The Muslim Brotherhood is a profound analysis by the American political scientist Carrie Rosefsky Wickham of the evolution of Egypt's best-organized and oldest Islamist movement from its founding in 1928 to the inauguration of Mohammed Morsi as president in 2012. Founded by Hasan Al-Bana in Egypt in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood is the flagship organization of Sunni revivalist Islam and has been in existence longer than any other contemporary Islamist group in the Arab world. In the beginning of the 462-page book, Mrs Wickham points out to the fact that the Brotherhood, at the time of its formation, was just one of several religious societies seeking to reinforce popular adherence to Islam and combat the threat posed by the spread of Western cultural values and lifestyles. The first brutal repression experienced by the Brotherhood took place in the era of Gamal Abdel Naser, who issued the first dissolution degree targeting the group and its assets. The assassination attempt on his life in January 1954 was the straw that broke the camel's back. Although the Brotherhood's leadership condemned the attack and denied any prior knowledge of it, the assassination attempt gave Nasser the pretext he needed to crush the organization. His government alleged that the Brotherhood aimed to overthrow the regime and seize power for itself. The crackdown, which included the destruction of its headquarters and the arrest of hundreds of its leaders, culminated in the hanging of six of its members. Mrs Wickham blames the iron-fist of the Naserist state, which made the Brotherhood its prime target, for the radicalization of its members and the emergence of extremist ideologues; chiefly Sayyid Qutb. The latter authored in his prison cell a book that became a basic reference for all Islamists around the globe. In Ma'alim fii al-Tariq or Signposts Along the Path, Qutb exhorted Muslim youth to form a vanguard ready to launch a holy war or jihad against the modern jahili (ignorant) system and all who supported it, with the ultimate objective of establishing a system based on the laws of God. In fact, several militant Islamist cells emerged later drawing inspiration from the radical thought of Qutb and embraced the practice of takfir (the act of designation a nominally Muslim individual, group, or government insufficiently committed to Islam as a kafir or non-believer). These militant groups then revolted against the Brotherhood and questioned their leaders' religious commitments. There was a major policy shift after the death of Naser in 1970 and his succession by his deputy Mohammed Anwar el-Sadat, who granted a general amnesty to the Brotherhood and released its members from prison in stages. He also encouraged the group's leaders living in exile to return home. Sadat, the writer says, portrayed himself as a religious leader whose overture to the Brothers reflected his hope that the group would pose a counterweight to the Naserist left, which he viewed as the grater challenge to his authority at that time. Under Sadat, the Brotherhood was permitted to publish its own journal but lacked formal recognition as either a jami'iyya (association) or a political party. Then came the landmark 1976 when six of Brotherhood members won for the first time seats in parliament when they ran as independents. But Egypt's peace treaty with Israel in 1979 was the first clash between Sadat and Brotherhood leaders, who opposed the treaty as they considered Jews and Israel as inherently enemies of Islam and the Muslim people. After Sadat's assassination in 1981, the writer traces the group's re-entry into parliament, and professional associations, and faculty clubs from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s and demonstrate how its leaders justified the groups' participation in electoral politics in an ‘un-Islamic' regime. The professional associations in particular like the syndicates were used by the writer to show how they became important ‘sites' of contact between Brotherhood members and secular public figures and that the cross-partisan interactions within them helped nurture the formation of a new ‘reformist trend' within the group's ranks. So one of the central objectives of this book is to highlight the emergence of a new ‘reformist' trend within the Brotherhood, which refers here not to the reform of society and state but the reform of the self. Mrs Wickham writes: "Though still committed to the ultimate goal of establishing a political system based on Shari'ah, Islamists affiliated with the ‘reformist' trend have begun to articulate a different version of what this would mean in practice." The book explains how and why growing internal tensions led to a rift in the Brotherhood's ranks in the mid-1990s with the formation of the Wasat (Center) party by a breakaway group of reformist leaders. The writer says she is particularly struck by the fact that many of the Brotherhood leaders she interviewed over the years emphasized how dramatically their worldviews and priorities had changed over time. This trend was pronounced among younger-generation Islamists, then in their thirties and forties, who had begun openly question the positions and practices of their elders. But the writer came to realize that from one perspective, the rhetoric and behavior of Brotherhood members and more generally Islamist groups are open to change, but the fundamental character of the movement is not. "Hence their statements in favor of democracy, pluralism, and equal citizenship rights can be dismissed as a form of strategic posturing, designed to mask their radical intentions behind a moderate veneer. Likewise, Islamist groups' support for democratic procedures can be discounted as purely self-serving, since such procedures offer them a means to convert their mass support into political power," Mrs Wickham says. One of the key characteristics of the Brotherhood is self-restraint. The group has shown over the years pragmatic self-restraint as it is driven by the desire to gain social acceptance. Such considerations have led the group to "soft-pedal" its calls for Shari'ah rule by postponing it far into the future and/or by redefining it as the application of a general set of principles rather than equating it with the imposition of traditional rulings inherited from the past. The writer analyzes the path taken by the Brotherhood during the final decade of the Mubarak era and especially how the group tried to navigate an unforgiving political environment yielded a zigzag course, with "periods of bold self-assertion followed by periods of retreat." She highlight the waning influence of the reformist trend within the Brotherhood and how the old guards of the group's Shura Council managed to achieve a near total monopoly of power in the Guidance Bureau, and the growing influence of the Salafi trend among the members of its base. The writer further traces the role the Brotherhood in the 2011 revolution and the course it pursued after the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) assumed power and launched a transition to a new political order. Mrs Wickham writes: "Although that the Brotherhood did not lead the uprising, it ended up as one of its greatest beneficiaries. While moving quickly to form a party and gear up for parliamentary elections in the fall, the Brotherhood took pains to emphasize that it sought to ‘participate, not dominate' the new political institutions that would be seated by popular vote." The book also explains in great detail the pushback suffered by the Brotherhood from the institutions of the ‘deep state' carried over from the Mubarak era. "The Brotherhood has thus been forced to walk a fine line, attempting to defend its mandate to govern without provoking a backlash that could place the transition – and its own gains – at risk," she said. It is worthy of mentioning that the book does not cover the downfall of the Brotherhood after the ouster of Morsi following mass protests against his single year in power. In sum, the writer's message is that the Brotherhood began as an organization outside and against the political order. Its goal was not to seize power for itself but to launch a broad process of social reform that would lead eventually and inevitably to the establishment of an Islamic state. Owing in part to the Brotherhood's emphasis on action over ideology, its conception of Islamic rule remained vague and ill defined, famed less as a particular form of government than as a utopian end state offering a panacea to all of the problems confronting the Muslim community. The book is indeed a must read and Islamist Gate cannot highlight all of its useful and important pages in just one review. The website's staff will publish in the coming days several quotes from the book in the ‘Quotes' section. Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, A.B., Harvard College; M.A., Ph.D. (1996), Princeton University. Specialization: Politics of developing countries, with a regional focus on the Middle East. Her current research examines the origins of political opposition in authoritarian settings, focusing on the rise of Islamic activism in Egypt and other Arab states. Other research seeks to identify the conditions for the political integration of "anti-system" parties in the Arab world, based on intra-regional and cross-regional comparison. Teaching interests include Third World politics; Middle East Politics; Islam and Politics; Democratic Transitions; and Comparative Social Movements.
