Modern Islamist Movements: History, Religion, and Politics (12 page)

These practices, in addition to building Islamic faith and practice and perpetuating it, were, at the same time, intended to create socio-economic justice and equality in Egyptian society and, eventually, other majority- Muslim countries. Al-Banna believed that his ideas for justice and equality were firmly rooted in the Quran and the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. He believed that Muhammad led an austere life and envisioned an Islamically-based society that embodied economic and political equality; al-Banna endeavored to actualize that goal in Egyptian society, where there were enormous rifts between the rich and poor. Al-Banna criticized the socio-economic injustices in Egypt in one of the tracts which elucidated the Muslim Brotherhood’s religious, political, and economic ideals for Egypt: “Remember, brothers, that more than sixty percent of Egyptians live in conditions worse than those in which animals live; [these Egyptians] can only obtain their food by breaking their backs. Egypt is threatened with deadly famine, exposed to economic problems which have no solutions except through God.”40

Al-Banna believed that there were a number of means, working in tandem, that could solve the socio-economic inequities in Egyptian society. One such instrument was the zakat, which is a required annual contribution for Muslims of at least 2.5 percent of all their assets and is one of Islam’s Five Pillars. Al-Banna believed that if all Muslims actually contributed their zakat and if it were properly distributed among all Muslims, particularly to the economically disadvantaged, this could be one major step toward helping alleviate economic inequities in the majority-Muslim world.41 Thus, for Hasan al-Banna a truly Islamic society should be based in part on economic justice. While strong Islamic faith and obedience to Islamic law should be integral elements of such a society, at the same time, institutions embodying equity and fairness, state-sponsored organizations practicing economic justice, and progressive taxation on income and wealth should, in his view, also play a crucial role. It should be borne in mind that, in some respects, al-Banna’s view of socio-economic justice and equality was quite different from that of many Westerners, in that for him a thoroughly Islamic society under Islamic laws was the most important goal. For example, two of several differences between al-Banna’s conception of justice and equality, on the one hand, and those of many Westerners, on the other, are that men and women in his society would have very different roles and that law courts would operate under Islamic and not secular laws.

From 1928 until 1945, the Muslim Brotherhood under al-Banna’s leadership had increased its missionary activity, generated numerous publications, organized a wide range of lectures, recruited ever-larger numbers of members, and strengthened its internal structure. During this period and throughout much of its history, the Muslim Brotherhood funded its work mostly through membership fees, contributions, estate gifts, and

profits from its business enterprises including publications.42 The Muslim Brotherhood had also built its own companies, factories, schools, and hospitals, whose revenues helped fund the organization.43 The Muslim Brotherhood remained strong financially even through the very difficult economic period during and after World War II when Egypt faced:

(1) sky-rocketing inflation; (2) an accelerating gap between the rich and poor; (3) a sharp growth in urbanization and people from rural areas moving to cities, particularly Cairo; (4) rapid growth of the industrial sector; and

(5) high unemployment.44 In the midst of these enormous challenges, by 1948 the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt had an estimated 500,000 active members in 4,000 branches across the country.45 Concomitantly, it has been argued that from approximately the late 1930s until 1945 various Islamist groups, including Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, were influenced by the strands of German National Socialist (Nazi) thought which had an anti-Semitic character and that aspects of this worldview may have continued to influence the Muslim Brotherhood and some other Islamist groups long after the end of World War II.46

In any case, as the Muslim Brotherhood grew in strength and numbers, at least one faction arose within the Brotherhood that attempted to use physical force in attempts to achieve that faction’s aim of toppling the Egyptian government and establishing what those members perceived to be a truly Islamic government. During a period of great political unrest in Egypt in the late 1940s, two members of the Muslim Brotherhood assassinated Ahmad al-Khazindar Bey, a respected Egyptian judge, on March 22, 1948, in all likelihood because he had given another Muslim Brother a lengthy prison sentence for his attack on British citizens in a club in Alexandria, Egypt.47 In November 1948, the two assassins were sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor.48 Al-Banna was questioned about his possible role in the assassination and released because of lack of evidence.

