elected and in 2005, Brotherhood-affiliated candidates won 88 seats in the Egyptian parliament (Sharp 10).

Over the years, the Egyptian government has alternated between tolerating and suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood; in some cases, its members have been arrested and imprisoned while during other periods, the government has allowed the group to operate with virtual impunity (Sharp 10). The formation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the late 1920s (various authorities cite 1927, 1928 and 1929 as the founding date) represented the beginnings of the radical Islamic movements that are being witnessed in the Middle East and elsewhere today (Hovsepian 5). For instance, Chickering and Haley (2007) report that, "Most of the new threats to U.S. And international security are arising in countries with weak or illegitimate governments and strong societies, presenting very different challenges from those of the strong states that were adversaries in the past" (59).

As noted in the introduction, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt represents a nebulous threat to the United States and its interests abroad because of its non-state status. As these authors emphasize, "The United States and its allies face growing hostility and instability in a region in which the U.S. has few strong relationships or none at all with many of the principal actors. Some of these are states and leaders of states (Iran, Hamas, Syria); others are nonstate actors (Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt)" (Chickering and Haley 59). For the most part, the absence of U.S. recognition of such groups is a direct consequence of foreign policy decisions; in some cases, though, it is a response to opposition to such groups by a friendly government (for example, the Egyptian government's previous outlawing of the Muslim Brotherhood) (Chickering and Haley 60).

According to Moussalli, the group's founder, Hasan al-Banna (1906-1949), provided a framework that would be followed by other Islamic groups in the decades to come. "In Egypt in 1927," Moussalli advises, "Hasan al-Banna founded the first full-fledged Islamic fundamentalist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, in the Arab world; it spread throughout the Muslim world and became the prototype that most Islamic movements tried to imitate" (21). In his book, Islamic Fundamentalism, Davidson (1998) reports that Hasan al-Banna was born in 1906 in the town of Mahmudiyya, situated approximately 90 miles northwest of Cairo. This author adds that, "Hasan was the oldest of five children. His father, a teacher at the local mosque school, passed on to his eldest son his piety and love of learning. Hasan chose the teaching profession and at the age of sixteen entered the teacher training school at Dar al-Ulum in Cairo. He attended to his studies diligently and was active in the many religious clubs and societies affiliated with the institution" (Davidson 20).

During his tenure as a teacher in the Suez Canal Zone, al-Banna sought to associate political and economic issues to religion and maintained that Islam was a complete moral, economic, social, political, and philosophical system that would provide a superior approach. These beliefs were further reinforced by the significant British colonialist influence in the region at the time as well as the corruption and inefficiencies that characterized the Egyptian government at the time. For instance, Davidson reports that:

Working within this atmosphere, al-Banna, increasingly aware of the eroding social and religious values he so treasured, rejected the passive posture of the Egyptian ulama of his day and instead, in March 1928, organized the Society of the Muslim Brothers. This action was motivated by his conviction that Muslims were called upon to be socially, economically, and politically aware and active in ways prescribed by Islam. Although the organization had only six members at its founding, it would grow quickly. (20)

The rapid growth enjoyed by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has been attributed to both the message itself as well as the untiring efforts of its founding members, especially al-Banna himself. In this regard, Moussalli advises, "Al-Banna called for active commitment to Islam through political actions that seek the establishment of the Islamic state. The assassination of al-Banna in 1949 led to splits within the movement" (21). These splits in ideological approaches notwithstanding, the fact remains that when people are convinced that they are doing God's will and are willing to die to further this will, they represent a powerful and deadly force and this is precisely what is taking place with those drawn to the Muslim Brotherhood today. According to Nusse (2002), "The appeal to the personal consciousness and responsibility of Muslims indicates an activist Islam in mind. This is a very important feature of modern Islamic thought. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt had been one of the first mass movements in the Islamic world and this popular nature is still a characteristic of the fundamentalist movement today" (84).

Moreover, as Hovsepian emphasizes, radical Islamic groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt have adopted a more practical approach to their recruiting and political activities by appealing to the day-to-day realities being experienced by the citizens of Arab nations. For instance, Kaplan (1994) advises, "Many Egyptians see the Brotherhood as a benevolent neighborhood force, operating clinics, welfare organizations, schools, and hospitals" (26). Likewise, according to Hovsepian, "The new wave of Islamists has developed a pragmatic link between ideology and the daily concerns and fears of ordinary citizens who are alienated and marginalized by the process of modernization" (20).

From the perspective of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, it would seem plausible to assert that no matter what type of political and social system existed at the time, if it was not fundamentally Islamist, it was not appropriate and must be replaced. As Usman (2002) points out, "The Muslim Brotherhood grew under the founder's fiery oratory and positive approach to a personal and social religion. He exhorted his followers to return to the Islam of the prophet Muhammad, which meant an acceptance of the Quran as the basic law of society. He desired to make Egypt, as well as other Muslim lands, an Islamic theocracy and to stop the trend toward a secular state" (1679). Likewise, Sullivan and Abed-Kotob (1999) point out that, "Al-Banna also found that he shared one goal with the secular nationalists: to end British rule in Egypt. Yet that was virtually the only shared goal. Al-Banna called for the return to shari'a and the establishment of an Islamic government" (10). According to Pires-O'Brien (2002), "Al-Banna was assassinated in 1950 by the intelligence services in retaliation for the murder of the Prime Minister, Nuqrashi Pasha, in December 1949 by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood" (243).

