Gudrun Kraemer - Hasan al-Banna

Hasan al-Banna

SELECTION OF TITLES IN THE MAKERS OF
THE MUSLIM WORLD SERIES

Series editor: Patricia Crone,

Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, Samer Akkach

Abd al-Malik, Chase F. Robinson

Abd al-Rahman III, Maribel Fierro

Abu Nuwas, Philip Kennedy

Ahmad al-Mansur, Mercedes Garca-Arenal

Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Christopher Melchert

Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi, Usha Sanyal

Akbar, Andr Wink

Al-Mamun, Michael Cooperson

Al-Mutanabbi, Margaret Larkin

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Fazlallah Astarabadi and the Hurufis, Shazad Bashir

Ghazali, Eric Ormsby

Husain Ahmad Madani, Barbara Metcalf

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Ibn Fudi, Ahmad Dallal

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Karim Khan Zand, John R. Perry

Mehmed Ali, Khaled Fahmy

Mu awiya ibn abi Sufyan, R. Stephen Humphreys

Nasser, Joel Gordon

Sadi, Homa Katouzian

Shaykh Mufid, Tamima Bayhom-Daou

Usama ibn Munqidh, Paul M. Cobb

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GUDRUN KRMER

HASAN AL-BANNA

Published by Oneworld Publications 2010

This ebook edition published in 2013

Copyright Gudrun Krmer 2010

All rights reserved

Copyright under Berne Convention

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781851684304

eISBN 9781780742120

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Introduction

1 FAMILY BACKGROUND, EDUCATION AND EARLY CAREER

Rural Piety

Early Education

Encountering Sufism

At Dar al-Ulum

The Impact of the Capital

2 THE SOCIETY OF THE MUSLIM BROTHERS: 192838

Planting the Seed in Ismailiyya

Contestation and Suspicion

The Move to Cairo

Building a Base

Recruitment and Activities

3 ENTERING THE POLITICAL STAGE: 193849

Looking Beyond Egypt

Going Political at Home

Preparing for Jihad: Rovers and Battalions

Patrons without Clients? The Muslim Brothers, the Palace and Party Politics

The SecondWorldWar and its Aftermath

Post-War Growth and Expansion

The Special Apparatus

Breakdown: 19489

4 HASAN AL-BANNA: THE PIVOT OF HIS UNIVERSE

Between Shaykh and Efendi: a Social Profile

Islam Applied: an Intellectual Profile

What Went Wrong?

The Means of Change

On Unity and Community

Islam as a System

A Moral Order, or Creating New Islamic Man

The Virtuous City

A Moral Economy

A Charismatic Community?

Concluding Remarks

Endnotes

Bibliography

Index

H asan al-Banna (190649) was the founder and lifelong leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and most influential Islamic movement in the Arab Middle East, formed in 1928 and still active in Egypt and other Muslim countries from Jordan and Yemen to Nigeria and Indonesia. Until Sayyid Qutb (190666), who only joined the Muslim Brotherhood after al-Bannas death, emerged, posthumously, as a powerful voice of modern Islamism, Hasan al-Banna embodied the Brotherhood as no other individual did. Even today, he continues to evoke strong feelings as reflected in a rich and varied literature, ranging from hagiography to angry polemic. Yet no scholarly biography has so far been published in either Arabic or any other relevant language. This may be due to the problematic nature of the sources as much as to the sensitivity of the subject that is, Islamism past and present. Not that there is a dearth of writings on the subject. The most widely read focus on a limited number of issues: Islam and power, Islam and gender and, of course, Islam, jihad and martyrdom. These issues are of obvious relevance to the present study, but they do not constitute its prime concerns. At the centre stands al-Bannas project of establishing a moral order based on what he conceived of as true Islam.

Hasan al-Bannas life and thought are so closely intertwined with the movement he founded and inspired that it is difficult to distinguish the private man from the public figure. For this reason, this study deals as much with the Muslim Brothers as with Hasan al-Banna himself, attempting to put them firmly in context. This sounds perhaps more trivial than it is. There is a tendency to treat Islamism as a subject located on a planet called Islam, different from all other socio-political and cultural phenomena. The Islamic exceptionalism resulting from this approach tends to underrate the commonalities of thought, idiom and practice between Islamists on the one hand and their secular contemporaries on the other. As a historian, one ought to try to counter this tendency.

Some technical remarks are called for. To illustrate al-Bannas thought, or discourse, I have quoted amply from his writings, notably his Memoirs, tracts and talks published in the Muslim Brothers press. Unfortunately, these texts have been repeatedly reissued, sometimes without indicating the publisher and the year of publication. A number of al-Bannas tracts are available in English translation. Whenever possible, I have referred to Charles Wendells Five Tracts of Hasan Al-Banna in addition to the original Arabic, taken from the collection of tracts Majmuat rasail, of which there exist several editions with different selections. My own translations are occasionally based on Wendells but depart from his whenever this seemed necessary. Footnotes are always a touchy subject: instructions for the Makers of the Muslim World series ask authors not to use any footnotes at all. Given the controversial nature of much of the material, I felt this was impossible. Some compromise had to be found. In the end, I decided to provide footnotes for statements, such as membership figures or the role of women in the Muslim Brotherhood, that I thought might be of interest to a wider readership or elicit debate. The main body of the narrative relies on what passes as Hasan al-Bannas Memoirs (Mudhakkirat al-dawa wa-l-daiya), the Letters edited by his brother Jamal, as well as a number of studies on the Muslim Brotherhood, notably R. Mitchell and Lia on the one hand, and Abd al-Halim, Ahmad, Mahmud, Shair, al-Sisi and Zaki on the other. Transliteration has been simplified so as to make the text readable while allowing the specialist to identify names, terms and titles. Al-Banna is written without the final hamza, which according to the rules of Arabic grammar it requires. However, the al-Banna family consistently spells its name without the hamza, and even as an orientalist, I saw no need to be as it were holier than the Pope, if this is a proper expression to use in the present context.