Jihad, martyrdom and other murky concepts (2)

Contemporary political Islam finds its origin and closest basis in the systematised and staged projection made by the ideologist Hassan al-Banna in his masterpiece, his own organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood, whose codes have served and still serve as a background for many Islamist political parties in the Islamic world in general and in European countries in particular. 

The thought of Al-Ijwan Al-Muslimin (The Muslim Brotherhood) is undoubtedly the seed of contemporary Jihadist ideology and is therefore inconsistent and counterproductive. From the point of view of security and the fight against Jihadism, at this point in history an incipient trend is beginning to emerge in Western intellectual circles that is extremely defensive of the aforementioned Islamic organisation, brandishing and labelling any criticism of it as Islamophobic acts and excusing and exculpating its doctrinal line from any Jihadist ideological background.

The apparent embracing of modernity, openness and acceptance of the other, women's education and, above all, the use of an apparently pacifist Islamic and Islamist discourse bathed in a connotation of victimhood are, among other things, the key elements that have guaranteed the survival of the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology and, with it, its dangerous, covert but latent Jihadist essence.

To understand the Muslim Brotherhood we must go beyond the noise generated by opinions. We must trace the legacy of the initial and permanent source of this ideology, that is, investigate the legacy of its leader, creator and polariser Hassan al-Banna through his organisational and intellectual heritage. 

Like Jihadist Salafism, the Muslim Brotherhood believes in the supremacy of the Muslim Ummah, a key ideological knot that reinforces the exclusionary component and lays the foundations for the acceptance of the ideology of Jihad.  

Al-Banna, in the compilation of his letters (the only documentary ideological legacy available in addition to a short biography, owing to his reluctance to put his doctrine on record in writing, as stated in his biography), and particularly in two of these letters entitled "Letter to the Young" and "Our Dawa in the Contemporary Era", he provides the Aleyas of the Jayriya of the Muslim Umma, which stress the supremacy of Muslims over other religions and ideologies. The Aleya points out that "you are the best community that has emerged for the good of men. You command the acknowledged, you prevent the reprehensible and you believe in Allah (Qur'an 03;110)". It also provides another Alayah where it states that "whoever chooses and follows any religion of worship other than Islam will not be accepted and in the last life will belong to the losers (Qur'an 03;85)".

Hassan al-Banna points out in the same letter that "we have a full faith and an unshakable and deep belief that only one idea is capable of saving lost humanity and that this afflicted world guides humanity to the right path of truth, so it deserves to be sacrificed in order to uplift and transmit it and to eventually force people to follow it, a sacrifice with material goods and with lives". He continues by indicating that "our ideology (that of the Muslim Brotherhood) is Islam, on which it is based and from which it subtracts its references in order to advance, striving for its cause and working to raise its criteria and precepts. We do not accept any other method of governing and living other than Islam, and we do not accept any precepts other than Islamic ones, nor do we submit to precepts that do not come from Islam". 

The followers of the Muslim Brotherhood, unlike other organisations, learned well from their master and founder, maintaining to this day their key code for achieving their optimum goals with the Islamic cause (Islamising the world). 

Hassan al-Banna made flexibility and adaptation to the times and circumstances, together with evasion of a head-on collision with the adversary, a primordial dynamic in advancing towards the goal he set.

Although both the Salafist Jihadist ideology and that of the Muslim Brotherhood share the same ideological germ, the latter adopted a flexible dynamic underlined by the experience of their referent, Al-Banna. 

In Hassan al-Banna's memoirs entitled "Memoirs of Proselytism and the Proselytizer" we can see at first-hand how he has gradually understood that the best way to connect with contemporary society and subsequently polarize it is to be flexible but always in terms of a lawful Islamic projection.  

The simplest but most significant example of this is the internal crisis that Al-Banna experienced in relation to clothing, which led him in the end to adopt Western styling and get rid of the supposedly Islamic dress. 

Al-Banna felt the need to cling to the prophetic model in a literal manner from a very young age and, unlike his classmates, he opted for an Islamic style according to him, in application of the Sunna, on the basis of which he admits no criticism. 

At an early age, specifically when he was studying at secondary school, as he tells in his memoirs, and under the title "Problems related to clothing" he comments that "I remember as a child in secondary school entering the office of the head of studies and being with the director of education in the area, Mr Raguib, who, on observing how I was dressed, asked me why I was dressed like that. I was wearing a turban, flip-flops, like those worn in "Al-Haj" - the pilgrimage - a tunic and an Islamic cloak (Islamic style). I replied that I was dressed according to the Sunna (emulating the prophet of Islam). The director answered me with another question and said: " Have you complied with everything (emulating the prophet in his entirety) and you only lacked the stylism and clothing?" I answered: " No, I have not complied with everything, but I try to comply with what I can". And he said to me: "But you know that this way you are not subject to the school rules". I asked him, "Why, sir, school rules require compliance with rules and study, and I am a student who complies with my tasks and obligations and I have never missed a class, I am first in my class and all my teachers, thanks to Allah, are satisfied with me. The headmaster commented: "If you graduate and insist on dressing like this, the board may prevent you from being appointed as a teacher (teaching was Al-Banna's dream). He had always wanted to pass on his ideas and convictions)". To which I replied that my graduation was still an early topic to talk about and when it reached its time the board would be free to decide as I did. "Everything is in the hands of Allah, not in the power of the council or the ministry ....." 

Al-Banna and his ideology start from a clear Salafist vision, but learning throughout his life allowed him to know that flexibility and openness to modernity are key in the process of penetration and advancement, so the change from the Islamic robe to the costume is a staging of the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology and a dynamic of social penetration with the aim of becoming stronger.