Fundamentalism

Founded in Egypt in 1928, some fifty years prior to the Islamic revolution in Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood is considered the premier Sunni Islamist organization in the Muslim world. The writings of its founder, Hassan al-Banna (1905–1949), and its main ideologue, Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966), have become standard reading for Muslim activists. Both figures were martyrs to the Islamist cause, killed by an authoritarian state that eliminated sources of authority that it could not easily control. The preaching and activism of the Brotherhood set the stage for a new kind of Muslim reformer, one who engaged society and confronted the state on a broad spectrum of issues. Indeed, through its array of clinics, schools, businesses, and mosques, the Brotherhood tried to create a mini-society that modeled the power of the Islamic alternative to Western-style modernization. This alternative included the rejection of the nation-state as a legitimate form of Muslim political organization, though some scholars believe that the Brotherhood's ultimate goal was to replace secular nationalism with religious nationalism. In either case, the Brotherhood's proposed "Islamic order"—the notion of a society and polity integrated according to Islamic cultural values and ideas—served, and continues to serve, as a challenge to the Western-leaning policies of the Egyptian government.