Interestingly, the MB was established in Egypt in 1928 as a movement inspired by Muslim Modernism and Pan-Islamism. Muslim Modernism had been developing ever since the mid-19th century as a way to address the rise of European colonialism through the adoption of modern sciences and economics. Muslim Modernism advocated the readjustment of Islamic traditions and polities through ‘modernist’ tools such as pragmatism, rationalism, science, capitalism and/or socialism.
Pan-Islamism, on the other hand, wanted to do this to help the Muslims gain ascendency in colonial conditions, and once in, dismantle Western colonial supremacy and carve out a modern universal Islamic caliphate. According to Malise Ruthven, in Islam in the World, the MB became more conservative and militant once various reformist ideas of Muslim Modernism began being adopted by various non-religious Muslim leaders and outfits.
By the 1940s, the MB was being accused for organising assassinations and bomb attacks against colonial British officials in Egypt and the country’s monarch. In 1948, an MB member assassinated the country’s prime minister. However, in 1949, MB’s founder Hassan Al-Banna was killed in a retaliatory strike by Egypt’s secret police.
According to H.M. Hamouda’s 1985 tome Secrets of the Movement of Free Officers, the Free Officers Movement which toppled the Egyptian monarchy in 1952 and ousted the British, was formed within the MB. According to an essay by Selma Botman in the 1986 edition of Middle Eastern Studies, anti-monarchy and anti-British Egyptian officers had used the secret network constructed by the MB to facilitate their attempt to take over power.
However, by 1954, the now-in-power Free Officers Movement clashed with the MB, accusing it of trying to assassinate Nasser. MB denounced the new government as being ‘anti-Islam’ and ‘secular.’ Hundreds of MB leaders were arrested and jailed.
One such leader was Qutb, an unassuming man who had joined MB after returning from a trip to the US. Influenced by the writings of controversial French eugenicist and alleged Nazi sympathiser Alexis Carrel — who often attacked Western modernity — and by the prolific South Asian Islamic scholar Abul Ala Maududi who had described modernity as modern-day ‘jahiliya,’ Qutb advocated an armed social and political struggle against this jahiliya.
Many MB activists escaped arrest and were given asylum by Saudi Arabia. After Nasser’s death in 1970, and Egypt’s restoration of friendly ties with the US and Saudi Arabia, hundreds of MB members were allowed to return to the country. MB decided to renounce violence and enter mainstream politics. Disagreeing with this resolution and angered by Egypt’s recognition of Israel in 1979, two groups separated from MB. They insisted on following Qutb’s teachings. One such faction assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981.
Nevertheless, the MB as a whole continued on its ‘mainstream’ path. But the MB is condemned by its own history. Those who came out to protest against the Morsi regime claimed that, no matter how ‘moderate’ it pretends to be, MB’s end goal remains the enactment of a totalitarian theocracy. The opponents of this view bemoan that the coup against Morsi marked the end of a unique experiment in which a once-militant Islamist outfit was willing to take a more pluralistic and democratic path.
MB’s erstwhile backers, the Saudi monarchy, disagreed. In an environment of monarchy-backed reform within the kingdom, it now sees MB as a dangerous impediment which can use its vast network across the Arab world to undermine Saudi influence and trigger populist uprisings, including one in the kingdom.
Either MB will look to further modify its course to prove that it is no more a theocratic threat or a democratic ruse, or it may restore its militant tendencies. But I believe the latter is not possible in a world where there will not be a Saudi Arabia or a US welcoming escaping MB cadres from the arm of the Egyptian state.
Published in Dawn, EOS, June 30th, 2019