Todas las entradas con etiquetas con: "Hassan al-Banna"

El mañana árabe

david b. OTTAWAY

Octubre 6, 1981, estaba destinado a ser un día de celebración en Egipto. Marcó el aniversario del momento más grandioso de la victoria de Egipto en tres conflictos árabe-israelíes., cuando el ejército desvalido del país atravesó el Canal de Suez en los primeros días del 1973 Guerra de Yom Kippur y envió a las tropas israelíes tambaleándose en retirada. en un fresco, mañana sin nubes, El estadio de El Cairo estaba repleto de familias egipcias que habían venido a ver a los militares pavonearse con su hardware. En el estrado de revisión, Presidente Anwar el-Sadat,el arquitecto de la guerra, observó con satisfacción cómo hombres y máquinas desfilaban ante él. yo estaba cerca, un corresponsal extranjero recién llegado. De repente, uno de los camiones del ejército se detuvo justo frente a la plataforma de revisión justo cuando seis jets Mirage rugían sobre su cabeza en una actuación acrobática, pintando el cielo con largas estelas de rojo, amarillo, violeta,y humo verde. sadat se puso de pie, aparentemente preparándose para intercambiar saludos con otro contingente de tropas egipcias. Se convirtió en blanco perfecto para cuatro sicarios islamistas que saltaron del camión, subió al podio, y acribillaron su cuerpo a balazos. Mientras los asesinos continuaban durante lo que pareció una eternidad rociando el stand con su fuego mortal, Consideré por un instante si golpear el suelo y arriesgarme a ser pisoteado hasta la muerte por espectadores aterrorizados o permanecer en pie y arriesgarme a recibir una bala perdida.. El instinto me dijo que me quedara de pie, y mi sentido del deber periodístico me impulsó a ir a averiguar si Sadat estaba vivo o muerto.

Reforma Islámica

Adnan Khan

PRECISIÓN EN LA GUERRA GLOBAL CONTRA EL TERROR:

Sherifa Zuhur

LOS HERMANOS MUSULMANES DE EGIPTO: CONFRONTACIÓN O INTEGRACIÓN?

Research

Continuidad organizacional en la Hermandad Musulmana de Egipto

Tess Eisenhart Lee

ENTRE AYER Y HOY

HASAN AL-BANNA

Las vidas de Hasan al Banna & Syed Qutb.

A la sombra de un César árabe: Sayyid Qutb y la radicalización del fundamentalismo islámico moderno

Research

EGIPTO: SEGURIDAD, POLÍTICA, Y DESAFÍOS ISLAMISTAS

Sherifa Zuhur

LA METAMORFOSIS DE LOS HERMANOS MUSULMÁN EGIPCIOS

Mona El-Ghobashy

The History of the Muslim Brotherhood

Michelle Paison

We in the West !nd it incomprehensible that theological ideas still in”ame the minds of men, stirring up messianic passions that can leave societies in ruin. We had assumed that this was no longer possible,that human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones, that political theology died in 16h-century Europe. We were wrong.1Islam is no longer exclusively a religion, but an ideology that provides a total framework for all aspects of political, social, economic, and cultural life in the Muslim world. Although Islam has continuously demonstrated the theme of resurgence throughout its history in response to the internal and external forces that challenge Muslim faith and society, the assertion of Islamism has strongly reemerged. Discontent is evident through the gradual movement towards Islamist ideology, whether or not the idea ofIslam strongly resonates among the populous. Individuals, despondentfrom the suppression of alternatives from oppressive regimes, look towards change. Organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, provide clear examples of the greater trend developing throughout the region ofthe Middle East and North Africa. #e political power and social in”uenceheld by the Brotherhood capitalizes on the Arab Republic of Egypt’s failureto support its peoples. Subsequently the dissatis!ed population turns to a movement that has the ability to provide the necessary services for survival;Islamism. #is increasing development is pushing moderate, mainstream Islam into the realm of radicalism through means of desperation.Part of the emergence of neorevivalism, the Muslim Brotherhood,established by Hassan al-Banna in 1928, saw the Islamic community at a critical crossroads and insisted that Muslims would !nd strength in the totalself-su$ciency of Islam.

