The Muslim Brotherhood

by Alison Pargeter

  Some Ikhwani are so sensitive about the subject that questions about it sometimes engender irritation. In 2006 the Guide of the Jordanian Ikhwan, Abd al-Majid al-Dhunaybat, asserted: ‘The so-called international organisation is a wrong name and a term used by adversaries to refer to the brothers in various countries and who try to standardise the understanding, ideology and positions of the groups regarding world events.’3 Guidance Office member Abdul Moneim Aboul Fotouh claimed that the international tanzeem was something that existed primarily in the minds of those in the West, angrily complaining, ‘You find that a lot with the westerners!’4 Egyptian Ikhwani Youssef Nada, who ran the Al Taqwa Bank, explicitly stated, ‘As far as I know this so-called international tanzeem never existed.’5

  There is also a strong divergence of opinion among commentators. According to some detractors, the international tanzeem, along with the various plans and documents that have been ascribed to it, is an elaborate network set up by the Brotherhood to infiltrate Europe with its dangerous and fundamentalist ideology.6 The Egyptian state also sought to portray the organisation as a sinister entity, poised to topple regimes throughout the world. Former Egyptian Interior Minister Hassan al-Alfi described it as ‘the base from the cloaks of which have emerged all these [extremist] organisations which betray their religion and their countries’.7 For others, however, the international tanzeem is nothing more than a ‘loose and feeble coalition scarcely able to convene its own members’.8 Some commentators have gone even further, suggesting that the organisation is completely irrelevant and incompetent. Abu Ala Madhi, who broke away from the Brotherhood in 1996 to form the Al-Wasat party in Egypt, has described the international movement as a fantasy, a failure that is incapable of carrying out any objective.9

  To add to the confusion, whilst some have suggested that the Ikhwani are deliberately evasive when talking about the international tanzeem in order to make themselves appear more powerful than they actually are, others have accused them of downplaying the organisation so as to detract attention from it. It is true that after 9/11 the Brotherhood was especially concerned about being branded as an international terrorist organisation and there appeared to be a concerted effort to refute the suggestion that the mother branch in Egypt might be directing the policies of Ikhwani groups elsewhere. Rather they were keen to promote the idea that the local branches are independent and are not obliged by decisions made in Cairo. As Mohamed Habib, the former Deputy of the Brotherhood in Egypt, explained:

  There is an international organisation, but the groups within it operate in a decentralised way, giving it flexibility … what is more important is that the aims of the international tanzeem are one and it has one methodology so all the branches aim for the same things but within the framework of the legislation of their own countries.10

  Given the tense security situation that existed in Egypt prior to the Arab Spring and the pressures that the Egyptian Brotherhood was under, this decentralised scenario would certainly seem to be the most likely way in which the transnational movement operated in the years leading up to the 2011 revolution. It would seem far-fetched to imagine that the leadership in Cairo could have been in any position to run a fully functioning international organisation. Yet at the same time it was difficult to ignore the Tanzeem al-Dawli completely, not least because it continued to have an international Guidance Office headquartered in Cairo. Furthermore, for all that it might have been organisationally weak, the international tanzeem represented an important feature in the Brotherhood’s history and has played a key role in the movement’s evolution. Its fortunes have ebbed and flowed according to the personalities who have been at the helm of the movement and it has been as wrought with internal division as each of the individual branches themselves. On occasion, such as in 1990–1 during the Gulf war crisis, these divisions threatened to rupture the entire Brotherhood. The story of the international tanzeem therefore highlights the Ikhwan’s never-ending difficulties in reconciling being both a local organisation with national branches and priorities and an international body and school of thought.

  Origins

  The fact that the Brotherhood set up an international organisation is hardly surprising. The movement’s internationalist outlook was established from its very inception, thanks to the vision of its founder Hassan al-Banna. The Ikhwan was formed largely in response to the fall of the last caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, and the movement stressed the universal nature of Islam and the umma (one Muslim nation). Moreover, although al-Banna’s main focus was on local issues, he also sought to spread his ideology and his movement beyond the confines of Egypt. To this end, he sent members of the Brotherhood abroad to spread dawa and to expand the movement in other Arab states.

