Inside the Brotherhood E-Book

Hazem Kandil

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 449

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

This is the first in-depth study of the relationship between the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and its own members. Drawing on years of participant observation, extensive interviews, previously inaccessible organizational documents, and dozens of memoirs and writings, the book provides an intimate portrayal of the recruitment and socialization of Brothers, the evolution of their intricate social networks, and the construction of the peculiar ideology that shapes their everyday practices. Drawing on his original research, Kandil reinterprets the Brotherhood’s slow rise and rapid downfall from power in Egypt, and compares it to the Islamist subsidiaries it created and the varieties it inspired around the world.

This timely book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the politics of the Middle East and to anyone who wants to understand the dramatic events unfolding in Egypt and elsewhere in the wake of the Arab uprisings.

Leseprobe

Copyright © Hazem Kandil 2015

The right of Hazem Kandil to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2015 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

350 Main Street

Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8291-4

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8295-2 (epub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8294-5 (mobi)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Kandil, Hazem.

      Inside the Brotherhood / Hazem Kandil.

          pages cm

      Includes bibliographical references.

      ISBN 978-0-7456-8291-4 (hardcover) – ISBN 0-7456-8291-X (hardcover)    1.  Jam'iyat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin (Egypt)    2.  Islamic fundamentalism–Egypt.    3.  Islamic fundamentalism. I. Title.

      BP10.J383K36 2014

      320.55′70962–dc23

                                                                                                    2014019107

The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

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To those Brothers who found the strength to climb the walls and look beyond

– Support your brother, whether he is the oppressed or the oppressor.

– O Prophet of God, support him surely if he is oppressed, but what if he is the oppressor?

– Restrain him or prevent his oppression; this is how you support him.

Prophet Muhammad

Introduction

A reputation established over eight decades collapsed in less than eight months. Islamism, an ideology that carved its name from Islam, had always been synonymous with it in the minds of many. And the Egyptian Muslim Brothers, who have invented and embodied this ideology since 1928, had been merely perceived as fervent believers who went beyond practicing religion to propagating and defending it. But a gathering rebellion against the country's first Brotherhood president changed all that. On the eve of the 2013 popular uprising against Muhammad Morsi, Brothers organized preemptive sit-ins in several locations around the country. The biggest crowd camped around Cairo's Rab'a al-‘Adawiya mosque. For 40 days, unsuspecting Egyptians tuned in (some even strolled in) to witness for themselves what Brothers said and did.i It was a rare opportunity to eavesdrop on this exceptionally discreet group. And what the people saw and heard was somewhat different from what they were used to from the normally polished Brothers: political competitors were religiously condemned; images of Prophet Muhammad's epic battles were conjured; biblical stories, from David and Moses to Armageddon, were invoked; claims that Archangel Gabriel prayed at the Islamist campsite were flaunted; and sacred visions were relayed on stage night after night. This was not the vocabulary Brothers typically employed in their public interactions. Almost overnight, many Egyptians panicked. Who were these strangers, they wondered?

Little did they know that many Brothers were equally confused. Popular hostility was certainly frustrating after decades of successful promotion of the Islamist image. But there was more: Brothers were visibly shaken by the absence of divine intervention. In their mind, everything was set in place for their divine empowerment (tamkin); and God would never desert His soldiers. The fact that the sit-in coincided with the holy month of Ramadan, which featured Islam's early victories, was quite suggestive. Brothers held constant vigils, fasting during daytime, and praying from dusk till dawn to make themselves worthy of divine favor. As the political showdown approached, the daughter of the Brotherhood's effective leader was caught screaming on television: “God will part the sea for us! Just wait and see!”1 She was echoing one of many prophecies circulated during the sit-in: that the soldiers of Pharaoh had trapped the Brothers just as they had done with the ancient Hebrews, and if the Brothers kept faith with Morsi, as their predecessors did with Moses, a miracle was shortly at hand. Brotherhood preachers even determined the date (some random Friday) for the metaphorical drowning of the soldiers.2 But the sea remained as calm as ever, and the cornered believers were mercilessly slain. Those who saw their campsite laid to waste muttered in shock and denial: why would Heaven forsake us?

This book attempts to answer these two questions: Who are the Muslim Brothers? And what sort of relationship do they believe they have with the divine? My search for an answer began in 2006 with a handful of interviews with leading Islamist figures. Responses were typically longwinded, insubstantial, and ultimately unsatisfactory. Resisting the temptation to abandon the project, I decided to revisit the Islamist literature I had ploughed through years before. This was supplemented by six years of regular attendance at a Brotherhood mosque in California, and hours of audio/video indoctrination materials. But immersing myself in Islamist rhetoric raised more questions than answers.

Then something unexpected happened. A mutual friend asked me to lecture informally to a group of Muslim Brothers on secular ideologies. This was the summer of 2008, and Islamists were concerned that their poor grasp of secular platforms hampered their strategy to unite opposition under their banner. Weekly lectures were organized at a Brother's house (during the months I spent in Cairo) with 30 male attendants on average, from a variety of age groups and backgrounds. We bonded over discussions on the origins of Western ideologies and their history in the Muslim world, and I was allowed over the next five years to observe group members closely in their ‘natural habitat,’ amongst themselves and their families, rather than ‘in action’ (teaching, providing welfare, campaigning), as other researchers had done before.