The Future of the Muslim Brotherhood

Amr Al-Chobaki

The Muslim Brotherhood managed to maintain its organizational existence since its establishment in 1928, by the late Hasan Al-Banna. Throughout eight decades, it has managed to exist as a religious movement as well as a political and social organization. This, on one hand, helped it to be sufficiently strong to be distinguished from other political powers, but also made it weak and feeble in some other ways.

The Muslim Brotherhood as a movement is similar to other Egyptian political movements, as it was established at the time of the royal regime and a semi-liberal era. It clashed with the government during the time of President `Abd Al-Nasser, adapted to the regime of President Sadat, and tended to fluctuate in its relationship with President Mubarak, however, the relationship was based on partial elimination, just like the state during the age of President `Abd Al-Nasser. Moreover, it has been outlawed for most of its history; since 1954 until the present time (i.e. more than half a century).

The Muslim Brotherhood has continued to be both a witness and a party in the political and cultural dispute in Egypt and the Arab countries, throughout different historical periods; Egypt in the time of the royal regime and in the time of the republic with its three stages. This dispute was about issues of identity and cultural belonging, the relationship between the religion – on one hand – and politics, the East and the West on the other hand, as well as the coming and the inherited. The Muslim Brotherhood had a flexible political and intellectual reference that gave it a comprehensive conception of Islam.

Current Trends in the Ideology of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood

Dr. Israel Elad Altman

The American-led Middle East reform and democratization campaign of the last twoyears has helped shape a new political reality in Egypt. Opportunities have opened up fordissent. With U.S. and European support, local opposition groups have been able to takeinitiative, advance their causes and extract concessions from the state. The EgyptianMuslim Brotherhood movement (MB), which has been officially outlawed as a politicalorganization, is now among the groups facing both new opportunities and new risks.Western governments, including the government of the United States, are consideringthe MB and other “moderate Islamist” groups as potential partners in helping to advancedemocracy in their countries, and perhaps also in eradicating Islamist terrorism. Couldthe Egyptian MB fill that role? Could it follow the track of the Turkish Justice andDevelopment Party (AKP) and the Indonesian Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), twoIslamist parties that, according to some analysts, are successfully adapting to the rules ofliberal democracy and leading their countries toward greater integration with,respectively, Europe and a “pagan” Asia?This article examines how the MB has responded to the new reality, how it has handledthe ideological and practical challenges and dilemmas that have arisen during the pasttwo years. To what extent has the movement accommodated its outlook to newcircumstances? What are its objectives and its vision of the political order? How has itreacted to U.S. overtures and to the reform and democratization campaign? How has itnavigated its relations with the Egyptian regime on one hand, and other opposition forceson the other, as the country headed toward two dramatic elections in autumn 2005? Towhat extent can the MB be considered a force that might lead Egypt toward liberaldemocracy?

Will Politics Tame Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood?

NEIL MacFARQUHAR

CAIRO, Dec. 7 – When stumping through the port city of Alexandria, whose crumbling mansions and rickety tram lines evoke long-faded glory, Sobhe Saleh of the Muslim Brotherhood vowed he had a different vision for Egypt’s future.

“If Islam were applied, no one would be hungry,” he roared recently to a crowd of fully veiled women ululating with joy. “Islam is a religion of construction. Islam is a religion of investment. Islam is a religion of development.”

Religion, in fact, should profoundly alter both Egypt’s domestic and foreign policy, said Mr. Saleh, a 52-year-old lawyer with a clipped helmet of steel-gray hair.

“If Islam were applied, the television would not show us prostitution and people lacking all decency!” he declared. “If Islam were applied, Iraq could not have been invaded, Israel could not occupy Jerusalem, and aggression could not have been used to humiliate Muslims everywhere!”

A long-expected day of reckoning is at hand in Egyptian politics now that the Brotherhood, an illegal organization with a violent past, is entering the corridors of power for the first time in significant numbers.

The outcome of the freest election in more than 50 years could determine whether political Islam will turn Egypt into a repressive, anti-American theocracy or if Islamic parties across the Arab world will themselves be transformed by participating in mainstream politics.

