By Bruce Newsome, TCW
THE Muslim Brotherhood which explicitly aims to establish sharia (Islamic law) through peaceful political means was founded in 1928 in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna as a reaction to British colonialism, in opposition to colonial rule and the growing influence of secular Western ideas.
Initially as a pan-Islamist, religious, and social movement, the organisation sought to revive Islamic principles and unify the Muslim world under sharia law and champion an Islamic identity. It opposed the secular regimes that followed, even though they were Islamo-centric and authoritarian.
It has been directly engaged in terrorism since the 1930s and through to the present. However, since the 1970s it has, at various times, repudiated terrorism while still providing ideological and material support to proscribed groups. To pick only the most topical, when Hamas chartered itself (1988) it was as the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In 2017, when Hamas nominally disavowed terrorism and religious conflict, it did so without repudiating its charter and, with a deft linguistic sleight of hand, reinterpreted terrorism as ‘armed resistance’. What such armed resistance looks like was most brutally displayed on October 7, 2023.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s international influence focuses on seditious propagandizing and disinformation. For instance, the Muslim Students Association (MSA) — founded by Muslim Brotherhood activists — currently operates on more than 600 campuses in the United States where they advance vicious disinformation about supposed Israeli and Western atrocities, and promote their radical Sunni form of Islam. They are funded by the ruling family of Qatar, which has pledged Bay’ah (loyalty) and money to the Muslim Brotherhood, a crucial and often overlooked fact, that the Institute For The Study Global Anti-Semitism Policy’s latest report highlights. And it is some funding – to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars the ISGSP reports.