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The future of Islam after 9/11
Μανσούρ Moaddel
There is no consensus among historians and Islamicists about the nature of theIslamic belief system and the experience of historical Islam, on which one couldbase a definitive judgment concerning Islam’s compatibility with modernity. Παρόλα αυτά,the availability of both historical and value survey data allow us to analyzethe future of Islam in light of the horrific event of 9/11. The key factor that woulddetermine the level of societal visibility necessary for predicting the future developmentof a culture is the nature and clarity of the ideological targets in relation towhich new cultural discourses are produced. Based on this premise, I shall try toilluminate the nature of such targets that are confronted by Muslim activists inIran, Αίγυπτος, and Jordan.
MB goes Rural
Hossam Tammam
The May 2008 elections of the Muslim Brotherhood Guidance Bureau show that the grouphas undergone a major transformation. The Muslim Brotherhood used to be an urban group inits membership and style of management. Now its cultural patterns and loyalties are taking ona rural garb. As a result, the Muslim Brotherhood is losing the clarity of direction and methodit once had.Over the past few years, the Muslim Brotherhood has been infused with rural elements. Itstone is becoming more and more patriarchal, and its members are showing their superiors thekind of deference associated with countryside traditions. You hear them referring to their topofficials as the “uncle hajj “, “the big hajj “, “our blessed one”, “the blessed man of ourcircle”, “the crown on our heads”, etc. Occasionally, they even kiss the hands and heads of thetop leaders. Not long ago, a Muslim Brotherhood parliamentarian kissed the hand of thesupreme guide in public.These patterns of behaviour are new to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that emerged andoperated mostly in an urban context. The new ways of speech and behaviour, which I willrefer to as the “ruralisation” of the Muslim Brotherhood, have affected every aspect of thegroup’s internal operations. In its recent elections, the Muslim Brotherhood maintained a tightlid of secrecy, offered the public contradictory information, and generally seemed to beoperating with little regard for established procedure.The Muslim Brotherhood Shura Council elections emphasised ritual over order. The mainconcern of the Brotherhood, throughout the recent elections, seemed to be with maintainingan aura of respect for the leadership and getting the rank-and- file to offer unquestioningloyalty to top officials.A system of secondary loyalties has emerged inside the Muslim Brotherhood, in nearindependence from all considerations of institutional work. Entire geographical areas, indeedentire governorates, are now viewed as political fiefdoms pertaining to one MuslimBrotherhood leader or another. Muslim Brotherhood members would refer to a certain city orgovernorate as being the turf of certain individuals.Duplicity, another trait of rural communities, is also rampant. Feigned allegiance is common,with members saying one thing in private and another in public. As is the custom in thecountryside, deference to authority is often coupled with resistance to change. As a result,you’d see members pretending to listen to their Muslim Brotherhood superiors while payinglittle or no attention to what they say. Many of the new ideas put forward by MuslimBrotherhood leaders have been ignored, or at least diluted and then discarded.When a Brotherhood member comes up with a new idea, the Muslim Brotherhood leadershipreacts as if that member spoke out of order. Self- criticism is increasingly being frowned uponand the dominant thinking within the Brotherhood is becoming traditionalist andunquestioning.The Muslim Brotherhood has been active in recruiting teachers and professors. But most ofthe new recruits are rural in their culture and understanding of public life. Despite theirscholarly pedigree, many of the academics that have joined the Brotherhood are parochial intheir understanding of the world. The Muslim Brotherhood has nearly 3,000 universityprofessors in its ranks, and few or any of those are endowed with the habit of critical thinking.They may be academics, but they are no visionaries.In the recent Muslim Brotherhood elections, five members of the group’s Shura Council wonseats in the Guidance Bureau. Most of those were either from rural areas or people with apronounced rural lifestyle. Four were from the countryside, including Saadeddin El-Husseinifrom Sharqiya, Mohamed Hamed from Mahala Al-Kobra, Saadeddin El-Katatni from Minya.Only one was from a metropolitan centre: Osama Nasr from Alexandria.Over the past decade or so, most of the newcomers to the Guidance Bureau were from thecountryside: Mahmoud Hussein from Assiut, Sabri Arafa El-Komi from Daqahliya, andMohamed Mursi from Sharqiya. Rural governorates, such as Assiut, Minya, Daqahliya andSharqiya, are now in control of much of the Muslim Brotherhood, especially middle-rankingposts, while Cairo and Alexandria have seen their status gradually erode. The Brotherhoodleadership is encouraging the trend, for rural people are less prone to challenging theirleaders.There was a time when the Muslim Brotherhood appealed mainly to an urban audience. Butsince the late 1980s things have changed. Due