4 pages response paper

Part 1: Compile a mental list of FIVE issues, concepts, or facts that you learned from the readings (preferably something you knew little, or nothing about) and engage in a critical examination of these five, citing appropriate peer-reviewed articles to strengthen your argument(s). In a sense, you will find a common theme around which you would write a 2-page essay, making an argument surrounding these five concepts, issues, or facts. This is NOT a reflection paper! It’s about critical engagement in the texts that you have read. Do not just list 5 concepts and define each, but rather provide a narrative, informed by peer-reviewed articles. 

Part 2: In your opinion (rooted in, and informed by, peer-reviewed academic journal articles), which is the most appropriate lens through which we should and/or should not study the Modern Middle East? Explain why, in details. (The remaining 2 pages)

Please cite and use footnotes/endnotes or in text citation (be consistent) when referring to specific pages, ideas, and quotes you read about.

Note: Please use an established citation guide (Chicago, APA, or MLA…etc.) Finally, please include a bibliography (not included in the page limit mentioned above). Feel free to consult with a librarian, and visit the writing center if you need help. Note: Do not ever cite Wikipedia! Or a random website online. Peer-reviewed journal articles are always the best to cite for obvious reasons.

SPRING 201134

GRAHAM E. FULLER n AHMED ZEWAIL

TARIQ RAMADAN n AYAAN HIRSI ALI

BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY n OLIVIER ROY

ABOLHASSAN BANI-SADR n MOHAMED DELKATESH

RAMIN JAHANBEGLOO n EVGENY MOROZOV

The Arab Revolution

The Great Arab Revolt of 2011 has moved swiftly from the peaceful overthrow of

autocrats in the nation-states of Tunisia and Egypt to brutal repression in the tribal

societies of Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen.

Meanwhile, the wired youth bulge of the Middle East that brought change

is dissipating into an impotent diaspora while the organized interests of the old

regimes and the once-suppressed Islamists charge ahead to power. This section

examines the revolt, the reaction and the power struggles in its aftermath.

Democratic Turkey Is the Template
for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood

TARIQ RAMADAN is professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford. His latest book

is The Quest for Meaning: Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism (Allen Lane). Ramadan i

s

the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928.

oxford, england — Even as the mass demonstrations began in Tunisia, who would

have thought that Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s regime would have collapsed so quickly?

Who could have predicted that Egypt would soon witness such unprecedented popu-

lar protest? A barrier has fallen. Nothing will be the same again. It is quite likely that

other countries will follow the lead of Egypt, given its central and symbolic signifi-

cance. But what will be the role of the Islamists after the collapse of the dictatorships?

The Islamist presence has for decades justified the West’s acceptance of the worst

dictatorships in the Arab world. And it was these very regimes that demonized their

Islamist opponents, particularly Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which historically rep-

resents that country’s first well-organized mass movement with the political influence

to match. For more than 60 years, the Brotherhood has been illegal but tolerated. It

has demonstrated a powerful capacity to mobilize the people in each relatively dem-

ocratic election — for trade unions, professional associations, municipalities, parlia-

ment and so on — where it has been a participant. So, are the Muslim Brothers the

rising power in Egypt and, if so, what can we anticipate of such an organization?

In the West, we have come to expect superficial analyses of political Islam in gen-

eral and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular. However, Islamism is a mosaic of

widely differing trends and factions, and its many different facets have emerged over

time and in

response to historical shifts.

The Muslim Brothers began in the 1930s as a legalist, anti-colonialist and nonvio-

lent movement that claimed legitimacy for armed resistance in Palestine against Zionist

expansionism during the period before World War II. The writings from between 1930

and 1945 of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Brotherhood, show that he opposed colo-

nialism and strongly criticized the fascist governments in Germany and Italy. He reject-

ed use of violence in Egypt, even though he considered it legitimate in Palestine, in

resistance to the Zionist Stern and Irgun terror gangs. He believed that the British par-

liamentary model represented the kind closest to Islamic principles.

Al-Banna’s objective was to found an “Islamic state” based on gradual reform,

beginning with popular education and broad-based social programs. He was assassi-

nated in 1949 by the Egyptian government on the orders of the British occupiers.

Following Gamal Abdel Nasser’s revolution in 1952, the movement was subjected to

Not only is Islamism a

mosaic of widely differing

trends and factions, but its

many different facets have

emerged over time and in

response to historical shifts.

SPRING 201142

violent repression. Several distinct trends emerged. Radicalized by their experience

of prison and torture, some of its members (who eventually left the organization)

concluded that the state had to be overthrown at all costs, even with violence. Others

remained committed to the group’s original position of gradual reform.

Many of its members were forced into exile: some in Saudi Arabia, where they

were influenced by the Saudi literalist ideology; others in countries such as Turkey and

Indonesia, Muslim-majority societies where a wide variety of communities coexist.

Still others settled in the West, where they came into direct contact with the

European tradition of democratic freedom.

Today’s Muslim Brotherhood draws these diverse visions together. But the lead-

ership of the movement — those who belong to the founding generation are now very

old — no longer fully represents the aspirations of the younger members, who are

much more open to the world, anxious to bring about internal reform and fascinated

by the Turkish example. Behind the unified, hierarchical facade, contradictory influ-

ences are at work. No one can tell which way the movement will go.

The Muslim Brotherhood was not leading the upsurge that brought down Hosni

Mubarak: It was made up of young people, of women and men who have rejected dic-

tatorship. The Muslim Brotherhood, and the Islamists in general, do not represent the

majority. There can be no doubt that they hope to participate in the democratic tran-

sition, but no one can tell which faction will emerge in a dominant position. That

makes it impossible to determine the movement’s priorities. Between the literalists

and the partisans of the Turkish way, anything can happen; the Brotherhood’s political

thinking has evolved considerably

over the past 20 years.

Neither the United States nor Europe, not to mention Israel, will easily allow the

Egyptian people to make their dream of democracy and freedom come true. The

strategic and geopolitical considerations are such that the reform movement will be,

and is already, closely monitored by US agencies in coordination with the Egyptian

army, which has played for time and assumed the crucial role of mediator.

By deciding to line up behind Mohamed ElBaradei, who has emerged as the chief

figure among the anti-Mubarak protesters, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership has sig-

naled that now is not the time to expose itself by making political demands that might

frighten the West, not to mention the Egyptian people. Caution is the watchword.

Respect for democratic principles demands that all forces which reject violence

and which respect the rule of law (both before and after elections) participate fully in

the political process. The Muslim Brotherhood must be a full partner in the process

of change — and will be, if a minimally democratic state can be established in Egypt

(though no one can define the intentions of foreign powers).

Between the literalists and the

partisans of the Turkish way,

anything can happen; the

Brotherhood’s political think-

ing has evolved considerably

over the past 20 years.

SPRING 2011 43

Neither repression nor torture has been able to eliminate the Brotherhood. The

opposite is true. It is only democratic debate and the vigorous exchange of ideas that

have had an impact on the development of the most problematic Islamist theses —

from understanding of the Sharia to respect for freedom and defense of equality. Only

by exchanging ideas, and not by torture and dictatorship, can we find solutions that

respect the people’s will. Turkey’s example should be an inspiration to us observers.

The West continues to use “the Islamist threat” to justify its passivity and outright

support for dictatorships. As resistance to Mubarak mounted, the Israeli government

repeatedly called on Washington to back his junta against the popular will. Europe

adopted a wait-and-see stance. Both attitudes are revealing: At the end of the day, lip

service to democratic principle carries little weight against the defense of political and

economic interests. The US prefers dictatorships that guarantee access to oil and

allow the Israelis to continue their slow colonization to credible representatives of the

people who could not allow these things to continue.

Citing the voices of dangerous Islamists to justify not listening to the voices of the

people is short-termist as well as illogical. Under both the Bush and Obama adminis-

trations, the US has suffered heavy losses of credibility in the Middle East; the same is

true for Europe. If the Americans and Europeans do not re-examine their policies,

other powers in Asia and South America may begin to interfere soon with their elabo-

rate structure of strategic alliances. As for Israel, which has now positioned itself as

friend and protector of the Arab dictatorships, its government may well come to real-

ize that those dictatorships are committed only to its policy of

blind colonization.

The regional impact of Mubarak stepping down is huge, yet the exact conse-

quences are unpredictable. After both the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, the polit-

ical message is clear: With nonviolent mass protest, anything is possible and no auto-

cratic government is safe and secure any longer.

Presidents and kings are feeling the pressure of this historical turning point. The

unrest has reached Algeria, Yemen and Libya. One should also look at Jordan, Syria and

even Saudi Arabia: Preventive reforms have been announced, as if there were a com-

mon feeling of fear and vulnerability. The rulers of all these countries know that they

run the risk of the same destiny on Mubarak. This state of instability is worrying and

at the same time very promising. The Arab world is awakening with dignity and hope.

The changes spell hope for true democrats and trouble for those who would sacrifice

democratic principle to their economic and geostrategic calculations. The liberation of

Egypt seems to be just the start. Who will be next? If Jordan and Yemen follow, so will

Saudi Arabia — the heart of the Muslim world — and Riyadh would be in a critical

position, with no choice but to evolve toward a more open political system.

As for Israel, which has now

positioned itself as friend

and protector of the Arab

dictatorships, its government

may well come to realize that

those dictatorships are com-

mitted only to its policy of

blind colonization.

SPRING 201144

Around the world, among Muslims, there is a critical mass that would support

this move, the necessary revolution at the center. In the end, only democracies that

embrace all nonviolent political forces can bring about peace in the Middle East, a

peace that must also respect the dignity of the Palestinians.

s

It is highly likely but not

inevitable that the Muslim

Brotherhood will win the

elections to be held in Egypt

this coming September.

SPRING 2011 45

Prepare to Compete with the Muslim Brotherhood

AYAAN HIRSI ALI is the author of Nomad and Infidel. She is a fellow of the American

Enterprise Institute and founder of the AHA Foundation, which works to protect the rights

of Muslim women.

washington — In 1985 as a teenager in Kenya, I was an adamant member of the

Muslim Brotherhood. Seventeen years later, in 2002, I took part in a political cam-

paign to win votes for the conservative party in the Netherlands. Those two experi-

ences gave me some insights that I think are relevant to the current crisis in Egypt.

They lead me to believe it is highly likely but not inevitable that the Muslim

Brotherhood will win the elections to be held in Egypt this coming September.

As a participant in an election campaign, I learned a few basic lessons.

1. The party must have a political program all members commit to with a vision of

how to govern the country until the next election. Dissent within the party is a

sure way of losing elections.

2. Candidates must articulate not only what they will do for the country but also

why the other party’s program will be catastrophic for the nation.

3. The party has to be embedded in as many communities as possible, regardless of

social class, religion or even political views.

4. Candidates must constantly remind potential voters of their party’s record of

success and the opponent’s record of failure.

Hamas: A Historical and Political Background
Author(s): Ziad Abu-Amr
Source: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Summer, 1993), pp. 5-19
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Institute for Palestine Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2538077

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HAMAS: A HISTORICAL AND
POLITICAL BACKGROUND

ZIAD ABU-AMR

Hamas-the Islamic Resistance Movement-was born of the intifada,
which marked the beginning of the true political revival of the Islamic forces
in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the face of Israeli occupation on the one
hand, and the national secular forces led by the PLO on the other. Up until
that time, the most important Islamic movement in the occupied territories,
the Muslim Brotherhood, had shied away from active resistance against the
Israeli occupation, a decision that stood in the way of its full development as
a popular force. This situation was suddenly to change with the outbreak of
the Palestinian uprising, which led the Muslim Brotherhood to play an active
role in the resistance for the first time. This it did through Hamas, the organ-
ization it created from its own ranks expressly for that purpose. It was thus
that the Islamic movement, after many years in existence, was able to emerge
as the first true challenge ever posed in the occupied territories to the domi-
nant nationalist trend.

The new force-for Hamas soon overshadowed its parent organization-
now prevails in a number of localities, especially the Gaza Strip, with a mag-
nitude that parallels that of Fateh, the largest of the PLO factions. Its emer-
gence has brought about a state of imbalance in the political forces that had
held sway for decades. Moreover, the developing rivalry between the Islamic

Ziad Abu-Amr, an associate professor of political science at Birzeit
University, is the author of Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza:
The Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad (Indiana University Press,
forthcoming). This article is based on an article that appeared in the spring
1993 issue of our sister publication, Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniya.

Joumnal of Palestine Studies XXII, no. 4 (Summer 1993), pp. 5-19.

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6 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

trend led by Hamas and the national secular trend under the PLO may not
cease in the event that the Israeli occupation ends, since what is at stake in
this rivalry is nothing less than the leadership, the identity, and the future
direction of the Palestinian people.

The Rise of the Islamic Groups in the Occupied Territories
Since Hamas was the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, to

understand it one must begin with the history of the parent organization in
the occupied territories.

The Muslim Brotherhood

Up until the 1980s, when the radical Islamic Jihad broke away from the
Muslim Brotherhood Society, the history of the Islamic movements in Pales-
tine can be reduced to the history of the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood had
been founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, and soon spread to other
parts of the Arab world. In his attempt to revitalize the Islamic call, al-Banna
stressed three elements: revival, organization, and upbringing. Basically, the
goal of al-Banna’s movement, like other Islamic revival groups, was to trans-
form society to approximate as closely as possible that established by the
Prophet Muhammad and his Companions. This would entail the establish-
ment of an Islamic state, with no distinction being made between religion
and government, and with the Quran and the sunna serving as the basis for
all aspects of life.

The Brotherhood’s connection with Palestine dates back to 1935, when
Hasan al-Banna sent his brother, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Banna, to establish con-
tacts there. In 1945, the group inaugurated its first branch in Jerusalem.
With the assistance of the mother group in Egypt, more branches were estab-
lished in other Palestinian towns, reaching twenty-five by the year 1947. The
branches had memberships ranging from 12,000 to 20,000, and were at-
tached to the command of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo.’ Al-Haii Amin
al-Husseini, preeminent Palestinian nationalist leader, was named a local
leader of the Brotherhood, which helped spread its influence in the country.2

It should be noted that the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, while em-
bracing the same ideology as the Society across the Arab world, does give a
special place to two figures, aside from the founder, Hasan al-Banna. One
important model for Palestinian Islamists is Sayyid Qutb, who was executed
in Egypt in 1966 and is considered a true symbol of revolutionary Islam. In
contrast to Hasan al-Banna, known for his moderation, Qutb embodies the
concept of active opposition to, and noncooperation with, the existing order.
The other source of inspiration for Palestinian Islamists is ‘Izz al-Din al-
Qassam, the first leader of armed resistance in the history of modern Pales-
tine, who was killed by the British in 1935 in the events leading up to the
Great Palestinian Rebellion of 1936-39. The military branch of Hamas today
bears his name.

