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The following article is Copyright Foreign Policy Research Institute (http://www.fpri.org/).
UNDERSTANDING THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD
by Barry Rubin
Barry Rubin, a Senior Fellow of FPRI, is director of the
Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center
and editor of the Middle East Review of International
Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His books include The Muslim
Brotherhood: The Organization and Politics of a Global
Islamist Movement (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010) and Islamic
Fundamentalists in Egyptian Politics (Palgrave-Macmillan,
2002). Other books include The Long War for Freedom: The
Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley,
2005), The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007);
and Israel: An Introduction (Yale University Press, 2012).
His articles are featured at the website of the GLORIA
Center and in his own blog, Rubin Reports.
________________________________________________
Today, the Muslim Brotherhood is the most important
international political organization in the Arabic-speaking
world. It is the dominant party in Egypt’s parliament,
having obtained about 47 percent of the vote there, and in
the Tunisian government, having received 40 percent of
the ballots. In the form of Hamas, now an explicit branch
of the movement, it rules the Gaza Strip.
It is the leadership of the opposition in the Palestinian
Authority (West Bank) and in Jordan, while the local
Brotherhood controls the internationally recognized
leadership (the Syrian National Council) of the Syrian
opposition in the civil war there. Much smaller Brotherhood
groups exist in several other Arab countries.
Yet even that is not all. The Brotherhood has become the
most important group among Muslims in Europe and North
America, too, often directing communities and representing
them in dealings with the government and non-Muslim society
as well. It should be stressed, however, that it is a
decentralized organization and there is no close
coordination of the branches in different countries.
What is most important to understand about the Brotherhood
is that, despite its religion-based ideology, it should be
viewed in political, not theological terms. It is and has
always been a revolutionary organization seeking to seize
state power and then to transform thoroughly the societies
where it operates.
This point does not imply any necessary opposition to
democratic elections or playing within parliamentary rules.
After all, the Brotherhood ran candidates for years in
Egyptian elections under the Mubarak regime, though it was
not allowed to run as its own party, and has played a
parliamentary role for years in Jordan. In the Gaza Strip,
however, after it ran in Palestinian elections and won,
Hamas seized power by force. The Brotherhood’s most
important ideological advisor, the Egyptian but Qatar-
based Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has strongly endorsed
electoral politics for almost a decade. In response to
al-Qaida, which rejected elections, al-Qaradawi said
there was no reason not to run candidates, especially
since the Brotherhood would win.
EARLY HISTORY
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 in Egypt
by the schoolteacher Hasan al-Banna. At that time Islam
was at a relative low point in affecting politics. The
direct inspiration for the new group was the abolition
of the caliphate, which had existed at least nominally
since Islam began twelve centuries earlier, by the new
Turkish republic. For al-Banna and his friends, Islam
had to be restored to center-stage not only socially
but also politically.
At that time, nationalism was in the ascendancy. With
British help, during World War One the Arab nationalists
had revolted against the Ottoman Turkish sultan-caliph,
to whom they supposedly owed fealty in Islamic terms.
Arab countries had been formed that were tending toward
relative secularism. Islamists were a small minority,
many of them having been Arabs who had been on the
losing side by continuing to back Ottoman rule.
There had been a number of leading thinkers in Egypt,
notably Muhammad Abdu and Rashid Ridda, who had
argued that Islam was an important element in the
country’s national identity and development. They
tended, however, to favor a somewhat modernized
Islam. The Brotherhood represented a more conservative
reaction against the changes taking place in Egypt and
the Arab world.
During the 1920s and 1930s, the movement grew quickly,
establishing branches in other countries, notably Syria.
It reached out to allies, most importantly the grand
mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husaini, and developed
contacts as far away as the Indian subcontinent. But
overall it remained a relatively minor force in an
Egyptian national life dominated by the king and
relatively liberal parties that sought a more European-
style system and worldview for the country.
