Hasan al-Banna

"Hasan al-Banna is a very significant figure because the Muslim Brotherhood is the most important political force in Egypt today and possibly the Middle East. It’s very timely to choose Gudrun Kraemer’s biography because of the election of Mohamed Morsi in Egypt and all the consequences that are flowing from that epoch-making event. A biography of a key figure is a good way into the subject, because there is so much abstract writing about Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood. Hasan al-Banna is really a primal figure. He was a schoolteacher who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 and was assassinated in 1949 by the old monarchist regime that was eventually overthrown in the Egyptian revolution of 1952. I think Gudrun Kraemer is a very careful and diligent scholar and is able to locate Al-Banna in the context of his time. He grew up in Ismailia, the city where the European functionaries of the Suez Canal operated and where foreigners enjoyed a far richer lifestyle than local Egyptians. This is where much of the resentment that you can see in his discourse came from. He was disgusted at the licentious immorality that he saw or that he interpreted from the behaviour of Europeans. In some of his tracts, he denounces the Europeans for bringing their half-naked women into Egypt and corrupting the morals of the local population. This was the kind of discourse that feeds into the psyche of Islamism throughout the region, so he’s an important figure there. He’s also something of a hybrid. He was a political activist but he also adopted the organisation of a Sufi tariqa , with its hierarchical progression into spiritual knowledge. This, in an Egyptian context, was a very powerful and effective combination. “He is the first prime mover, certainly in the Sunni world, in the process of the ideologisation of Islam.” At the same time, I don’t think Kraemer is particularly enamoured of Al-Banna. She describes him as a somewhat pettifogging type. As a young boy he denounced fellow Egyptians who weren’t observing Ramadan properly. According to the Quran you have to enjoin the good and repress the evil. Repressing the evil can mean denouncing your neighbours who aren’t observing the fast of Ramadan. There is something very pettifogging and mean-spirited there and that comes out in quite a gentle way in her biography. Absolutely, and this kind of institutionalisation has always been to some extent a problem in Islam. He succeeded in setting up a very effective and powerful institution. At the same time, as Kraemer points out, there was an ambiguity about his political objectives. In the 1930s and 1940s, Egypt was in transition from a political system based on patron-client relationships of the old parties like the Wafd, to a system shaped by a more ideological vision and mass mobilisation. He captured that transition. Perhaps, like all successful politicians, he had an intuitive feel for what was happening. He was therefore able to promote Islam as a new ideological vision. He is the first prime mover, certainly in the Sunni world, in the process of the ideologisation of Islam."