Muslim brotherhood history

Transnational Sunni Islamist organization

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The Society of the Muslim Brothers (Arabic: جماعة الإخوان المسلمينJamāʿat al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn), better known as the Muslim Brotherhood (الإخوان المسلمونal-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn) is a transnational SunniIslamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna in Al-Banna's teachings spread far beyond Egypt, influencing various Islamist movements from charitable organizations to political parties.

Initially, as a Pan-Islamic, religious, and social movement, it preached Islam in Egypt, taught the illiterate, and set up hospitals and business enterprises. It later advanced into the political arena, aiming to end British colonial control of Egypt. The movement's self-stated aim is the establishment of a state ruled by sharia law under a caliphate–its most famous slogan is "Islam is the solution". Charity is a major aspect of its work.

The group spread to other Muslim countries but still has one of its largest organizations in Egypt, despite a succession of government crackdowns since It remained a fringe group in the politics of the Arab World until the Six-Day War, when Islamism managed to replace popular secular Arab nationalism after a resounding Arab defeat by Israel. The movement was also supported by Saudi Arabia, with which it shared mutual enemies like communism.

The Arab Spring brought it legalization and substantial political power at first, but as of it has suffered severe reversals. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was legalized in and won several elections, including the presidential election when its candidate Mohamed Morsi became Egypt's first president to gain power through an election. A year later, follow

Since its founding in by Hassan al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood has been controversial. The group, which has active and public chapters in many countries around the world, has, over the decades, developed an immunity against annihilation. Even as a quasi-clandestine organization, it exerted great influence in Egyptian and regional politics. For a series of Egyptian autocrats, the Muslim Brotherhood, with its reach and popularity, was a hidden threat that needed to be managed. Those authoritarians jailed tens of thousands over the years. For generations of wronged and alienated Brotherhood members in Egypt, the movement provided a foundation for political action, and held the promise of a different kind of society and government.

After the January revolution, the Brotherhood finally had its chance to govern. But governing required different strengths from leading the opposition, and after some failures and in the face of much hostility from other nodes of Egyptian power, the Brotherhood lost credibility. In July , just a year after the Brotherhood took power, the Egyptian military staged a coup, ousted the president, Mohamed Morsi, and crushed the group. The army killed hundreds of Brotherhood activists in the streets, and arrested tens of thousands of others. (Morsi died in June , while in custody.)

The coup and crackdown left the Brotherhood adrift, perhaps more so than it ever had been in its ninety-two-year history. Nevertheless, it has been able to survive, in large part because thousands of members fled the country and continue to lead the organization from abroad. Though extant, however, the organization is forever changed. For those who appreciate the Brotherhood’s importance to Egyptian and regional history, the group’s new situation poses burning questions: What shape will it take in the future? Will it continue to be an Egyptian organization?

Finding the answer to these questions requires a deeper understanding of the Brotherhood’s current circumsta

The Muslim Brotherhood and Jama’at-i Islami are separate movements that tend to draw the bulk of their members from different ethnic groups (Arabs and South Asians, respectively). Nevertheless, both groups are rooted in a political ideology, frequently described as “Islamist,” that calls for the establishment of a distinctly Islamic system of government.

The Muslim Brotherhood is without question the world’s most influential modern Islamist organization. Founded in Egypt in by schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna, the group advocates the embrace of Islam as a way to promote both personal development and broader social reform. Initially a religious and social organization, the Muslim Brotherhood quickly became politicized. Its ideology, which calls for establishing Islamic states based on shari’a (or Islamic) law, became the basis for virtually all Islamist movements. The group’s standard slogan, “Islam is the solution,” expresses the movement’s emphasis on the systematic application of Islam to all facets of life.

Soon after it was founded, the Muslim Brotherhood spread beyond the confines of Egypt, eventually establishing branches in nearly every country in the Arab world. In addition, it also provided the ideological basis for a number of other prominent Islamist movements outside the Arab world, including the Pakistan-based group Jama’at-i Islami, broadly translated as “Islamic society.”

By the s, the secular nationalist regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt came to view the politicized Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood as a major threat to the security of the Egyptian state, and suspected members of the group were imprisoned and in some cases tortured. In the decades that followed, governments in other countries where the movement had a following, including Syria, Iraq and Tunisia, began similar crackdowns on the Muslim Brotherhood, prompting many members of the group to seek refuge in Franc

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Muslim Brothers
Muslim Brotherhood
al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin
Jama'at al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun
Hizb Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimoon
al-Ikhwan ("The Brothers")

"Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."�Muslim Brotherhood

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in by Hasan al-Banna, a year-old elementary school teacher, as an Islamic revivalist movement following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent ban of the caliphate system of government that had united the Muslims for hundreds of years. Al-Banna based his ideas that Islam was not only a religious observance, but a comprehensive way of life, on the tenets of Wahhabism, better known today as "Islamism", and he supplemented the traditional Islamic education for the Society's male students with jihadia training.

The Brotherhood grew as a popular movement over the next 20 years, encompassing not only religion and education, but also politics, through the Party of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimoon. It blamed the Egyptian government for being passive against "Zionists" and joined the Palestinian side in the war against Israel; and started performing terrorist acts inside of Egypt, which led to a ban on the movement by the Egyptian government. A Muslim Brother assassinated the Prime Minister of Egypt, Mahmud Fahmi Nokrashi, on December 28, Al-Banna himself was killed by government agents in Cairo in February,

The Egyptian government legalized the Brotherhood again in , but only as a religious organization; it was banned again in because it insisted that Egypt be governed under shari'a (Islamic law).

Abdul Munim Abdul Rauf, a Brotherhood activist, attempted to assassinate Egyptian President Nasser in and was executed, along with five other Brothers. Four thousand Brothers were also arrested, and thousands more