Egyptian Muslim Research Articles

Politics as Worship: Righteous Activism and the Egyptian Muslim Brothers, By Sumita Pahwa

<i>Politics as Worship: Righteous Activism and the Egyptian Muslim Brothers</i>, By Sumita Pahwa

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Jāhiliyya? The Struggle over Sayyid Quṭb’s Legacy among Jordanian Muslim Brothers

Abstract The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Quṭb (1906–66) is perhaps the most famous Islamist intellectual of the twentieth century, mostly because of his radical ideas. In academic literature, Quṭb’s controversial views—especially his use of the term ‘jāhiliyya’—are equally dominant and it is also because of this that Muslim scholars allied to the Egyptian state have criticized him. To deal with the Egyptian state’s repression of Islamists and its vilification of Quṭb as emblematic of the danger they supposedly represent, several Egyptian Brothers have tried to salvage Quṭb as a martyr for the cause, but have apologetically portrayed his ideas as moderate. This article analyses how Jordanian Muslim Brothers, who participate in a far more inclusive political environment, have interpreted Quṭb’s works (especially the concept of jāhiliyya), and what this tells us about Quṭb’s legacy.

A movement in exile: the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s survival action frames in the post-coup era (2013–2023)

ABSTRACT On August 14, 2013, the Egyptian security forces raided the Rabaa and al-Nahda sit-ins, marking the largest mass killing in modern Egyptian history. The massacre, aimed at targeting the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood – henceforth MB – did not end its existence; rather, it recast it as a movement in exile striving for organisational survival. Drawing on interview materials, MB media outlets, and a process tracing of key international and regional events unfolding between 2013 and 2023, this article explores the interactive relationship between exile politics and the MB’s survival action frames from a framing perspective. By mapping four successive phases highlighting its organisational trajectories to pursue survival, the article contends that the MB’s survival action frames result from the interactive relationship between failed mobilisation tactics and changes in the MB’s hosting environment which together affected and sustained intra-movement divisions. Following shifts in exile politics and inefficient mobilisation tactics to face the post-2013 Coup, the MB’s survival action frames included the organisational recentralisation of a demobilised and inactive movement and the re-setting of the group’s priorities amid unresolved leadership strife.

Is the Muslim Brotherhood a Sect?

This article proposes the novel understanding of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood as a sect, going against the grain of the existing literature, which posits it as a political group, a social movement, or a religious movement (or some combination of all of the above). The sectarianisation occurs within the group via ideological build-up, organisational tactics, and internal socialisation of behaviour. The group is also a sect by constituting its unique identity in opposition to external actors. To make the argument, the analysis draws on the statements of key figures within the movement’s history, such as its founder Hasan al-Banna, as well as a range of interviews with current and ex-members. My argument has two main consequences for our understanding of sectarianism in general and the Brotherhood in particular. First, sectarianism is a process of sectarianisation that operates beyond the state and at lower levels, such as groups and individuals. Second, the Brotherhood is not a mere victim of the sectarianising practices of the state. Its sectarianisation is partly of its own making.

QIRÂAH FÎ KHIȚÂB AL-MAR'AH: A STUDY OF GENDER ISSUES IN THE BOOK DAWÂIR AL-KHAWF

This article examines gender issues in the thoughts of Naṣr Ḥāmid Abu Zayd as stated in his book entitled Dawâir Al-Khawf Qirâah Fî Khițâb Al-Mar'ah. Naṣr Ḥāmid was originally a follower of Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, who later turned into a liberal intellectual figure from Egypt who was known for his controversial and controversial thoughts. This study uses a literature study which refers to several main books of his works and is added to secondary sources in the form of several writings resulting from research on the thoughts of Naṣr Ḥāmid Abu Zayd. The results of this research show that Naṣr Ḥāmid criticizes the interpretations that have developed over time, especially regarding qiwâmah, inheritance, talak, polygyny and women's private parts (hijab). According to him, women are part of the substance that is rooted in human social existence in certain historical realities. These conditions of social relations determine the position of men and women equally in the social, cultural and intellectual framework. Both are equal as complete human beings. This thinking places him at the level of progressive thought and attracts many groups, which is sometimes in harmony with the ideas of early Egyptian Muslim feminists, namely Muhammad Abduh.