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HAMAS: A BACKGROUND 7

After the creation of Israel in 1948, relations between the Brotherhood and
the Hashemite leadership in Jordan, which had annexed the West Bank in
1950, were generally smooth and cordial, despite periodic tensions. The ac-
tivity of the Brotherhood in the West Bank was not political in the main, but
social and religious. In the Gaza Strip, on the other hand, administered by
Egypt until 1967, the Brotherhood’s relations with the administration were
problematic most of the time, and the Brothers were persecuted and
outlawed.

In the years following the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in
1967, the Brotherhood continued to concentrate mainly on what it described
as “the upbringing of an Islamic generation” through the establishment of
religious schools, charity associations, social clubs, and so on. But the Broth-
erhood’s emphasis on the Islamic restructuring of society and religious edu-
cation seemed to have little relevance for a population that was seeking
liberation from foreign occupation. The emerging Palestinian nationalist
resistance movement had far greater appeal, and the failure of the Brothers to
participate in this resistance cost them many potential adherents.

Several factors, both organizational and objective, contributed to strength-
ening the Brotherhood. In 1973, al-Mujamma’ al-Islami (the Islamic Center)
was established in Gaza by Shaykh Ahmad Yasin, a dynamic preacher and
1948 refugee who was later to become the primary force behind Hamas.
Within a relatively short period of time, virtually all religious organizations
and institutions dominated by the Brotherhood-including the Islamic Uni-
versity in Gaza-were controlled through the Center. Then, in the 1970s, the
centralizing effect of al-Mujamma’ was reinforced by a reorganization within
the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood: the societies in the Gaza Strip,
West Bank, and Jordan were now merged into a single organization called
“The Muslim Brotherhood Society in Jordan and Palestine.”3 This reorgani-
zation affected the position and policies of the Brotherhood in the occupied
territories by bringing guidance, instruction, and support from the Society
and its leadership based in Jordan.

The organizational changes laid the groundwork for the Brotherhood’s
growth. Then, in the late 1970s, a certain disillusionment had begun to
spread with regard to the Palestinian resistance movement, making the popu-
lation more amenable to alternative political or ideological approaches. The
Islamic revolution in Iran also had a galvanizing effect, capturing people’s
imaginations. These factors gave a boost to the Brotherhood, which stepped
up its political activities, especially within Palestinian universities. Initially,
most of these activities were aimed at countering the secularist ideas and
influence of the nationalist factions of the PLO, with only part of the group’s
efforts being directed against the Israeli occupation. Moreover, while the oc-
cupation authorities were expending considerable energies on dismantling
and repressing the resistance organizations, the Muslim Brotherhood, which
was not involved in armed resistance, was able to build its organizational

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8 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

structure and pursue its work among the masses with little Israeli
interference.

The Muslim Brotherhood had a number of means at its disposal in spread-
ing religious ideas and rallying support for the Islamic movement. Aside
from the various associations it had established throughout the territories
such as libraries and sports and social clubs, the organization used zakat
(alms giving, one of the five pillars of Islam) to help thousands of needy
families. Thousands of children were enrolled in nursery schools, kindergar-
tens, and schools run by the Islamic movement. Loans were extended to
students in Palestinian and Arab universities.

The Brotherhood was also able to gain significant access to the population
through its increasing control over the religious institution of the waqf (reli-
gious endowments), which controls an extensive network of property that it
leases to the local inhabitants. In the Gaza Strip, waqf constitutes 10 percent
of all real estate: “Hundreds of shops, apartments, garages, public buildings,
and about 2,000 acres of agricultural land belonged to its trusts, and the waqf
employed scores of people, from preachers and other clerics to grave
diggers.”4

But the Muslim Brotherhood’s most effective tool in spreading its influence
was the mosques, especially given their proliferation following the Israeli oc-
cupation. Thus, in the period from 1967 to 1987, the number of mosques in
the West Bank rose from 400 to 750, in the Gaza Strip from 200 to 600.5
After daily afternoon and sunset prayers, the Muslim Brotherhood was able to
use mosques-as sanctuaries generally not subject to interference from the
Israeli authorities-for political work and for recruiting followers.

Still, despite the Brotherhood’s growth and effectiveness in gathering sup-
port through its social services and activities, a certain amount of dissatisfac-
tion continued because of its failure to engage in fighting the occupation.
This dissatisfaction led to the creation of the Islamic Jihad movement, which
broke away from the Brotherhood in the early 1980s.

The Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Jihad

While Islamic Jihad has remained small and never commanded anywhere
near the following of the Brotherhood, it is important to dwell briefly on the
movement and its positions, because these positions encompass criticisms
leveled at the Brotherhood and which in fact were later addressed in the
creation of Hamas-that is, the Brotherhood’s lack of commitment to an all-
out struggle against Israel.

Islamic Jihad was founded by two 1948 refugees who grew up in camps in
the Gaza Strip, Fathi al-Shaqaqi and ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Auda. As university stu-
dents in Cairo, both were strongly influenced by trends within the Muslim
Brotherhood Society in Egypt, and notably by the militant Islamic groups that
had emerged from the ranks of the Egyptian Brotherhood in the mid-1970s,
al-Takfir wa al-Hijra (The Atonement and Holy Flight), and Tandhim al-Jihad
(the Jihad Organization).

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HAMAS: A BACKGROUND 9

Ideologically, the Islamic Jihad shares with the Muslim Brotherhood the
same basic precepts concerning the need for the establishment of an Islamic
state and for the application of Islamic principles in an Islamic society. The
chief difference between the two groups lies in the place of Palestine in their
priorities and their means of action.

All Islamic groups, not only in Palestine but throughout the Muslim world,
consider Palestine in its entirety as Muslim land, no part of which can be
ceded under any circumstances. The establishment of a Palestinian state in
the West Bank and Gaza is therefore seen as sinful if it entails conceding the
rest of Palestine to Israel, an illegitimate entity. For the Islamic groups, Pal-
estine is not merely a Palestinian or an Arab problem, but an Islamic prob-
lem of concern to the entire Islamic nation; true Muslims are called upon to
sacrifice lives and money to liberate every inch of the holy land.

Where the Islamic groups differ is on the centrality of the Palestine issue
and the proper timing for liberating the country. For the Muslim Brother-
hood, the first priority is the Islamic transformation of society, which it sees
as a prerequisite to the liberation of Palestine. According to the Brotherhood,
armed struggle Qihad) cannot be undertaken until the society is reformed,
until secular ideas are abandoned and Islam adopted. The Islamic Jihad, on
the other hand, considers Palestine its central issue, and advocates armed
struggle as its strategy for political action without waiting for the Islamization
of society.6 The Islamic Jihad was all the more critical of the Brotherhood’s
failure to engage in armed struggle in thatjihad is one of the five pillars of
Islamic doctrine. The new organization further rejected the Brotherhood’s
reformist approach and traditionalist ideas and practices in favor of revolu-
tionary action by an Islamic vanguard; for the Islamic Jihad, the problems of
Arab society can not be solved by gradual measures or “truce, patching, and
reform,” but by “decisiveness and revolution.”7

In a similar vein, Islamic Jihad objected to the Muslim Brotherhood’s posi-
tion of coexistence with the Arab regimes, especially those having strong ties
with the West such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan. These it regarded as
an “actual security belt for Israel,” considering the Arab regimes and Israel as
“two faces of the same coin; they are both the fruit of the Western invasion of
the Arab world.”8 Given these views, it is not surprising that another source
of disagreement between the two groups was the attitude toward the Islamic
revolution in Iran, which the Brotherhood began to criticize after the Iran-
Iraq war broke out. The Jihad movement, on the other hand, considered the
Ayatollah Khomeini as an important source of ideological inspiration.

Because of its focus on Palestine as a central issue, the Islamic Jihad shares
a common objective with the PLO factions. Despite its Islamic approach to
the achievement of this objective and its disapproval of the PLO’s political
program and diplomatic conduct as being incompatible with the “Islamic
view of history,” the Islamic Jihad does not see itself as a rival or alternative
to the PLO. The Brotherhood, for its part, has accused the Jihad of being

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10 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

part of the Fateh movement, the “Islamic Fateh,” and for concentrating on
political matters at the expense of Islamic education.

Despite the challenge by the more radical Islamic Jihad and the nationalist
forces-a challenge made stronger by the Islamic Jihad’s launching of mili-
tary operations in the mid-1980s and even participation in certain joint ac-
tions with Fateh against Israeli targets in the occupied territories9-the
Brotherhood held firm in its refusal to engage in outward resistance to the
occupation. Soon, however, the intifada was abruptly to change all the givens
of the situation and move the organization to an unprecedented change of
course, involving it for the first time in organized resistance against the
occupation.

The Formation of Hamas

Despite claims to the contrary, the intifada erupted spontaneously without
any political decision by any organized group, and caught the Brotherhood,
like the PLO, by surprise. On 8 December 1987, a motor accident in the
Gaza Strip involving an Israeli truck and small vehicles transporting Palestin-
ian workers, several of whom were killed, triggered the riots that spread and
evolved into what became known as the intifada. The very next day, leading
members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza met to discuss ways of utilizing
the event to stir up religious and nationalist sentiments and assure the spread
of wide public demonstrations. The meeting was held at the house of
Ahmad Yasin, the founder of the Islamic Center, and was attended by other
prominent leaders of the Center: Dr. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Rantisi (age 40), a
physician residing in Khan Yunis; Dr. Ibrahim al-Yazuri (age 45), a pharma-
cist residing in Gaza city; Shaykh Salih Shihada (age 40), an instructor at the
Islamic University residing in the town of Bayt Hanun; ‘Isa al-Nashshar (age
35), an engineer in Rafah; Muhammad Sham’a (age 50), a teacher in al-Shati
refugee camp; and ‘Abd al-Fattah Dukhan (age 50), a school principal at al-
Nusayrat camp.10 The group was soon meeting regularly to develop contin-
gency plans to deal with the fast-developing situation.

On 14 December, the Brotherhood leaders issued a statement calling on
the people to stand up to the Israeli occupation. Hamas retrospectively con-
sidered this its first serialized leaflet, though the new organization did not
identify itself as such until January 1988 when it issued leaflets under the
name ” Hamas. “11 Meanwhile Shaykh Yasin and his colleagues were in con-
tact with their counterparts in the West Bank. That same month, January
1988, Shaykh Yasin assigned Shaykh Jamil Hamami, a Brotherhood activist
in the West Bank and one of the young preachers at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa
mosque, to establish with his colleagues a branch of Hamas there. Hamami
thus became the liaison between Shaykh Yasin on the one hand and the
Hamas command in the West Bank and the Brotherhood command in Jor-
dan on the other. It should be noted that this last provided financial support
for the intifada.12

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HAMAS: A BACKGROUND 11

The establishment of Hamas, which means “zeal” in Arabic and is the
acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamfrya (the Islamic Resistance Move-
ment), was not a clear-cut and immediately conscious decision, but evolved
over time. Indeed, the Brotherhood’s response to the uprising was the sub-
ject of tensions within the organization. In the West Bank, especially, the
younger strata of the Brotherhood were eager to participate in the uprising
against the occupation, while the traditional leaders initially had a reserved,
wait-and-see attitude. It was only when the intifada was in full swing and
Hamas had become an active participant that the discrepancy between the
young activists and the traditional leaders came to an end.

But the question of participation in the intifada was not merely one of
young versus old; the new situation confronted the Brotherhood with a real
ideological dilemma. On the one hand, given the unprecedented events tak-
ing place in Palestine and the internal pressures within the movement, it
would have been politically impossible for Yasin and the other leaders to
allow the Brotherhood to remain on the sidelines, especially in the light of
the Brotherhood’s ongoing and bitter rivalry with PLO factions. On the other
hand, it was not easy for the group to justify suddenly joining the intifada
when its previous positions were well known; until the very eve of the upris-
ing, Yasin and the other leaders had been arguing that the time had not yet
come for the actual jihad. According to their oft-stated views, the Brother-
hood was still in the phase of educating the Muslim generation in prepara-
tion for the restructuring of the Muslim community; this in turn would be the
prelude to the declaration of jihad against Israel. Similarly, Yasin and his
close associates in the Brotherhood had to find a way to join the intifada
without compromising the future of the movement they had built up with
such painstaking efforts and personal sacrifice (Yasin and a number of others
having already served prison sentences).

It was Shaykh Yasin’s idea, as a way out of these dilemmas, to create an
ostensibly separate organization out of the Muslim Brotherhood to take re-
sponsibility for its participation in the intifada. The calculation was probably
that if the intifada failed the Brotherhood could disclaim Hamas and escape
Israeli retribution for its participation, whereas if the intifada continued, the
Brotherhood could derive benefit by claiming Hamas as its own. This is pre-
cisely what happened when the Hamas charter was issued in August 1988
proclaiming Hamas as a wing of the Brotherhood.13 In a sense, the establish-
ment of Hamas by the Brotherhood in the occupied territories was parallel to
the founding of the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU) by
the PLO factions, with both serving to channel their respective bodies’ resist-
ance activities.

Hamas’s active role in the intifada and the growing awareness of its rela-
tionship to the Brotherhood gave this last a credibility much needed because
of the PLO campaigns criticizing it for its nonparticipation in the armed
struggle. Indeed, the Brotherhood began deliberately to equate the two orga-
nizations, and Yasin and his colleagues became more vocal and less circum-

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12 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

spect in terms of their political visibility: Hamas had soon become a credible
and convenient name for a rehabilitated Muslim Brotherhood Society, en-
abling the “new” organization to attract followers and supporters who had
not been members of the Brotherhood. Before long, in fact, Hamas had be-
come a force that could not be ignored and even a serious challenge to the
secular forces led by the PLO.

Ideology, Aims, and Strategies

Hamas’s aims and strategies are spelled out in the charter it issued on 18
August 1988, which contains the philosophy of the Movement, its rationale,
and its positions not only on such central issues as the Palestine problem but
also on social welfare, the role of women, other Islamic movements, nation-
alist movements and the PLO, the Arab countries, and so on.* One might
note that recent rumors to the effect that Hamas is considering far-reaching
changes in its charter14 have been vigorously denied, notably by Hamas
leader Dr. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Rantisi.15

The content of the charter does not differ from positions taken by the Mus-
lim Brotherhood on the same issues; as stated in article 2 of the charter,
Hamas is only a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood Society. There is no
doubt, however, that the charter pays little attention to the Brotherhood’s core
goal of transforming society, placing far greater emphasis on the Palestine
problem and jihad.

Concerning Palestine, the charter states that “the land of Palestine is an
Islamic trust (‘wacf’) upon all Muslim generations until the Day of Resurrec-
tion. It is not right to give it up nor any part of it” (article 11). In the
opinion of Hamas, the solution of the Palestine problem rests in the up-
rooting of the State of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state in its
place. The charter also mentions three spheres connected with the Palestin-
ian cause. These are the Palestinian, the Arab, and the Islamic, each of
which has its role in the struggle against Israel (article 14).

