Islamism, a reform movement advocating the reordering of government and society in accordance with Shariah law, has its roots in the Muslim Brotherhood.
As a movement distinct from the religion of Islam itself, Islamism traces back to Egypt in the 1920s, when the loosely organized Muslim Brotherhood was established by a man named Hassan al-Banna. Al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood as a reaction to the modernizing influence of Kemal Ataturk, who dismantled the shell of what was left of the Muslim caliphate in Turkey and dragged his country into the 20th century.
Al-Banna’s principal disciple was also an educator—a bureaucrat in the education department of the Egyptian government named Sayyid Qutb. Qutb caused enough trouble in Egypt to get himself awarded a traveling fellowship in 1948, the year al-Banna was killed.
Unfortunately, Qutb chose to travel to Greeley, Colorado. And, for a man like Qutb, Greeley was Sodom and Gomorrah. He hated everything he saw: American haircuts, enthusiasm for sports, jazz, and what he called the “animal-like mixing of the sexes,” even in church. His conclusion was that Americans were “numb to faith in art, faith in religion, and faith in spiritual values altogether,” and that Muslims must regard “the white man, whether European or American . . . [as] our first enemy.”
Qutb later returned to Egypt, quit the civil service, and joined the Muslim Brotherhood. He welcomed Gamal Abdel Nasser’s coup against the corrupt monarchy of King Farouk in 1952, but then became disillusioned with Nasser for failing to institute Shariah law. He opposed Nasser, and was subsequently arrested and tortured. However, he continued to write and agitate for Islam and against Western civilization, particularly against Jews, whom he blamed for atheistic materialism and considered the worst enemies of Muslims. He was released for a time, but eventually was re-arrested, convicted of conspiracy against the government, and hanged in 1966.
Many members of the Brotherhood fled to Saudi Arabia, where they found refuge and ideological sustenance. Qutb’s brother was among those who fled and taught the doctrine in Saudi Arabia. Among his students were Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian who would become a leading Al Qaeda ideologist, and a then-obscure Osama bin Laden, the pampered child of one of the richest construction families in the country. And the rest, as they say, is history.
The Muslim Brotherhood is now poised to dominate the new governments of both Egypt and Libya.
***Ed Randazzo, is a nationally syndicated author. He has been a conservative activist and consultant for over 30 years and is currently the Chief News Editor of Life and Liberty Media***
