1. Hiding in Plain Sight in Plainfield:
The Muslim Brotherhood of North
America
2. Overview
The following presentation reveals some preliminary findings from an as-yet
unfinished doctoral thesis entitled Re-Islamization in Higher Education from
Above and Below: The University of South Florida and its Global Contexts,
by Terri Wonder, a doctoral candidate at the University of South Florida. At
USF Terri is being mentored by specialists in the fields of social psychology,
organization and administration theory and practice, education law, political
Islam/Islamism, and international terrorism.
wondertk@juno.com
3. Presentation Outline
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Summation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, from 1927-1966, with the
inception of the movement until its repression by Nasser
Summation of the Muslim Brotherhood‟s organizational charts, with view of
overhead transparencies alongside slideshow
Explanation of historical development of the charts and their significance,
with emphasis on their administrative purposes
Summation of results of Nasser‟s repression of the Muslim Brotherhood,
with emphasis on Muslim Brothers in-exile in Saudi Arabia‟s university
system, the role of the Society of Muslim Ladies, and Sayyid Qutb‟s
Signposts in the reconstitution of the organization as the “neo-Muslim
Brotherhood”
Explanation of the “discovery” of the organizational structure and
administrative functioning of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America, with
comparative emphasis on the Islamic Society of North America, its affiliated
groups and persons, and their ideology and institutional roles
4. Hassan Al-Banna: 1906-1949
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A sheikh‟s son born during the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the demise of the
Caliphate, and the rise of modernization / “de-Islamization” of Egypt and the
Middle East (i.e., in social psychology a “cathexis” or significant emotional
turning point for Islamic civilization)
At age of 12 became leader in his village of The Society for Moral Behavior
and the Society for the Prevention of the Forbidden (haram)
Al-Banna and other members reached “deep into town life” by imposing
“increasingly burdensome fines” on Muslims who “cursed their fellows and
their families, or cursed in the name of religion” and by drafting and
circulating “secret and threatening letters to those they regarded as living
violation of the teachings of Islam” (Mitchell, 1969/1993: 2).
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1927, Al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, Egypt
5. Ideological Interplay: Salafism, Marxism, and Nazism
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Salafism: The Ideological Base of the Muslim Brotherhood
Al-Banna and co-founders steeped in teachings of Muhammad Ibn Abdul alWahhab (b.1700)
While accused of being devoid of intellectual creativity, Al-Wahhab
nonetheless had some influence on the Brothers
Al-Wahhab taught that Islam had vanquished many earlier civilizations but
had become corrupted by foreign influences and therefore had lost its sense
of “unity” (tawhid)
From Al-Wahhab the term “Salafist‟ came into being, denoting a “pure” form
of Islam believed to have been practiced by Muhammad and the early
caliphs, the “al-salaf al-salihin”
Appeal for Salafism grows in 1930‟s Egypt as Rashid Al-Rida published
articles about the doctrine in Al-Manar (The Beacon)
6. Salafism Translates into the Muslim Brotherhood‟s Credo:
• “God is our objective; the Quran is our
constitution; the Prophet is our leader; struggle
is our way; and death for the sake of God is the
highest of our aspirations.”
• Says Mitchell (1969/1993): That credo “was
equally useful as a unique mark of the Brother”
(p.193, italics added).