Concerning peace negotiations and initiatives, the charter states: “What
are called ‘peaceful solutions’ and ‘international conferences’ to solve the
Palestine question all conflict with the doctrine of the Islamic Resistance
Movement, for giving up any part of the homeland is like giving up part of
the religious faith itself” (article 13). According to the charter, there is no
solution to the Palestine problem exceptjihad: “When an enemy occupies
some of the Muslim lands,jihad becomes obligatory on every Muslim” (arti-
cle 15). Thus, all peace initiatives are a “waste of time and acts of absurdity”
(article 13). In keeping with this, Hamas protested against the peace confer-
ence that was held in Madrid in October 1991, and continues to oppose
Palestinian participation in the current Arab-Israeli negotiations, calling for
immediate withdrawal from these negotiations.

* See special document.

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HAMAS: A BACKGROUND 13

Although it is still premature to determine how far Hamas would go in its
opposition to the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations, it is evident that
Hamas’s opposition is tempered by the realization of the hardships facing the
Palestinians in the occupied territories. Despite vocal opposition, the organi-
zation does not wish to project itself as an obstructive force when there may
be a chance, however slim, of finding a solution. Hamas’s opposition to the
talks is further tempered by lack of available alternatives and awareness that
the internal Palestinian balance of power still favors the PLO. More impor-
tant is the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, its patron, whose
opposition to Jordanian government policies can not be allowed to reach the
point of alienating the king.

As for Hamas’s relations with the nationalist movement, the charter refers
to the PLO as a “father, brother, relative, or friend” of the Islamic movement
and stresses the fact that the two movements have a common plight and
common destiny and face the same enemy (article 27). At the same time,
Hamas sharply criticizes the PLO’s secular course and its leadership, as well
as its political program calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state that
would coexist with the State of Israel. Hamas had already condemned the
PLO’s recognition of the State of Israel and its acceptance of UN Security
Resolutions 242 and 338.

Although Hamas does not openly question the PLO’s status as the sole
legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, in fact it objects to the
organization’s widespread acceptance as the people’s frame of reference and
definer of their identity and national goals. Hamas makes no explicit claims
to being an alternative to the PLO, but its repeated references to Islam as the
alternative to the failed nationalist and secular ideologies would seem to im-
ply a certain projection of itself as an alternative to an organization embrac-
ing such failed ideologies. Hamas’s rejection of the PLO’s political program
and its call for the establishment of an Islamic society in Palestine and for the
establishment of an Islamic leadership to spearhead the popular struggle are
all manifestations of its rivalry with the PLO for leadership.

Organization and Leadership

Although the Muslim Brotherhood has in theory maintained its internal
organizational structure, and although Hamas, as a “wing” of the organiza-
tion, is in theory separate, in practice the two have become increasingly inter-
twined. It is thus that the division of labor within the leadership and rank-
and-file levels is considered an “internal” affair.

The initial leadership of Hamas consisted of Shaykh Ahmad Yasin and the
other six founding members. Later, as the movement developed, leadership
wings and committees were set up to take charge of political matters, secur-
ity, military operations, and the media. Even so, Hamas has remained rela-
tively simple and lacks the complex bureaucracy of the PLO. Overall
leadership of the movement is entrusted to a majlis shura (consultative coun-
cil) whose members live inside and outside the occupied territories.

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14 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

From the beginning, the leadership has been plagued by repeated losses in
its ranks through deportations and imprisonment, necessitating periodic re-
organizations both at the central leadership and committee or branch levels
and obliging Hamas to graduate successive leadership echelons. After
Shaykh Yasin was arrested in May 1989 and sentenced to fifteen years in
prison, Dr. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Rantisi took command of Hamas in the Gaza
Strip. In the West Bank, the better known leaders included Husayn Abu
Kuwik, a prominent unionist, Fadil Salih, an imam, and Hasan Yusuf, a
school teacher and imam. All these were deported by Israel in December
1992. The Hamas connection of the renowned advocate Shaykh Bassam Jar-
rar, also deported by Israel, is not confirmed. Among the well-known lead-
ers of Hamas outside Palestine are Musa Abu Marzuq, head of the
Movement’s political bureau, Muhammad Nazzal, representative in Jordan,
and ‘Imad al-Alami, representative in Tehran. The identity of a number of
Hamas leaders, both inside and outside the occupied territories, remains
unknown.

The mass deportations of December 1992 aimed mainly at Hamas and the
Muslim Brotherhood removed not only most of the front-line leaders, but
also large numbers of second- and third-tier leaders and other activists, leav-
ing the occupied territories seemingly bereft of major leaders. Nonetheless,
the devastating effect of the deportations is somewhat mitigated by the fact
that the leadership inside the territories has always relied for its strategic
decisions on guidance from its extended leadership abroad, including leaders
of the Muslim Brothers in Jordan and Egypt. In addition, the armed actions
performed by the “Martyr ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam Battalions” may not be af-
fected, as the Israeli authorities do not appear to have succeeded in arresting
any of their leaders.

Most probably, the leadership vacuum resulting from the mass deporta-
tions will pave the way for the appearance of a new militant leadership giving
less weight to political considerations than most of the deported Muslim
leaders, whose positions had been tempered by the moderation arising from
involvement in practical politics.

Activities and Popularity

As a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and indeed inextricably inter-
twined with it, Hamas has been able to build on the mother organization’s
extensive infrastructure in expanding its public base of operations. It is thus
that nursery schools, kindergartens, social and sports clubs, libraries, and
other such associations fall under its auspices, and the Islamic University
continues under its control. These various institutions-to say nothing of the
network of mosques-are useful vehicles for spreading Hamas’s ideas and
influence and enlisting supporters. Following the example of the Brother-
hood, Hamas also organizes trips, particularly among university students, as
well as visits to the Dome of the Rock.

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HAMAS: A BACKGROUND 15

In the political realm, Hamas sponsors forums, political gatherings, and
Islamic exhibitions, particularly on university campuses, that serve as vehi-
cles for its influence. It issues statements, brochures, and pamphlets, and
commemorates martyrs and Islamic events. It organizes demonstrations and
strikes and other expressions of protest. Its success in calling for comprehen-
sive strikes is testimony to its influence; it is doubtful that any PLO faction,
except for Fateh, could alone find a similar response to its strike calls.

The movement now participates in the intifada on an equal footing with
the PLO groups. At present it is larger than any single faction except for
Fateh, and, like Fateh, has a strong presence throughout the occupied territo-
ries. There is no doubt that Hamas’s actions, including the use of arms
against Israeli military targets, have been a major factor in the continuation of
the uprising because of the movement’s wide following and quick mobility.
Moreover, its nonparticipation in the political process has led it to concen-
trate its efforts on intifada activity: Hamas has become the party most en-
gaged in armed actions against Israeli targets and is estimated to have more
members under detention than any other group except Fateh. It should be
noted that Hamas’s military activities are intended not only to strike at the
occupation, but also to embarrass the negotiating factions and to bolster its
own position as a major Palestinian force that cannot be ignored and without
which no agreement can be reached.

In the absence of free and direct democratic elections, it is impossible to
determine with any certainty the size of Hamas’s following. However, some
idea can be obtained from the sectoral elections held in professional associa-
tions, trade unions, student councils, chambers of commerce, and so on,
where results point to the movement’s increasing popularity. An analysis of
the results of the elections that Hamas did not win indicate that it obtained
more votes than any individual faction except Fateh, scoring anywhere from
35 to 45 percent of the total popular vote. In some elections, where Fateh
ran on a joint ballot with other factions (as was the case in the 1992 elections
for the Ramallah Chamber of Commerce and the student councils at the uni-
versities in Gaza and Hebron), Hamas actually won over Fateh, although in
general more institutions are dominated by PLO supporters than by Hamas
supporters. It should nonetheless be noted that under the elections system
followed in the occupied territories, the percentages of the popular vote do
not translate into an equivalent ratio of seats in the elected councils. For
instance, the pro-Hamas Islamic Bloc won 45 percent of the total votes in the
elections for the Nablus Chamber of Commerce in 1992, but obtained only
three out of twelve seats. Similarly, the Bloc won more than 40 percent of the
votes in the student council elections of al-Najah University (Nablus) in
1992, but did not obtain a single council seat.

It was in keeping with the popular percentages that Hamas, in response to
an invitation to join the PLO, demanded 40 to 50 percent of the seats in the
Palestine National Council (PNC) as a precondition to joining that body. But
given Hamas’s rejection of the PLO program, it is possible that this demand,

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16 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

clearly impossible for the PLO to meet, was intended to relieve Hamas of
public criticism for rejecting unity and cooperation with the nationalist
movement.

External Relations

From the outset, Hamas has been closely interconnected with the Muslim
Brotherhood in Jordan, which has provided it with a wide range of doctrinal,
political, moral, and material support. Hamas has also enjoyed the support
of Islamic movements in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Sudan, Algeria,
and Tunisia, not to mention of Islamic communities and organizations in the
United States and Europe.

The organization further had good relations with official elements in Saudi
Arabia and the Gulf states, but these deteriorated as a result of the Gulf war,
when Hamas took a position not much different from that of the PLO, oppos-
ing Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait but strongly opposing the massive foreign mili-
tary intervention in the region. Meanwhile, relations with Iran, which had
begun to improve as a result of Hamas’s participation in the intifada and
especially following the improvement of relations between Iran and the
Brotherhood in Jordan, improved even more as a result of the Gulf war;
Hamas was keen on finding new allies after the deterioration of its relations
with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states as well as the Islamic movements in
these countries. It is thus that Hamas opened an office in Tehran, and Iran is
said to be providing military training to Hamas activists both in Iran and at
pro-Iranian Hizballah bases in Lebanon. It should be noted that Hamas
(along with Islamic Jihad) participated in a conference held in Tehran to
protest the convening of the Madrid peace conference of October 1991.

Financial Needs and Funding

Hamas does not until now possess a complex bureaucracy like the PLO,
and the leadership and cadres are characterized by modesty in expenditure
and absence of financial corruption. Infrastructural expenditures are there-
fore still quite limited. Its resources in no way compare with the financial
potential of the PLO, restricting its ability to engage in comparable patronage
activities. It should also be mentioned that the responsibilities of Hamas are
not as diversified as those of the PLO, and while the PLO assumes financial
burdens in the Palestinian diaspora as well as in the occupied territories,
Hamas’s expenditures are limited to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. None-
theless, the movement has financial responsibilities that are increasing day by
day to keep pace with the parallel growth of its activities and the size of its
organization.

Hamas depends for its finances on a number of sources, especially local
contributions, donations from individuals and Islamic movements abroad,
and certain governments.

For the local sources in the occupied territories, individuals contribute
either directly to the movement or to the zakat committees or other founda-

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HAMAS: A BACKGROUND 17

tions supervised by Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood. Money from the
zakat is used for Hamas’s activities in helping the poor, building mosques
and schools, and other charitable works.

As for individual foreign contributions, just as financial support was given
to the mujahidin of Afghanistan, Muslims throughout the world, including in
the United States and Europe, are now offering support to the “mujahidin of
Palestine.” These individual donations are collected on Hamas’s behalf both
by individual supporters and Islamic organizations in various countries. Fi-
nancial support to resist the Israeli occupation and reinforce the Islamic
trend against secular forces in the occupied territories is also received from
the international Islamic movement in various countries, particularly Jordan,
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Sudan, Iran, and others.

Despite assertions by the Hamas leadership that it does not receive dona-
tions from governmental sources,’6 reference has been made to financial sup-
port from some governments, notably Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. This
was the case particularly before the Gulf war, although some support has
reportedly continued even afterwards as a way of penalizing the PLO for its
positions concerning Iraq. Iran is also reported to have contributed millions
of dollars, above and beyond its military and other assistance.

Other sources of financial support have included the PLO, at least once
and at the instruction of Yasir Arafat,’7 and possibly the movement’s own
investment projects, although the movement has denied ownership of profit-
making projects.

Future Prospects

While Hamas (and the Islamic movement in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip in general) have made great gains, becoming a major political force in
Palestinian society, it continues to face important challenges.

There is no question that Hamas has benefited immensely from being in
the “opposition.” It has no responsibility for the painful concessions that
those in authority-meaning the PLO-have had to make without thus far
receiving any tangible results in return. The PLO’s abandonment of revolu-
tionary slogans and shift to political pragmatism enabled Hamas to fill the
resulting ideological and doctrinal vacuum at a time of increasing disillusion-
ment in the nationalist program. But while the maximalist stands of the Is-
lamic groups may sound appealing in the light of growing doubts about the
PLO’s ability to deliver on its goals, there is no evidence that Hamas is any
better able to achieve either its transitional objective (ending the occupation)
or its strategic objective (establishing an Islamic state in Palestine). It is true
that Hamas has the advantage of being able to revert to the Brotherhood’s
earlier stance of deferring the liberation of Palestine and jihad until more
propitious circumstances. The PLO, on the other hand, cannot suggest that
its more limited goals of self-determination and statehood on some 20 per-
cent of Palestine are no longer feasible and must be postponed sine die; these

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18 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

objectives, after all, are the raison d’etre of the PLO. Nonetheless, Hamas
cannot rely indefinitely on the failures of others as a means of gaining lasting
influence. In the longer term, it will itself have to “deliver.”

Hamas has also benefited from a trend toward conservatism that has been
growing in the territories since the outbreak of the intifada. The atmosphere
of oppression, deprivation, and hopelessness has moreover contributed to the
spread of an Islamic climate. That the PLO factions themselves are sensitive
to this shift is clear from the increased use of religious expressions and
Quranic verses in the statements issued by the UNLU. It is also significant
that the pro-PLO nationalist groups ran in the May 1992 elections for the
Nablus Chamber of Commerce under the name “The National Muslim
Trend.” 18

Nonetheless, it is far from clear whether Hamas can ever make Islam a
political frame of reference for the Palestinian people. The Islamic move-
ment’s social outlook creates anxiety among large segments of the popula-
tion; Palestinian society has a strong secular tradition, perpetuated in a large
number of secular institutions. Palestine also has an active and influential
Christian minority.

Hamas has thus far failed to take a clear stance on a number of important
issues. Democracy and pluralism are among these. From a theoretical and
doctrinal standpoint, Palestinian Islamists, including Hamas, dismiss democ-
racy as a Western concept with no place in a Muslim society. They argue
that Islamic doctrine provides principles that have greater justice and com-
prehensiveness. In an Islamic order, political parties whose frame of refer-
ence is not Islam would be banned, but before the establishment of Islamic
rule, democracy is preferred to dictatorship as more hospitable to the flour-
ishing of Islam.’9 For the time being, Islamists can argue that national liber-
ation takes precedence over the debate over democracy and pluralism. In the
long run, however, failure to articulate acceptable positions on these issues
may alienate significant segments of Palestinian society and undermine the
movement’s influence.