No sudden earthquake is expected. But initial results from the final round of voting on Wednesday showed that the Brotherhood had gained at least 12 more seats to bring its total to 88, with seven races from all three rounds still unsettled, according to a spokesman. That is five times the 17 seats the group won in 2000.

Democratization and Islamic Politics:

YOKOTA Takayuki�

The aim of this article is to explore the often contradictory correlation between democratizationand Islamic politics in Egypt, focusing on a new Islamic political party, the Wasat Party (Ḥizbal-Wasaṭ).Theoretically, democratization and Islamic politics are not incompatible if Islamic politicalorganizations can and do operate within a legal and democratic framework. On the other hand,this requires democratic tolerance by governments for Islamic politics, as long as they continueto act within a legal framework. In the Middle East, however, Islamic political parties are oftensuspected of having undemocratic agendas, and governments have often used this suspicion as ajustification to curb democratization. This is also the case with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood(Jam‘īya al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn) under the Ḥusnī Mubārak regime. Although the Brotherhood is amainstream Islamic movement in Egypt, operating publicly and enjoying considerable popularity,successive governments have never changed its illegal status for more than half a century. Someof the Brotherhood members decided to form the Wasat Party as its legal political organ in order tobreak this stalemate.There have been some studies on the Wasat Party. Stacher [2002] analyzes the “Platformof the Egyptian Wasat Party” [Ḥizb al-Wasaṭ al-Miṣrī 1998] and explains the basic principlesof the Wasat Party as follows: democracy, sharī‘a (Islamic law), rights of women, and Muslim-Christian relations. Baker [2003] regards the Wasat Party as one of the new Islamist groups thathave appeared in contemporary Egypt, and analyzes its ideology accordingly. Wickham [2004]discusses the moderation of Islamic movements in Egypt and the attempt to form the WasatParty from the perspective of comparative politics. Norton [2005] examines the ideology andactivities of the Wasat Party in connection with the Brotherhood’s political activities. As theseearlier studies are mainly concerned with the Wasat Party during the 1990s and the early 2000s,I will examine the ideology and activities of the Wasat Party till the rise of the democratizationmovement in Egypt in around 2005. I will do so on the basis of the Wasat Party’s documents, suchas the “Platform of the New Wasat Party” [Ḥizb al-Wasaṭ al-Jadīd 2004]1), and my interviews withits members.

ISLAMISM IN SOUTHERN EGYPT

James Toth

For years, religious violence and terrorism in Middle Eastern countries such as Egypthave splashed across the headlines and surged across the screen, announcing yet anotherround of senseless death and destruction. While Arabists and Islamicists attemptto pick their way carefully through the ideological and intellectual minefields to makesense of what is happening, the wider public generally disregards their insights andinstead sticks to what it knows best: deeply ingrained prejudices and biases. Egyptian,Arab, Muslim—all are painted in a very unfavorable light. Even in Egypt, manybystanders show the same sorry prejudices. In the end, people simply blame the brutalityon inexplicable backward religious ideas and then move on.Yet comprehending terrorism and violence in places such as Egypt by recourse toan unnuanced religious fundamentalism is generally acknowledged not only to begthe question of why these events actually happen, but also to lead to misunderstandingsand misperceptions, and perhaps even to exacerbating existing tensions.1 Mostscholars agree that such seemingly “irrational” social behavior instead needs to beplaced in its appropriate context to be properly understood, and hence made rational.Analyzing these actions, then, involves situating this violence and destruction in theireconomic, political, and ideological milieu as these have developed historically, forthis so-called Islamic terrorism does not merely arise, ex nihilo, out of a timeless void.What follows, then, is one case study of one portion of the Islamic movement as itemerged principally in southern Egypt and as it was revealed through anthropologicalfieldwork conducted in one of this region’s major cities. This account takes a completelydifferent direction from that of stigmatizing this movement as a sordid collectionof terrorist organizations hell bent on the senseless destruction of Egypt and itsIslamic civilization.2 Because this view is somewhat at odds with the perceptions oflocal spectators, Egyptians in Cairo, and non–Egyptians inside and outside the country,I go to some length not only to discuss the movement itself but also to shed lighton why it might have received such negative publicity.