Squandering Marital Movables: On Family and Criminal Law in Egypt

Abstract This essay focuses on the trousseau inventory (ayma) created by Egyptian Muslims at the time of marriage. Though not a legal requirement, creating the ayma is widespread as it proves the husband’s receipt of the wife’s property. After divorce, he must return the items listed in the inventory to her, and if he fails to do so, she may sue him for “squandering marital movables” (tabdīd manqūlāt zawjiyya), as stipulated in the Penal Code. In July 2022, when an Egyptian man posted a message suggesting that the ayma had been abolished, his post caused a huge outcry. In this essay, I address the social debate triggered by the post, introduce the case of an Egyptian woman who filed a tabdīd lawsuit to secure a divorce, and discuss judgments issued by the Court of Cassation on tabdīd cases. I argue that Egyptians use criminal law and courts to solve family disputes.

Achieving fidelity through self-translation: a case study of Friday sermons by Imam Mohammed Ewes

This study investigates whether fidelity was achieved in the self-translation of Friday sermons by imam Mohammed Ewes. Ewes is an Egyptian Muslim imam who immigrated to the United Kingdom in 1996. When writing this paper, he had been preaching at Al-Birr Mosque in London for 25 years. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, he is one of the few Muslim imams in the Islamic world to have self-translated and compiled his religious sermons into a single book. This study adopts the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach to analyze the data. We extracted the data from Ewes’s book Pulpit Sermons in Arabic and English, written in Arabic and self-translated into English by Ewes himself. Specifically, we selected eight sermons randomly from the book. We analyzed the data using Ajunwa’s (2015) approach to assessing fidelity in translation. The findings show that fidelity was not achieved in the self-translation because the self-translator did not produce a faithful and accurate translation. Therefore, the self-translation of Ewes’s Friday sermons cannot be regarded as a true translation but as a rewritten translation.

An In-Depth Analytical Study Of The Works Of Sayyid Qutb: Ideology, Influence, And Legacy

Sayyid Qutb, born in 1906 and executed in 1966, was a prominent Egyptian writer, educator, and Islamic theorist. He played a significant role in shaping modern Islamic thought and was a key figure in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood during the 1950s and 60s. Qutb’s writings, particularly his most famous book “Ma‘âlim fî al-Tarîq” (Milestones), published in 1964, became central to the ideology of Qutbism. In “Milestones”, he critiqued contemporary societies, arguing that despite their technological progress, they lived in a state of “Jâhiliyyah” (ignorance), disconnected from true Islamic principles. Qutb advocated for a resurgence of Islam through jihad to restore a purer form of the faith. His works have greatly influenced modern Islamic movements. After being convicted of plotting to assassinate Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Qutb was executed in 1966. His writings, including “Fî Ẓilâl al-Qur’ân” (In the Shade of the Qur’ân), continue to impact debates on Islamic governance and the role of religion in political life.

Revisiting post-Islamism a decade after the Arab Spring

The Arab Spring uprisings marked a watershed moment in regional politics, significantly impacting Islamist movements in terms of strategies, ideologies, and organizational structures. Accordingly, this paper examines whether these dramatic events strengthened or weakened the post-Islamist evolution of traditional political Islam movements, focusing on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (E-MB) and the Tunisian Ennahda Movement Party (EMP) as case studies. The proposed hypothesis is that the Arab Spring has variably influenced Islamists. In Egypt, it initially weakened the post-Islamist turn of the E-MB. However, owing to the 2013 coup and subsequent repression, the E-MB was politically excluded and weakened, creating a vacuum that was filled by various forms of less political or non-ideological forms of Islamic activism. The Tunisian Islamists had a different story. The Arab Spring seems to have strengthened their transition to post-Islamism. In its tenth conference, the EMP declared its exit from political Islam, adopting the new concept of Muslim Democracy. Even after the presidential takeover in July 2021, which resulted in the political exclusion of the EMP, the Work and Achievement party that defected from it maintained clear post-Islamist features.

The invisible other: Rituals and Egyptian perception of the unknowable

AbstractThis paper is positioned within broader scholarly debates about ritual‐religious and psychological elements underlying the phenomenon of altered states of mind in Egyptian Muslim contexts. This research examines the intricate relationships between ritual, consciousness, and the unseen/unknowable world reflected in the imagination and practices of urban and rural communities belonging administratively to the city of Tanta in Egypt. This comparative study proposes that the image of the embodied invisible Other, in both benevolent and malevolent forms, impacts the state of consciousness of persons participating in two different rituals, the zikr (remembrance of God) and the zār (the exorcism of spirits). This inquiry concentrates on the transformation of the states of people's consciousness, namely the majzūb (those mystically attracted to God) and the malbūs (those possessed by spirits), through embodied engagement with the invisible Other that is made visible through participation in the ritual performances of the zikr and/or the zār. Rituals performed by Egyptians, particularly those who experience altered states of consciousness, display both a psychic (emotional) experience and an encounter with the invisible Other that may be depicted as divine or otherwise non‐divine. Each case of the zikr ritual and zār cult relates to its participants' perception of reality.