Finally, for all the current disappointment in the peace process and the
pro-PLO negotiators, the PLO has a legitimacy acquired through more than
twenty-five years of nationalist resistance to Israeli occupation. It is credited
with reviving and crystallizing Palestinian national identity and with defining
the national rights of the Palestinian people. As long as Hamas does not
espouse a defined nationalist program responding to the aspirations of the
Palestinian people, it can not become an alternative to the PLO or even a
serious contender for the legitimate representation of the Palestinians.

The future of Hamas (and the Muslim Brotherhood) will be influenced by
local, regional, and international developments that will either reinforce or
weaken its position. Crucial will be its ability to sustain its activism against
the Israeli occupation, as well as the PLO’s ability to safeguard and advance
the fixed national rights of the Palestinian people-self-determination, state-
hood, and the right of return. Any PLO failure will probably translate into

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HAMAS: A BACKGROUND 19

gains for the Hamas movement. In preserving its position, Hamas will need
to contain tough Israeli measures against it. There is no doubt that the De-
cember 1992 deportations of large numbers of its leaders and activists, even
while reinforcing its political and moral position among the Palestinians, has
negatively affected its organizational strength.

To meet the many challenges that face it, the movement must safeguard its
unity inside and outside the occupied territories. It must also solidify to the
maximum its relations with the other Islamic movements inside Palestine; in
this regard, considerable progress has already been made in improving rela-
tions with the Islamic Jihad. Discussions have taken place between the two
groups to explore the possibility of closer cooperation and even unity. Iran
and Sudan, traditional supporters of Islamic Jihad, may be playing a mediat-
ing role, or even pushing for closer coordination between the two groups.20

Hamas should also try to ensure the highest level of support from other
Islamic movements abroad. In the words of a noted leader of the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt, an Islamic solution to the Palestine problem requires
the “mobilization of the Islamic nation.”,21 In the last analysis, Hamas’s suc-
cess will depend on its ability, or lack thereof, to mobilize its reserve support
outside Palestine as represented by the other Islamic movements and forces,
and to convince them to engage in the confrontation against Israel.

NOTES

1. Ziad Abu-Amr, al-Harakat al-Islamiyyafi al-dcffa al-
gharbiyya wa qita’ Gaza. Jama’at al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin
wa Harakat al-Jihad al-Islami (The Islamic Movement in
the West Bank and Gaza: The Muslim Brotherhood
and the Islamic Jihad) (Acre: Dar al-Aswar, 1989), p.
21.
2. ‘Arif al-‘Arif, al-Nakba: nakbat bayt al-muqaddas wa
al-firdaws al-mafqud, 1947-1955, vol. 11 (The Catastro-
phe: The Catastrophe of Jerusalem and the Lost Para-
dise) (Tyre and Beirut: Manshurat al-Maktaba al-
Asriyya, 1956), p. 103.
3. Interview with Yusef al-‘Azm, a Muslim Brother-
hood leader and member of parliament in Jordan, Am-
man, 30 May 1989.
4. Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, Intifada: The Palestin-
ian Uprising-Israel’s Third Front (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1989), p. 224.
5. Fahmi Huwaydi, “Hawl al-‘usuliyyun fi al-ard al-
muhtalla” (About the Fundamentalists in the Occupied
Territories), al-Ahram, 8 December 1987.
6. Hala Mustafa, “al-Jihad al-Islami fi al-ard al-
muhtalla” (The Islamic Jihad in the Occupied Territo-
ries), Qadaya Fikrijya, no. 6 (April 1987), p. 179.
7. Interview with Shaykh ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Auda, the spiri-
tual leader of the Islamic Jihad Movement, Gaza, 24
March 1987.
8. al-Fajr, 28 August 1987, p. 9.
9. Abu-Amr, al-Haraka al-Islamiyya, p. 36.

10. From a personal interview with Dr. Ibrahim al-
Yazuri, executive director of the Islamic Center in Gaza
and one of the founders of Hamas, 9 July 1991. It is
worth noting that these founders, except for Shaykh
Yasin and Dr. Yazuri, were among those deported in
December 1992.
11. Abu-Amr, al-Haraka al-Islamiyya, p. 101.
12. This information was part of Shaykh Yasin’s con-
fessions to the Israeli investigators after his arrest in
May 1989; al-Bayareq, 25 December 1992, p. 12.
13. Mithaq Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Hamas)
(The Charter of the Islamic Resistance Movement,
Hamas), 18 August 1988, article 2, p. 5.
14. al-Hayat, as quoted in Mideast Mirror, 7 April 1993,
p. 25.
15. Sawt al-Haq wa al-Humiyya, no. 152/3, 7 May 1993,
pp. 1, 23.
16. al-Bayareq, 25 December 1992, p. 13.
17. The author was able to review the minutes of the
meeting of the PLO Central Council held in Baghdad in
1990.
18. al-Quds, 18 May 1992.
19. Interview with Dr. Mahmud al-Zahhar, an Islamic
leader in the Gaza Strip, 4 December 1991.
20. Interview with Ibrahim Ghawshah, official spokes-
man of Hamas, and with an Islamic Jihad leader who
requested anonymity, Amman, January 1992.
21. Interview with Ma’mur al-Hudaybi, a leader of the
“Muslim Brother Group” in Egypt, Cairo, 3 May 1992.

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• Article Contents

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• Issue Table of Contents

Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Summer, 1993), pp. 1-195
Front Matter [pp. ]
Hamas: A Historical and Political Background [pp. 5-19]
Gaza: New Dynamics of Civic Disintegration [pp. 20-31]
Israeli-Palestinian Coauthoring: A New Development toward Peace? [pp. 32-44]
Interview
Eric Rouleau Talks about the Peace Process and Political Islam [pp. 45-61]
Report from Washington
Clinton’s Tilt [pp. 62-72]
Review Article
Prospects of the Palestinians in Israel: II [pp. 73-93]
Recent Books
New Gender Studies [pp. 94-97]
Strategies for Growth [pp. 97-99]
Road Map to Peace [pp. 99-100]
The City and Its People [pp. 100-102]
Overtaken by Events [pp. 102-104]
Concealed Casualties [pp. 104-105]
How Green is Your Peril? [pp. 105-107]
A Thinking Man’s Zionism [pp. 107-108]
Shorter Notices [pp. 108-110]
Special Document
Interview with Syrian President Hafiz al-Asad [pp. 111-121]
Charter of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) of Palestine [pp. 122-134]
Documents and Source Material [pp. 135-161]
Chronology: 16 February-15 May 1993 [pp. 162-179]
Bibliography of Periodical Literature [pp. 180-194]
Letters [pp. 195]
Back Matter [pp. ]

Third World Quarterly

Egypt’s Islamic Activism in the 1980s
Author(s): Saad Eddin Ibrahim
Source: Third World Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 2, Islam & Politics (Apr., 1988), pp. 632-657
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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SAAD EDDIN IBRAIIIM

Egypt’s Islamic activism in the
1 980s

Islamic resurgence has gradually come to dominate the Egyptian
political landscape. Islamic resurgence as a form of political discourse is
currently competing successfully with its secular counterparts-
liberalism, socialism, and nationalism. Egypt’s Islamic resurgence,
though significant in itself, is only one instance in the context of far more
complex phenomena that are sweeping the Islamic world from Morocco
to Indonesia. Questions of ‘identity’, ‘modernisation’, ‘cultural
authenticity’, socio-economic grievances, political participation, and
foreign domination are all involved in the resurgence. While there may
exist certain similarities between Islamic movements in various parts of
the world, there also exist differences that set country experiences apart
and that may result in quite different developments taking place, often
within the same country. Egypt is no exception. It is therefore neither
wise nor accurate to oversimplify or overgeneralise about Islamic
resurgence.

If Islamic resurgence was to be roughly defined as a marked increase in
religious activities and action, involving the participation of greater
numbers of individuals and groups than one would generally expect
under ‘normal’ circumstances, then Egypt’s Islamic resurgence could at
present be characterised as a broad movement of activity, action and
participation, several different tendencies or branches influencing its
direction. To be more exact, it is possible to identify at least three distinct
tendencies within the religious movement in Egypt, which are often
grouped together under the general term of ‘Islamic resurgence’. For the
lack of better terms, these tendencies may respectively be labelled as
‘establishment Islam’, ‘Sufi Islam’, and ‘activist Islam’.

Before we elaborate on these three tendencies that constitute the
resurgence movement, a brief account of what has come to be known as
‘Islamic fundamentalism’ is in order. In a sense it is this
‘fundamentalism’ that binds all three tendencies together. The
differences among these three tendencies are very much matters of
emphasis, concerning such details as their mode of organisation,
strategy, and tactics.

632 TWQ 10(2) April 1988/ISSN 0143-6597/88. $1.25

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EGYPT’S ISLAMIC ACTIVISM IN THE 1980s

Fundamentalism is a concept more often used in Western mass media
than in Muslim countries. Its closest equivalent in Arabic is
usuliyya-from usul al din, meaning origins or roots of religion. The
Arabic term salafiyya-that of the past or predecessors is sometimes
used interchangeably with usuliyya. The ‘past’ in this case refers
specifically to the time of the early Muslims who faithfully adhered to the
original principles of Islam. Thus ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ simply
means the belief in the precepts and commandments of Islam as stated in
the Holy Koran; and, as enunciated and practised by the Prophet
Muhammad, the Sunna.’ In other words, Islamic fundamentalism is a
return to the purest sources of the religion, a movement to cleanse Islam
from all the impurities, heresies, and revisionisms which may have
influenced its body-intellect as well as its body-practice.

Believers, that is those that fit the fundamentalist description, are
convinced that such adherence to the purest sources will deliver them,
their society, and the world from all the ills of our time-from the
world’s decadence, corruption, weakness, poverty and humiliation-in
other words, purity of religious practice is believed to be the road to total
salvation. It will enable the faithful to establish a perfect social order on
earth-an order that is virtuous, just, human, compassionate, free,
strong, and prosperous. It is an order that is believed to be far superior
to both communism and capitalism. For the Islamic order balances the
interests of the individual with the welfare of the community. It balances
the material of the ‘here and now’ on earth with the commandments of
the ‘hereafter’ in preparation for Heaven: ‘You do for your world, as if
you would live for ever; and for the hereafter as if you would die
tomorrow’. Adherence to the purest sources of Islam, the Holy Koran
and Sunna, furthermore ensures the faithful Paradise or Heaven when all
humans are resurrected in the Day of Judgement.

In concentrating on this world, unlike other religions, Islam has
provided not only guidelines to live by, but also a set of comprehensive
principles for the regulation of all aspects of life-from the interpersonal
to the international. In some major aspects, Islam has even provided
detailed codes for human conduct. Its penal codes, hudud, is a case in
point.

Reinforcing this conviction in the perfection of Islam is not just the
deep religiosity of the faithful, but also, their reading of past as well as
their interpretation of the recent history of the umma (Islamic nation or
I These distinctions are elaborated in Saad Eddin Ibrahim, ‘Contemporary Islamic militancy’, in

Ideen Unserar Zeit, Zurich: Rugger Verlag, 1987, pp 109-27.

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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

community of the believers). The glorious period for many believers was
the seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era and the first century
of the Islamic era when the Prophet Muhammad and his four successors,
the rightly guided Caliphs, presided over a society that strictly adhered
to the spirit and letter of the Holy Koran and Sunna. During that
Golden Age, Muslims not only established a perfect society on earth, but
were also the masters of the entire world. Dar al-Islam (the abode of
Islam) was the strongest force and the bearer of the torch of world
civilisation. Their reading of more recent history is that Dar al-Islam has
decayed and become vulnerable to Western encroachment because
Muslims have strayed away from their religion: they no longer strictly
adhere to its purest sources. The road to salvation, therefore, is
self-evident.

The mainstream of fundamentalist thought (al-salafiyya or
al-usuliyya) espouses a reading of Islam that is far from extremist. As
expounded by Jamal el-Din, al-Afghani and Muhammad Abdu in the
later part of the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth
century, fundamentalism prides itself on being the epitome of
‘moderation’. The umma is a moderate or Middle Nation (ummatun
wasta) among all nations. The ‘straight path’ of Islam is the path that
forms the geometric centre between extremes.

Accordingly, Islam is consistent with human nature. It recognises
mankind’s instincts and impulses but attempts to refine, sublimate, or
moderate them. Politically, it emphasises a participatory society through
a system of shura -the community’s selection of its rulers-counselling
them, and holding them accountable on the basis of Sharia (Islamic law).
As such, Islam is consistent with Western-type democracy, the Holy
Koran being the functional equivalent of a Divine Constitution. There is
no priesthood, and hence no theocracy, under Islam. The ulema are
learned men of religion; but, they do not constitute a clergy in the
Western sense. While rulers may perform some religious functions, for
example, leading prayers, and rule according to a Divine Constitution
(the Holy Koran), they are not themselves divine, nor do they possess
any divine rights. Islamic economic theory regards human labour as the
only legitimate basis for generating and accumulating wealth. It
recognises private property as guardianship, and protects it in all spheres
except those having direct bearings on the community as a whole, for
example, in such spheres as water, energy, and other public utilities. It
prohibits usury (interest on loans) and the production, trade and

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EGYPT’S ISLAMIC ACTIVISM IN THE 1980s

consumption of commodities which are considered repugnant by Islam:
alcohol and intoxicating drugs. In social terms, Islam considers the
family as the basis of society. It recognises women’s ‘equal, but different’
rights with men. It accepts religious pluralism with differential rights and
obligations for Muslims and Peoples of the Book (Christians and Jews).
While recognising classes, Islam frowns upon great class differences and
provides several measures to check excessive wealth. It ensures
satisfaction of basic needs for the poor, disabled, orphans, and the aged.
Finally, Islam glorifies the human mind, the pursuit of knowledge and
reason, so long as such intellectual activities cast no doubt on the
existence of God Almighty. Thus, today’s fundamentalism has no
quarrel with modern science and technology.

Articulated in the above terms contemporary Islamic fundamentalism
is hard to describe as the ideology of the fanatic. In fact, the majority of
today’s activists in Egypt are quite moderate in words and deeds. While
vigorous in the advocacy of their vision, they do not as a rule resort to
violence. The exception to this statement is what we may call, for the
lack of a better term, ‘Muslim militants’. Thus, while it is a century old,
modern Islamic fundamentalism whether at the hands of its pioneers,
al-Afghani and Abdu, or its mid-century propagators (Hassan al-Banna
and Sayed Qutb in Egypt, and Abu al-Aala al-Mawdudi in Pakistan),
the emphasis has always been on consciousness-raising, moral teachings,
and peaceful pressure on rulers to heed the call of Islam. Occasional calls
for the use of force were mainly directed against the foreign occupation
or Zionism. However, even in that respect, Islamic activists were in tune
with Egypt’s other secular nationalist and patriotic forces.