Soon afterwards, al-Banna expressed considerable opposition to the assassinations and deep concern that certain segments of the Brotherhood were not under his complete control.49 Yet, al-Banna cannot be completely absolved of responsibility for the assassinations because he had expressed his own displeasure with the sentence which Khazindar handed down to the Muslim Brothers who were prosecuted for the attack on the club in Alexandria.50 Attacks and attempted attacks by members of the Muslim Brotherhood against government institutions continued during the year and climaxed on December 28, 1948 with a Muslim Brother’s assassination of Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi Pasha, after he had declared the dissolution of the Muslim Brotherhood and had aggressively pursued the arrest of its members.51

While Hasan al-Banna condemned the Egyptian government’s dissolution of the Muslim Brotherhood, its members’ torture in prisons, loss of jobs and

property, and unwarranted search and censorship at the hands of the government, al-Banna explicitly condemned al-Nuqrashi’s assassins and all Muslim Brothers who perpetrated violence. These declarations, which were “painfully and angrily received by his followers,” stated that individuals who engaged in acts of violence were “neither Brothers nor were they Muslims.”52 Al-Banna continued by exhorting the “young ones” in the Brotherhood to stop writing belligerent letters and engaging in violent acts, saying that he would consider any future violations of these principles or of Egyptian law by any Muslim Brother as directed against himself and that he would personally accept all legal ramifications of such actions.53

During the brief tenure of al-Nuqrashi’s successor Prime Minister Ibrahim Abd al-Hadi Pasha, who was in office from December 28, 1948 until July 26, 1949, members of Egypt’s political police assassinated Hasan al-Banna on February 12, 1949 in retaliation for the Brotherhood’s violent activities and the assassination of al-Nuqrashi.54 In 1954, two years after Egypt’s Free Officers gained power through a coup d’état, four persons who were respon- sible for al-Banna’s assassination were brought to trial and given prison sentences. The investigations and the trial proceedings indicated that al-Banna’s assassination was an act planned by the Egyptian Prime Minister’s office and other high-level officials in the Egyptian government.55

Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood after Hasan al-Banna

After al-Banna’s death, a succession of supreme leaders followed him. These leaders included Hasan al-Hudaybi (1949–72), Umar al-Tilimsani (1972– 86), Hamid Abu al-Nasr (1986–96), Mustafa Mashour (1996–2003), Ma) mun Hudaybi (2003–4), and Mahdi Akef (2004–10).56 During the late 1940s and 1950s, the Muslim Brotherhood had a tenuous and at times tumultuous relationship with the Egyptian government because of the Brother- hood’s anti-secular and pro-Islamic stance combined with a series of violent acts which members of the Brotherhood perpetrated against government interests. One of the most significant events in twentieth-century Egyptian politics was the coup d’état of the strongly secularist and nationalist Egyptian Free Officers in 1952.57 These secularist Free Officers deposed Egypt’s Prime Minister and King, taking charge of the Egyptian government, declaring a political plan which called for the end of British colonialism in Egypt, the ousting of Egyptian colonialist sympathizers, the termination of the political influence of the Egyptian state by Western capital, the institution of social and economic justice, the formation of a strong national army, and the creation of a vibrant democratic life.58 General Muhammad Naguib, one of the Free Officers and a popular military and political leader, became the first Prime Minister and President after the Free Officers’ coup.59 In 1954,

another charismatic member of the Free Officers’ corps, Gamal Abd al-Nasser, who had served as Interior Minister under Naguib, ousted Naguib, accusing him of sympathizing with the Muslim Brotherhood, and placed him under house arrest which lasted until Naguib’s death in 1984.60 Nasser remained President and Prime Minister until his death in 1970, when his Vice-President, Anwar Sadat, became his successor as President of Egypt.61

In 1954, a segment of the Muslim Brotherhood planned an assassination attempt on President Nasser which took place in October of that year. This failed assassination attempt may have been an initial step on the part of the Brotherhood to implement a broader strategy to overthrow Nasser’s secular government and replace it with an Islamic one, based on the Brotherhood’s principles.62 While the Nasser government had taken substantial steps to subdue the Muslim Brotherhood before this assassination attempt, the government intensified its efforts to destroy the Muslim Brotherhood immediately in the wake of this violent act. In the months following the shots fired at Nasser, the Egyptian government engaged in a media barrage which vilified the Muslim Brotherhood, saw to the destruction of the Brotherhood’s headquarters, imprisoned thousands of the organiza- tion’s members, brought numerous Brothers to trial, and condemned 15 Brotherhood members to death, executing six of them.

