What is the Muslim Brotherhood?
Founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood, also referred to as the Brotherhood, is the world’s oldest and largest religious-political organization, formed to resist the secularization of areas that were formerly under Islamic Ottoman rule. The core principle of the Muslim Brotherhood is that Islam is not only a religion, but a way of life. Initially, the Muslim Brotherhood was a movement that included education and religion, however when the organization disagreed with the Egyptian government’s passive treatment of Zionists, it ventured into political territory when it began to support the Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Al-Banna’s brother, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Banna, was responsible for the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestinian territories. At this time the Brotherhood used terrorism within Egypt as a tool of expression, causing the Egyptian government to ban the organization for a short time. When the ban was lifted in 1948, the Mus
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna in Egypt. It calls for Islamic domination of all nations under Muslim law, to be carried out by violent jihad or all other means. A 1991 document revealed the Muslim Brotherhood’s view of the strategy to be employed in North America: “The Muslim Brotherhood must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated, and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” Hamas, the jihadist organization currently ruling the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, is a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot, as is the Gaza-based Doghmush clan’s Army of Islam terrorist group. Similarly, Al-Qaeda’s leader Osama Bin-Laden’s mentor was a graduate of the Muslim Brotherhood, as is al-Qaeda’s number two Ayman al-Zawahiri.
“They [the Muslim Brotherhood] represent the original semiclandestine Islamic political party and have created offshoots and branches throughout the mashriq, or Eastern Arab world. Theirs is the literature and the ideas, principal among them Sayyid Qutb’s Ma’alim fil Tariq, 1964 (Signposts Along the True Way), which pioneered the use of jahiliyya [‘pagan ignorance and rebellion against God’] as a term of contemporary description. In the Occupied Territories [West Bank & Gaza Strip], Hamas is a local branch of the Brotherhood… In Egypt and Jordan (and to some extent in Palestine) the Brotherhood, in the minds of many, has a symbiotic relationship with the government. In Jordan, for example, they have a considerable number of parliamentary seats and to the more nationalist-minded Islamists are remembered for their use by the king as buffers against Arab nationalism and Abdel Nasser. A similar configuration exists between the Brotherhood and the Egyptian government. Despite its confusin