While much of this article will deal with ‘activist Islam’ in Egypt, we
shall deal first with the other two branches of contemporary Islamic
resurgence: ‘establishment Islam’ and ‘sufi-Islam’.

Establishment Islam

Establishment Islam is symbolised by Al-Azhar, the Muslim world’s
foremost and oldest religious university. It is the centre of Islamic
teaching and spiritual guidance. Establishment or official Islam is also
embodied in Egypt’s Ministry of Religious Endowments-Awkaf
(henceforth the MRE). Together, since the time of Mohamed Ali
(1805-48) (the founder of the modern Egyptian State), these two bodies

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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

of establishment Islam have formed the religious arm of the State.2
Previously, Al-Azhar had been an important lobbying institution for the
powerless Egyptian masses vis-a-vis their despotic rulers. With
Al-Azhar’s incorporation into the state, it came to abdicate this vital
function. This was largely due to state control over religious
endowments. Religious endowments have since the ninth century
provided Al-Azhar with an economic base, securing for the university
some degree of economic and therefore political independence. Under
Mohamed Ali, such endowments were brought under state control. The
ulema or sheikhs of Al-Azhar and other religious functionaries became
in effect state employees, losing their independence and consequently
their political role as spokesmen for the masses. To be sure, occasionally
tenacious towering figures such as Muhammad Abdu and Ali Abdul
Razek from Al-Azhar opposed the Egyptian rulers. But these figures
have tended to be the exception rather than the rule, and have often had
to be men of independent means, in order to secure with subsequent
dismissal, an alternative income source. Even with such rare figures, the
government has usually managed to rally other Al-Azhar ulema figures
against dissenters as was the case with Abdul-Razek and then Taha
Hussein in the 1920s and 1930s.3 This trend of emasculating Al-Azhar
continued steadily through the post-Second World War period, both
under the Royals as well as under Egypt’s revolutionary leadership after
1952.

Establishment Islam is now an easily manipulated tool of the Egyptian
state. It can be counted on to issue pronouncements (fatwa) to legitimise
government policies. When King Fouad made his bid to become a
Muslim Caliph in the aftermath of the fall of the Ottoman Empire (and
with the abolition of this institution in Turkey), some Al-Azhar sheikhs
were ready to provide the necessary pronouncements. Some went as far
as fabricating genealogical links between the aspiring King and the
Prophet Muhammad. Gamal Abd al-Nasser, at a later stage, had no
trouble obtaining fatwas to justify Arab Socialism and his struggle
against Israel. Justification was provided on Islamic grounds, in terms of
precepts on social Islamic justice and jihad respectively. Sadat obtained
2 Hanafi, Hassan, ‘Islam and politics in Egypt: 1952-1977’ in S E Ibrahim, Egypt in a Quarter of a

Century (in Arabic). Beirut: Arab Development Institute, 1980, pp 265-340; and Barbara,
Rosewiez, ‘Prestigious Al-Azhar is a force of moderation’, Wall Street Journal, 10 August 1987,
p 18.

3 The reference here is to Ali Abdel Razek’s book Islam and Fundamentals of Rule (in Arabic,
al-Islam wa Usul al-Hukm) in which he advocated the separation between Islam and governments;
and to Taha Hussein’s book, The Jahiliyya Literature (in Arabic, al-Adab al-Jahili), both
appeared in the early 1930s and were considered by Al-Azhar as ‘heretical’.

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EGYPT’S ISLAMIC ACTIVISM IN THE 1980s

fatwas for the sake of justifying opposing policies, including his treaty
with Israel. Mrs Jehan Sadat found enough ulema to support her drive
for changing the Personal Status Law in the late 1970s. With Sadat’s
death in 1981, many ulema expressed their misgivings as regards this law
and the law was amended accordingly in 1985.4

This lack of backbone has logically resulted in an erosion in the
credibility of establishment Islam, particularly among young educated
Egyptians. The latter would have nothing good to say about A1-Azhar
and the MRE ulema. Some of them, especially militant activitists, are
plainly hostile toward these ulema. They often describe them as ‘parrots
of the pulpit’ (babghawat al-manaber), ‘stooges of the government’, or
‘religious mercenaries’.5

Despite its emasculation and diminishing credibility with the young,
establishment Islam still commands considerable respect and prestige
with common Egyptians. It controls some 10,000 mosques, hundreds of
secondary educational institutions and several provincial branches of
Al-Azhar University.6 It has monopoly access to the state-controlled
media, especially radio and television. In the last fifteen years, activities
of establishment Islam have grown as rapidly as those of ‘activist Islam’.
Between 1970 and 1985, the state-supported mosques have more than
doubled their number of religious educational institutions and their
student intake has more than tripled. Finally the number of radio and
television hours of religious programmes have quadrupled during this
period. There is now a radio station which is exclusively devoted to such
programmes (twelve hours daily); religious broadcasting accounts for
nearly one-quarter of the hours of all other radio and television
channels. Publications issued by Al-Azhar, MRE and the Supreme
Council of Islamic Affairs (SCIA), which affirm the officially approved
version of Islam, have also increased four fold.

This tremendous growth in the activities of establishment Islam in
Egypt has been partly a genuine response to grass-roots needs, especially
after Egypt’s defeat in 1967 at the hands of Israel. But equally, the
growth in establishment Islam has also been an attempt by the
government to counterbalance the upsurge in ‘activist Islam’. The latter
4 See an elaborate account of the changing relationship between the religious establishment and the

state in Fahmy Howaidi, The Quran and the Sultan (in Arabic), Cairo: Dar al Shuruk, 1982.
5 These descriptions were used by young Islamic militants interviewed in prison by the author

between 1977 and 1979. See details on this point in S E Ibrahim ‘Anatomy of Egypt’s militant
Islamic groups’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 12, December 1980, pp 423-53.

6 These figures are obtained from a mimeographed report prepared by Egypt’s Central Agency for
Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMS), titled Imams and Preachers in the Arab Republic of
Egypt, Cairo, June 1984. See also, Rosewiez ‘Prestigious Al-Azhar’.

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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

is considered by the state and establishment Islam as ‘deviant’, ‘fanatic’
or ‘lunatic’.

Antagonisms between ‘establishment’ and ‘activist’ Islam are often
heightened during episodes of violent confrontations between the
Islamic activists and the Egyptian state. But for the most part, the two
‘Islams’ actually reinforce the general religiosity of the Egyptian masses.
Establishment Islam emphasises beliefs, worship, and rituals, while it
generally remains silent on matters of ‘politics’. If pressed, it cannot but
acknowledge the virtues of implementing Sharia (Islamic law), although
suggesting a ‘gradualist’ path, often qualified with a statement of
‘preconditions’ that must first be fulfilled.

Sufi Islam
Sufi Islam in contemporary Egypt has, likewise, witnessed an impressive
upsurge in recent years. Some fifty major Sufi orders and twice as many
minor orders are registered in a federation known as the Supreme
Council of Sufi Orders (scso)-al-Majlis al-Aala Lilturuk al Sufiyya.
Each order has its central leadership and headquarters, mostly in Cairo,
with provincial and village branches throughout Egypt.7

Classical Sufism-along the lines expressed by al-Ghazali, Rabia
al-Adawiyya, Ibn Arabi and similar figures of medieval Islam-is known
for its puritanic spiritualism and retreat from worldly concerns. Sufism is
a perpetual quest for ‘unity with God’. It seeks human salvation and
eternal peace and harmony through minimum involvement in societal
affairs. Egypt’s Sufi orders, however, do not strictly conform to such an
‘ideal type’. They are mostly loosely organised fraternities around
mystical leaders. Members of a tarika (order), are fully engaged in
everyday pursuits. But they gather together periodically (weekly,
monthly, or annually) for collective prayers, religious chanting, dancing
(zikr) and dining. Every tarika has its own recitals, insignia, parades and
other identifying symbols. On the occasion of the Prophet’s birthday, all
of Egypt’s Sufi orders gather for several days around the mosque of
al-Hussein (the mosque named after the Prophet’s grandson). Their
ceremonies culminate in a grand parade in the Old City. Each order
usually mobilises its membership for the occasion. The parade often goes
on for hours. And it is at times like these that an observer takes ready
note of the annual growth of such orders.
7 For a detailed account on Egypt’s sufi orders, see Morroe Berger, Islam in Egypt Today: Social

and Political Aspects of Popular Religion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970
especially pp 62-89.

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EGYPT’S ISLAMIC ACTIVISM IN THE 1980s

There is little information available on the membership of Egypt’s Sufi
orders. But members who have registered with the scso, and hence have
the privilege of participating in the annual parades have tripled between
1970 and 1985.8 In the mid-1960s the parade march took no more than
two hours following the afternoon prayer (al-asr) and ending well before
the sunset prayer (al-maghreb). In the mid-1980s, the parade begins after
the noon prayer (al-zuhr) and may continue long after sunset.

Sufi Islam provides its members with an intimate sense of belonging
(to a tarika). The spirit of fellowship and communion is exhilarating.
There is a good deal of mutual help among each order’s membership.
There are no harsh demands or strict organisational obligations. As such
the Sufi orders seem well suited for traditional middle-aged urbanites.
On the surface, Sufi orders in Egypt are apolitical. As such they represent
no threat to the state or the regime. If anything, the government is
sufficiently comfortable with their activities for it to provide facilities for
their congregation in Cairo and other cities. While there is peaceful
rivalry among the different orders, the orders as a whole do not take
sides on socio-political issues. They neither condemn nor condone
‘establishment Islam’ or ‘activist Islam’; establishment Islam (Al-Azhar
and MRE) tends to take a benign attitude toward Sufi Islam. In fact
several well-known Azhar ulema were and are known to be Sufis
themselves. Activist Islam, on the other hand, holds a critical view of
Sufism in general, and of Egypt’s Sufi orders in particular. Muslim
militants see these orders as inimical to true belief. A true believer for
them should be engaging and striving in matters of this world ‘as if he
would live forever’ in the same manner as ‘he prepares for the hereafter
as if he would die tomorrow’.

Despite their apolitical appearance and manners, Sufi orders are
potential social activists. It is not unusual for a member who joined an
order for ‘individual salvation’ to discover or be persuaded that such
salvation is better attained collectively and through other means as well.
The late Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood is a
case in point. He started as a young Sufi during his college career. But
soon after, he smoothly made the transition into religio-political
activism.

8 Information obtained directly from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Sufi Orders (scso) indicate that
the number of such registered orders has grown from twenty-one in 1960 to sixty in 1985. Some
minor orders in existence and active are not registered, especially if they are split-offs from major
orders.

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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

Activist Islam

Contemporary ‘Islamic activism’ in Egypt has its roots in the Muslim
Brotherhood, which was established by Hassan al-Banna in 1928. Thus,
while millions of Egyptian Muslims subscribe to fundamentalist ideas,
and take their cues from ‘establishment Islam’ or ‘Sufi Islam’, only
Islamic activists are willing to go one step further. They strive to bring
about the Islamic order-to restore a ‘paradise lost’. The activists
propagate the vision of Islam by words and deeds. In their advocacy they
use peaceful or violent means; and often, a mixture of both.

In its sixty years, the Brotherhood has managed to politicise Islam as
no other indigenous popular movement has ever done in Egypt’s history.
The impressive development and the march of the Brotherhood is
beyond the scope of this paper, and details of its development can be
found elsewhere.9 In its most violent phase (1945-65) the Brotherhood
was implicated in assassinations of its political opponents in both royal
and revolutionary Egypt.’0 It was such an attempt on Nasser’s life in
1954 that broke the Brotherhood’s back and marginalised it in Egyptian
politics for nearly twenty years. Nasser hit back with unprecedented
ferocity. Thousands of the Brotherhood’s members were jailed and
tortured. Several of the Brotherhood’s leaders were executed, including
top theoreticians such as Abdel Qader in 1955 and Sayyed Qutb in 1965.

It was not until Nasser’s defeat in 1967 that the Muslim Brotherhood
was to gradually recover from its twenty-year eclipse. When it did, its
remaining leaders had made the strategic decision to discard violence.
The decision was preceded by heated debates among the membership
inside and outside Nasser’s prisons. Younger members never accepted
the new strategy of ‘non-violence’. Others had decided to divorce
themselves not only from violence but from politics as well. Thus, by the
time Sadat released them from jail, the Muslim Brothers were divided
into four broad tendencies, all of them activists and committed to the
cause of an Islamic socio-political order, but widely differing on issues of
strategy, tactics, and internal organisation. These four tendencies were

9 The best and most detailed account of the foundation and evolution of the Muslim Brotherhood
is found in Richard Mitchell, The Society of the Moslem Brothers, London: Oxford University
Press, 1969. See also, Ishaq Musa Husayni, The Muslim Brethren: The Greatest of Modern Islamic
Movements (translated from Arabic), Beirut: Khayat College Book Cooperation, 1956; Rifat
al-Said, Hassan al-Banna (in Arabic), Cairo: Madbouly Bookshop, 1978.

10 See an account of the Brotherhood’s acts of violence in Fahmy Howaidi, ‘The new Commander
[of the Faithful] in Upper Egypt’ (in Arabic), Al-Ahram, 17 November 1987. Among these
assassinations before 1952 was a judge A al-Khazendar and a prime-minister M F al-Noukrashi
in 1947 and 1948-49, respectively.

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EGYPT’S ISLAMIC ACTIVISM IN THE 1980s

the apolitical Muslim Brotherhood; the mainstream Muslim
Brotherhood; the anti-regime Muslim groups; and the anti-society
Muslim groups.

The ideological underpinnings of the four tendencies are fairly clear;
and will be dealt with shortly. Organisationally however, the boundaries
between them, particularly the last two, are not as clear. The official
security reports are often confusing as to the names, numbers, size, and
relative weight of these groups. We rarely learn anything definitive about
them until their membership is either implicated, arrested or tried for
‘illegal acts’. In the last several years the violence-prone groups have
received much of the media attention at home and abroad especially
after the Iranian revolution. Their acts of defiance and bloody
confrontations with the Egyptian state have been sensational enough to
warrant such attention. But in the longer term it is probably the first two
tendencies that are gradually, if less dramatically, having an impact on
the ‘body-social’ of Egypt.

The apolitical Muslim Brotherhood
Encompassing a smaller number, mostly middle-aged professionals, this
group while still loyal to the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood has
decided to devote its time and energy to religious teaching, moral
reinforcement, and setting up modem economic and service institutions
along ‘Islamic lines’.’1 As it turns out, this group has been as active as the
other groups, though without the same blatant public profile, and
without resorting to violence or extra-legal methods. Its members try to
be as ‘Islamic’ as possible within the existing ‘non-Islamic’ socio-political
order of the Egyptian state.