A key element in the development of the Brotherhood
was its admiration for and eventual alliance with Nazi
Germany. The Germans subsidized the Brotherhood before
and during World War Two. The height of their
cooperation came in 1942. As German forces approached
Egypt from the west, the Brotherhood prepared an
uprising and called for the massacre of the Jews and
Christians in the country. Large amounts of German-
supplied arms were hidden to be ready for the revolt.
But the British defeat of General Erwin Rommel’s
forces and decisive British action in Cairo kept the
country under control.
After 1945, Egypt was in an unstable situation. The
Brotherhood organized a secret group for terrorist
activities and also, in 1947, volunteers to fight to turn
all of Palestine into an Islamist state, armed with the
guns the Germans had provided five years earlier. One of
the soldiers was Yasir Arafat.
As a revolutionary situation developed in Egypt, the
monarchy closed down the Brotherhood in December 1948,
the Brotherhood assassinated Prime Minister Mahmoud al-
Nukrashi, and al-Banna was then killed, probably by
the government in retaliation.
Instead of the Brotherhood, however, a radical
nationalist group in the army seized power, in 1952.
The Brotherhood had worked with many of these people in
the anti-British, pro-German movement. But the officers,
led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, had no interest in sharing
power or leaving such a powerful rival intact.
After a controversial alleged assassination attempt on
Nasser in 1954, the nationalists crushed the Brotherhood.
Its leaders were arrested, sent to concentration camps,
and treated very harshly. Three years later, the Syrian
branch faced similar treatment by Nasser’s counterparts
there. Among the prisoners in Egypt was Sayyid Qutb, an
Islamist theorist who is responsible for much of the
basis of modern Islamism. He was executed in 1966.
From the mid-1950s, the Brotherhood went underground and
into exile. Drawing on links with Saudi Arabia, which
offered financing and safe haven, the Brotherhood built
an international structure. An infrastructure was built
in Europe, based in Germany and Switzerland, to help the
movement survive. Although this was not the intention,
these operations would prove invaluable in providing the
Brotherhood a foothold that would, decades later, help it
take a leading role in the new Muslim communities in
Europe.
THE BROTHERHOOD REVIVED
After Nasser died in 1970, his successor, Anwar al-Sadat,
wanted to strengthen his base against the left-wing
faction in the regime that opposed him. He released the
Brotherhood leaders from jail and allowed the movement to
revive, albeit not officially. In return, the Brotherhood
promised not to engage in violence in Egypt, though this
did not keep them from continuing to support violence abroad.
Chastened by their suffering, the Brotherhood’s leaders
were very cautious. They proclaimed that the current stage
of politics was one of base-building and recruiting (da’wa)
but not of revolutionary actions. Still, the revival of
revolutionary Islamism thrust up new thinkers and
activists in Egypt who were impatient with the Brotherhood’s
caution.
Such people regularly left the Brotherhood to form smaller,
more militant and sometimes violent groups. These included
the Jihad movement, which assassinated Sadat in 1981 and
whose surviving leaders eventually joined al-Qaida. Other
such groups engaged in community organizing. A smaller
group of relative moderates urged the Brotherhood to form
the Wahda party and give up its revolutionary goals. But the
reformers were stymied, eventually quit the Brotherhood, and
became openly critical of it.
Wrongly concluding that a revolutionary opportunity was
present in the 1990s, the militant groups turned to
terrorism and for several years Egypt was wracked by
violence, with hundreds of people being killed. The
Brotherhood stayed aloof and the government repressed the
insurgency.
Thus the situation remained during the last two decades of
the Mubarak regime. In its main expression of goals,
Brotherhood leaders circulated a political platform in
2007 platform stating that under its rule, “Islam is the
official state religion and that the Islamic shari'a is
the main source for legislation.” This would be compatible
with democracy since this program “will be implemented in
a manner that conforms to the [will of the] nation, by
means of a parliamentary majority elected in free, clean,
and transparent [elections].”
However, a Supreme Council of Clerics would be established
to determine what laws are acceptable. While promising to
protect non-Muslim citizens in their practice of religion,
the state would be “ensuring that no ritual, propaganda,
or pilgrimage contradicting Islamic activities are carried
out,” which could be interpreted, for example, to forbid
the construction or repair of churches among other things.