  However, for al-Banna, Egypt was always the centre and he considered it to be the true heart and soul of the movement. The fact that the Brotherhood was founded in Egypt, al-Banna’s birthplace, has always given Cairo a certain moral authority, so much so that the Murshid of the Egyptian branch has always been the supreme leader and spiritual reference of the entire movement. As Syrian Ikhwani Adnan Saad Eddine said, ‘The Murshid has [overall] moral responsibility.’11

  The importance of Egypt notwithstanding, the Brotherhood has not been averse to trying to create alternative centres of power whenever Cairo has found itself under extreme pressure. In 1954, for example, after the Nasser regime clamped down particularly hard on the Ikhwan, arresting most of its leadership, the then Murshid Hassan al-Hodeibi held meetings with Ikhwani leaders in Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon to develop plans to set up an executive office for the Arab world.12 According to Issam al-Attar, after al-Hodeibi returned to Egypt he became busy with local issues once again and the idea of the regional office slipped down the agenda.

  The idea was resurrected in the early 1960s and during the Haj of 1963 a number of Ikhwani from Arab states held a conference, during which they elected al-Attar as the head of an Arab executive bureau to be known as the Maktab al-Amm (General Office). The main function of this office, aside from acting as a focal point for the Ikhwan outside Egypt, was to collect funds and donations for the Brotherhood and to promote dawa.13 There was no direct obligation to Cairo within this set-up; according to Sudanese Ikhwani Dr Hassan al-Turabi, it worked on the basis of voluntary co-ordination.14 Yet due to the ongoing restrictions on the Egyptians, this office remained largely the domain of the Syrians, who were experiencing a more flexible domestic situation at that time. It was never able to really develop, not least because al-Attar himself was forced into exile in 1964 but also because once the Egyptians had no immediate need or interest for it, it was left to wither away.

  As the Ikhwan continued to develop internationally, with branches springing up across the Islamic world, Cairo came to act as a natural arbiter and leader and it intervened to resolve issues in local branches where it saw fit. For example, in the late 1960s the Guidance Office in Egypt stepped in to sort out the conflict that had built up between the Aleppo and Damascus wings of the Syrian Ikhwan. Cairo organised an election for a new Shura Council for the Syrian branch. Therefore, although it had no formal role in this respect, there was a general assumption that the Guidance Office in Egypt had a natural responsibility to solve problems that occurred in other parts of the movement. However, as the Sudanese Ikhwani leader has described, the relationships between Cairo and other branches at this time were largely spontaneous and done without any real organisational formality.15

  Whilst Cairo had always had this informal moral authority over other branches, it was in the early 1970s that a hawkish group of Egyptian Ikhwani sought to amplify Cairo’s role and to use the movement’s international dimensions to their advantage. This group, which included Mustafa Mashour, Ahmed al-Malat and Kamel Sananiri, were all members of the Nizam al-Khass and were released from prison shortly after President Sadat came to power in 1970. As explained in Chapter One, immediately after their release this group sought to wrest control of the Egyptian Ikhwan away from t
he Murshid and to reinvigorate the movement, which had dwindled significantly since the heady days of the early 1950s. Yet their ambitions for the Ikhwan went beyond Egypt, and they were to become the real driving force behind the international tanzeem.

  The group’s bid to make use of the movement’s international aspect was partly driven by the fact that once they left prison they discovered that other Ikhwani branches around the world had flourished whilst their own had withered. The brothers in Jordan had gained much popularity and had a good connection to the monarchy, which like the Gulf states viewed the Ikhwan as a useful bulwark against nationalist or leftist forces. The realisation that other branches had become stronger than the mother group provoked a ‘big organisational crisis’ within the Egyptian Ikhwan.16 They could see that whilst they were being stifled by the Egyptian regime, the international environment offered distinct opportunities that they could use not only to strengthen their influence within the movement as a whole, but also to increase the authority of their own particular clique within the Egyptian branch. As such they took steps to begin bringing the other branches under their control.