Its initial success in setting up economic enterprises (Islamic Banks,
investment companies, factories, large-scale farming and agribusiness)
has tempted several intruders (not originally Muslim Brothers) to follow
suit, using the same religious appeal of usury-free enterprises. By the
mid-1980s, the original as well as the intruding Islamic entrepreneurs

Having escaped Egypt to the oil-rich Arab countries during Nasser’s crack-down on the
Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s, many members of the Brotherhood accumulated substantial
savings abroad; returned to Egypt in the early 1970s, took advantage of Sadat’s new open-door
economic policy, and set-up various types of industrial enterprise. The Al-Sherif brothers are
perhaps a good example of Brotherhood entrepreneurship. In one decade their small plastic
enterprise had grown into an agglomeration of multi-industries agribusiness, and investment
companies. The total value of its assets are estimated to be in excess of one billion dollars at home
and abroad. See, al-Ahram al-Iktisadi (in Arabic-Al-Ahram Economist), 8 December 1986.

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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

had amassed substantial deposits from a broad strata of Egyptian
Muslims. The competition with public (state-owned) and other
conventional private institutions is increasingly in their favour. Press
reports have estimated the volume of Islamic venture-capital held by
these institutions to be anywhere between $5 billion and $15 billion.12
With the exception of Islamic banking (which like all banking is
regulated by Egypt’s Central Bank), most of the other Islamic economic
enterprises are simple contractual arrangements between a major
entrepreneur and thousands of individual ‘partners’ (depositors). 3
Hence, the details of their transactions, through accounts and annual
reports, etc, are not publicly monitored. This fact alone has been a
belated cause for alarm by the state-controlled press since mid-1986. A
sustained campaign was intensively waged against ‘the so-called Islamic
investment companies’ in the autumn of that year. Citizens were warned
to stop dealing with them. One of these companies, al-Rayyan, was
rumoured to have lost millions of dollars while speculating in gold and
hard currencies abroad.’4 The campaign and the rumour resulted in a
run on the company’s offices by thousands of clients demanding their
money. To the surprise of all, including the government, al-Rayyan
honoured every request for withdrawal. This episode strengthened,
rather than weakened, the Islamic investment companies, particularly
al-Rayyan. Most of those who had withdrawn their money returned it
shortly after. The loud publicity surrounding the episode encouraged
new clients to deal with these companies, particularly as the news of their
high rate of return (20 per cent annually or more-twice the rate of
return given by the commercial banking sector) became widely known.

Apolitical Islamic activism has not confined itself to the economic
sphere. There is a broad range of services rendered under the catchword
‘Islamic’. Again most of these were started by the original Muslim
Brothers in the 1970s. Among the most widely used facilities of the
Brotherhood are the medical services clinics to be found in more than

12 ibid., see also an interview with Dr Atef Sidky Egypt’s Prime Minister, Al-Ahram, 14 August,
1987. The higher estimates of L.E. 48 billion (about $25 billion) of the 180 Islamic investment
companies was given by the Cairo weekly Sawt al-Arab, 9 August 1987.

13 The typical contractual arrangement takes the form of a statement to the effect that ‘the
undersigned has agreed to put the amount of … at the disposal of … (the name of the
enterpreneur) to invest on his behalf in Islamically lawful activities; and accepts the risks of such
an investment. In case of positive return he gets the profits … (monthly, quarterly, or annually).

14 See details of this campaign in the state-controlled Cairo weeklies al-Mosawwar, 14, 21, and 28,
November 1986, and Al-Ahram al-Iktisadi, 1, 8 December 1986.

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EGYPT’S ISLAMIC ACTIVISM IN THE 1980s

20,000 non-governmental mosques,’5 many of which have operating
facilities for minor surgery. The Islamic clinics charge their clients a
nominal or modest fee for a generally better and more compassionate
service than their state-run counterparts.’6

Similar educational and other social services are rendered by apolitical
Islamic activists. Often these are also located on the premises of
non-governmental mosques. These are run on a low-cost overhead basis
and generally provide good-quality services given the donated time and
expertise of their volunteer workers. More recently, Islamic economic
entrepreneurs have also involved themselves in providing similar services
on a graded service-charge basis, according to ability to pay.’7 Thus
al-Rayyan, the controversial and well publicised investment company,
has advertised daily for its newly established nurseries, schools, medical
clinics, restaurants, and publishing houses.

This strand of Islamic activism has therefore set about establishing
concrete Islamic alternatives to the socio-economic institutions of the
state and the capitalist sector. Islamic social welfare institutions are
better run than their state-public counterparts, less bureaucratic and less
impersonal, if slightly more expensive and riskier. They are definitely
more grass-roots oriented, far less expensive and far less opulent than
the institutions created under Sadat’s infitah (open-door policy),
institutions which mushroomed in the 1970s and which have been
providing an exclusive service to the top 5 per cent of the country’s
population.

Apolitical Islamic activism has thus developed a substantial
socio-economic muscle through which it has managed to baffle the state
and other secular forces in Egypt. The Islamic non-governmental
organisations are operating within the bounds of Egyptian law but
independently of the state. So far they are displaying a high degree of
vitality and viability that is envied by their secular counterparts. And so

5 In 1980, the number of mosques in Egypt was about 28,000 of which slightly more than 7,000
were government controlled and the remainder (more than 20,000) were independently
controlled. The former are maintained, their preachers and employees are paid, and their
activities (including the text of the Friday Ceremony, (Khutba) are directly supervised by the
government’s MRE and Al-Azhar. The latter remained completely outside government control till
1981, when they too were placed under partial governmental supervision. See CAPMAS’ report,
Imams and Preachers, op. cit.

16 This statement is based on field observations by a research team currently working with the
author. Three medical institutions in Cairo-one Islamic (Mustafa Mahmoud Mosque), one
governmental (Abu al-Rish Hospital), and one private (al-Salamm International Hospital) have
been sampled for comparable services.

7 See, for example, al-Rayyan’s and al-Hoda’s advertising for such services in Egypt’s major daily
Al-Ahram 6, 13 November 1987.

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far, attempts to smear or discredit them by the state media have had little
impact. The irony of the matter is that while the Egyptian public may
often be exposed to hostile editorials against such organisations, they
will also be exposed to positive promotional advertising on behalf of
these Islamic organisations, usually in the same daily newspapers and
weekly magazines.’8 In fact, most of these institutions are quite
sophisticated in their advertising. Their style combines an appeal of
‘Islamic authenticity’ and a Madison Avenue-like attraction. The
atmosphere they have created is also beneficial to the mainstream
Muslim Brotherhood.

The mainstream Muslim Brotherhood
Encompassing the majority of the old Muslim Brothers, the mainstream
Muslim Brotherhood has retained the original name and is perceived by
the state and the public to be an extension of the original Brotherhood.
Although still technically banned (since the attempt on Nasser’s life in
1954), the Brotherhood has enjoyed ‘de facto recognition’ by the
Egyptian government since the mid-1970s and has also issued its own
monthly publication (al-Daawa, al-Iitisam, and al-Mukhtar al-Islami)
regularly between 1974 and 1981.

When Sadat released Brotherhood leaders from prison in the early
1970s, and then allowed them a reasonable measure of freedom, his
motives were concerned with the support that the Brotherhood could
give in countering his Nasserist and leftist detractors. In the first years of
Sadat’s presidency, the Brotherhood and other Islamic groups were
largely to keep their side of the bargain.’9

While committed as ever to its historical objective of bringing about
an Islamic social order, the Brotherhood is now equally committed to
achieving this objective by non-violent means, a decision that led in the
early 1970s to the breakaway of several groups from its ranks. Even
when its disenchantment with Sadat grew steadily in the late 1970s, the
Brotherhood remained true to its commitment, confining its opposition
to legal political means. Many of President Sadat’s policies were
18 See, for example, issue of Al-Ahram al-Iktisadi, 2 Nov 1987 in which the editorial and three

articles (pp 8-2 1) were directed against these companies. Meanwhile the Al-Ahram daily (the same
publishing house) on the same day carried promotion advertising for three of these companies
(al-Rayyan, al-Huda, and al-Saad). This practice is not confined to the state-controlled media.
The leftist weekly Al-Ahali issue of 25 November 1987 published an article against Islamic
investment companies (p 3) and an advertisement for one of them (al-Rayyan) on the back page.

‘9 For an account of the relationship between the Brotherhood and Sadat, see Ibrahim, ‘An Islamic
alternative in Egypt: the Muslim Brotherhood and Sadat’, Arab Studies Quarterly, 4 (2) Spring
1982.

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EGYPT’S ISLAMIC ACTIVISM IN THE 1980s

vehemently criticised, especially his ‘peace initiative’ with Israel. The
Brotherhood has had a long-standing hostility toward Zionism. Its
volunteers had fought beside the Palestinian resistance long before the
Arab armies entered the war of 1948. The Brotherhood’s position on
Sadat’s policy towards Israel centred on the impossibility of peaceful
co-existence with the Jewish state. Israel is viewed as ‘a villain aggressor
on the abode of Islam (Dar al-Islam). Israel is directly or indirectly
behind major calamities befalling Muslims everywhere, particularly in
Palestine. Israel has desecrated Muslim Shrines in the Holy Land. As an
evil it must be eradicated’.20 These assertions were echoed in nearly every
issue of al-Daawa and al-Iitisam, with increasing passion following
Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in November 1977 and before these two
magazines and other Brotherhood publications were banned by Sadat in
September 1981. It was the openness of the attack by the Brotherhood
that emboldened other opposition groups to come out against Sadat’s
policy of reconciliation with Israel. His alliance with the West, especially
the USA, was criticised as well. The Brotherhood’s criticism was
credible, effective, and painful.

Thus, in his September 1981 crackdown on the opposition, Sadat
spared one or two top leaders of each opposition party, for example, K
Mohi-eldin of the Progressive Unionist Party (PuP) and Ibrahim Shukry
of the Socialist Labour Party (SLP). However, with the Muslim
Brotherhood, Sadat’s arrests included all elements within the top
leadership, in addition to the seventy-year-old Supreme Guide, Omar
el-Telmessani. Out of the 1,500 arrested and detained between 3-5
September 1981, about two-thirds were from the Muslim Brotherhood
and other Islamic groups.

Shortly after Sadat’s assassination on 6 October 1981, by the Islamic
group al-Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood leadership was released from
jail. The Brotherhood was not implicated in the use of violence on this
occasion nor had it been in earlier confrontations with Sadat that had
occurred in April 1974 and January and July 1977. This violence-free
record of the Brotherhood further consolidated its image as a
respectable and responsible opposition. Under the wise stewardship of
its third Supreme Guide, Omar el-Telmessani, the Brotherhood
increased its membership and considerably improved its relationship
with other opposition parties. There was also a significant shift in the
Muslim Brotherhood’s political thought and practice.
20 See the Brotherhood’s monthly al-Dawa, issues of December 1977 to April 1981.

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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

Beside discarding violence and opting for change by peaceful means,
the Brotherhood in the 1980s had clearly accepted political pluralism
and parliamentary democracy as the road forward. In earlier decades,
the Brotherhood had firmly asserted that only two types of party can
possibly exist: God’s Party (Hisbu Allah) and Satan’s Party (Hisby
Ashytan). The Brotherhood was the former, and all others the latter. Not
only has the Brotherhood come to discard this stand in recent years but
it also entered into alliance with other parties in coalitional
arrangements for parliamentary elections. Thus in 1984 the
Brotherhood, which is still illegal as regards formal political
participation and cannot run on a separate party2l list, chose to form an
alliance with the Wafd party (wp). This decision was all the more
significant for the fact that the wp has been the most ‘secular’ of Egypt’s
modern political parties since the 1919 revolution. The coalition
managed to win some sixty-five seats (out of 450), seven of which were
for the Brotherhood. The coalition came second only to Mubarak’s
National Democratic Party (NDP) and served as the major opposition in
the People’s Assembly (Egypt’s Parliament) for three years. In the 1987
elections, the Brotherhood shifted its alliance and formed a coalition
with two smaller parties: the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) and the Liberal
Party (LP). The new coalition took the name of Islamic Alliance
(IA)-al-Tahaluf al-Islami. Again this bloc came second to the NDP, with
some sixty seats, thirty-eight of which went to the Brotherhood. The IA
now forms the major opposition group to the ruling party.

The 1987 election was a landmark for the Muslim Brotherhood. Three
years earlier it was a minor partner in a coalition dominated by the wp.
In contrast, the Brotherhood was now the dominant partner in the IA;
and was responsible not only for the IA’S ‘Islamic’ name but also for the
first demand in the coalition’s ten-point election platform, which called
for the implementation of Islamic Sharia.22 The campaign’s only slogan
was ‘Islam is the Solution’. The Brotherhood’s resounding success was
2′ Egypt’s electoral law was changed in 1984 (shortly before the election) from an individual

candidacy to a complicated proportional representation. Candidates must be on a party-list for a
given enlarged district (Egypt was divided into some fifty electoral districts) to compete for its
seats (ranging from seven to ten seats per district). A given party must first obtain a minimum of
8.0 per cent of the popular vote nation-wide, then gets a number of seats (or none) in each district
proportional to the number of votes it obtained in that district. In the 1984 Elections no
‘independent’ candidate could run for the People’s Assembly. The law was amended again, also
shortly before the 1987 Election, because of the Supreme Constitutional Court’s ruling, and
allowed ‘independents’ to run, but only for one seat per district. The 1987 electoral law is also
contested in Court by the opposition.

22 For the Islamic Alliance Platform, see the SLP weekly al-Shab issues of 17 March through to 15
April.

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EGYPT’S ISLAMIC ACTIVISM IN THE 1980s

dramatised by the fact that the son of its founder and first Supreme
Guide, Seif al-Islam Hassan al-Banna was among those elected, along
with the son of the Brotherhood’s second Supreme Guide, Maamoun H
al-Hudhaiby. While all other major parties, namely the government’s
NDP and the wp, registered a net loss in votes cast in 1987 as compared to
1984,23 the Brotherhood also increased its number of seats in the
Assembly by more than five-fold, the number of seats rising from seven
to thirty-eight.

Equally significant was the IA’S accommodating and sophisticated
election campaign. The campaign went out of its way to dispel the fears
of Egypt’s Christian Copts by both words and deeds. The second
demand of the ten-point election platform was the unequivocal
affirmation of the IA’s desire for ‘full equal rights and obligations
between Muslims and their Coptic brothers’.24 To couple these words
with deeds, the IA placed several Copts on its candidacy lists. The only
Copt who was put at the top of a party list and was elected in the 1987
Election was with the IA.25

Spearheading the IA, the Brotherhood’s position during and after the
1987 election was one of moderation, gradualism, and constitutionalism.
Its spokesmen emphasised the imperative of going slowly, but steadily,
with the implementation of Sharia, making clear that they do not wish a
repeat of the premature and ill-fated experience of the Sudan,26 nor its
implementation in the convulsive revolutionary manner of Iran. By the
same token, the Brotherhood has painstakingly distanced itself from the
anti-regime violence-oriented Muslim groups, such as Repentance and
Holy Flight (al-Takfir wa al-Hijra) and Holy War (al-Jihad). The
Brotherhood has largely benefited from the fanaticism of such groups,
23 Out of the 448 seats, the NDP had 391 in 1984, which dropped to 353 in 1987 (a net loss of

thirty-eight seats). The wp (with the Brotherhood combined) had fifty-seven seats in 1984, which
dropped to thirty-five in 1987. Since the Brotherhood was not with wp in the latter election its net
loss is actually twelve seats (i.e. from forty-seven to thirty-five).

