Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution, the Umma - Research Paper Example

? Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution, the Umma Table of Contents I. Introduction 3 II. The Muslim Brotherhood 6 A. Shifts in Conception of Identity through Time 6 B. The Muslim Brotherhood as a Global Movement 8 C. The Muslim Brotherhood as Representing Conservative Islam 9 D. The Umma 10 Works Cited 13 I. Introduction This paper discusses the Muslim Brotherhood, the evolution of its identity through time and its general history, and includes a discussion of its Umma program. The Muslim Brotherhood defines itself as a group whose aims are the promotion of progress that are founded on references that are Islamic in nature (The Muslim Brotherhood). The literature notes that the Muslim Brotherhood has positioned itself within the very center of a movement to revive Islam and to essentially lead what amounts to a global solidarity movement whose aims are to root the Islamic religion at the heart of a global political movement. One of the goals is power and the installation of Muslim leadership in the Islamic states, and certainly the ambition according to analyses is pan-Islamist, meaning that it is not restricted to just one geography but imagines the brotherhood as bridging national boundaries and having a global character. The thorough Islamization of the whole individual and social personality of the Muslim Brotherhood convert is a key aspect of its indoctrination process, starting from the individual personality becoming rooted in the Islamic mold, to the establishment of a Muslim-based family, to pushing that Muslim individual personality out into the wider community and society, through to making sure that the state and the government that he belongs to becomes thoroughly and exclusively Islamic. Here the primacy of the Umma enters, with the Umma being defined as that general, global community of the believers of Islam in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, The Umma, in this sense, is that social body made up of the members of the Muslim Brotherhood and the general Islamic populations all over the world. That Umma is both a social body and an end that is to be the subject of a restoration effort where the Umma becomes the embodiment of the ascent of the Muslim Brotherhood into world power. One view of the Muslim Brotherhood is that of a political movement with Islam retooled from its religious contexts and used instead as a political ideology to power the drive to power of the entire organization (Haqqani; Kingsley; Dreyfuss; Hansen). To be sure, the political aspects of the work of the Muslim Brotherhood were not always central to the work that it did, having had a phase in its history when the Muslim Brotherhood focused its efforts on non-political, social agendas such as the provision of schools, hospitals, and medical dispensaries all over the Muslim world. That said, its essential character as an organization that has given birth to Islamist, or militant Islam movements based on Sunni roots, in different parts of the world, remained part of what the Muslim Brotherhood came to be identified with. This is true from its early years and extends all the way back to its founding in 1928. As the oldest such group that aimed to put Islamic law at the center of an effort to organize the world according to Islamic contexts, it had always been known to meld political action with social action and the references to religion to advance its aims. On the other hand, its early history was marked by an ascendancy based on the identification of western powers in the Arab world as enemies that needed to be rooted out, in the process building a support base among a section of the intellectual elite, and the lower portion of the middle class in those societies. For the Muslim Brotherhood the whole vision of an Islamic world context is out of sync with Western models of governments and the economy, and so the latter had to be displaced, politically and with the use of force if necessary, which is what it did use many times throughout its somewhat chaotic history. Its drive to power gained legitimacy in the aftermath of the Arab Spring in 2011, the movement that deposed Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak out of power and which installed the Muslim Brotherhood at the top of political power in Egypt for a short time, together with its chosen President in Mohammed Morsi. That political victory would be short-lived, however, as Morsi himself would be deposed in the middle of 2013, and thousands of members of the Muslim Brotherhood would be the subject of a nationwide crackdown (Laub; BBC; Braude; Stakelbeck). The key tenets of the character of the Muslim Brotherhood as it was understood in the West and by other nations in the Arab world include the fundamentally Islamist nature of its ideology, and here by Islamist is meant a more militant form of Islam that also justifies the use of violence and arms to secure its aims. Those aims are founded on a strict formulation of Islam that is not only religious but moreover has very strong