The World View of Hasan al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood
by Joseph S. Spoerl (December 2012)
Islam is a perfect and complete way of life.
Islam must be the basis of all legislation.
Because Islam is a complete way of life, encompassing law and politics, all constitutional and positive law must be based on it: As the above quotation makes clear, al-Banna is very scrupulous in adhering to the traditional prescriptions of classical Islamic law. In 1936, al-Banna wrote a letter to King Faruq of Egypt, as well as to the other rulers of Islamic countries, in which he laid out in some detail his program for Islamic government.8 In this letter al-Banna called for God has commanded Muslims to conquer and rule the earth.
[I]t is our duty to establish sovereignty over the world and to guide all of humanity to the sound precepts of Islam and to its teachings, without which mankind cannot attain happiness.21 In other words, the world view of Hasan al-Banna is simply the world view of classical Sunni Islam. Al Banna was not and did not aspire to be an original thinker, but merely repeated and applied what can be found in any manual of classical Islamic law, such as The Reliance of the Traveller, which indeed enjoys the endorsement of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a major global Muslim Brotherhood organization.38
[3] Hasan al-Banna, Five Tracts of Hasan Al-Banna: A Selection from the Majmu at Rasail al-Imam al-Shahid Hasan al-Banna, translated and annotated by Charles Wendell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 30.
[4] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, p. 46.
[6] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, p. 89.
[7] See Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law, trans. Nuh Ha Mim Keller, revised edition (Beltsville, MD: Amana Publications, 1994), pp. 610-618, 704, 985. This manual is an excellent guide to the world view of al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood generally, for that world view is simply the world view of classical Sunni Islam. Indeed, the Reliance of the Traveller is endorsed by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (pp. xviii-xix), a well-known global Muslim Brotherhood organization based in Herndon, Virginia (see Vidino, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West, p. 36, and Johnson, A Mosque in Munich, p. 95).
[8] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, pp. 103-131, esp. pp. 126-130.
[11] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, p. 16.
[12] A communal obligation means that as long as enough are doing the activity in question, the whole community has fulfilled its duty, even if not everyone is doing it, but if no one is doing it, then the whole community is guilty of sin. Al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller, p. 33.
[13] Al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller, p. 714.
[15] Al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller, pp. 713-725.
[16] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, pp 26-7.
[17] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, p. 28.
[18] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, p. 29.
[19] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, p. 31.
[20] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, p. 71.
[21] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, p. 72.
[22] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, p. pp. 17, 24, 49, 51-2, 71-2, 81-2, 93-4, 110.
[23] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, p. 110.
[24] See al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller, p. 600.
[25] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, pp. 133-156.
[26] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, p. 142.
[27] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, p. 147.
[28] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, pp. 136, 142
[30] See al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller, p. 32.
[31] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, p. 150.
[32] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, p. 155.
[33] David Cook, Understanding Jihad (Berkely: University of California Press, 2005), p. 35.
[38] See footnote 7, above.
[39] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, p. 3.
[40] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, p. 4.
[41] Al-Banna, Five Tracts, p. 7.
http://www.memri.org/report/en/print5319.htm
http://www.pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamas-and-hezbollah/
http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2011/04/Pew-Global-Attitudes-Egypt-Report-FINAL-April-25-2011.pdf
Joseph S. Spoerl is professor of philosophy at Saint Anselm College. To comment on this article, please click here. here. here.