What Islamists Need to Be Clear About: The Case of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood – high-caliber work by the Carnegie Endowment’s excellent Amr Hamzawy and Marina Ottaway, essentially giving recommendations to Islamists on what they need to to convince the rest of the world that they are not a Trojan Horse. Many will have problems with this paper, but it clearly lists the issues that Western policymakers have problems with. The MB or other groups don’t have to agree with, most notably the provisions on international agreements. I also wonder what foreign policymakers would make of the fact that the most thorough intellectual work by Islamists on social justice is probably Sayyid Qutb’s “Social Justice in Islam.” Let’s hope they continue with other examples from other countries.
The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood – like most Foreign Affairs articles, pretty bland aside from making the suggestion to the wonk crowd that “a conversation with the Muslim Brotherhood makes strong strategic sense.” The article should have been less broad in scope, better sourced and referenced, though, and does not come up with any serious analysis of MB discourse and practice. It also, in my opinion, exaggerates the links between the Egyptian MB and various affiliates in Europe that are dealing with entirely different circumstances. It is however a refreshing change from the Daniel Pipes line that there are no differences between moderate and extremist Islamism.
Parties of God – Ken Silverstein’s Harpers piece covers a lot of ground, from the Egyptian MB to Hizbullah to the resistance to discussing Islamism with an open-mind in the US. Because of this it’s hard to see his point, even if, for its audience, much of the material will be new and interesting. He devotes some space to his own experience dealing with pro-Israel bias with his former editors at the LA Times when reporting on Hizbullah, something that would make a great article on its own (looking at pro-Israel bias and fear of retribution in American newsrooms) but has ultimately little to do with Islamist parties.
– at-tarikh as-siri li-jamaa al-ikhwan al-muslimin (The Secret History of the Association of the Muslim Brothers) is a re-edition of a controversial book by Alaa Ashmawy, who claims to be a former member of the tanzim al khass, the MB’s paramilitary wing that operated mostly in the 1940s and 1950s. The book has been reissued by Saad Eddin Ibrahim’s Ibn Khaldoun Center and makes the argument that the MB retains some kind of paramilitary wing, which is not accepted by many Egyptian and other scholars. I mention it because I was recently given a copy, but I have not had time to read it seriously nor can I comment on its usefulness. The issue is very topical though, particularly after the (inflated) concerns about the al-Azhar martial arts demo and last summer’s claim that the MB was willing to send 10,000 fighters to Lebanon.
– I’d like to also mention an undergraduate essay a reader sent me about the MB along with a message about the “On Freeloaders” post from a few days ago. The essay was written by an Australian student who has never been to the Arab world, does not speak Arabic and relied only on previously published English-language material. While obviously it isn’t ground-breaking, it provides a nice introductory summary and more importantly a decent bibliography of recent academic, policy and journalistic work on the MB. You can read the essay here, and it author has a blog called Jovial Fellow. If someone who had done that much reading contacted me for help on further research, I would have no problems helping them.
[…] up on reading about the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood). The Arabist lists a number of reading resources here. Amira Al […]
Thanks Issandr (Aussie non-Arab speaking Arabist here) – if you can read Blogspot, Nate from Abu Aardvark left some rather valid criticism which is slightly embarrassing (I got 80% for the essay, though, so there’s something to be said for sharing your lecturer’s prejudices). I’ve linked to the essay on my blog, so if anyone would like to head over there and comment on its content I’d be grateful.
I found the FA article quite interesting, as it included information about the European MB that I didn’t know, and I disagree with Issandr that it exaggerates the links between MBs in different countries – I thought the article made it quite clear that different branches of the MB have quite a strong local character. Keep in mind also that for FA, this is ground-breaking stuff – I’m pretty sure that most FA readers read more Daniel Pipes than they do Marc Lynch. Certainly, the people I meet in the foreign policy community (non-academic people, I mean) seem to regard “the Muslim Brotherhood”, taken out of any national context, as a parent company of al-Qaeda.
Nate’s comments are a teacher’s — he didn’t get you on the substance. I’m not a teacher nor am I familiar on the political science literature on political parties.
Ms 45, I thought your essay was pretty impressive for an undergraduate. It’s natural to read widely at first and develop a tight argument only later. I was puzzled by the literature recs you got from the commenter however. If you want to see how the political parties literature can be applied to the MB, read Mona el-Ghobashy’s article, though some of the literature she uses comes out of the communist to social democratic party cases, while the more relevant literature, for my money, is that which deals with Christian Dems. Stathis Kalyvas has a book on the Christian Dems that might interest you if you want to pursue that.
Don’t forget Marc Lynch’s post on Guardian.co.uk on the brotherhood and blogging. I think it was posted yesterday or the day before.
Ms .45… I’m guessing that refers to vinyl records and not pistols, but if it refers to the latter, jeez, consider yourself an honorary East Tennessean.
Hi guys,
thanks for comments. As I mentioned, the essay was submitted and marked ages ago – I was mostly interested in what people who are either Egyptian, Arab or just living in the ME thought of the evidence, not so much the structural problems, although Nate’s comments were valuable. Because I don’t live in the Middle East, I’m very much going by what people have said in journals, popular magazines and newspapers. I don’t know if this is good (gives me distance and objectivity) or bad (I have no idea what’s happening on the ground).
I’m planning to put up the current version of my Honours thesis soon, so if anyone’s crazy enough to read it, it will afford you the opportunity to vent on the topic of The Bush Administration’s Freedom Agenda 2002-2006 (now tell me you don’t want to start venting already!).
Abu Muqawama, Ms .45 was the title of a movie with the best movie poster ever in the world in all recorded history (look it up on imdb.com). But yeah, vinyl records are good, I’m probably way too small to handle a .45 calibre weapon though. It’d be the size of one of my legs.