In 1928, in the colonial garrison town of Ismailia, Egypt, a modest schoolteacher named Hassan al-Banna planted the seed of a movement that would shape the future of political Islam across the Arab world. The Muslim Brotherhood began as a religious and charitable society, preaching moral reform and Islamic revival. But it quickly evolved into something far more ambitious: a political project with transnational reach and ideological rigidity.
Al-Banna's vision was clear from the beginning. Islam, he declared, was not just a religion but a "faith, a worship, a nation, and a nationality; a religion and a state." That fusion of mosque and state — recasting Islam as the complete and exclusive foundation for political and legal life — was the cornerstone of the Brotherhood's ideology. It was framed as a righteous alternative to what al-Banna saw as the corrosive Western influence infecting Egypt: secularism, materialism, and cultural decay.
But here's where the story gets more complicated and politically useful for its critics....<<<Read More>>>...
