Turkey's Declining Democracy

2022

In the mid-seventies, a group of leaders of the Islamic student movement in a number of Egyptian universities established the scientific Salafist movement, but its main weight was at the University of Alexandria, where it was led by Muhammad Ismail al-Muqaddam, Said Abdel Azim, Abu Idris, Ahmed Farid and others from there and to all parts of Egypt, and one of its most prominent leaders in Cairo at that time was Abdel Fattah Al-Zeini, and they refused to join the Muslim Brotherhood in 1978 AD and called themselves the Salafi school and rejected the term "Emir" because they considered it limited to the emirate of the state. They called their school the "Salafi school," similar to the scientific schools that existed during the flourishing times in Islamic history. The competition between the "Salafi School" and the Brotherhood intensified over the inclusion of youth and control of mosques. When the Salafi School issued at the end of 1979 AD a series of periodical books called "The Salafists Speak," some of the Brotherhood joked about them by saying that the Salafis speak and the Brotherhood strives. The Afghan jihad had emerged against the Soviets, and it was common then that the Afghan Mujahideen were from the Muslim Brotherhood. Scientific Salafism has been calling itself the "Salafi School" for several years. Still, to develop its movement and give it more mobility, their interest in mass action increased, and they called their organization "The Salafi Da'wah." Thus the name "Salafi School" became just history. The "Salafi Da'wah" is spread all over Egypt and has many followers, estimated at hundreds of thousands, and they are called "Salafis" for short, but they are not a coherent hierarchical organization like the Muslim Brotherhood. They tend to disperse into groups that follow a sheikh from among the sheikhs, but their sheikhs are very cooperative. Among its famous sheikhs are Muhammad Hassan, Abu Dhar al-Qalamuni, author of the book "Fa Farrou Ila Ahhah" (So Flee to God), Muhammad Husayn Yaqoub, Muhammad Husayn al-Afani, Yasser Burhami, Abu Ishaq al-Huwaini, Mustafa al-Adawi, and many others, but we have mentioned the most famous of them. The "Salafi Da'wah" like the rest of the currents of the modern Islamic movement, sees the necessity of all Muslims to return to the teachings of Islam under righteous predecessors (Al-Salaf Al-Salih). Still, they are more traditional and less reformist and innovative in it. What separates them and the Muslim Brotherhood is their rejection of Sufism and the views of the Ash'aris, Mu'tazila, and Shiites, which Imam Hassan al-Banna left the door open for uniting Muslims, and what separates them from jihad and al-Qaeda is their rejection of armed action and secret organizations. The most prominent and announced strategy for the "Salafi Da'wah" and the most accurate one that was introduced by Sheikh Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani in a number of his lectures and books is that the civilizational decline that happened in Muslim communities is caused by weak and invented hadiths, Israelis. Jurisprudential opinions that contradict the hadith, therefore, the Islamic change (according to Al-Albani's opinion) must pass through the following stages: First-Purifying: It is for Muslim scholars to purify all legal books from weak and invented hadiths, Israelites, and jurisprudential opinions that contradict the authentic hadith. Second-Education: Muslims should be invited and educated on these books that are pure from errors.

The emergence of the political Salafism in Egypt after the January 25 uprising took many observers by surprise. Salafis, whom once deemed politics as heresy and religiously prohibited (haram), became a key political force after the uprising. They established political parties, contested elections, and vied for public office. Al-Nour party, the main Salafi party, played a key role in Egypt’s politics with undeniable political propensity. However, after the removal of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) from power in 2013, Al-Nour Party’s image and credibility was significantly damaged. The party supported the coup against President Mohamed Morsi which undermined its clout and appeal among Islamists. Therefore, it fared poorly in the 2015 elections where it won only 12 seats out of 596 parliamentary seats. After the coup, Salafis came a full circle and began to rethink politics as it is no longer a blessing but a curse.