political flavors, and that strong flavor spills over into a militant kind of Islam that also has had extremist tendencies in the past. When the Arab Spring therefore brought about the downfall of the old Mubarak regime and the installation of the new Muslim Brotherhood-backed President in Morsi, it was also seen as the whole of the Arab world being signaled with regard to the rise to political power of a group that had a decidedly radical and Islamist, fundamentalist bent. By fundamentalist is meant a contrast to a more moderate and liberal form of Islam that is more inclusive and takes into account the more spiritual and tolerant forms of Islam as it is practiced in many countries in the Arab world. On the other hand, the Muslim Brotherhood then and during the time of its ascent to power in Egypt in 2011 maintained a conception of its identity as being rooted in the Islamic conception of a world order, the centrality of Islamic law and Islamic contexts for a world order, and a politics that is rooted in insisting on governments that are decidedly Islamic in their flavor and their intent (Wickham; Zollner; Zahid; Al-Khatib; Al- Mdaires). II. The Muslim Brotherhood A. Shifts in Conception of Identity through Time The Muslim Brotherhood as it was set up in 1928 by Hassan Al-Banna, or Banna, who would found the group on highly spiritual precepts of wanting to spread the religious aspects of Islam, even as that would quickly morph to have explicit political tones in a short span of time. The morphing would coincide with a rapid growth in membership throughout the Arab world, to the point of being able to amass a membership of half a million people in Egypt alone a mere decade after its founding. The DNA of those early years was structural, and consisted of a Muslim Brotherhood chapter having a school, a mosque, and a club for sports. While this was being set up, the Muslim Brotherhood also formed a group that would counter the British in Egypt on its own military terms, and this was what gave the Muslim Brotherhood a militant slant from the very first years of its existence. Egypt’s government would try to shut down the Muslim Brotherhood two decades after its founding, with suspicions that the group was actively engaging the British in military combat. By 1954 too, having been implicated in a murder plot against Nasser, the group would be the subject of a crackdown with members by the thousands being the subject of mass imprisonments and tortures. It was out of these early crackdowns that an influential member would encourage the group to grow in an underground fashion, while espousing an ideology of political struggle with the use of arms. It was Sayyid Qutb, whose writings would form the ideological underpinning of Islamist militant groups such as the Al Qaeda and Islamic Jihad. By the middle of 2005, moreover, the Muslim Brotherhood had become part of the mainstream of politics in Egypt once more, having won substantial representation in the country’s legislature, and having formed a formidable opposition challenge to the government of Mubarak. In the wake of Mubarak’s overthrow in 2011, a Muslim Brotherhood-backed party known as the Freedom and Justice Part or FJP would gain control of the elective posts in the Assembly, and this paved the way for the rise to power of Morsi. Dissent would immediately grow against Morsi as it became clear that he was unable to restore order and jumpstart government processes and the economy, and the overthrow of Morsi would also lead to the undermining of the just-sprouting influence and power of the FJP and the Muslim Brotherhood behind it (BBC). We see from this history and from tracing the fate of the Muslim Brotherhood through the years that its fortunes in Egypt had been mixed and its successes likewise not clear cut and sustained. Its early victories and successes at being able to grab power were short-lived. Consequently what stands is that of a Muslim Brotherhood being defined by its history also to bring about major changes in the way it viewed its essential character and what it stood for. Out of the persecution through the decades came a new vision of itself as jihadist for the Islamist cause of an Islamic world order. Being underground and militant, working in the shadows, and often in opposition to the existing powers in Egypt and elsewhere, meant also that it would operate in the shadows and would use extra-legal means to achieve its goals. Other sources documenting a version of history after the Arab Spring likewise have similar views on the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood identity and how it has morphed out of necessity and out of a desire to achieve power in the political sphere. Here we see for instance that the drafting of a Constitution that did not have popular support when Morsi came to power, by interests that are aligned with the interests of the Muslim Brotherhood, made sense in the context of the grab to power of the Muslim Brotherhood. The misstep here was that the Muslim Brotherhood, through Morsi, tried to come up with a draft Constitution that favored the vision of an Islamist