to the long-running confrontation with theregime, the Muslim Brotherhood has found it harder to recruit urban supporters. Also, the lackof innovation in Muslim Brotherhood ways has turned off many city dwellers. Instead ofjoining the Muslim Brotherhood, the young and disgruntled, as well as those seeking spiritualsalvation, have joined the Salafi current or become followers of the country’s new breed ofwell- spoken televangelists. The fact that the Muslim Brotherhood has mostly abandonedreligious propagation in favour of politics may have accelerated this trend.What the Muslim Brotherhood has to offer is something that city dwellers don’t really need.The Muslim Brotherhood offers an alternative family, a cloning of the village communitywith its personalised support system. This is something that appeals best to new arrivals fromthe countryside, to people who miss the stability and comfort of a traditional community.The attraction of countryside people to the Muslim Brotherhood over the past two decadescoincided with the disintegration of the extended family and the weakening of communal ties.Moreover, the Westernisation of city life may have pushed many people with a ruralbackground into seeking a moral and social refuge in the Muslim Brotherhood.In universities, the Muslim Brotherhood attracts newcomers to the cities rather than originalcity dwellers. It is more successful in recruitment among students in Al-Azhar University thanin other universities, and more successful in rural governorates than in Cairo and Alexandria.Following the 1952 Revolution, Egypt as a whole underwent a wave of ruralisation. But eventhen, the Muslim Brotherhood focussed its recruitment on people with an urban lifestyle. Fiftyyears ago, the Muslim Brotherhood recruited mostly among the sons of governmentemployees, teachers, and generally the white-collared class. Egypt’s countryside was notwelcoming to the Muslim Brotherhood or its outlook. Τώρα, the Muslim Brotherhood hasgone so conventional that it is gaining ground in the countryside.The Muslim Brotherhood can run effective campaigns and even win elections in many areasin Egypt’s countryside. Ακόμη, it is my belief that the countryside is affecting the MuslimBrotherhood more than the Muslim Brotherhood is affecting it.In Hassan El-Banna’s time, Muslim Brotherhood leaders were mostly urban in their ways:Hassan El-Hodeibi, Omar El-Telmesani, Hassan Ashmawi, Mounir Dallah, Abdel-QaderHelmi and Farid Abdel Khaleq. Even in the countryside, top Muslim Brotherhood memberswere known for their urban lifestyle: Mohamed Hamed Abul- Naser and Abbas Al-Sisi, forexample.By contrast, the new breed of Muslim Brotherhood leaders is rural in its ways. This goes evenfor Cairo-based Muslim Brotherhood leaders including Mohamed Mursi, Saad El-Katatni,Saad Al-Husseini and Sabri Arafa El-Komi. And the Muslim Brotherhood supreme guide,Μαχντί Akef, is more rural in his leadership style than his predecessor, Maamoun Al-Hodeibi.
Political Islam Gaining Ground
Μιχαήλ Α. μακρύς
characteristics of the democratic order. Their newly-discovered acceptance of elections andparliamentary processes results not least from a gradual democratisation of the formerlyauthoritarian regimes these groups had fought by terrorist means even in their home countries.The prime example of this development is Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which started out as acharitable social movement and has now become the most powerful political opposition force inEgypt.Founded in the 1920s, the Muslim Brotherhood is the oldest Islamic organisation of the Arabworld today. Following the ideas of its founder Al-Banna, it intended to return to a state of ‘trueIslam’, δηλ. to return to the way of life of the early Islamic congregation at the time of theProphet, and to establish a community of social justice. This vision was increasingly viewed as acounterweight to the Western social model that was marked by secularisation, moral decay, andgreed. During World War II, the Muslim Brotherhood even founded a secret military arm, whoseactivities, ωστόσο, were uncovered, leading to the execution of Mr Al-Banna by Egypt’s secretpolice
The Muslim Brotherhood in Belgium
Ο Steve Merley,
Senior Analyst
The Global Muslim Brotherhood has been present in Europe since 1960 when SaidRamadan, the grandson of Hassan Al-Banna, founded a mosque in Munich.1 Since that time,Brotherhood organizations have been established in almost all of the EU countries, as well asnon-EU countries such as Russia and Turkey. Despite operating under other names, some ofthe organizations in the larger countries are recognized as part of the global MuslimBrotherhood. Για παράδειγμα, the Union des Organizations Islamiques de France (UOIF) isgenerally regarded as part of the Muslim Brotherhood in France. The network is alsobecoming known in some of the smaller countries such as the Netherlands, where a recentNEFA Foundation report detailed the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in that country.2Neighboring Belgium has also become an important center for the Muslim Brotherhood inEurope. ΕΝΑ 2002 report by the Intelligence Committee of the Belgian Parliament explainedhow the Brotherhood operates in Belgium:“The State Security Service has been following the activities of the InternationalMuslim Brotherhood in Belgium since 1982. The International MuslimBrotherhood has had a clandestine structure for nearly 20 χρόνια. The identityof the members is secret; they operate in the greatest discretion. They seek tospread their ideology within the Islamic community of Belgium and they aimin particular at the young people of the second and third generation ofimmigrants. In Belgium as in other European countries, they try to take controlof the religious, social, and sports associations and establish themselves asprivileged interlocutors of the national authorities in order to manage Islamicaffairs. The Muslim Brotherhood assumes that the national authorities will bepressed more and more to select Muslim leaders for such management and,Στο πλαίσιο αυτό, they try to insert within the representative bodies, individualsinfluenced by their ideology.