Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

Islam after Empire 5 3dedicated to d a ’ w a , sports, publications, and translation work. The Brotherhoodfounded hospitals, schools, and other social service institutions; sponsoredmeetings and conferences; and trained lay Muslim preachers. Its thoroughlymodern administrative apparatus and its social, cultural, and politicalactivism were broadly popular among urban Egyptians, particularly schoolteachers,clerks, lawyers, physicians, police, civil servants, and students. But despiteits wide range of social activities, al-Banna always reminded followers ofthe broader purpose of the movement:Brethren, you are not a benevolent organization, nor a political party, nor a localassociation with strictly limited aims. Rather you are a new spirit making its wayinto the heart of this nation and revivifying it through the Qur’an; a new lightdawning and scattering the darkness of materialism through the knowledge ofGod; a resounding voice rising and echoing the message of the Apostle. . . . Weare calling you to Islam, which was brought by Muhammad. . . . government ispart of it, and freedom is one of its religious duties. If someone should say toyou: This is politics! say: this is Islam, and we do not recognize such divisions. (Al-Banna, “Between Yesterday and To d a y,” translated in Wendell 1978, 36)The Brotherh o o d ’s political goals were to rid Egypt of the British, to transformthe Egyptian government into an Islamic one, and to initiate changes inthe u m m a that would eventually result in the reestablishment of the caliphate.In the view of the Muslim Brotherhood, the moral and political bankruptcy ofsuch Western ideologies as liberal capitalism and communism—the first seenas a kind of Christian imperialism and the second as an equally belligerentm i s s i o n a ry atheism—was clear. The years following the horrors of World War Isaw cultural critics in both the West and the Middle East commenting on thefailures rather than the successes of European civilization. The American poetEzra Pound, for example, wrote of the modern West as “an old bitch gone inthe teeth . . . a botched civilization” (Pound 1920). For al-Banna, writing duringthe Great Depression of the 1930s,the civilization of the West, which was brilliant by virtue of its scientific perf e c-tion for a long time, and which subjugated the whole world with the products ofthis science . . . is now bankrupt and in decline. Its foundations are crumbling,and its institutions and guiding principles are falling apart. Its political foundationsare being destroyed by dictatorships, and its economic foundations are beingswept away by crises. The millions of its wretched unemployed and hungryoffer their testimony against it, while its social foundations are being underminedby deviant ideologies and revolutions which are breaking out every w h e r e .Its people are at a loss as to the proper measures to be taken and are wanderingfar astray. (Al-Banna, “Toward the Light,” translated in Wendell 1978, 106).