Our relationship was dramatically enhanced by the truly singular experience of revolution. As the 2011 revolt unfolded, I saw different members of my study group resign from the Brotherhood in disillusionment; rise to fame as independent activists; assume posts in the Brotherhood's first political party and presidential team; and sacrifice their lives in horrific street battles. This trying episode encouraged them to open up and inspect their beliefs and actions more than they would have normally done. It was also during this time that a series of tell-all memoirs and published testimonies began to trickle out. Months into Morsi's presidency, it became obvious that the Brotherhood's days in power were numbered. So, in March 2013, I returned to Egypt to conduct interviews and focus group sessions – some with members of my original crowd, and others with Brothers and Sisters they knew. I was also granted access to crucial movement documents from their personal archives, such as training manuals for group prefects, the all-important cultivation curriculum, questionnaire samples, internal memos, resignation and prison letters, and daily correspondence. Equally important was the opportunity to witness Brotherhood exchanges first-hand on the street, through social media, and in private meetings during the turbulent summer of 2013. These observations, complemented with dozens of memoirs and unpublished writings, allowed me to define the three-sided process that goes to the heart of any attempt to understand the Brotherhood: how individuals are recruited and socialized; how their social networks are constructed and sustained; and how their governing ideas are formulated and imbued.

This is an entirely new approach to studying Islamism. Past accounts have often been fettered by partial access – which mostly involved interviewing spokesmen and handpicked members. Research, therefore, remained limited to interactions between Islamists and their environment, rather than extending to the relationship between movements and their own members. Intellectual historians and discourse analysts pored over published texts and other public utterances. Social movement theorists examined how Islamists served their communities, garnered votes, framed and disseminated ideas. The politically inclined evaluated Islamist strategies regarding the state and the economy. Even anthropological accounts centered on the constituencies of Islamism rather than Islamists themselves. This book shifts focus from what Islamists say and do to who they really are – not in terms of social background, but as ideological subjects. Applying this new paradigm to Egypt, the book provides the first in-depth study of the Brotherhood from the inside: how Brothers are cultivated; how they interact; and what goes on inside their heads. These three interrelated processes are discussed in the first three chapters. The following two chapters then apply this new knowledge to reinterpret the history of the movement, before and after assuming power, and compare it to other Islamists (including Brotherhood affiliates) around the Muslim world.

Two notes are in order, however, before we proceed. First, this book does not attempt to reduce the Brotherhood to what it is from the inside – implying somehow that its exterior is a façade. Like any other organization (and, indeed, like any individual), the Brotherhood is the sum total of its interior and exterior facets. Brothers are both the public activists we have long recognized, and the closed ideological subjects that we will encounter in this work. Second, although this research partly draws on ethnographic fieldwork, the aim is not to understand the Brotherhood on its own terms, as a conventional ethnography would do. This is a political sociological study of how the movement's ideology contributed to its downfall. The chief focus, in other words, is on how ideas both empowered and restricted Brothers in their political power struggle. Needless to say, my purpose is not to judge the Muslim Brotherhood. This research was inspired, above all, by personal curiosity. It is simply an attempt at understanding.

Notes

i

The myth that there was a media blackout on Islamists during the sit-in is a powerful one, especially outside Egypt. But in fact Al-Jazeera Egypt managed a live, non-stop broadcast from the sit-ins, and the speeches made on stage were recorded and uploaded daily on YouTube and other social media. Furthermore, hundreds of Egyptians, including the author, could move in and out of the sit-in freely and anonymously.

1

Khadija Khairat al-Shatir's pronouncement from in front of her father's prison was uploaded on August 27, 2013 on

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsZsVM7kwes

.

2

Brotherhood propagandist Safwat Hegazi proclaimed on stage in Rab'a, on July 24, 2013, that Friday would bring a divine miracle and Morsi would be back in office the next day.

1Cultivating the Brother

One cannot choose to join the Muslim Brotherhood; one has to be chosen. Fayez, a lawyer who was recruited in his village mosque when he was only 11, said he did not remember embracing the Brotherhood like one would embrace an intellectual faction or a political party. It was the movement that decided (2013: 12). Mahmoud (2013), a hot-blooded Alexandrian journalist who had dwelt in Brotherhood circles since he was five, remarked with some amusement: “I was actually born to find myself a Brother.” And even though Rida (2013), a shopkeeper and lifelong Cairo resident, made it to the ranks a bit later (at elementary school), he did not remember making a conscious decision to join: “You simply slid in.”

Brothers constantly vet relatives, neighbors, colleagues, and – the most yielding pool – mosque attendees1 for potential recruits. Candidates pass through an average three-year probation period, typically without their knowledge, before being invited to join. They are encouraged to pray regularly at the mosque and participate in its activities, especially Qur'an-reading groups (maqari'). They are also advised to limit their interaction to pious individuals of their own age and gender. After this exceptionally long screening period, nominees are finally informed that they are being considered for Brotherhood membership. Only a tiny fraction refuses to play along after this extended courtship. And in that case, they are asked to support the cause without official membership. As for the willing majority, the recruitment process concludes with invitations to Brotherhood day-trips and informal gatherings for inspection by more experienced eyes. Those who receive the stamp of approval are designated as devotees (muhibin) and assigned to apprentice groups to test their diligence and familiarize them with the organization. Successful devotees are next enrolled on a grueling three-month induction course (), which provides a brief introduction to the founding history of Islam and Islamism, followed by qualifying exams (mostly in the form of questionnaires). If all goes well, devotees are asked to swear an oath of allegiance () to the general guide () – an oath historically reserved for caliphs, but temporarily appropriated by Brothers as the provisional leaders of the community of the faithful until a new caliphate is established. This intensely ritualized oath transforms a devotee into a Brother.