  Whilst the other Ikhwani branches had always given their loyalty to the Murshid as a matter of tradition, this group placed a new insistence on the obedience that other parts of the Ikhwan should display towards the Murshid. Following Hassan al-Hodeibi’s death in 1973 the group, who had by then appointed themselves as members of the Guidance Office, decided to select a new Murshid whom they could control from behind the scenes. However, this Murshid, who had agreed to take on the position very reluctantly, did not want his identity to be disclosed and became known as the Secret Murshid. Once they had appointed him, the group then demanded that the leaders of the various national Ikhwani branches come to Cairo to swear baya to the new guide, even though his identity was a secret.17 Adnan Saad Eddine has described how after he had been elected as the new General Guide of the Syrian Ikhwan in 1975 he was obliged to go through this process: ‘Omar al-Tilimsani called on me to go to Cairo to give baya to the Murshid in the name of the Syrian tanzeem … I went to Cairo to Dr Ahmed al-Malat who took me to a Cairo suburb to visit al-Murshid and I performed baya after I promised that I would not reveal or mention his name.’18

  Some Ikhwani rejected the idea of giving allegiance to a Murshid they did not know, forcing the Egyptian group to come to a compromise. In 1977 they brought in Omar al-Tilimsani as the new Supreme Guide. However, the incident reflects the sense among this group of Egyptians that they were at the top of the Ikhwan’s international hierarchy. As Issam al-Attar has explained, ‘They imagined themselves as the real leaders of all the Ikhwan in the Arab world because Egypt for them was the real leadership of the movement as a whole. They wanted to make the Murshid everything in the movement.’19

  As well as strengthening their control over existing branches in the Arab world, the group also sought to harness opportunities on offer in other parts of the world where the Ikhwan had a presence. Many of these openings were in Europe. The seeds of the Brotherhood had been planted in Europe in the 1950s by a number of Ikhwani who had sought refuge on the continent, such as Said Ramadan, the son-in-law of Hassan al-Banna. Ramadan, who had always had international ambitions, arrived in Europe in 1958. There, according to his son, Tariq, he was generally considered to be in charge of the Ikhwan abroad.20 He settled in Geneva, where he began publishing Islamist literature and set up the Islamic Centre of Geneva. Keen to expand his influence further, Ramadan also opened a centre in Munich and another in London in 1964.

  Although Ramadan had left the Ikhwan by the end of the 1970s, his presence in Europe and the opening of his Islamic centres were to lay the Ikhwan’s foundations on the continent. These centres became key hubs for other influential Ikhwani who had settled in Europe, including Issam al-Attar, Youssef Nada, and later the Lebanese scholar Sheikh Faisal al-Mawlawi. These individuals, along with Ramadan, found an environment where they could operate with a relative degree of freedom and where they could take advantage of the media opportunities that were on offer to promote their cause. As one commentator explained, ‘Leaders of the Ikhwan organisations were surprised by the Western openness to Islam and the facilities that were given to fugitive Islamic leaders.’21 Indeed, this group of highly ambitious and hawkish Ikhwani saw possibilities in Europe that they could not even dream of inside Egypt.