state in Egypt, with the Muslim Brotherhood being at the forefront, even if there was no popular support for that vision in Egypt, and even when Morsi needed to shore up support for a new government after Mubarak. It can be argued that the conflicts in vision and political necessity were a signature aspect of the identity of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was militant and it went against the grain of the mainstream, and it fell into shambles in Egypt for precisely those reasons (Kingsley). B. The Muslim Brotherhood as a Global Movement Elsewhere too, in its international arm for example and the progress that it was able to make in geographies and territories in the Arab world and in the west, outside of Egypt, one is able to grasp another aspect of the identity of the Muslim Brotherhood. This aspect of the identity of the Muslim Brotherhood is pronounced and a source of admiration and pride for both members in Egypt as well as in other states where groups such as the Hamas in Palestine openly modeling themselves in terms of ideology and organization to the Muslim Brotherhood. It is noted that the Hamas is the brainchild of members of the Muslim Brotherhood. In Tunisia, the Ennahda, which has been successful in claiming mainstream power, openly admires and emulates the Muslim Brotherhood in those aspects too, with the members of that ruling political group having their roots in the Muslim Brotherhood. In Syria, in Libya, and in Kuwait, the Muslim Brotherhood also has considerable membership and following, attesting to that successful, pan-Arab aspect of the identity that the Muslim Brotherhood has been able to forge throughout its decades-long existence (Kingsley; Dreyfuss; Zahid; Al-Khatib). C. The Muslim Brotherhood as Representing Conservative Islam There are aspects of the identity of the Muslim Brotherhood too, relating to its championing of conservative Islam founded on the establishment of Islamic or Sharia law, as intractable and non-changing through time. One aspect of that identity that has stayed the same through the many decades of political action and a relentless drive to power is this aspect of using Islam as a way to organize society along a vision of a conservative Sharia regime, in the same vein as that of Saudi Arabia, for instance. Its ideology is Islamic in nature, and that extends to its adherence of conservative Islamic political and social structures. It can be said for instance that this insistence on a unifying conservative Islamic world view, adherence to the Sharia law and the centrality of the Koran as the basis of a social order, is part of the core DNA of what the Muslim Brotherhood stands for from religious, theological, and philosophical perspectives. This stance defined the Muslim Brotherhood to such an extent that it was able to differentiate itself from communists in the Arab world, to cite just one example. To counter a communist ideological surge in the Arab world, the Muslim Brotherhood made use of the Koran and the Sharia law as a rallying cry, generating as a result the support of similarly conservatively inclined regimes, such as the Sauds of Saudi Arabia. It can be said that even its recent debacle in Egypt was partly the result of the Muslim Brotherhood wanting to institute a harsh Sharia state in Egypt via a Constitution that effectively tried to bring that into being. Moreover, its conservative Islamic stance had won for it, in the early years, the financial and political backing of the Sauds in Saudi Arabia, even as Saudi Arabia insisted on keeping the Muslim Brotherhood out of its territories for arguably political reasons. Be that as it may, its alignment ideologically with strict fundamentalist Islamist forces got the Muslim Brotherhood into the good graces of ultra-conservative Islamic groups within the Arab world (Stakelbeck; Wickham; Kingsley; BBC, Haqqani). D. The Umma The literature cites many different conceptions of the Umma even within the leadership and insider ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood, with the common threads centering on the Umma as the nation or community of those who believe in Islam, and those who share a common cultural heritage with the rest of the Arab world, to include even non-Muslims in a liberal sense. These are varying strains in the conception of the Arab society in the vision of the Muslim Brotherhood, even as the strong Muslim fundamentalist streak is also prevalent in some of the other definitions. On the other hand, there are also conceptions of the Umma as being pan-Arabic in nature, crossing boundaries of states and spilling from Muslim Brotherhood groupings in Egypt for instance and spreading to other Arab countries. In the previous discussion a pan-Arabic conception of the Umma would include the many different groups that derive their inspiration and their roots from the Muslim Brotherhood, to include elements of the Hamas in Palestine, the Ennahda in Tunisia, and various other satellite groups of the Muslim Brotherhood in places such as Syria. Of the mutation of the concept of Umma from this liberal community as conceived by some