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Europe
Qutbism: An Ideology of Islamic-Fascism
DALE C. Eikmeier
The recently published National Military Strategic Plan for the War onTerrorism (NMSP-WOT) is to be commended for identifying “ideology”as al Qaeda’s center of gravity.1 The identification of an ideology as thecenter of gravity rather than an individual or group is a significant shift froma“capture and kill” philosophy to a strategy focused on defeating the rootcause of Islamic terrorism. Accordingly, the plan’s principal focus is on attackingand countering an ideology that fuels Islamic terrorism. Δυστυχώς,the NMSP-WOT fails to identify the ideology or suggest ways tocounter it. The plan merely describes the ideology as “extremist.” This descriptioncontributes little to the public’s understanding of the threat or to thecapabilities of the strategist who ultimately must attack and defeat it. The intentof this article is to identify the ideology of the Islamic terrorists and recommendhow to successfully counter it.Sun Tzuwisely said, “Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundredbattles you will never be in peril.”2 Our success in theWar on Terrorismdepends on knowingwho the enemy is and understanding his ideology.While characterizing and labeling an enemymay serve such a purpose, it is only usefulif the labels are clearly defined and understood. Otherwise, overly broadcharacterizations obscure our ability to truly “know the enemy,” they diffuseefforts, and place potential allies and neutrals in the enemy’s camp. Δυστυχώς,theWar on Terrorism’s use of labels contributes a great deal to themisunderstandingsassociated with the latter. The fact is, five years after 9/11 theNMSP-WOT provides little specific guidance, other than labeling the enemyas extremist.3 This inability to focus on the specific threat and its supportingphilosophy reflects our own rigid adherence to political correctness and is beingexploited bymilitant Islamists portraying these overly broad descriptionsas a war against Islam.As David F. Forte states “Wemust not fail . . . to distinguishbetween the homicidal revolutionaries like bin Laden and mainstreamMuslim believers.
Political Islam in Egypt
The Problem of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood
Jeffrey Azarva
Samuel Tadros
On June 20, 2007, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research convened ameeting ofU.S. intelligence officials to weigh the prospect of formal engagement with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood,1known in Arabic as al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin. The session was the result of several years of discussion aboutengaging the group considered by many to be the fountainhead of Sunni fundamentalism.Although the Bush administration established a diplomatic quarantine of the Brotherhood afterSeptember 11, 2001, members of the U.S. House of Representatives held several meetings in Egyptin the spring of 2007—almost three months before the State Department meeting—with MuhammadSaad al-Katatni, an independent member of the Egyptian parliament and the head of its Brotherhoodaffiliatedbloc. On April 5, 2007, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) broke with conventionand met with Katatni at the Egyptian parliament building and at the residence ofU.S. ambassador to Egypt Francis J. Ricciardone. Επειτα, on May 27, 2007, a four-member U.S. congressionaldelegation led by Representative David Price (D-N.C.) met with Katatni in Cairo.Following Hoyer’s visit, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo dismissed Egyptian criticism that his meetingspresaged a reversal of U.S. policy.2 In November 2007, Ricciardone also played down themeetings when he claimed that U.S. contacts with nominally independent Brotherhood members did“not imply American endorsement of the views of the individual parliamentarians or their politicalaffiliates.”3 Despite this reassurance, the meetings with Katatni are indicative of opinion leaders, bothinside and outside the U.S. κυβέρνηση, warming inevitable. Yet while the movement, established by Hassan al-Banna in 1928, constitutes the most organizedand well-funded opposition in the country today—the byproduct of both its charitable services and da’wa (literally“call to God,” or preaching) network that operate outside state control—any examination of its rhetoricand political platforms shows U.S. outreach to be premature. Despite its professed commitment to pluralismand the rule of law, the Brotherhood continues to engage in dangerous doublespeak when it comes to the mostfundamental issues of democracy.