Islamic fundamentalism, or Islamic radicalism, has its roots in the so-called “Muslim Brotherhood” ( Al Ikhwan Al Muslim ) , organization founded by Hassan Al-Banna in Egypt, in 1929. In recent years, the name of the Muslim Brotherhood has been aired in various media outlets due to events such as the Arab Spring and the Civil War in Syria. Defending the Sharia (Islamic Law) and the extremist interpretation of Jihad , Holy War for Islam, are fundamental characteristics of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Al-Banna's organization emerged after the fall of the Ottoman Turkish Empire in 1924, a political organization that gave unity to the Muslim Arabs. Al-Banna was an Egyptian professor who denounced the situation in which the Islamic community found itself at the beginning of the 20th century, which, for him, could abandon its values and conduct after the fall of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. He then intended to bring about moral and spiritual reform in the Middle East and North Africa, revisiting the Quran and radically interpreting Quranic principles.
In the 1940s, the Muslim Brotherhood had over 500,000 members. One of the characteristics of this period was the fight against the presence of foreign European influence in Egypt and the project of building a caliphate (Isamic state inspired by the first heirs of Mohammed), which would unify the Arab nations. In 1948, the Muslim Brotherhood participated in the war against Israel. However, that same year he tried a coup against the Egyptian monarchy, which was repulsed by government forces. The “Muslim brothers” retaliated by assassinating the prime minister, Pasha. From then on, the Egyptian government began to persecute the Muslim Brotherhood leaders and assassinated Al-Banna on February 12, 1949.
After the assassination of its founder, a new leader emerged in the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, even more radical than Al-Banna. Qutb had lived in the United States and Europe and was familiar with the Western way of life. His hatred for the West developed mainly after the support that democratic countries, such as the USA, gave to the creation of the Jewish state in Palestine. He entered the Muslim Brotherhood with the aim of putting into practice his ideas, developed mainly in the books “The Landmarks” and “Our fight against the Jews”.
The fundamental concept developed by Qutb was jahilya , which means ignorance, or revolt. Revolt on the part of Western peoples who, according to Qutb, had perverted the values and morals arising from religion. Islamic radicalism was born out of this understanding that Qutb developed. Freedoms and rights, according to this ideologue, come from God (Allah) and are contained in the Quran, from which the Sharia is interpreted. , a set of expressly anti-democratic laws. Another characteristic of the Muslim Brotherhood is pan-Islamism, which presupposes Jihad Islam, that is, the “holy war” against the kind of behavior that does not take into account the Islamic tradition and the precepts of the Qur'an.
Currently, the Muslim Brotherhood operates in countries such as Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan among others. The radical Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and Al-Qaeda, responsible for the 9/11 attacks, as well as the Islamic State, which operates between Iraq and Syria, have their ideological foundation in Sayyid Qutb's ideas and support from a large part of the members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
*Image Credits:Shutterstock and Mohamed Elsayyed