24 Al-Shaab, 17 March, 1987.
25 The reference is to Mr Gammal Asad Abdel-Malak. The NDP (the majority party) did not put any

Copt on the top of any of its districts’ lists. Dr Botrous Ghali, the State Minister for Foreign
Affairs since 1977, is a Christian (but not a Copt) and was on one of the NDP’s lists for the number
two District of Central Cairo and was the only other Christian elected in 1987. It is noteworthy
that there are ten seats in the Assembly whose occupants are appointed by the President; most of
which go to Egyptian Copts. For other accommodating statements by the Brotherhood vis-a-vis
the Copts, see Sheikh Mustafa Mashhour, ‘The correct Islamic understanding of national unity’,
al Shaab, 3 November 1987, p 5.

26 The reference is to former President Numeiri of Sudan when he hurriedly implemented the Islamic
Penal Code in September 1983. As this coincided with the severe drought in the Sudan (1983-85),
not to mention the chronic economic problems of the country, the result was that hundreds of
poor Sudanese had their hands chopped for thieving. Wide-spread protest inside and outside the
Sudan broke out. Ultimately Numeiri was toppled, for this and other reasons, in April 1985.

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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

looking quite sane and respectable by comparison. Meanwhile the
Brotherhood never fails to point out that had the state allowed its own
organisation political rights, these fanatic groups would not have
flourished underground.27

The Brotherhood has taken full advantage of present conditions in
Egypt. It has capitalised on the upsurge in the overall religiosity of the
Egyptian masses since 1967. It has been steadily filling the political
vacuum created by Nasser’s departure from the scene in 1970. Its
religious populism is proving to be the functional equivalent to Nasser’s
national socialism. Both types of populism seem to appeal to the same
constituency: the lower-middle class in particular and the middle class in
general. The mainstream politicised Muslim Brotherhood has also taken
advantage of the growing economic muscle of the apolitical Muslim
Brotherhood tendency. And as we have also noted, the Brotherhood has
benefited, by default, from the actions of the other more violence-prone
Islamic groups.

The Brotherhood’s success can be attributed to a number of factors.
One of the main factors was its decision to pursue its objectives
peacefully. A factor of equal significance was the leadership of Sheikh
Omar el-Telmessani, the third Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood.
Telmessani was a seasoned and shrewd politician. He navigated steadily
but gently in post-Nasserite Egypt. He never compromised in matters of
principles under Sadat or Mubarak. His advocacy of Islamic Sharia
remained relentless till his death in 1986. Telmessani vehemently
objected to Sadat’s policies: especially Camp David, the
Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, and alliance with the USA. He did all this
with a style that baffled and at times outraged Sadat; but, without
libellous or illegal implications. Telmessani was also successful in ending
the Brotherhood’s half-century of self-imposed alienation from secular
political forces in the country. He instituted the practice of cooperation
with other political parties. His motto in this regard was ‘we cooperate
sincerely with others in matters on which there are common
agreement-we sincerely excuse each other on matters of
disagreement.’28 Finally, Telmessani laid firm rules of leadership in the
Brotherhood, proposing that it should be-collectively organised through
the Supreme Office of Guidance (soG), with command passing to the
oldest member unless he wilfully declines. This practice spared the
Brotherhood of one of the toughest problems faced by all mass
27 See Mashhour, ‘Islamic understanding’, op. cit. p 5.
28 From an interview with the author in February 1984.

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EGYPT’S ISLAMIC ACTIVISM IN THE 1980s

movements, namely the problem of succession. Thus, when Telmessani
passed away, the issue of succession was smoothly settled without much
fanfare.29

Social movements seem to go through a process of maturation. The
first stage of the process is that of preaching and advocacy. The second
stage is that of organisation and confrontation, in which the emphasis is
on radical action. The third stage is that of ‘institutionalisation’ in which
the emphasis is on consolidation and statesmanship. Egypt’s Muslim
Brotherhood seems to have followed this general pattern of
development. Its three successive stages fall between the periods
1928-45, when the organisation pursued its educational programme and
formulated its objectives; 1945-70, when the organisation’s programme
of radical action led to its being declared an illegal organisation; and
1970 to the present day following successive liberalisations, first by Sadat
and then by Mubarak.

The last stage in the Brotherhood’s sixty-year history has coincided
with external societal developments that have indirectly enhanced the
Brotherhood’s strength. The Brotherhood have been able to capitalise
on discontent arising from actions taken in Sadat’s Egypt in the 1970s
and the lack of direction under Mubarak during the 1980s. Sadat’s
open-door policy, his alliance with the USA and peace with Israel,
effectively undermined the legitimacy of his regime. In the 1980s growing
inequities, coupled with rising foreign influence, and alienation from the
rest of the Arab and Muslim world has also created conditions of
widespread discontent. The Brotherhood has thus been able to capitalise
on mass frustration, particularly among the youth and the lower-middle
and middle classes. The Brotherhood, however, is not the only Islamic
group to have done so. More violence-prone groups have been able to
appropriate some younger elements from these same classes that make
up the discontented.

The anti-regime Muslim groups
The anti-regime Muslim groups represent some of the factions that
broke away from the main body of the Brotherhood and have been
acting on their own behalf since the early 1970s. The militant violence of
these groups was aimed at toppling the regime (Sadat’s and now
Mubarak’s) and bringing about an ‘Islamic regime’. Proponents of this
29 Upon Telmessani’s death in 1986, Mr Hamed Abn-Alnasr, the oldest member of SPG was

automatically chosen as the fourth Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood. Other more able but few
other younger members, e.g. Sheikh Mustafa Mashhour (cited above) were bypassed.

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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

tendency contend that the present decadence and corruption that
characterises society is rooted within the ruling political elite. No
amount of preaching, religious consciousness-raising, or behaviour-
modelling is sufficient to change this state of affairs (as the first tendency,
the apolitical Brotherhood contends). Nor would any amount of
non-violent political activism bring about the desired result (as the
second tendency, the mainstream Brotherhood contends). In their view,
Egyptian society at large is redeemable if, and only if, its leadership
would be truly ‘Islamic’. Thus, the struggle must be directed against the
rulers, to remove them or force them to submit to the Islamic will. This
anti-regime tendency has been embodied in the Islamic Liberation
Organisation and the Jihad Organisation. The first, otherwise known as
the Technical Military Academy Group (TMA), had a bloody
confrontation with the Sadat regime in April 1974.30 The second, the
Jihad, is believed to be an ideological, if not also an organisational,
extension of the former, the TMA. The Jihad group was by far the
bloodiest and most deadly in its confrontations with the state. For
despite the preventive arrest of hundreds of its members by the state in
September 1981, it still had sufficient organisational capability to plan
and successfully carry out the assassination plot that took the life of
President Sadat on 6 October 1981. And despite a second round-up of its
members in the aftermath of the assassination, the Jihad was still able to
storm the main police headquarters in the Governorate of Assyut, and
kill or wound tens of state security men. Some members have already
been tried for direct involvement in the assassination of President Sadat,
receiving death sentences or varying terms of imprisonment. A second
trial, involving 302 Jihad members charged for the Assyut events and
membership in an unlawful organisation, ended on 30 September 1984
with 1 10 convicted, receiving prison sentences ranging from two to forty
years.31

30 The TMA plan to topple the regime was fairly simple. Some 100 TMAS were to storm the Technical
Military Academy (in cooperation with some of their own members inside who were cadets), seize
enough arms and vehicles; march on to the Arab Socialist Union building where Sadat and other
top leaders were attending an official event, arrest or kill them; and storm the nearby radio and
television building to announce the birth of the ‘Islamic Republic of Egypt’. The first two stages of
the plot on 18 April, 1974, were carried out. Before the TAMs could leave the Academy on their
way to the Arab Socialist Union, the State Security Forces counter-attacked. Eleven people were
killed and twenty-seven were wounded. For more details, see Ibrahim, ‘Anatomy of Egypt’s
Militant Islamic Groups’, op. cit., p 450.

3′ For a full analytical account of the Jihad group and the events of 1981, see Nemat Guenena, ‘The
Jihad an “Islamic Alternative” in Egypt’, Cairo Papers in Social Science (9) Monograph 2,
Summer 1986.

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EGYPT’S ISLAMIC ACTIVISM IN THE 1980s

After a four-year lull under President Mubarak, the Jihad and other
like-minded groups resumed their confrontations with the state through
acts of defiance and violence. In 1986, several attacks and bombing
incidents were directed against nightclubs, video shops, alcohol stores
and taverns. In 1987, assassination attempts were made on the lives of
two former ministers of the interior, Hassan Abu-Pasha, El-Nabawy
Ismael, and a leading journalist, Makram M Ahmed. The first two were
targeted by Islamic militants for their alleged role in ordering the torture
of ‘fellow Muslims’ while in jail between 1981 and 1984. The third was
singled out for his relentless smearing of Muslims groups in his editorials
in the weekly magazine al-Miswar. It took a few months before the
Egyptian authorities were able to arrest some, but not all, suspects in
August 1987 and charge them for committing these acts in November
1987. In the process, several skirmishes and shoot-outs took place, with
a score of dead and wounded on both sides.32

In a few upper-Egyptian cities, namely Assyut, Sohag, Menia, and
Bani-Souef, Islamic militant students have been harassing other students
either for being too ‘liberal’ or for being Christian Copts.33 They are
audacious enough to occasionally hold hostages and make demands on
the authorities in return for their release.34 They also issue their own
religious pronouncements and edicts (fatwas) and proceed to implement
them directly, bypassing religious (Al-Azhar) and state authorities.35

The ideological underpinnings of this anti-regime violent Islamic
tendency are outlined in a small booklet al Faridha al Ghaeba (The
Absent Commandment) attributed to Mohammed Abdel Salam Farag.
The ‘absent commandment’ is the Jihad and hence the name given by the
authorities to the group led by Farag, which assassinated President
Sadat in 1981. Farag takes his cues from Ibn Taymiyya (AD 1263-1328),
a noted Islamic thinker of more than six centuries ago.36 Both
pronounced on the society of their respective times as an abode in
between the abode of Peace (dar al-Silm) and the abode of War (dar
al-Harb). This ‘in-between’ status means that the majority of subjects
(citizens) are basically good Muslims, but are living under ‘non-Islamic’
laws and ‘non-Muslim’ or ‘nominal Muslim’ rulers. The implication of

32 For details of these shoot-outs. See Al-Ahram, 30 August 1987.
33 For details and analysis of these acts, see Al-Shaab, 27 October 1987, p 3; and F Howaidi, ‘The

New Commanders of the Faithful in Upper Egypt’, Al-Ahram, 17 November, 1987, p 7.
34 Howaidi, ibid, p 7.
35 ibid.
36 See a full account by both Ibn Taymiyya and Abdel Salam Farag in Mohamed Emera, The Absent

Commandment: Presentation, Dialogue, and Evaluation (Arabic) Cairo: Dar Thabet, 1982.

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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

this characterisation is that it is the duty (commandment) of good
Muslims to fight their ungodly rulers and liquidate their laws. In Farag’s
words:37

The State is ruled by heathen laws despite the fact that the majority of its people
are Muslims. These laws were formulated by infidel and compelled Muslims to
abide by them … And because they deserted the Jihad, Muslims of today live in
subjugation, humiliation, division, and fragmentation. The Koran has aptly
scolded them in the verse. Thou believers why if told to rise up for the sake of
God, you hedge closer to the ground? Are you more content with earthly life
than with the hereafter? The pleasures of the earthly life are little compared to
that of the hereafter. If you do not rise up God will torture you most painfully
. . .3 Thus, the aim of our Group is to rise up to establish the Islamic State and
restore Islam to this Nation … The means to this end is to fight against heretical
rulers and to eradicate the despots who are no more than human beings who
have not found those who can suppress them with the order of God almighty.

This combatant spirit, combined with religious passion, has made
Islamic militants quite deadly in their confrontations. Often the leaders
have no illusions about a quick victory over the ‘heathen State’ and its
rulers. Nevertheless, they are willing to ‘rise-up in anger for the sake of
God’ (Ghadhabah lilallah). Their death in battle, or subsequent execution
after trial, is akin to martyrdom that takes one right to heavenly paradise
(al-Janna).

The anti-regime Islamic tendency appeals to educated, motivated
youngsters of rural or small-town and lower-middle-class backgrounds;
but who are often living in large cities and away from their families at the
time of their recruitment.39 Contrary to common stereotypes that these
radical groups generally attract a disproportionate number of ‘misfits’,
‘alienated’, ‘marginals’, or otherwise ‘abnormal’, our fieldwork showed
Egypt’s Islamic militants to be almost ‘model young Egyptians’.’

M A Farag, The Absent Commandment (Arabic with no publisher or date) pp 7-8, as cited in Ibid
pp 10-1 1.

38 Al-Taba, Chapter of the Holy Koran, verses 38-39.
39 For details on the Militants Social Profile, see Ibrahim ‘The Anatomy of Egypt’s militant Islamic

groups’ op. cit. pp 437-40.
40 Shukry Mustafa was a young agricultural engineer, who in the mid 1960s after the Second

crack-down on the Brotherhood was heavily influenced by Sayed Qutb, a Brotherhood hard-liner
while in prison. Released by Sadat in the early 1970s, Shukry Mustafa organised what came to be
known as the Takfir Wal-al-Hijra group (Repentance and Holy Flight, RHF); which in July 1977
engaged the Sadat regime in a bloody confrontation, leaving six people dead and fifty-seven
wounded. Shukry Mustafa, along was four others, were sentenced to death and executed in 1978
at the age of thirty-seven.

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EGYPT’S ISLAMIC ACTIVISM IN THE 1980s

The anti-society Muslim groups
The fourth tendency, the anti-society Muslim groups, also broke away
from the Brotherhood in the early 1970s, believing that the
Brotherhood’s analysis of societal affairs was incorrect and that different
strategy and tactics were required for the situation at hand. Initiated by
Shukri Mustafa,4′ this tendency deplores the corrupt, decadent, and
sinful nature of Egyptian society. Thus they believed that moral change
was required from the grass-roots upwards. Its strategy, therefore, is one
of patience and its goals, long-term. It calls for building a nucleus
‘community of believers’ who would act out ‘the true life of Islam’. This
Islamic community of believers would grow in numbers, in spirit and in
material strength, until it is capable of marching and bringing down the
already crumbling sinful social order of Egypt at large. Shukri Mustafa
and his young followers cite the example of the Prophet Muhammad
who, surrounded and harassed by the jahiliyya people of Mecca, fled to
Medina with a few followers, and established there the first true Muslim
Community. Ten years later, and much stronger, the Prophet marched
on Mecca and terminated the state of jahiliyya.

