2
Building the Brotherhood

One of the most striking things about the Brotherhood is its name. Ideological movements usually carry the name of the new order they strive to impose: so one hears, for example, of liberal, communist, or nationalist movements. The Brotherhood, in contrast, carries the name of an already existing society: the society of the Muslim Brothers. It is as if the movement itself is the ultimate goal. To dispel doubts of organizational narcissism, members are told that the movement is sacred because what it represents is sacred - that is, Islam (Shatla 2013). Without the movement, there can be no return to Islamic rule. In time, however, means and ends become conflated. "We come to believe that Islam is the Brotherhood (al-Islam howa al-Ikhwan)," Hani (2013) stated, "that this divine group (al-jama'a al-rabaniya) must be preserved against all odds." As Ibrahim al-Houdeibi (2013) succinctly put it: "The organization is the cause of its own being." This unique organizational feature is grounded in a particular interpretation of Islamic social ties, and reinforced by interlocking networks of family, friends, and business partners.

A Brotherhood in God

'The believers are but brothers,' decrees the Qur'an (49: 10). And Prophet Muhammad compared believers to a single body in which, if one organ complained, the rest would attend to it with compassion. The founders of the Muslim Brotherhood drew on these and dozens of comparable religious texts to justify their choice of a name. As mentioned in Hassan al-Banna's memoirs, during the founding meeting, the movement's creators wondered whether they were forming a political club, a religious sect, a social association, or something else. He told them: "We are brothers in the service of Islam. Therefore, we are the Muslim Brothers" ([1948] 1990: 96). 'Brotherhood' (ukhuwa), the ninth pillar of Banna's Teachings, refers to "the bonding of hearts and souls with the bond of faith" ([1949] 1993: 313). In explaining this tenet, the cultivation curriculum lists the five characteristics of godly brotherhood: it is a divine blessing; it is a source of emotional energy; it is a bonding of souls; it is the true mark of believers; and it is love in God ("Turuq" 2002: vol. II, 239). Another volume of the curriculum describes brotherhood as the very spirit of faith ("Mabadi'" 2003: vol. III, 207).

And the flipside of godly brotherhood is antipathy to others. 'Loyalty and antipathy' (al-wala' wal-bara) is a concept Islamists derive from the Qur'an (9: 23): 'O you who have believed, do not take your fathers or your siblings as allies if they preferred disbelief over belief.' According to the curriculum, a believer must rid his heart of emotional attachment to family and friends if they do not share his beliefs, and substitute them with the primal bond between him and his brothers in Islam ("Turuq" 2002: vol. I, 269).1 In "Our Call" (Da'watana), Banna divided Muslims into four types: those who support Brothers out of belief; those who support Brothers for pragmatic reasons; those who are inclined to become Brothers; and unjust Muslims ([1949] 1993: 12-13). There are no good Muslims outside the Brotherhood and its orbit, and Brothers must rank organizational ties higher than any other, even those of family and friendship. Attachment to your Brothers entails separation from others. According to General Guide Hassan al-Houdeibi, Muslims who do not join the Brotherhood, while not necessarily infidels, are, at the very least, negligent, and a good Muslim should only intermingle with them to urge them to repent (1973: 230). Shatla (2013) described how dis­orienting it normally is for a young man to learn that his parents - those whom he had considered as a source of wisdom (sometimes even as role models) all his life - turned out to be sinners or simply deluded. One automatically turns to one's new Brotherhood family to fill this emotional gap.

The choice of name, in a sense, elevates Brotherhood membership above most other ideological movements. Without this "Brotherhood of belief," Deputy General Guide Muhammad Habib rightly proclaimed, "the Muslim Brotherhood would have become like any other party" (2012: 122). When you join an ideological organization or even a religious congregation, you commit to a cause and to a community. Not so with the Brotherhood. As an ordinary Muslim, you are in fact tied to other believers in an eternal God-ordained brotherhood. Not being aware of this fact and the ensuing obligations makes you a sinner, or at least gravely negligent. So by becoming a Brother you are not making a new commitment - a commitment you could later rescind - you are merely activating a so far dormant bond you had tacitly accepted when you first embraced Islam. The third general guide, 'Umar al-Telmesani, said that he and his Brothers did not swear allegiance to the movement, "We swore allegiance to God" (2008: 62). By the same token, leaving the Brotherhood amounts to nothing less than reneging on your religious duties: "Here you are renouncing faith not an ideology; you are abandoning God not Hassan al-Banna" (Fayez 2013: 18). Newcomers are scarcely aware of any ideological indoctrination. As far as they are concerned, senior Brothers are tutoring them on the basics of their religion. Naturally, then, defending the movement amounts to defending Islam (Fayez 2013: 29). How could it be otherwise when the founder clearly stated: "We openly declare that every Muslim that does not believe in this approach and work towards fulfilling it, has no share in Islam, and should find another [religious] idea to believe in . [This is] the mission God set for us, not the mission we set for ourselves" (Banna [1949] 1993: 101). Little wonder that Brotherhood spokesman Subhi Saleh once proclaimed on television, "I ask God to take my soul [while I am still] a Brother," a slightly altered version of the common prayer for God to take one's soul while one is still a Muslim.2 When Farghali's (2013) brother was detained, she blamed their father for encouraging him to join the Brotherhood. He responded: "We have no choice. There are only two paths, one leading to heaven, and the other to hellfire."

In the most recent interpretation of the Teachings, Muhammad Sa'ad Tag al-Din held that those who betray their commitment to the Brotherhood might not be completely excommunicated, but must be considered sinners for violating their oath of allegiance (2013: 55-9). In another interpretation of the Teachings, cleric Muhammad al-Ghazali commended the founder for trying to arouse Muslims from their coma (1981: 5). This distinction between conscious and unconscious Muslims is crucial. In "Our Call" (Da'watana), Banna maintained that: "The difference between us and our people after we have both accepted faith, in principle, is that their faith is dormant and slumbering in their souls, they neither respect nor follow its injunctions . and in their state of obliviousness they might even work against it, whether or not they are aware of it" ([1949] 1993: 15). The Brotherhood, in other words, does not consider itself an ideological movement, or any other type of movement, but an island of awakened Muslims amidst an oblivious community.

The brilliance of this formulation is that it does not appear to be promoting any new ideas; it simply asks Muslims to reexamine their religiosity for a possible discrepancy between what they believe themselves to be (devout Muslims) and what they actually are (violators of Islam). It is a Gramscian strategy par excellence. Gramsci held that counterhegemonic movements must push their audience to reflect upon the "contrast between [their] thought and action . the [artificial] coexistence of two conceptions of the world, one affirmed by words and the other displayed in effective action" (1971: 326-7). Muslims who want to overcome this dissonance between belief and action have to carry over their religiosity to the public sphere; they have to translate their faith into sociopolitical activism. Becoming conscious of the fact that, as a Muslim, you are already a Brother is the 'passive' aspect of your membership. The 'active' part is to go on and serve Islam with your Brothers. Now, what does Islam want? According to Sami (2013), secular-minded Muslims think Islam is all about praying, fasting, and other acts of worship. But, contrary to this distorted view, Islam could only exist in one grand religious community, an umma. As the Qur'an (21: 92) says: 'Indeed this umma of yours is one umma, and I am your Lord.' But this umma is long gone because the caliphate, the political institution that symbolized its unity had collapsed. As a result, 'the duty of the time' (wajib al-waqt) - a jurisprudential-sounding term coined by the Brotherhood to refer to the duty that must be prioritized - is to restore the caliphate.

This brings us to one of the Brotherhood's most brilliant recruitment and retention strategies, originally framed by the founder as the...