Monday, April 28, 2008

Utopianism of the Muslim Brotherhood (Al Ikhwaan)

The Birth of the Muslim Brotherhood changed everything:

Founded in 1928 by a then-obscure figure called Hassan al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood proclaimed the revival of an imaginary original purity in religion, asserting that a diluted and distorted Muslim devotion had undermined Islamic resistance to European imperialism. Yet the Muslim Brotherhood was modernistic in its reaction against modernity, adopting the characteristics of competing leftist and rightist militias in Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. It flourished as an aggressive, paramilitary formation, and established a network in the Arab East, India, Turkey, and Indonesia. While some of these branches were no more than fantasies typical of radical conspiracies, the Muslim Brotherhood did become an open ally of Hitler in seeking enhanced German influence in the Islamic world. Decades later, its Palestinian wing gave birth to Hamas, one of its most successful offshoots, and it has grown very powerful in many Muslim countries.

From HERE.

1 comment:

Don said...

I actually have a Muslim friend who send me a Salafi demonstration that the Brotherhood's modernity was opposed to Saudi-style Salafi/Wahhabi Islam, and that al-Qaeda is in fact a successor to the Brotherhood in that modernity.

While there may be some merit to this, the problem is that as long as you set in front of people the thought that many of the rest of us are "apes and pigs" you're going to get inspiration for extreme action.