The notion of removing oneself, literally or metaphorically, from the
present corrupt society is akin to a Hijra-holy flight from jahilliyya, a
condition of infidelity, decadence, and oblivious ignorance similar to
that prevailing in pre-Islamic Arabia. Hence the name given by Egyptian
authorities to the group formed and led by Shukri Mustafa in the early
1970s was al-Takfir Wa al-Hijra, literally Repentance and Holy Flight
(RHF).

While ultimately committed to the use of violence, RHF would only do
that in the long run, the ultimate sanction in its final struggle against the
jahiliyya society. Unlike the third tendency, symbolised by the Jihad, RHF
was not bent on engaging the state in a continuous and immediate war of
attrition, but rather on striking one final blow later. Thus, the 1977 big
bloody confrontation of RHF with the Egyptian government was not part
of its long-range plan. The group had scarcely begun building its ‘model
community’ somewhere in an unpopulated hinterland on the edge of the
Nile valley. According to RHF militants, the 1977 confrontation was
forced on them by the regime. Egyptian security forces had arrested
several of their ‘brothers’ and detained them without trial. Their pleas to
be tried or set free were repeatedly ignored. In retaliation the RHF
kidnapped Sheikh A H al-Dahabi, a former minister of Awqaf (Religious
4′ For more details on this confrontation, see Ibrahim, ‘Anatomy of Egypt’s militant Islamic

Groups’, op. cit., pp 442-3; and p 450.

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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

Endowments), and held him as a hostage until their brothers were freed.
When their deadline passed without a positive response from the
government, they felt they had to kill their hostage as they had
threatened. Their credibility was at stake.42

The shoot-outs that followed between RHF and the government left
some sixty dead or wounded. Ultimately the state prevailed and several
hundred RHF members were arrested and tried. Five RHF leaders,
including Shukri Mustafa, were sentenced to death, while others
received varying prison sentences ranging from five to twenty-five
years.43

At present there is no evidence that RHF still exists as an organised
group. But the tendency that the RHF embodied is still alive. Several
small groups have sprung up, influenced by the same ideas, but bearing
different names-‘The Saved from Fire’, ‘The Pause and Reveal’
groups.” The intellectual roots of this anti-society tendency are to be
found primarily in the writings of Sayed Qutb, the Brotherhood veteran
who was executed by the Nasser regime in 1965. In his famous book,
Maalemfi al-Tarik (Landmarks on the Road), Qutb declared the entire
Egyptian Society as a jahiliyya society.45 His arguments have been
compelling to thousands of Muslim youngsters in Egypt and elsewhere.
To date, this book has been reprinted more than thirty times in Egypt
alone. In addition, this tendency has been influenced by the writings of
the modern Pakistani Islamic thinker Abu al Ala al-Maudoudi, and
Mohammed Ibn Abd al-Wahab, an eighteenth-century Arabian thinker
as well as by the Kharajites (al-Khawarij) tradition (which goes back to
the middle of the first Islamic century).

At present, the anti-society Islamic groupings in Egypt are small. Its
membership tends to have the same sociological profile as the
membership of the anti-regime Islamic tendency: young, educated, high
achievers, from rural or small lower-middle-class backgrounds. They
represent the raw nerve not only of the Islamic Movement but also of
Egyptian society at large. Three decades earlier their counterparts of
similar background responded readily to Nasser’s Arab Nationalism
and Arab Socialism. And six decades ago, the youth of Egypt also
responded readily to Saad Zaghlul’s anti-colonial liberal democratic call.
42 ibid., p 450.
43 See Al-Ahram, Issues of 30, 31, August and 1 September, 1987.
” Sayed, Qutb, Landmarks in the Road (Arabic, Maalemfi al-Tarik), Cairo: Dar al-Shuruk, 1983

edition, p 191.
45 For details and critical analysis of these intellectual roots, see M A Khalafallah, ‘Islamic

awakening in Egypt’, op. cit. (footnote 10 above) pp 62-3 and pp 66-7.

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EGYPT’S ISLAMIC ACTIVISM IN THE 1980s

Thus successive socio-political movements of mass following in
Egypt-such as liberalism, nationalism, and socialism-have had their
respective share of militants in past times. We ought not to confuse the
bulk of a grass-roots trend with the behavioural manifestations of its
most extreme elements. The anti-regime and anti-society Islamic
militants represent the margins of the otherwise moderate grass-roots
Islamic activist movement that is a major force in Egypt today.

Conclusion

Islamic activism, with its various tendencies, is dominating much of the
political space and discourse of Egypt at present. In recent years a day
has hardly passed by without some form of media coverage of an act of
violence by one of these Islamic groups. There is also alarm over their
growing economic power, or their ascendancy within the political forum.
In passing, we mentioned a number of the conditions responsible for the
upsurge of Islamic activism in Egypt. However, a broader explanation of
the phenomenon is in order. Here, the Egyptian case must be placed in
the wider Arab-Islamic context.

To begin with, Islamic activism under various names, has been always
an integral part of Arab-Islamic history. In fact, much of that history is
one of successive religious movements striving to return to the pure
sources of Islam and to put its vision into effect. Some of these
movements have succeeded in seizing power at one time or another, and
some have failed. Seizure of power did not always lead to
implementation of the promised vision-in fact that often triggered
others to take on the challenge. Ibn Khaldun, the fourteenth-century
precursor of modern social science, noted the cyclical nature of these
attempts in which assabiyya (esprit de corps) coupled with religious zeal
punctuated the rise and fall of ruling dynasties in Arab Islamic history.
The cycle was roughly one hundred years, the life-span of four
generations in the Islamic Middle Ages.

Focusing on the last two centuries, we note the disruption of Islamic
societies’ traditional modes of life by Western intrusion. By the end of
the nineteenth century no Muslim country was free of direct or indirect
domination by one or more Western power. This swift domination was
both traumatic and humiliating. It generated three modal reactions in
Muslim countries. One response has been to attempt to emulate the West
in its ways in order to befriend or fight it back. A second response was to
reject Western ways completely and to draw back on the glorious

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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

heritage of Islam and adhere to its pure sources as the only means of
successful resistance. The third response was one of attempting to
reconcile the best elements of Islamic heritage with the best elements of
Western civilisation.

The emulators, the rejecters, and the reconcilers have co-existed,
debated with one another intellectually, and competed or even conflicted
politically throughout the last hundred years. The names of the three
trends are liberals, fundamentalists, and nationalists respectively. The
emulators and reconcilers included all types of secular combinations,
some even involving socialist, Marxist, or even fascist elements. Each
trend has had its expansion, ups and downs, during the past century. But
none of them has completely disappeared. At brief historical moments
they have even cooperated.

The liberals and nationalists dominated the political scene during the
fight for independence and in early decades thereafter. However, with
mounting problems of modem nation-building, and especially because
of failures to check new hegemonic designs of outside powers, the
liberals and nationalists began to lose their credibility. To many, the
defeat of Arab armies at the hand of Israel in 1967, for example, was not
just a military one. It was a defeat of political regimes and their secular
ideologies. Furthermore it was a blunt reminder of the century-long
humiliation by the West, which is seen by Arabs and Muslims as patron
and supporter of Israel. The USSR, which had befriended some of the
defeated Arab regimes, did not fare much better. The rejecters of
everything foreign (Western, Zionist, and Communist) were ready with
their explanation of the defeat and with their prescription for salvation:
the return to the purest sources of Islam. In the late 1960s and 1970s the
fundamentalist call found many takers.

We submit that a fuller interpretation of the spread of Islamic
activisms must be sought in understanding the century-long crisis of
Muslim societies. The salient dimensions of this crisis are the frustrated
quests for true independence, social equity, political participation, and
economic development. The culprits behind these frustrations are said to
be capitalism, communism, and Zionism; or, the West (especially the
USA), the USSR and Israel.

Islamic activists have no difficulty in amassing evidence to corroborate
this assertion. Along with outside culprits, there are domestic
perpetrators of secular ideologies who are at best misled or brainwashed
and at worst outright agents of this or that foreign power.

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EGYPT’S ISLAMIC ACTIVISM IN THE 1980s

Regardless of the truth of its claims, the above explanation is simple,
clear, and enhances amorphous but deep-rooted sentiments in the
Arab-Islamic world. And while many secular political forces may share
some of the above explanation of the present crisis, it is only the Islamic
activitists who have displayed daring and effectiveness. They ousted the
hated pro-Western, pro-Zionist Shah. They shot down the pro-Western
Sadat; and, they forced the US Marines out of Lebanon. They are also
bleeding Israel daily. Many of the secular political forces in the
Arab-Islamic world may have wanted to achieve these objectives, but
only the militant Islamic activists have managed to do so.

Whether Islamic activists in general or its militant elements in
particular can offer more than suicidal missions, displays of martyrdom,
investment companies, and service institutions, is still to be seen. For the
time being at least Islamic activism has galvanised the imagination and
mobilised the energy of thousands of Islamic youth and attracted them
to its ranks. In Egypt, Islamic activism is still on the rise. Its
achievements are so far impressive. Its future depends on its own ability
to come up with creative solutions to problems not only left over from
this century and from previous centuries but-more so-for the looming
challenges of the twenty-first century.

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• Article Contents

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• Issue Table of Contents

Third World Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 2, Islam & Politics (Apr., 1988), pp. i-xvi+473-1154
Front Matter [pp. i-1116]
Editorial: Islam and Politics [pp. xiii-xv]
Three Islamic Strands in the South African Struggle for Justice [pp. 473-498]
African Islam and Competitive Religion: Between Revivalism and Expansion [pp. 499-518]
Islamic Reform in Contemporary Nigeria: Methods and Aims [pp. 519-538]
The Monarchy, the Islamist Movement and Religious Discourse in Morocco [pp. 539-555]
Radical Islamism and the Dilemma of Algerian Nationalism: The Embattled Arians of Algiers [pp. 556-589]
The Islamic Challenge: Tunisia since Independence [pp. 590-614]
Islamic Opposition in Libya [pp. 615-631]
Egypt’s Islamic Activism in the 1980s [pp. 632-657]
The Muslim Brotherhood Movement in the West Bank and Gaza [pp. 658-682]
Shia Movements in Lebanon: Their Formation, Ideology, Social Basis, and Links with Iran and Syria [pp. 683-698]
Religious Militancy in Contemporary Iraq: Muhammad Baqer as-Sadr and the Sunni-Shia Paradigm [pp. 699-729]
Iran and the Spread of Revolutionary Islam [pp. 730-749]
Islamic Reassertion in Turkey [pp. 750-769]
Unrest in the World of Soviet Islam [pp. 770-786]
Islam within the Afghan Resistance [pp. 787-805]
Pakistan’s Shia Movement: An Interview with Arif Hussaini [pp. 806-817]
Indian Muslims since Independence: In Search of Integration and Identity [pp. 818-842]
The Politics of Malaysia’s Islamic Resurgence [pp. 843-868]
Indonesian Muslims and the State: Accommodation or Revolt? [pp. 869-896]
The Moro Struggle in the Philippines [pp. 897-922]
‘The Pure and True Religion’ in China [pp. 923-947]
Literature
Literary Profile
A Passion for Experimentation: The Novels and Plays of Tawfiq al-Hakim [pp. 949-960]
Literary Feature Reviews
Review: Negritude and after: Changing Perspectives in French-Language African Fiction [pp. 961-965]
Review: Chinese Literature in Renaissance [pp. 966-970]
Literary Reviews
Review: Tyranny and Redemption [pp. 971-973]
Review: Suffering with Stoicism: Kenyan Histories [pp. 973-978]
Review: The Politics of the Soul [pp. 978-980]
Review: Images of Istanbul [pp. 980-983]
Review: Enemies Within [pp. 983-985]
Review: Frustrated Fantasies [pp. 985-987]
Review: Tending Towards One Voice [pp. 988-990]
Review: Land of Riches [pp. 990-992]
Review: Autobiography of the Age [pp. 992-994]
Review: Caribbean Childhoods [pp. 995-998]
Review: Traumas of Partition [pp. 998-1000]
Review: Mirroring Pakistan: Reflections and Distortions [pp. 1000-1002]
Review: Prize Poetry [pp. 1002-1003]

Books
Bibliography
Islamic Awakening in the Twentieth Century: An Analysis and Selective Review of the Literature [pp. 1005-1023]
Feature Reviews
Review: Yet More on the Islamic Revival [pp. 1024-1027]
Review: Minorities and the Problem of the State [pp. 1027-1041]
Review: Iran’s Revolution Reappraised [pp. 1041-1047]
Review: The Discovery of the Lebanese Shia [pp. 1047-1052]
Review: The Beguiling Gulf Cooperation Council [pp. 1052-1058]
Book Reviews: The Islamic World
Review: untitled [pp. 1059-1062]
Review: untitled [pp. 1062-1065]
Review: untitled [pp. 1065-1069]
Review: untitled [pp. 1069-1071]
Review: untitled [pp. 1072-1073]
Review: untitled [pp. 1073-1075]
Review: untitled [pp. 1075-1077]
Review: untitled [pp. 1077-1078]
Review: untitled [pp. 1079-1080]
Review: untitled [pp. 1080-1082]
Review: untitled [pp. 1082-1084]
Review: untitled [pp. 1084-1085]
Review: untitled [pp. 1085-1087]
Review: untitled [pp. 1087-1089]
Review: untitled [pp. 1089-1091]
Review: untitled [pp. 1091-1093]
Review: untitled [pp. 1093-1095]
Review: untitled [pp. 1095-1098]
Review: untitled [pp. 1098-1101]
Review: untitled [pp. 1101-1103]
Book Notes
Review: untitled [p. 1104]
Review: untitled [pp. 1104-1105]
Review: untitled [p. 1105]
Review: untitled [pp. 1105-1106]
Review: untitled [p. 1106]
Review: untitled [p. 1106]
Review: untitled [p. 1107]
Review: untitled [p. 1107]
Review: untitled [pp. 1107-1108]
Review: untitled [p. 1108]
Review: untitled [p. 1108]
Review: untitled [pp. 1108-1109]
Review: untitled [p. 1109]
Review: untitled [pp. 1109-1110]
Review: untitled [p. 1110]
Review: untitled [p. 1110]
Recent Publications [pp. 1111-1115]
North-South Monitor [pp. 1117-1148]
Third World Foundation News [pp. 1149-1153]
Back Matter [pp. 1154-1154]