Sayyid Qutb

The government’s brutal and oppressive campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood continued during much of the 1950s and 1960s and it was within this repressive environment that one of the most influential intellectuals in the Muslim Brotherhood’s history, Sayyid Qutb (1906–66), formulated his ideas. Qutb’s interpretations of Islamic history, Islam’s sacred texts, and his conception of Islam’s role in the twentieth century would have a tremendous influence on a number of Islamist leaders and organizations, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, Usama bin Laden, and al-Qaida. Qutb is a towering figure in modern Islamic intellectual history.

Sayyid Qutb was born in 1906 in the town of Musha near the city of Asyut in Upper Egypt. Qutb’s father was highly educated with strong leanings toward Egyptian nationalism. Qutb attended the school in Musha which most of the other children attended. This kind of school is known as a kuttab and students in such schools typically memorize large portions of the Quran and learn about other Islamic texts.63 By the age of 10, Qutb had memorized the entire Quran. His mother strongly encouraged him in this process and in his entire Islamic education because she wanted her son to become a scholar of Islam. This hope was realized – in what may have been an unexpected way – later in Sayyid Qutb’s life.64 Qutb graduated from the

Dar al-(Ulum with a Bachelor of Arts degree in literature and a diploma (or certificate) in education in 1933.65

After graduating, Qutb received a teaching position with Egypt’s Department of Education, which he served from 1933 until 1939. In addition to teaching, Qutb devoted much of his time to writing during the 1930s and 1940s. His publications were primarily non-religious; he wrote two autobiographies, poems, essays, literary criticism, and love stories, which at times related to political issues.66 The influence of numerous Western literary figures, such as the British novelist and poet Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), is clearly evident in much of Qutb’s early writing. Qutb’s early works also manifest features of Western conceptions of liberalism, individualism, and modernism.67

Before his trip to the United States, Qutb articulated his opposition to Western colonialism in largely secular ways.68 That is, while before Qutb’s trip to America he vehemently opposed what he perceived to be the Western colonialist assault on Egypt, he did not use Islam as a basis for opposing it. Rather, during this period, his opposition to colonialism was based on such principles as nationalism, freedom, liberty, equality, and individual rights, which were derived from Western thought.69 In this and other ways, Sayyid Qutb’s thinking was close to that of other secular Egyptian intellectuals such as Taha Husayn (1889–1973) and (Abbas Mahmud al-(Aqqad (1889–1964). Over time, Qutb’s and al-(Aqqad’s ideas came to overlap in increasingly substantial ways; both “joined the secular- ist Wafd party, turned against it after the death of the Egyptian nationalist Sa(d Zaghlul (1857–1927), did not marry, and turned against Western ideas and institutions” and toward Islamism.70 However, after 25 years, Qutb ended his friendship with al-(Aqqad, because he refused to write the introduction to one of Qutb’s books.71

The most dramatic and life-changing turning point in Sayyid Qutb’s life was his trip to the United States which began in 1948.72 In that year, Egypt’s Ministry of Education sent Qutb to the United States so that he could gain a thorough understanding of educational philosophies and practices in the United States. The Ministry’s intent was for Qutb to return to Egypt so that he could convey the knowledge he had acquired to the Ministry and others in Egypt in order to help improve Egypt’s educational system.73 As a result of his time in America, Qutb embraced Islam as the ultimate solution to the tremendous challenges which the individuals, societies, and political structures of the majority-Muslim world faced. He came to utterly reject Western ideas and secularism as vehicles for solving Egypt’s and the majority-Muslim world’s problems.

One of Qutb’s first experiences with the West which he found objectionable occurred aboard the ship that transported him to the United States. Returning to his cabin one night after evening prayers, he ran across what