The Muslim Brotherhood Read online

  Because Qutb’s ideological development was not a secret, we can also conclude that al-Hodeibi was aware of the ideological foundation of Organisation 1965. In any case, al-Hodeibi made no effort to object to the group or Qutb’s theories, and it can be assumed that he chose to tacitly accept, if not support the activities of Organisation 1965.49

  However, once the regime began to clamp down on this group, accusing it of plotting to overthrow the state and executing a number of those involved – including Qutb himself, who was hanged in 1966 – as well as arresting many brothers, al-Hodeibi moved quickly to distance himself from the group.

  This provoked yet another internal crisis within the movement, with different strands in the Ikhwan unable to agree on what their stance towards the state should be. Many of those who had followed Qutb, including Mustafa Shukri who went on to establish the militant Takfir wal Hijra group, could not stomach the idea of taking a conciliatory approach towards the state and split off from the Brotherhood to follow an ultimately self-destructive path. Meanwhile, al-Hodeibi tried to set the Ikhwan back on a course of moderation. As part of this process, he published his famous text, Preachers Not Judges, which is widely regarded as an indirect refutation of Qutb’s ideas, although it was as much a rejection of the ideas of Indian theologian Abu Ala Maududi as it was of Qutb’s. Indeed, the text is broadly a dismissal of extremist thought and the concept of pronouncing others as kufar (apostate). Although serious questions have been raised as to whether al-Hodeibi was pressurised into writing the book by the regime, or whether he wrote it at all, it is used by the Ikhwan today as evidence of his peaceful stance and his re-channelling the movement back to its original moderate direction as conceived by al-Banna.

  The breakaway by the more militant Qutbist elements within the Ikhwan and al-Hodeibi’s reassertion of the Ikhwan’s non-confrontational stance did not bring an end to the divisions. The 1970s were to lay the foundations for another major split that would occur later on, which symbolised the Ikhwan’s never-ending conundrum over how to place themselves vis-à-vis the rulers of the day. The whole conflictual scenario was beginning to seem like a perpetual cycle of indecision and disagreement that increasingly came to paralyse the Ikhwan.

  The Dilemma of the New Generation

  The 1970s began with the promise of an era of golden opportunity for the Ikhwan. Shortly after coming to power in October 1970, President Sadat sought to reconcile with the Islamists and set about releasing members of the Brotherhood. Among those released were a group of hawkish members of the Nizam al-Khass including Mustafa Mashour, Ahmed al-Malat, Kamel Sananiri, Ahmed Hassanein and Hosni Abdelbaqi. They took it upon themselves to wrestle control of the Ikhwan away from Hassan al-Hodeibi once and for all. These figures soon gained a reputation for being tough; one former Ikhwani has described them as being ‘like steel’.50 Another observed, ‘When they left prison they were very young and they were very practical and the most activist. They took control of the movement in Egypt.’51 They appointed themselves as members of the Guidance Office at this time, giving themselves the reins of power.

  This group’s primary task was to try to rebuild the Ikhwan, which had by this point become so weak and fragmented that it was more the shell of a movement than a force in itself. This group, hardened by their prison experience, sought to turn the Ikhwan into a body fit to pose a real and robust challenge to the state. Whilst on the one hand they focused their energies on trying to re-establish some sort of legal recognition by the state, the main push was to try to recruit new members to fill the Ikhwan’s empty ranks. The most obvious place to begin recruiting was on the university campuses that had by this point become key centres of political activism, both left-wing and Islamist. This new political consciousness among the country’s student population was in part fuelled by international events such as the humiliating defeat of the Arabs against Israel in 1967, but was also a reflection of the failings of the nationalist state that had not lived up to expectations. The rise of the Islamist current was also due to the fact that Sadat had allowed space for Islamist groups to operate on the campuses, ostensibly in a bid to act as a counterweight to the Nasserists and leftists that were a potential challenge to his rule. As a result numerous Islamist groups and cells, each with their own emir, had sprung up on campuses across the country. Gradually they grouped themselves under the umbrella name of al-Jama’at al-Islamiya. Among the leaders of these groups were figures such as Abdul Moneim Aboul Fotouh, Issam al-Ariyan, Abu Ala Madhi and Mahmoud Ghazlan, all names that were to loom large in the Brotherhood. These figures had all benefited from the democratisation of education that had come about with the Nasser regime and came mostly from modest backgrounds.