insiders in the Muslim Brotherhood to the stricter ,militant and pan-Arabic notions of Umma as it has come to exist in places such as Syria, there is a common thread with the identity shifts in the Muslim Brotherhood itself. In the early discussions in this paper it has been shown that throughout its history the Muslim Brotherhood has seemed to have this double identity, one identity moderate and pushing for religious and social causes, and the other underground, dogmatic, militant, and leaning towards the use of violence in attempts to grab and hold on to power. In discussions on the Umma there seems to be the same two-faced reality being operative, as if the softer social and inclusive Umma is the good side of a two-headed reality where the militant and sometimes borderline-terroristic Umma of the international network of the Muslim Brotherhood is the movement’s dark side (Stakelbeck; Wickham; Kingsley; BBC, Haqqani; Braude; Laub). In Braude for instance we see the dark side of the Umma, or the Ummah as it is called in other countries, in operation. The words associated with this latter Ummah are jihad, terroristic, and armed struggle. Keen observers note that this Ummah, when coddled by leadership in countries like Syria which have strong militant tendencies, are encouraged with regard to their more dangerous leanings, and this is where the threat to other nations lies. An aspect of the identity of the Muslim Brotherhood is this dark side let loose too, as has been the case throughout its history where the group had been shown to have had a hand in the perpetration of political killings and terroristic acts in the name of a political struggle and a perennial drive to wrestle control of the political reins of power in various parts of the world. In places like Syria, the morphing of the ideas of the social and inclusive Umma into the militant and aggressive Ummah is done under the guise of extending the gains of the Arab Spring and leveraging the philosophical strengths of the Umma for non-peaceful, decidedly aggressive purposes. Again, even with regard to the Umma as a religious community when first conceived, there is a morphing of the tenets and the functions of that Umma into forms that are more in line with the aims of a militarist Muslim Brotherhood. The allies are of the same bent as well (Braude; Laub; Wickham; Al-Khatib; Al- Mdaires). To state it differently, the evolution of the concept and political reality of the Umma reflects the inner dynamic and the core identity characteristics of the Muslim Brotherhood itself. While benevolent and inclusive, and religious, in its social conception, its flipside is that aspect of its use by Islamists to further more militant, dogmatic, conservative and aggressive. The Umma and its progeny in Egypt and various parts of the Arab world, including in Syria, are as much a product of the designs of those who are in positions of leadership as they are also the product of the same dynamics of identity that define the way of being of the Muslim Brotherhood itself (Stakelbeck; Wickham; Kingsley; BBC, Haqqani; Braude; Laub). Works Cited Al-Khatib, Ibrahim. The Muslim Brotherhood and Palestine. 2012. Scribe Digital. Al-Mdaires, Falah A. Islamic Extremism in Kuwait: From the Muslim Brotherhood to Al-Qaeda and other Islamic Political Groups. 2010. Routledge. BBC. “Profile: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood”. BBC News Middle East. 20 August 2013. Web. 30 November 2013. Braude, Joseph. “The Muslim Brotherhood’s More Frightening Offshoot”. The Atlantic. 15 July 2013. Web. 30 November 2013. Dreyfuss, Robert. “What is the Muslim Brotherhood, and Will It Take Over Egypt?” Mother Jones. 11 February 2011. Web. 30 November 2013. Hansen, Suzy. “The Economic Vision of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Millionaires”. Bloomberg Newsweek. 19 April 2012. Web. 30 November 2013. Haqqani, Husain. “The Politicization of American Islam”. Current Trends in Islamist Ideology. 18 March 2008. Web. 30 November 2013. Kingsley, Patrick. “Who are the Muslim Brotherhood?” The Guardian. 2 April 2013. Web. 30 November 2013. < http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/apr/02/who-are-the-muslim-brotherhood> Laub, Zachary. “Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood”. Council on Foreign Relations. 4 November 2013. Web. 30 November 2013. Lorenzo, Vidino. The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West. 2013. Columbia University Press. The Muslim Brotherhood. “The International Organization”. IkhwanWeb. 2011. Web. 30 November 2013. < http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=29330> Stakelbeck, Erick. The Brotherhood: America’s Next Great Enemy. 2013. Regnery Publishing. Wickham, Carrie Rosefsky. The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist Movement. 2013. Princeton University Press Zahid, Mohammed. The Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt's Succession Crisis: The Politics of Liberalisation and Reform in the Middle East. 2012. IB Tauris. Zollner, Barbara. The Muslim Brotherhood: Hasan Al-Hudaybi and Ideology. 2008. Routledge. Read More