7. Sayid Qutb: The Brothers‟ Leading Intellectual/Theoretician
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As was the case for the main leadership of the Brothers, Qutb was in
Egypt‟s educational sector of the civil service
He is the Brothers‟ most major figure in formulating the economic, political,
and educational ideology of the Brotherhood and the mass social movement
known as “Islamism” or “political Islam”
He advocated a means of Islamic education designed to return the
Community of the Faithful (ummah) to their original state of “purity” be deWesternizing education and being “careful when we describe Islam not to
relate it to other principles and theories” (Social Justice in Islam, p.117)
“Islam is a comprehensive philosophy and a homogenous unity, and to
introduce into it any foreign element would mean ruining it” (p.117)
Islam is a “delicate and perfect piece of machinery that may be completely
ruined by the presence of an alien component” (p.117)
Education cannot be “entrusted” to “human logic alone”; it “relies also upon
revelation” (p.292)
8. Assimilating the Sacred with the Profane: The Fruit of Qutb‟s
American Education
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Among the many paradoxes of Islamism, and Qutb‟s theories in particular,
is that it cannot escape reference to Western or “alien” ideologies (see
Pipes, 2002)
And so it was Qutb‟s trip to America in the 1940‟s--having been sent by King
Farouk because Qutb was becoming a state nuisance--that spurred him to
write Social Justice in Islam (1953), a work whose title and totalitarian
precepts borrow directly from Marxism, then gaining in popularity among US
academics
“With no exaggeration his pamphlets can be compared, in terms of spread and
influence, with the Communist Manifesto” (Kepel, 1984/2003: 56)
Qutb‟s “basic missionary message” was that world peace could be achieved
only under Islam “within the framework of jihad as an expression of „world
revolution‟” based on “religious legitimacy and the use of force in the form of
irregular war” (Tibi, 1998: 56-58)
9. “By international legal standards, this kind of violence
qualifies unequivocally as „terrorism‟” (Tibi, 1998: 58)
And so after returning to Egypt, having
received an M.A. in education at The
University of Colorado, Qutb helped engineer
the overthrow of the Egyptian government in
the 1952 Free Officers‟ coup d‟etat
10. Immersion in Marxist rhetoric and concepts helps disguise
influence of Fascism in Brotherhood ideology
• Jew
• International Bankers
• Crusader conspiracy
• Zionist
• Imperialists, Militaryindustrial complex
• Zionism
11. Nevertheless, anti-Semitism in the “Islamic Order” (Nizam Islami)
remains a constant feature of the movement
Witness, for example, the reproduction of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
The Talmudic Jew, and even Marxism itself, as “alien” influences on
Islamism that the Muslim Brotherhood would perpetuate in its own ideology
Also witness Qutb‟s own teachings published and disseminated through the
Brotherhood‟s library in the General Headquarters in Cairo-From Al-Manar (1952), the essay “Our Struggle with the Jews” states that deIslamizationist intellectual power in the Arab world manifests from a secret
alliance with the “Jews” who maintained “a massive army of agents in the
form of professors, philosophers, doctors, and researchers—sometimes
also writers, poets, scientists and journalists” (qtd. in Schoenfeld, 2004: 42)
12. From Theory to Practice: Education, Indoctrination, Students, and
the Secret Apparatus
• While some of the Brotherhood‟s early development resulted from
Qutb‟s social theory, some of it also appears to have been the result
of Al-Banna‟s need to control conflict within the organization and in
his interest in advancing a direct confrontation with the state
• Thus by the 1940‟s, educational theory became re-codified as
“scientific” that would appeal to professors and students in the
universities--a point that refutes Beck‟s (1998) assumptions about
Islamic fundamentalism‟s education programs
• By that time, the Brotherhood had begun recruiting “rovers” through
its para-educational subsystems introduced originally to ensure
success of members enrolled in Egypt‟s universities
• Rovers were found in the Brothers‟ summer youth camps, where
they received intellectual, spiritual, and physical training
13. Kepel (2002)
• “The success of the Society of the Muslim Brothers derived from its
capacity to muster widely different groups in support of its program,
while recruiting members through charitable activities such as
dispensaries, workshops, and schools near mosques” (p.30)
• And as it became more successful, it grew larger and needed more
management, which led to the Secret Apparatus, a paramilitary
version of the Brotherhood‟s Field Apparatus (see Appendix B)
• “Left-leaning Arab intellectuals … regarded the Brothers as a
populist movement whose aim was to enlist the masses”; yet this
populist view “pointed out similarities to the workings of European
fascism during the same period” (p.28).