Ideology, organisation, and path dependency: The use of violence among Egyptian Islamist movements

Does ideology prevent social movements from resorting to violence? Structuralist, organisational, or political economy theories are widely agnostic on the relationship between ideology and the use of violence. In contrast, this article argues that founding ideologies indirectly shape social movements’ long-run decisions regarding the use violence, primarily by influencing the kind of individuals who join the movement to begin with. A path dependency develops as new members reinforce the initial ideology, as individuals who might tip the ideological-organisational equilibrium towards utilising new tactics join other organisations instead. Over time, ideology morphes from being initially an endogenous factor into an exogenous constraint how the group can behave. The article compares the mainstream Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB), al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya (IG) and the Jihad Organisation (JO), studying individual biographies, the groups’ recruitment patterns and their corresponding ideologies. The article thereby explains why the MB, with some minor exceptions, remained committed to non-violent activism, in contrast with the JO that resorted to violent means only and the IG that applied both violent and non-violent means. In the conclusion, the article addresses cases in Algeria and Madagascar to indicate the relevance of this argument beyond Egyptian Islamist movements to future comparative work.

Zaynab al-Ghazālī al-Ǧabīlī, a Female Activist and Writer in Favour of the Islamic Cause From the Formative Years to Her Imprisonment Under the Regime of ʿAbd al-Nāṣir (1917-65)

Zaynab al-Ghazālī (1917-2005) was an activist of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the founder of the Muslim Women’s Association, a religious preacher and a prolific writer. The article seeks to trace the evolution of al-Ghazālī’s activism and her political ideas, starting from the formative years (1917-48) until her imprisonment under the regime of ʿAbd al-Nāṣir (1964). The article is expected to make an original contribution to the existing literature by presenting al-Ghazālī’s thinking beyond her conception of women and by relying on the analysis of a group of articles written on theMagazine of the Muslim Women(Maǧallat al-Sayyidāt al-Muslimāt) between 1951 and 1957, which has remained so far unexplored.

The Emancipation of Egypt: A Quest for Modernity under Islamic and Egyptian Values

The nineteenth and the twentieth centuries were pivotal in Muslim Egypt’s history as they shaped and influenced not only Egyptian society, but also the Muslim community at large. If the West went through various modernizing movements and experienced a fas

Integrating ISS and SOR models to investigate the determinants of continuance intention toward using m-payment for donations (Sadaqah): the moderating role of Islamic religiosity

PurposeDespite the significance of donations (Sadaqah) via mobile payment in Islamic countries, little is known about the variables influencing continuance intention toward using m-payment for donations (Sadaqah). Based on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model, this research explores the influence of perceived quality (i.e. system, information, service) as a stimulus on customer satisfaction, engagement and delight as organisms, which then affects continuance intention toward using m-payment for donations (Sadaqah) as a response. Moreover, the study investigates the moderating role of Islamic religiosity.Design/methodology/approachUsing partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), a representative data sample of 419 Egyptian Muslims was analyzed to test hypotheses.FindingsThe findings revealed that all perceived quality constructs significantly positively affect customers' satisfaction. Customer satisfaction, in turn, positively affects customer engagement and delight. Moreover, customer engagement, delight and Islamic religiosity significantly positively affect continuance intention toward using m-payment for donations (Sadaqah). The findings also revealed that Islamic religiosity moderates the influence of customer engagement and customer delight on continuance intention toward using m-payment for donations (Sadaqah).Originality/valueThis is the first study to examine using m-payment for donations (Sadaqah) in an Islamic environment based on the S-O-R model.

Experiences of listening to the Qur'an in Egypt: A qualitative phenomenological study of therapeutic and recreational listening

This is an interdisciplinary study that explores the impact of listening to the Qur'an on the physiological and psychological statuses of an average Egyptian Muslim. It is a transcendental phenomenological study that intersects with theories and concepts from different disciplines including reception studies, media, and popular culture analysis. The study uses two tools that are common in transcendental phenomenological studies: journals, memoirs, and in-depth interviews. Such tools help investigating the experience of listening to the Qur’an as an ongoing stream of consciousness. The study aims at exploring the phenomenon of listening to the Qur’an from the points of view of six participants who are heavy listeners of the Qur’an and are in the habit of writing memoirs and diaries, as a multi-case study purposive sample. The study reveals that the ritual practice of listening to the Qur'an differs from one person to another depending on several factors mainly gender and educational background. Analysis of the replies of the study respondents sheds light on the positive influence of listening to the Qur’an, and the characteristics of a good reciter from Muslims’ point of view. Future studies on a bigger sample are highly recommended so as to gain deeper insights into the influence of this Islamic ritual, leading to possible generalization.