  Although these groups were politicised and opposed to what they considered to be the un-Islamic nature of the Egyptian regime, they were predominantly preoccupied with enforcing Islamic morals and behaviour within their own milieu. They focused their attentions on issues such as encouraging female students to wear the hijab, ensuring there was sufficient segregation of the sexes within the university campuses and seeing that lectures were stopped in order for students to be able to pray. Their slogans at this time were ‘all for Sharia and all against atheism and nudism’ and ‘neither East nor West, but for Qur’anic Islam’.52

  These groups, with their call for a return to traditional conservative values, were able to capture the student mood of the day and they spread with remarkable speed. They also succeeded in taking control of the student unions; in the late 1970s al-Jama’at al-Islamiya led the unions in eight out of the twelve universities including in Cairo, Minya and Alexandria. By the end of the 1970s, they had become so strong that they were able to take their activism beyond the campuses, organising public prayers and gatherings that attracted thousands and that were attended by famous Islamic scholars such as Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Sheikh Mohamed al-Ghazali. In short, al-Jama’at al-Islamiya had become the most effective populist Islamist movement in Egypt, able to achieve what had always eluded the Ikhwan – mass popular support.

  Although these student groups had no one specific religious reference at the time, they were particularly influenced by Salafist teachings as well as by literature that was flooding in from Saudi Arabia and that was provided free of charge. However, these students were also attracted to the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood, especially through the works of Sayyid Qutb that were circulating. It is true that the al-Jama’at al-Islamiya had certain reservations about the Ikhwan’s less rigid approach to Islamic codes – such as the fact that its members did not have beards or wear the traditional jalaba, and were willing to hang pictures in their houses or listen to music – but they felt a certain affinity with this historic movement and shared its conviction that ‘Islam is the solution’.

  More important than the Ikhwan’s ideology was the fact that some of the leaders of the al-Jama’at al-Islamiya began having personal contacts with members of the Brotherhood. These contacts first came about in the early 1970s before the Nizam al-Khass group had even been released from prison. President Sadat began allowing some of the Brotherhood prisoners to be given medical treatment at the Qasr al-Aini Hospital in Cairo, where they were visited by some of the student activists. Al-Ariyan describes it:

  It was a dream for me to meet the Sheikhs of the Ikhwan as we used to hear stories that were full of terror and fear about them. But when we saw them and talked with them we found them to be different people. We found mujahideen who sacrificed themselves for the sake of al-Dawa. They refused to compromise even though their fate was prison and torture and sometimes death.53

  It seemed to these young Islamists that whilst they had been engaged in student politics these Brotherhood stalwarts had been living the real experience.

  Those members of the Nizam al-Khass who started leaving prison in the early 1970s decided to build on these contacts, seeing in these young students an opportunity to breathe new life into their own failing movement. They began actively r
ecruiting these student leaders. Abu Ala Madhi recounts how Mustafa Mashour used to visit him at home in order to convince him to join the movement.54 Similarly Kamel Sananiri used to summon these young student activists to try to persuade them to join the Ikhwan’s ranks. As Aboul Fotouh, a student union leader at that time, recounts, ‘Sananiri was for me a symbol of a preacher and a mujahid that we needed to take as an example.’ He went on to observe, ‘The characters of the leaders captured us and had the biggest impact in our desire to join their group.’55

  One of the reasons the student leaders were so attracted to these characters was because of their more militant stance, which was in tune with the student radicalism of the day. They felt much closer to the ideas of the Nizam al-Khass than they did to the more traditional Ikhwani school, as represented by its more moderate currents. As Aboul Fotouh has said:

  Our ideas and our methodology was close to the methodology and the way of thinking of the Organisation 1965 … Even more than that I see in the brothers of the Nizam al-Khass such as Mustafa Mashour, Kamel Sananiri, Hosni Abdelbaqi, Ahmed Hassanein and Ahmed al-Malat that their methodology was close to us and when they left prison they were carrying the same ideas as us. Therefore they were closer to us at that time than the older generation of Ikhwan who were brought up at the time of al-Banna.56

  This distinction was so great that Aboul Fotouh also declared:

  It was one of life’s good coincidences that we met the people of the Nizam al-Khass, the fundamentalists, before we met other more moderate leaders. If the first contact had been with those moderates such as Omar Tilimsani and those who were close to him, we would have decided not to join the group.57

  However, in spite of their reverence for these Ikhwani legends, the al-Jama’at al-Islamiya leaders were undecided about which group should absorb which. As far as the Ikhwani leaders were concerned, being the older and more experienced organisation, they would not countenance anything other than the younger body’s being absorbed into their own ranks. As Kamel Sananiri told Issam al-Ariyan, the Ikhwan would not consider accepting the al-Jama’at al-Islamiya joining as a group but only as individuals.58

  After a year of dialogue and debate, the al-Jama’at al-Islamiya, bowing to age and experience, accepted the idea of becoming part of the Ikhwan. Among those who moved from the al-Jama’at al-Islamiya to the Ikhwan at this time were not only Aboul Fotouh and al-Ariyan, but also Abu Ala Madhi, Mahmoud Ghazlan, Usam Hashish, Sana Abu Zeid and Mohamed Abdelatif among many others. Key to this process appears to have been Aboul Fotouh, one of the most prominent leaders at the time. Abu Ala Madhi claims that if not for Aboul Fotouh, he would not have joined the Ikhwan at all.59

  Although organisational links were established between the two movements in 1975, with the agreement to join forces coming around a year later, the merger was not made public until 1980. Part of the reason for this secrecy was because the al-Jama’at al-Islamiya was a loose affiliation comprising different tendencies, including those of jihadist or a more purely Salafist orientation, that were hostile to the Brotherhood. More importantly, the Ikhwan decided it would be more advantageous to get the student leaders to recruit under the al-Jama’at al-Islamiya banner as they believed this would bring more people to the cause. This was especially the case in the Al-Said and Al-Minya regions, which were dominated by the jihadist current and where the Ikhwan had almost no presence.

  After news of the merger leaked out the more militant elements, angered by the deception, broke away to form their own groups such as al-Jihad. Some of these more militant elements also kept the name al-Jama’at al-Islamiya and like al-Jihad proved willing to employ violence to achieve their objectives. Yet it would be wrong to assume that these student activists who had joined the Ikhwan were averse to the principle of violence. Many of them were fully accepting of the idea of using force to achieve their objectives. Where they differed from the other groups was in their views on when and how it should be used. As Aboul Fotouh explains: ‘Our rejection of violence wasn’t on principle … violence was acceptable and the difference [with the others] was only in its timing and utility.’60 This way of thinking was of course directly in line with that of those more militant elements within the Brotherhood. Aboul Fotouh also acknowledges that there was a current within the Ikhwan which shared this position until 1984 when the Brotherhood had a major reassessment and decided to condemn the use of violence. Yet it is notable that even though the Brotherhood leadership, which had by this point passed to Omar al-Tilimsani, was opposed to violence, it was prepared to take in these young student cadres as a means of bolstering the organisation.

  And bolster it they did. Through this highly strategic move the Ikhwan succeeded in bringing a whole new base into the movement that had until that point consisted primarily of a leadership with no one to lead. Aboul Fotouh clarifies: ‘We were an organisation before we delivered it to the Ikhwani and they became the leaders of it. The Ikhwan was a house that the young of al-Jama’at al-Islamiya filled and pumped new blood into.’61 Some of the young students who joined the Ikhwan at this time were astonished to discover just how empty a shell the Brotherhood was. Abu Ala Madhi says: ‘When we joined we were shocked to find it was hollow inside. The leaders had cheated us and told us they were the biggest jama’a [group] and had their traditions but when we joined we found it to be empty. In the Al-Minya governate when we joined we discovered there wasn’t a single member of the Ikhwan in it.’62

  It is perhaps because of the fact that they were already leaders in their own right and because they had built up such a large populist movement – which essentially saved the Ikhwan – that this group somehow retained a sense of their own importance and a belief that they had a major stake in deciding the Ikhwan’s future. As Abu Ala Madhi declares: ‘Our generation did a big favour to the Brotherhood and without us it would have died.’63 As a result this group had a sense of their own importance and it made them less willing to adopt the blind obedience that had so characterised the Brotherhood under al-Banna.