14. Hence, another quote from “Our Struggle with the Jews”
(Qutb, 1952, rpt. In Saudi Arabia, 1970):
“Allah brought Hitler to rule over them”
And so, present-day Muslims must follow in the same path,
letting
“Allah bring down upon the Jews people who will mete out
to them the worst kind of punishment, as confirmation of
his unequivocal promise” (qtd. in Schoenfeld, 2002: 43)
In other words,
“My Struggle” (Mein Kampf) = “Our Struggle”
15. Al-Banna Youth
• Student “rovers” (jawwala) work for the revolution
• Specific membership ranks, like all sub-units of the Brotherhood:
assistant (musa‟id), related (muntasib), active („amil), and struggler
(mujahid)
• Five groups of rovers equals one battalion (kata‟ib)
• These developed also in response to British activity in Palestinian
territory, “the inspiration for activism within the Society” (Mitchell,
1969/1993: 30)
• And also in support of Erwin Rommel‟s advance into Libya in
Egypt‟s Western desert, when member students began circulating
pro-Axis propaganda and holding supportive campus
demonstrations
16. More on the “Rover Troops”
(Firaq al-Jawwala)
• Their taking of loyalty oaths in the summer youth camps “more
importantly preserved order within the Society and its defense
against enemies from outside” (p.202)
• They were the Brothers‟ “prime source of power, the machine
by which the alleged revolution was to be effected” (p.203)
• They had close associations with the close-knit “families” of
the Muslim Brotherhood‟s Field Apparatuses
• They were the organization‟s “spiritual-military training
program” and a „prime inspiration to violence” (p.203)
18. General Headquarters
• The primary leadership‟s main units: General Guide, Guidance
Council, and Consultative Assembly
• Mitchell (1969/1993) writes, the general headquarters “was also the
base for „technical‟ operations and the field apparatuses” (p.169)
• Physically composed of committee rooms, offices, a permanent
staff, reception rooms, a small mosque, and library—the largest
room in the building
• The library might best be described as a “central intelligence”
headquarters for information collected from the society‟s members
from around the world, which is likely why the library‟s contents were
of such interest to Farouk and Nasser, who confiscated or burned
most of the collections
19. Technical Operations:
Responsible to Guidance Council
• Sections (aqsam)
• message propagation
(nashr al dawa)
• labor and peasants
• students
• liaison with Islamic world
• professions
• press/translation
• bodily training
• family
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Committees (lijan)
finance
policy
law
statistics
services
legal opinion (fatwa)
20. Purposes and Appointments of Sections & Committees
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advisory and investigative
leaders named by General Guide or Guidance Council
assistants appointed by Guidance Council
office locations usually at General Headquarters
press/translation responsible for publishing newspapers and magazines &
collecting, filing, translating into different languages
major role in spiritual and intellectual training of members, including
members whose native language was not Arabic
sections more important than committees, however, because of involvement
with training and orientation of members
chairmanships of sections highly prized because they carried possibility of
real power within the structure
21. Nashr Al-Dawa
• Most important of all sections
• Responsible for disseminating ideology compatible with “the spirit of
Islam”
• Missionaries (du‟at) for speeches and lectures/well-trained for
“public meetings” outside the society
• Publications of a “scientific, cultural, and athletic” nature/none can
be issued without authorization by the section
• Supplies branches with speakers and lecturers
• Provides field apparatuses with unified schedule of study for the
missionary school which each was required to maintain
• Graduates of missionary school elevated to level of organizational
missionaries
22. Organizational Change and Education