The Brotherhood functioned effectively but without full
legal sanction. It did well in various professional
associations, generally ruling the doctors’, lawyers’, and
other organizations. On several occasions it joined with
other parties to run candidates under their partner’s
auspices but was denied their full vote total. The
Brotherhood even had members of parliament, though they
were elected on the lists of other parties.
Abroad, the Brotherhood advocated anti-Americanism,
violence against the United States as well as terrorism
against Israel; that country’s extinction; and anti-
Semitism, proclaiming that Jews were innately evil and
the enemies of Islam.
The Syrian branch of the Brotherhood tried a revolt in
1982 which was suppressed by the regime there with
heavy casualties. Its leaders fled to Europe. Brotherhood
groups in Lebanon, Iraq, and other countries remained
small. In Jordan, however, the branch grew, forming an
Islamic Salvation Front to contest elections. While it
did well in the balloting, this group was not allowed
by the monarchy—which manipulated the rules and results—
to win and form a government.
The big area of expansion, however, was in the West.
As Muslim immigrants moved to Europe and North America,
the Brotherhood was the only international Arab
organization that was ready with a strong infrastructure,
a clear ideology, and ample financing. In country after
country it seized the leading positions even though it
only enjoyed direct support from a tiny minority of the
communities.
In the Gaza Strip, Hamas appeared from the small
Brotherhood branch but was nominally independent. It
generally, but not always, cooperated with the PLO,
gradually increasing its attacks on Israeli civilians.
Hamas rejected Arafat’s decision to enter into
negotiations with Israel in 1993 but used the Palestinian
Authority to build its own base. In 2000, it allied again
with Arafat in another insurgency against Israel. After
winning elections, it made a deal with the Fatah
nationalists but quickly broke it and launched a coup
which seized the Gaza Strip in 2007. In 2011, following
Egypt’s revolution, Hamas formally joined the Muslim
Brotherhood.
REVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY IN THE “ARAB SPRING”
In the fall of 2010 the Egyptian Brotherhood’s new
leader, Muhammad al-Badi, made a dramatic speech changing
the organization’s course and initiating a new
revolutionary phase. The improvement and change that the
[Muslim] nation seeks can only be attained through jihad
and sacrifice and by raising a jihadi generation that
pursues death just as the enemies pursue life."
According to his analysis, the moment to strike had
come because the United States was weak and in retreat
("experiencing the beginning of its end and is heading
towards its demise"); Islamist groups had been defeating
Israel; and the Mubarak regime—its leader ailing and his
choice of son as successor extremely unpopular—was near
collapse. One reason for that decline, al-Badi claimed,
was that it had not fulfilled “Allah's commandment to
wage jihad…so that Allah's word will reign supreme” over
all non-Muslims.
The following February, liberal-radical groups with
which the Brotherhood had been cooperating launched
massive demonstrations centered in Tahrir Square. Aware
that a high profile would make it subject to government
repression and wanting to see if the movement succeeded
before committing itself, the Brotherhood held aloof for
a few days. Then, with the movement gaining momentum,
it shifted to full participation.
In Tunisia, which also had an army-assisted revolution,
the Brotherhood branch gained 40 percent of the vote in
the subsequent elections and took the leading role in
forming the government. It was constrained, however, by
the need to form a coalition with secular parties.
Once Mubarak had been forced out of power by the army
in Egypt, the Brotherhood emerged into the light. In
February 2011, a huge demonstration headlined by the
Brotherhood’s most influential ideologist, Yusuf al-
Qaradawi, called out an estimated one million plus people
in Cairo, dwarfing the liberals’ events. From that point
on, the Brotherhood took the lead in the revolution.
The Brotherhood had to make three difficult strategic
decisions:
--How bold should it be in seeking power? The
Brotherhood had already decided to participate fully in
elections, as it had done before under Mubarak, but at
first it insisted that it would only run candidates for
one-third of the parliamentary seats. Over the ensuing
months, this was raised to one-half and finally to all of
the seats. In the 2012 elections for the lower house of
parliament it would gain 47 percent.