The Presence of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Media Space of Turkey to Maintain Political Participation after the Events of the Arab Spring in Egypt

After the collapse of the ongoing 2011–2013 policy, the Egyptian movement “Muslim Brotherhood” was banned in many countries of the world including some member countries of the League of Arab States (LAS): Syria, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and several others. On the contrary in Turkey which borders Syria the Brotherhood received support in particular access to the media and made it possible to continue to broadcast the ideas of the organization. This paper discusses the features of building the communication strategy of the Muslim Brotherhood in the period after the Arab Uprising and the overthrow of President Mohammad Morsi in Egypt on July 3, 2013. There is no political party in Turkey that would openly represent the interests of the Muslim Brotherhood, however, some members of the leading Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partısı; AKP), including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, provided the Brotherhood various forms of support including providing asylum to wanted members of the organization and access to the television and radio stations. Even though the Egyptian government charged the Brotherhood’s members in absentia, some of them were allowed to openly meet in Turkey and speak out against the Egyptian government. The Turkish media space has become a platform for broadcasting ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood, which found itself isolated in the Arab media and the Internet. The Turkish government has contributed to the development of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s outreach activities which is seen as a shift in the political participation not only of the organization itself but of Islamists in general. Taking advantage of the favorable political environment in Turkey the Brotherhood attempted to challenge the legitimacy of the new regime in Egypt by creating their own television channels on Turkish television as evidenced by the results of the content analysis presented in this paper.

The Muslim Brotherhood: From the Caliphate to the Modern Civic State

The Muslim Brotherhood plays a prominent role in the politics of many Muslim countries as one of the largest Islamist groups. As a politico-social movement, the Muslim Brotherhood has gone through many tactical and ideological shifts over the past 90 years since its founding in 1928. Studying these shifts and the reasoning behind them can help us to understand the behaviour of certain groups. This paper studies one of the major shifts in the discourse of the movement, from the advocacy for restoring the Caliphate to the call for a modern civic state, despite the idea of the Caliphate having been one of the core motives behind the founding of the Brotherhood. This paper traces the change in Muslim Brotherhood discourse of the Caliphate through a thick analysis of the writings and statements of the prominent leaders of the group, starting with Brotherhood’s founder, al-Banna, and progressing to the leaders of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. This paper examines this shift’s degree of significance and its underlying rationale. Instead of addressing changes collectively, each change is considered individually to gain further insight into the incentives driving the major shift under study, namely the overhaul of the political discourse of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in so far as shifting from adopting the caliphate to the modern civic state. This shift in the Caliphate discourse is approached singularly, opening room for exclusive explanations that are unique to the altered concept. While a wholesale approach that treats changes as a collective succeeds in explaining the changes within some social and political movements, it ignores substantial factors and elements that are advantageous for profound understanding of the case in question. The shift in the Caliphate discourse, though it was not significant in practice, is useful in suggesting an alternative method for the justification of tactical and ideological shifts of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Editor's Note

While many young members of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood became politically disengaged in the wake of the 2013 military coup, others resorted to violence. Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in 2016/17, this article investigates the forces of radicalization among younger Brotherhood members after the coup. Rather than there being a positive correlation between repression and radicalization, I argue that the majority of rank-and-file movement members remained inclined against radicalism due to the effects of state repression, organizational schism, and transformative personal experiences.

Why Were They Not Radicalized? Young Members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Aftermath of Egypt's 2013 Military Coup

While many young members of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood became politically disengaged in the wake of the 2013 military coup, others resorted to violence. Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in 2016/17, this article investigates the forces of radicalization among younger Brotherhood members after the coup. Rather than there being a positive correlation between repression and radicalization, I argue that the majority of rank-and-file movement members remained inclined against radicalism due to the effects of state repression, organizational schism, and transformative personal experiences.

The Cultural Transformation of the Trope of the Renegade in Late Seventeenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century English Drama

This article examines the transformation of the trope of the renegade character in late seventeenth-and early nineteenth-century English drama, as represented by John Dryden’s Don Sebastian (1689) and its adaptation by Frederick Reynolds as The Renegade (1812). Reynolds adopts the trope of Restoration ‘cultural renegade’, or what I call ‘Restoration gone cultural revolutionary protagonist’, to reflect on the military alliance between England of George III and the Oriental Muslims in Egypt in 1801 against their common enemy, Napoleon Bonaparte. The renegade character in the plays of Dryden and Reynolds transcends religious limitations of the negative connotations of betrayal and fosters cross-cultural interactions.