• Education of the Brothers changed from basic religious
and propagandistic messages to more sophisticated
ones with “scientific” emphasis
• Nashr al-Dawa “began to make use of the talent
available to it among its professional members in the
fields of law, economics, society, education, chemistry,
engineering, and zoology”
• Al-Banna‟s death “compelled the society to look to its
hitherto untapped „intelligentsia‟ to find answers‟” about
challenges from “outside its ranks”
(Mitchell, 1969/1993:189)
23. Students Section
• Training ground for future party leadership
• Responsible for establishing “Islamic
atmosphere” in Egypt‟s school system
• Organized summer classes for preaching
and guidance
• Rovers make sure that study and leisure
time is spent profitably
24. Professions
• Historically an outgrowth of students section
• Work colored with “Islamic atmosphere”
• Committee subdivisions representing different types of
workers in Egyptian society
• Most important to Brothers were teachers and civil
servants because these were the largest professions in
Egypt and could mold opinion and instruments of “a new
generation of Muslims”
25. Liaison with Islamic World
• Global nashr al-dawa
• Studies problems of the Islamic world in cooperation with policy of
General Headquarters
• Organizes annual meeting attended by leaders and representatives
of the „Islamic movement”—whether of the Brothers or other reform
organizations
• Discuss possible unification of rules and regulations different groups
governed themselves
• Dossiers on demographics and socio-political issues
• Information collection on growth of the movement itself
• Studies country problems through research, lectures, publications,
study groups
• “Missionary” exchange
26. More about “Missionaries”
“And throughout its history the Society, in
the traditional Islamic fashion, never
minimized the effect of a good speaker”
(Mitchell, 1969/1993: 190)
Many missionaries doubled as teachers and
professors in Egypt‟s civil service
27. Liaison Section
• Administered by a chief, two deputies, a secretary, and his aide
• Nine permanent sub-committees for world regions: North Africa;
East and Southwest Africa; the Fertile Crescent; Saudi Arabia,
Yemen, and Persian Gulf kingdoms; Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and
Afghanistan; India, Ceylon, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, China,
Pacific Ocean, and Far East; Islamic minorities in the Americas,
Soviet Union, Europe; Older specialists; Islamic divisions
• Liaison section guests checks in with General Headquarters
• Provides haven for foreign Muslim students who sympathize with
movement, then urged to join Brotherhood in other countries
• Manages General Headquarters library, a clearinghouse for
information on world‟s Islamic movements
28. Field Apparatuses
• Mitchell (1969/19930 states that these were “the administrative
channels through which the voice of high command passed to
operating membership groups and through which the membership
was welded to the highly disciplined instrument it was” (pp.175-176)
• Administrative unit (al-maktab al-idari) largest unit in field, usually
coincided with provincial divisions of the government of Egypt
• Districts (manatiq) also imitates organization of government
• These units allowed for ease in communication among various civil
servants who were also Muslim Brothers
• Also, they set the stage--as does the entire organization--for a
shadow government to take over in the event of a successful coup
d‟etat
29. Branches (Shu‟ba)
• Usually named according to geographical locations, but not always,
in case of academic branches
• For most members allegiance was to a specific branch
• Branch consisted of a council of administration elected by a general
assembly composed of paid-up branch members
• Structure and purpose like a “miniature General Headquarters”
• Chairman, two deputies, secretary, treasurer
• Funds for whole Society occurs at these lowest levels
• Memberships, contributions, legacies, profits, publications,
emblems, pins, seals, endowments, land grants, etc.
