The Muslim Brotherhood and State Repression: The Rise of Clandestinity and Militancy in an Islamist Organization

This PhD dissertation examines the history of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during two periods of repression. More specifically, the focus is on the correlation between state repression and the rise of secrecy and militancy inside the Brotherhood during the periods of 1948-1951 and 1954-1970. My overall contention is that the Brotherhood acquired an ability to survive persecution by transforming its mass organization into an underground existence. This ability was especially constructed during these two periods of harsh repression. Studies dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood after Hasan al-Banna’s death in 1949 have mainly focused on the radicalizing influence of Sayyid Qutb on the Ikhwan. In this regard, a particular emphasis was put on the concepts presented by Qutb in his well-known book “Milestones”, published in 1964 while he was in prison, as researchers aimed to explain why some young members of the Ikhwan left the Brotherhood to form militant organizations in the aftermath of the Nasserite years. Accordingly, most research on this era has predominantly focused on the ideological reactions to repression, and the major part of this research has been on the conceptual world of Sayyid Qutb from his Maʿālim fil-Tarīq (Milestones on the Road). Gamal Abdel Nasser’s heavy-handed repression of the Ikhwan from October 1954 represented for the organization the toughest and most violent test in its history. Following an abortive attempt on Nasser’s life, the regime initiated a widespread and well-structured oppressive campaign against the Brotherhood which would last for the better part of the Nasserite era. The second miḥna (tribulation/ordeal), as this persecution has been termed by the Ikhwan, witnessed the jailing of some of the most active and well-known members of the Brotherhood, including the Murshid (guide/leader) Hasan al-Hudaybi and most of his lieutenants, and the hanging of six well-known Brothers. As a consequence of this systematic repression of the major Islamist organization in Egypt, and due to its subsequent disappearance from the public scene, most studies dealing with the Brotherhood in this period came to believe that the Brotherhood was nearly exterminated during this era. Numerous authors described the Brotherhood during these years as in a state of shock, despair and crisis. These studies considered the Nasserite years as the “heyday” of secularism and modernity, an era in which a politico-religious organization such as the Ikhwan was perceived as archaic and without hope of survival. Accordingly, the contention of this existing literature has been, that the Brotherhood disappeared as a result of the tough policing it was exposed to during the years of Nasserite rule, and reappeared once the military rule had ended with the death of Nasser in September 1970. This “reappearance” of the Ikhwan was considered a result of President Anwar al-Sadat’s scheme to restrict the influence of secular Nasserite currents in government and society by allying himself with “traditional religious forces” such as the Brotherhood. While I agree with the overall contention of these studies, in conceiving the repressive environment of the Nasserite years as triggering a radicalization among some young activists, I maintain that a wider study of the Brotherhood’s development during these years of repression is essential to understand the trajectory and history of the Ikhwan. Challenging the idea that the Brotherhood disappeared and then re-appeared following the Nasserite years, the main argument of this dissertation is that the Brotherhood continued to exist as an underground organization during the first and second miḥna. In so doing, I study the Brotherhood during these years as a secret organization that transformed its existence and activities into secrecy in order to survive the repression it was exposed to. I claim that we can trace a continuation of the Ikhwan during the key periods in the history of the organization, thereby bridging the al-Banna-era with the period that followed his death in 1949. Thus, this study is an attempt to move the focus away from being predominantly on the Qutbian ideology and shed much needed light on the historical development of the Brotherhood as a mass organization. Accordingly, the dissertation draws on a conception of secrecy by borrowing the definitions of secrecy put forward by, among others, Georg Simmel and Bonnie Erickson. In this regard, I focus mainly on the correlation between secrecy and repression. Furthermore, to understand the effects of repression on the Brotherhood, I apply Donatella della Porta’s causal mechanism framework to grasp how the Brotherhood reacted to the repression it was exposed to. Yet, in so doing, I do not neglect the role of Sayyid Qutb, but the study attempts to put Qutb in the correct context of the Ikhwan-history. In utilizing primary sources such as the extensive field of memoirs authored by Brotherhood members who witnessed these events firsthand, alongside contemporary British and American intelligence sources and documents from their embassies, this dissertation sheds important light on the Brotherhood’s activities and development during these years of “invisibility”. In this way, I offer a more nuanced examination of the Brotherhood in the years that followed al-Banna’s death in 1949, introducing Ikhwan actors and events not always studied in the existing field of research. Taken together, the dissertation contributes to our understanding of the Brotherhood during two decisive periods in its history. On the one hand, the study contributes to the historical field, by studying the Brotherhood’s transformation into secrecy as a result of repression, showing that the Brotherhood was working actively during the Nasserite years. By tracing this secrecy back to the Second World War, I contend that it emerged in the context of global rupture and as a defensive mechanism against repression. Furthermore, the dissertation highlights the Ikhwan’s development into an anti-colonial force in Egypt and discusses its participation in the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948 and the subsequent war in the Canal Zone in 1951. In this vein, I discuss how the Ikhwan developed secret structures in the army and among its civilian members to combat the British and to change the status quo in Egypt. As a result, the study indicates that the radicalization of Brotherhood members had occurred in this context of anti-colonial agitation and came as a result of these circumstances surrounding Egypt. This radicalization, which had occurred in the context of colonized Egypt, was reinforced as a result of the Brotherhood’s struggle with Nasser’s military regime and the harsh repression it was exposed to during these years. In other words, the radicalization of the Ikhwan did not emerge in the prison camps of Nasser but had already been there for years before. On the other hand, the dissertation challenges the mainstream research that understands Sayyid Qutb as the main radicalizing ideologue of the Brotherhood. In tracing the radicalization of segments of the Ikhwan back to the 1940s, I contend that the understanding of Qutb’s role in the history of Islamist radicalization might be reconsidered. The study contends that a continuation of radicalization can be observed in the history of the Brotherhood, taking its starting point in the anti-colonial agitation of the 1940s and the struggle between the Brotherhood and the Saadist regime in the late 1940s. This early radicalization, I claim, continued into the Nasserite era. Thus, I show that some Brothers were radicalized long before Qutb’s affiliation with the Ikhwan.