While the message being communicated by al-Banna was enormously compelling for the downtrodden of the day, it was the relentless actions on the part of the group's founder and his like-minded cohorts that were the actual driving force behind the Muslim Brotherhood's initial successes. According to Usman, "The true strength of the Muslim Brotherhood lay not so much in its ideology as in the energy, devotion, and ruthlessness of its leaders. In its early years the Muslim Brotherhood maintained an active program of social welfare and agricultural cooperatives; in its later years it became more militant" (1680). The original goal of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was focused on reshaping society into one that mirrored Hasan al-Banna's rigid concept of early Islamic life.

Not surprisingly, the Egyptian government was alarmed at this movement because not all of the group's activities were considered benign social efforts, but were rather viewed as threats to the existence of the legitimate Egyptian government:

Reprisals, pressure, assassination, and armed gangs gave the Muslim Brotherhood power, and its actions attracted youth yearning for an active course to follow. The secular Egyptian government found the Muslim Brotherhood a serious threat and took measures against it, leading to the assassination of the prime minister in 1948. When Hasan al-Banna was murdered, the government took no serious steps to identify his assailants. In 1951 permission was given to reactivate the Brotherhood on the condition that its semi-military activities be discontinued. (Usman 1680)

Despite these assurances, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has emerged as one of the leading organizations in the Middle East calling for substantive changes in the status quo by whatever means are necessary. These observations are also congruent with those made by Stark (2004), who advises, "Since the fall of communism a new world order is emerging in which political Islam develops into one of the major players: Islam not only provides a new stimuli for the re-definition of political models as well as social and cultural identity but also constitutes a crucial part of globalization as one of its most outspoken critics" (51). Likewise, Moussalli (1999) reports that the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt "range from liberating the Muslim world and establishing a free Islamic state to eliminating poverty and crime. All of this requires a deep religious belief, strict organization, and constant activism" (55). Such constant activism requires a great deal of intellectual and political staying power to be successful, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has actively recruited those with the knowledge and expertise to help them accomplish their goals. In this regard, Zeidan (2003) maintains that "modern educated professionals were actively involved in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt since the 1940s" (66).

Although the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt focused its intellectual reinterpretation of Islam on a return to the fundamentals, the group also carefully selected recognized major Western political concepts such as constitutional rule and democracy as requisite tools for revamping the doctrine of an Islamic state (Moussalli 114). This author adds, though, that "the Brotherhood's extremely antagonistic dealing with the Egyptian government led some Brothers to splinter off under the leadership of Sayyid Qutb" (Moussalli 114). In fact, it was Sayyid Qutb who would go on to introduce the ideological basis of Islamic activism that became the model used by the more radical and violent Islamic groups to accomplish their respective goals. As Moussalli points out, "Qutb, who was imprisoned for over a decade and finally hanged in 1966, viewed societies as being responsible for the 'un-Islamic' actions of their government and, therefore, as paganist as their rulers. He called for a total revolution against all human systems" (21).

In her essay, "A Fury for God," Pires-O'Brien points out that, "Qutb admired the Quran as a literary work and later used this aesthetic approach to seek the meaning of the world. He spent some time in America and there he began to show signs of paranoia and other aspects of mental disturbance. In 1954 he was arrested along with other members of the Brotherhood, after a botched attempt to overthrow the government of Gamal Abd al-Nasser" (244). While the group's leadership has changed over the years, their basic goals have remained unchanged. According to Mcgregor (2007), "In and out of the political process over the decades, the Brotherhood has remained committed to a vision in which Egyptian civil society is subordinated to Islamic religious principles and legal precepts. The Brotherhood produced the single most important modern Islamic fundamentalist thinker, Sayyid Qutb, who was hanged by the Egyptian state in 1966" (37).

In reality, the radical Islamic movement has a lot of political and religious fodder to feed its adherents. The United States is actively prosecuting shooting wars in two Arab nations, Afghanistan and Iraq already, and the saber-rattling against Iran and its involvement in Iraq is growing louder by the day. In this environment, recruiting religious zealots to the cause of Islam has apparently become easier for such groups and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is no exception. In this regard, Nusse (2002) reports that, "The Jih-d against the enemy would continue as long as one day follows the other. This was not a political choice, but a religious duty and therefore cannot be negotiated. Hamas got support for this attitude by various religious institutions" (Nusse 148).

This position was further reinforced by ongoing activities by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: "The parental organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt reminded every male and female Muslim of his or her religious duty to work for the liberation of Palestine which would only be possible through 'all forms of Jih-d'" (quoted in Nusse at 148). From the perspective of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, though, "all forms of Jihad" would potentially include legitimate and lawful political initiatives. In this regard, Stark cites the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as an example of an Islamic group that attempts to change the political system by working within its institutions (52). Given its recent successes in gaining parliamentary seats in the Egyptian government, the tactic appears to be working well. This point is also made by Massoulli who advises, "The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt focused more on the political aspect of Islam as the cornerstone in promoting a modern Islamic revival. It called urgently for establishing an Islamic state as the first step in implementing the sharia [Islamic code of law]" (114).