2022

The oldest faction of the modern Islamic movement is the Muslim Brotherhood, which was established by Sheikh Hassan al-Banna in 1928 AD. Hasan al-Banna tried to bring together the various Islamic intellectual currents in his group in order to unite the ranks of Muslims in the face of the dangerous challenges facing them, so he declared, “We are a Salafi da’wah and a Sufi reality”, but Hasan al-Banna stressed that Sufism is a means and not a goal and that it is an educational method and not a dervish discourse, but this did not succeed in reunification except to a limited extent. In the Brotherhood there are Salafist and Sufi currents, and so on. Al-Banna attacked the intellectual aspect that contradicts Islam in Western civilization, but he benefited from various Western sciences because they did not clash with Islam, especially the science of organization, management, journalism, media, and others. The Muslim Brotherhood in the whole world still applies the principles of Hassan al-Banna in general until now.

The Muslim World

The late 1970s and early 1980s were a propitious yet challenging time for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, as its elites sought to define the movement's priorities in the face of new opportunities to spread their call (da'wa). The debate over preaching, while one of strategic assessment, also involved a negotiation of intellectual hierarchy: Should laymen lead Egypt's oldest Islamist organization, or should scholars? In contrast to previous studies that focus on how laymen led the Brotherhood's return to grassroots preaching, this article reintegrates scholars into the story of da'wa by focusing on the organization's most prominent 'a ¯ lim, Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and his vision of institution-based preacher education and extra-institutional activism. Drawing on three books written by Qaradawi on this topic between the mid-1970s and early 1980s, this article casts lights not only on this Islamist scholar's claim to religious authority as he sought to mold the Brotherhood, but also on the ways in which projects of mass mobilization – whether grassroots preaching or the reform of state-sponsored educational curricula – have transformed scholarly claims to authority more broadly. T he late 1970s and early 1980s were a propitious yet challenging time for the Mus-lim Brotherhood in Egypt. The organization had begun to rebuild its infrastructure within a political system that provided it space to mobilize on a grassroots level, even as it forbade national political participation. These new opportunities were particularly fraught for scholars within Egypt's leading Islamist group: Was this to be a movement of intellectuals or activists, of 'ulama ¯' or of laymen? Who was to lead it and how should it relate to state-controlled religious institutions? This article explores how the participation of scholars in the Muslim Brotherhood shaped the region's oldest Islamist organization and how this story reveals a radical

Political Theology, 2011

Abstract This paper will examine the history and methods of the Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwan) political party in Egypt from its origins in the late 1920's to modern day. The stated political goals and the historical actions of the Brotherhood will be analyzed in conjunction with a comparison against the repeated accusations of terrorist methods and ideologies which have been made by the official Egyptian government over the years. Research will show that while neither the leadership nor the regular members of the organization have been monolithic in aim, the party has demonstrated a repeated and firm commitment to the democratic process and working within the system rather than attacking it from the outside. A common mistake in political analysis by Americans is to assume that Islamic Revivalist forces in the region of North Africa and the Middle East are united in goal and methods. The history of the Muslim Brotherhood on the other hand shows that some revivalists might in fact be capable of being allies of the United States in supporting democratic movements in the region. Continuing forward, a greater nuance of rhetoric and differentiation between violent and non-violent Islamist factions is needed to ensure foreign policy success.

AJIS: Academic Journal of Islamic Studies

This article aims to describe the dynamics and contestation of Egyptian Islamic politics. The Islamic political movement carried out by a group of people in Egypt has changed the streets of existing democracy with the emergence of coups and assassinations that occurred in the Anwar Sadat era. It was a form of turmoil that occurred. This condition continued until the emergence of the Arab Spring in 2011. From all the dimensions that exist in Egypt, the root of all the turmoil is the unresolved religious and political problems that have made Egypt transform into a stagnant country until now. This study also shows that there is a transformation of Egyptian radicalism that has penetrated in all lines which hinders the progress of Egyptian democracy in which the mosques and campuses are used as the basis of radicalism so that they can influence the public's interest. This research is also supported by literature sources from books, journals, and comprehensive research. As for the res...

P.R. Kumaraswamy (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 2019

Egypt's Revolutions - Stéphane Lacroix, Bernard Rougier (eds.), 2016

This articles examines the revolutionary Salafi movement that developed around the charismatic leadership of Hazem Salah Abu Ismail in post-2011 Egypt.