The Political Evolution of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

Stephen Bennett

“Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

Since its early days in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood has created much controversy, as some argue that the organization advocates violence in the name of Islam. According to Dr. Mamoun Fandy of the James A. Baker III Institute of Public Policy, jihadism and the activation of the views of the world of the house of Islam and the house of war are the ideas that emerged from the writings and the teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood” (Livesy, 2005). The primary evidence for this argument is notable member of the Brotherhood, Sayeed Qutb, who is credited with developing the revisionist and controversial interpretation of jihad that provided religious justifications for violence committed by offshoot organizations of the Brotherhood like al-jihad, al-Takfir wa al-Hijra, Hamas, agus al-Qaeda.

Yet that is still a debatable position, because despite being the ideological parent of these violent organizations, the Muslim Brotherhood itself has always maintained an official stance against violence and instead has promoted Islamic civil and social action at the grassroots level. Within the first twenty years of its existence the Muslim Brotherhood gained status as the most influential of all major groups in the Middle East through its popular activism. It also spread from Egypt into other nations throughout the region and served as the catalyst for many of the successful popular liberation movements against Western colonialism in the Middle East.

While it has retained most of its founding principles from its inception, the Muslim Brotherhood has made a dramatic transformation in some crucial aspects of its political ideology. Formerly denounced by many as a terrorist organization, as of late the Muslim Brotherhood has been labeled by most current scholars of the Middle East as politically “moderate”, “politically centrist”, and “accommodationist” to Egypt’s political and governmental structures (Abed-Kotob, 1995, p. 321-322). Sana Abed-Kotob also tells us that of the current Islamist opposition groups that exist today “the more ‘radical’ or militant of these groups insist upon revolutionary change that is to be imposed on the masses and political system, whereas… the new Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, call for gradual change that is to be undertaken from within the political system and with the enlistment of the Muslim masses”

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