Similarly, the Brotherhood repeatedly stated that it
would not run a presidential candidate but preferred to
back a liberal or nationalist one. Rejecting this policy, a
leading Brotherhood official and reputedly a relative
moderate, Abdul Moneim Aboul Fotouh, declared his candidacy
and was expelled. In the May 2012 first round, the
Brotherhood’s Muhammad Mursi came in first with more than
25 percent of the vote while Fotouh ran fourth with 19
percent.
--Who should it identify as its main allies and enemies
in Egyptian politics? The Brotherhood at times worked
on making a deal with the military junta while at other
times cooperated with liberal and radical secular groups
against the transitional military regime. In the end, it
was able to maintain decent relations with both.
--How radical or moderate should it appear to be? The
Brotherhood undertook a carefully coordinated charm
offensive to persuade the West that it was now moderate.
For example, its English-language blog highlighted such
statements and omitted the positions taken by the
Brotherhood in Arabic.
Many observers in the West—including government officials,
academics, and journalists—argued that the Brotherhood
had become moderate. They particularly cited personal
contacts with Brotherhood leaders or activists; the
organization’s alleged rejection of violence; and its
participation in elections. It was also argued that
participation in elections and in governance would
inevitably moderate the Brotherhood.
A serious problem with this thesis, however, was when
the Brotherhood adopted an extremely radical stance
during the presidential elections, calling for a Sharia
state and the restoration of the Caliphate. By then,
many of those who had previously proclaimed the
Brotherhood’s moderation transferred the label of
“moderate Islamist” to Fotouh.
There were certainly those in Egypt for whom the
Brotherhood was deemed insufficiently militant. Such
groups, mostly descended from the 1990s’ dissidents,
were collectively called Salafists. The most extreme
engaged in violent attacks on churches and the Israeli
embassy. Some, particularly in the Sinai, began assaults
on police stations to obtain arms and repeatedly
sabotaged the natural gas pipeline to Israel, forcing it
to be closed down.
While the Salafists gained about 25 percent in the
parliamentary elections, their candidate was barred
from the presidential elections on a technicality. Some
of the Salafist groups endorsed Fotouh. It was not clear
whether the Salafists would be able to work with the
Brotherhood in the future, due to differences in tactics
and rivalry for power, although their basic goals were
quite similar.
The great change in the Brotherhood’s fortunes made it
clear that the group would play a leading role in the
governance of Egypt and possible that it would be the
governing power. More broadly, the Egyptian Brotherhood,
using the state to whatever extent, had placed itself at
the head of a Sunni Islamist bloc including Hamas, which
governed in the Gaza Strip; the Tunisian government; the
Syrian branch, which was playing a leading role in the
civil war there; and the Jordanian branch, along with
smaller groups in Libya, Lebanon, and elsewhere.
With its leading role in many Muslim communities in
Europe and North America, the Brotherhood has emerged as
a considerable international force. Clearly the leading
Sunni Islamist group in the world, it is arguably the
most important revolutionary organization in the world
as well.
Suggested Readings:
John Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical
Islamism (Columbia University Press, 2010)
Steven A. Cook, The Struggle for Egypt (Oxford
University Press, 2011)
Richard Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers
(Oxford University Press, 1993)
Yvette Talhamy, "The Muslim Brotherhood Reborn," Middle
East Quarterly, 19:2 (2012)
Eric Trager, “The Unbreakable Muslim Brotherhood:
Grim Prospects for a Liberal Egypt,” Foreign Affairs,
September-October 2011, Vol. 90, No. 3
Lorenzo Vidino, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West
(Columbia University Press, 2010)
Itzchak Weismann "The Politics of Popular Religion—
Sufis, Salafis and Muslim Brothers in 20th Century
Hamah," International Journal of Middle East Studies,
37:1 (2005)
Quintan Wiktorowicz, The Management of Islamic
Activism: Salafis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and State
Power in Jordan (SUNY Press, 2000)