  In addition, this group were far more politicised than the former cadres of the Ikhwan and they gave the Brotherhood a new sense of urgency. This urgency was of course fuelled by the 1979 Iranian revolution, which had proved that an Islamic state was possible, and by the growing tide of Islamic consciousness that was sweeping the Islamic world. Furthermore, this generation was used to working openly and was unconstrained by the same sense of secrecy and fear that characterised those leaders who had spent so many years in prison. As one analyst describes: ‘Their experience was different from that of the sheikhs of the Nizam al-Khass who had grown up in hiding, in the ritual of secrecy and in detention.’64 They also differed from their predecessors in that they sought to take the Ikhwan in a new direction, moving away somewhat from ideological and theological issues to focus more on practical socio-economic challenges such as poverty or corruption. Aboul Fotouh became an ardent critic of the Sadat regime publishing outspoken criticisms not only of its lack of Islamic values but also of its corruption and its inability to meet the everyday needs of the population. This group were essentially political players for whom the excitement of the political scene appears to have been as important as the religious dimension.

  Having gained direct political experience through their involvement in student unions, this group saw an opportunity in the unions and professional syndicates. Aboul Fotouh, Abu Ala Madhi and al-Ariyan all became well-known activists in the professional syndicates during the 1980s. This highly pragmatic group proved willing to enter what were ostensibly secular organisations through elections in order to consolidate their influence. Their dominance of these institutions enabled the Ikhwan to address the concerns of the middle classes more directly, attracting greater numbers to the cause.65 They also began reaching out to people more directly by offering welfare services such as setting up free clinics to provide medical treatment to students plugging the gaps where the state was so woefully inadequate.

  As t
he 1980s progressed this group began pushing for more direct participation in the political system. Although they had started out sharing the more hawkish ideology of the Nizam al-Khass, by the early 1980s it seems that they had become convinced by the arguments of Omar al-Tilimsani. Although al-Tilimsani, appointed as Murshid in 1977, was originally conceived as a front man for the Ikhwan behind whom the Nizam al-Khass would pull the strings, it appears that he was able to impose himself on the organisation more than Hassan al-Hodeibi was ever able to do. Al-Tilimsani brought back more traditionalist figures such as Farid Abdel Khaliq into the Guidance Office, where they acted as a counterweight to figures such as Mustafa Mashour. The Murshid also seems to have been able to bring people around to his way of thinking and his belief that the best means of achieving the movement’s goals was through participating in the political arena. According to Barot, ‘He attracted a great number of those who are now in the reformist current of the group including … Abu Ala Madhi and Aboul Fotouh. This generation brought the group [Brotherhood] to the core of Egyptian political life despite the fact that it was still illegal.’66 A similar view was expressed by Egyptian brother and former head of the Al-Taqwa bank, Youssef Nada, who remarked, ‘Omar al-Tilimsani brought the Ikhwan back to life.’67

  Ironically the Murshid’s task of steering the movement down a more moderate path was made easier by the fact that after President Mubarak came to power in 1981 following Sadat’s assassination, the regime carried out a major clampdown of the Ikhwan, resulting in a number of key figures from the Nizam al-Khass (including Mustafa Mashour) fleeing abroad. The removal of this more militant group from the scene enabled these reformist characters to seek a greater and more direct engagement with the practical issues of politics. As one member of the Ikhwan recalls, ‘By the 1980s the demand for Sharia had receded and was replaced by calls for freedom to establish political parties and join elections and have newspapers etc.’68 Of course these calls were in part a response to the prevailing political conditions of the day and the fact that the new President made it clear that the only way to play a part in the country’s political life would be to join in the system of political parties. Mubarak’s Electoral Law of 1983, which ruled that political activism would be restricted to the realms of political parties that had been sanctioned by the Parties’ Committee, forced the Ikhwan to think in a different way. This posed a serious dilemma for the Brotherhood. In line with the ideology of al-Banna, they were essentially averse to the idea of party politics. Moreover, they were all too aware that their strength on the popular level at least had always derived from the fact that they were about more than just politics. Indeed, they were so successful because they were a jama’a (group) that blended politics with being a religious and cultural social movement. The leadership had further to consider the repercussions of such a move outside of Egypt, given that they were leading an international organisation that looked to them for guidance and example. Local concerns could never be entirely disassociated from the restraints of the international arena. Perhaps even more importantly, the Ikhwan knew that it was highly unlikely that the powers would countenance the establishment of such a party.