  Much of the spread of this Ikhwani activism in Europe was thanks to the large sums of money that the Saudis had been prepared to direct into the continent to support their activities. As such, Saudi Arabia offered another opportunity for this group of Egyptians. The Saudis had built strong relations with the Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Kingdom had become the most important place of refuge for the Egyptian Ikhwani facing persecution at the hands of the Nasser regime. The Saudi monarchy welcomed the Ikhwan, partly as a means to shore itself up against the nationalist regimes that were spreading in the region, but also as an opportunity for the Saudis to use the Brotherhood to fill the gaps in their own society and institutions.The Saudis offered the Ikhwani, who were generally members of the educated intelligentsia, posts within the administration and government, enabling the Ikhwan to penetrate the Saudi establishment to the highest level.22 At the same time the Saudis gave the Ikhwani key posts in many of their charitable organisations including those in Europe. As the former Murshid Mehdi Akef, who himself worked as a consultant for the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) in Riyadh in the 1970s and also spent several years at the Islamic centre in Munich, commented, ‘The Muslim Brotherhood is like a beauty spot on the face of Saudi Arabia because of what it provided the country.’23

  However, the Ikhwan’s links into the Gulf did not rest solely with Saudi Arabia. They also developed a presence in other Gulf countries including Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, and the richness of these branches was an appealing prospect for the struggling Egyptian Ikhwan, whose finances had been strangled by the state. The new leaders in Cairo realised that there were established networks operating outside Egypt unburdened by the kinds of restrictions they were facing at home and with a ready supply of petrodollars. They therefore set about trying to develop a way to bring all of this activism, not to mention the supply of resources, under their control.

  The Internal System

  Much of this push to harness these opportunities was driven by Mustafa Mashour, who seems to have taken on establishing the international tanzeem as his personal project. The highly ambitious Mashour, who one Sudanese brother described as a ‘very centralised man’,24 seems to have had an almost romantic vision about what such an organisation could achieve and he invested a huge amount of time and effort in trying to turn his vision into a reality. During the 1970s he began making regular visits to Europe, consulting with different figures within the Ikhwan and trying to persuade them of the benefits of restructuring the movement in a way that would bring it under a single united leadership. He even courted figures who had moved away from the Ikhwan, including Issam al-Attar. Al-Attar recounted that Mashour, accompanied by Ahmed al-Malat, visited him in his home in Aachen, where they tried unsuccessfully to persuade him to return to the Ikhwan.25 However, Mashour was more successful with other parts of the Ikhwan. The Jordanian Ikhwan, for example, was quick to support Mashour, which accounts for the important role that the Jordanian General Guide Mohamed Abdelrahman Khalifa came to play within the Brotherhood’s international structures.

  By the early 1980s the pressure to activate some kind of international body had become even greater. Whilst there had been some room for manoeuvre during most of the 1970s, in 1981 President Sadat decided that it was time to clamp down on growing Islamist activism and embarked upon a major sweep of arrests that included large numbers of Ikhwani. Mustafa Mashour discovered that he was about to be detained and fled to Kuwait just four days before the arrests began. From Kuwait he moved between Germany and the Gulf, doing his utmost to push this new international system, something that was even more urgent now
that the Ikhwan had such limited room to manoeuvre inside Egypt. After Sadat was killed in October 1981, his successor, Mubarak, continued with this repressive policy, preventing the Ikhwan from having any real space to develop inside the country.

  However, the freedom that Mashour had found abroad was to consolidate his power and influence within the movement. Dr Kamal Helbawy has observed of this period that ‘Mustafa Mashour was busy supervising and running activities whilst the Murshid in Egypt was unable to move a lot.’26 Just as had occurred in earlier years, the Egyptians once again focused their efforts on alternative centres that could sustain them whilst they weathered a particularly difficult period in Egypt. This time, however, the efforts were much more sustained and developed.

  In July 1982 the Ikhwan produced a document titled La Iha al-Dakhiliya (The Internal Statute). This was the culmination of the meetings that Mashour had been holding across Europe and elsewhere. This document, which is widely considered to mark the official establishment of the international tanzeem, reads very much like a constitution and lays out the new internal structure for the Ikhwan that had been approved by the Murshid in 1978. The document essentially formalised the existing relationships between Cairo and the Ikhwan’s other branches into one official system. As such, it was a way for the Egyptian Ikhwan to bring an unwieldy movement of disparate parts spread far and wide across the globe into one formalised body.