Boxing in the Brothers

The Muslim Brotherhood in Focus. The Organization and Politics of a Global Islamic Movement (ed. Barry Rubin), 2010

Middle Eastern Studies, 2023

This paper examines the relationship between al-Azhar and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) following the 2011 Egyptian uprising. While the interplay between them in the pre-revolutionary period was mostly shaped by the gap between the status of al-Azhar as a body of statist Islam and the MB as a dissident Islamist movement, Mubarak’s downfall yielded a change in their status, raising the question of its effect on their attitude toward one another. Though on the face of it, following Morsi’s ouster, al-Azhar seems to have reverted to its traditional position of backing the de-legitimization campaign of the authoritarian regime against the MB, the paper portrays a more intricate picture: not one of close affinity during the MB’s rule despite the potential to realize common interests and advocate centrist Islam, but one of competition over religious authority; not one of utter hostility following al-Azhar’s support of the coup, but one of restrained conflict.

2014

Political Theology, 2011

Middle East Journal, 2022

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2007

2022

Sheikh Taha al-Samawi (his fame is Abdullah al-Samawi) was arrested in 1965 within the Muslim Brotherhood and was still in his teens, when he got out of prison he succeeded in establishing a new group that he became its emir to seek to re-establish the Islamic caliphate by forming a large group that isolates society And live in the desert. In the mid-seventies, his group became one of the largest Islamic groups in Egypt, as only Shukri Mustafa's group was comparable to it in the number of followers at that time, and Shukri was al-Samawi's colleague in Nasser's prisons. Its spread led to the affiliation of many extremists and Salafis to Al-Samawi until it was said that “all Islamists have passed through it at some time in their lives,” and one of the most famous of his students was Khaled Shawqi al-Islambouli, the killer of Anwar Sadat. Sheikh Taha al-Samawi is known to be a poet with much-distinguished poetry. Al-Samawy was active for some time in the late eighties and until the late nineties with the Egyptian Labor Party, and his assistant Abd al-Rahman Lutfi (Khaled al-Islambouli's cousin) was working as a leader of the Labor Party in Minya in Upper Egypt. Abd al-Rahman Lutfi joined the Islamic Jihad Movement in the late seventies and was greatly influenced by Sheikh Abdullah Al-Samawi, Dr. Omar Abdel Rahman, and their son-in-law later. He was arrested by the Mubarak regime during the eighties, and his last arrest was during the Mubarak era on April 6, 2008, then he was arrested twice during the era of Sisi, and he was released several months later without any accusation against him.

Crown Center for Middle East Studies, 2007

Are the Muslim Brothers in Egypt moderating? Through a critical analysis of their positions on society, democracy, foreign policy, and, especially, the relations between religion and state, Dr. Abdel Monem Said Aly evaluates the Muslim Brothers’ current level of moderation. Drawing from their various statements and especially the draft party platform they recently published, Dr. Said Aly questions the assertion that the Muslim Brothers in Egypt are moderating. Finally, he also addresses the conditions under which moderation and democratic values might become intrinsic parts of the Brothers’ ideology and behavior.

Rethinking Political Islam, 2017

This is a chapter in "Rethinking Political Islam" (Hamid, Shadi, and William McCants, eds.). It discusses the effect of this unprecedented security campaign on the group’s ideology and its internal decision-making processes. I argue that the likelihood of the Muslim Brotherhood resorting to violence in Egypt is less than what many observers believe.