• Designated fixed shares go up the rungs
30. “The General Headquarters was, in effect, at
the mercy of a strangely decentralized fiscal
structure”
Mitchell (1969/1993, p.181)
31. Other ways Branches imitate General Headquarters
• Sections and Committees within the
branches
• Each branch maintained a reading room
• Local educational programs and initiatives
• “Family” activities take shape in branches
32. Families
• Most fundamental enterprise for creating cohesion among
members
• Term originated to soften its identification with the term „cell‟—
which was part of the government‟s press campaign to
delegitimize the Society
• Reinforces loyalty oaths taken by members, especially when
Brotherhood became concerned about outside infiltration of
ranks
• Family represented by a chief (naqib) who represented his
family to a branch
• Four families = a clan („ashira)
• Five clans = a group (raht)
• Five groups = a battalion (katiba)
33. Academic Branches
• Mirror the organizational and administrative
structure of the university as opposed to other
institutions in Egypt‟s civil service
• Leaders of academic branches have more capability
than other leaders in other branches because of the
time and intellectual equipment they possess
• Thus, they would arouse animosity of other leaders
in the organization
• They also had greater potential to become enemies
of the state itself by mobilizing “rover” students
34. “The head of the university branch was
the recognized leader of the university
Brothers; his was a powerful voice in the
leadership echelon of the Society in
general, among the student Brothers,
and among other students. Control of the
position was one of the most certain
assurances of mobility to the highest
ranks in the Society”
(Mitchell, 1969/1993: 180)
35. Other People involved in University Branches
• Leaders of each faculty
• Faculties divided in turn divided into groups representing four
years of schooling
• Heads of year-groups responsible to faculty heads for member
performance of their groups
• Breakdown allowed for small units to be rapidly assembled yet
large enough to be effective in their fields of knowledge
• “Perhaps no other facet of the activity of the Brothers in the
university so astounded (and infuriated) their opponents there
as the ability of the leaders to communicate directions and
decisions with such speed and to have them perfectly obeyed”
(p.180)
• Overlap between faculties and families regarding
para-educational training
36. Nasser‟s Repression of the Brotherhood
• The repression can be attributed, in part, to the success
of the organizational structure and administration of the
Society over a period of a few decades that grew more
and more confrontational with a socialist state
• 1,000 members arrested in 1954
• They were either tortured, executed, or exiled
• Qutb spends fifteen years in prison, is released, and
later executed
• The society itself is abolished in a legal sense until Sadat
assumes power and lifts ban
37. Qutb‟s Signposts
• Like all of Qtub‟s works, very important in terms of its
reformulation of doctrine and potential action into the
neo-Muslim Brotherhood after 1966
• Mrs. Zaynab Al-Ghazali organizes teach-ins for released
prisoners and young student recruits
• She goes to Saudi Arabia to speak with exiled Brothers
now working in Saudi Arabia‟s newly restructured
education system, run by the Wahabbi Al-Sheikh family
• Copies of Qutb‟s prison work Signposts disseminated
along the Nile among students and in Saudi Arabia,
where it is taught and published
38. New Doctrines of the “Vanguard”
• Jahiliyah: all but a few elect Muslims have this condition
• Takfir: members of society as a whole no longer Muslims; only
a few “vanguard” are
• Kufr: Muslims who are not pure/ “His blood is forfeit”
• Istid‟af: “weakness” in enemy society
• Kitman: “concealment” practiced in enemy society
• Al-haraka bi‟l-mafhum: “concealed advance”
• Marhalat al-tamakkun: “phase of power”
• Jihad: now means vanguard know when to retreat and when to
advance by seeking contact with surrounding jahiliyah society
39. Brothers-in-Exile in “The Kingdom”
• Muhammad Qutb (part of conspiracy to assassinate Nasser)
• Omar Abdul Rahman (…Sadat, New York City landmarks,
leadership coup in New Jersey mosque)
• Ayman Al-Zawahiri (…Sadat, Al-Qaeda official)
• Abu Jihad (founder of Palestinian Fatah movement)
• Hassan Al-Turabi (engineered overthrow of Sudan, genocide of
black Christian minorities in southern Sudan)
• Abdullah Azzam (conceives of “martyred scholars,” Bin Laden‟s
mentor)
Many of these and others were part of a US lecture circuit in the 1980‟s
and 1990‟s
40. And one final doctrine:
Zalzalah
“Shaking” or “Revolution”
but not from above, from below
and
specifically through education
41. Islamizing North America:
“Concealed Advance” in Organization and
Administration
Ideology, Structure, Purpose
The Society of the Muslim
Brothers
Cairo, Egypt
The Islamic Society of North
America,
Plainfield, Illinois
42. Rationale
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Emerson (2002): documents relationships among ISNA and sub-groups with
Islamist leaders who are members of the Brotherhood; states that Mustapha
Mash‟hur, Supreme Guide of Egyptian Brothers was a speaker at a MAYA
conference
Katz (2004): states that IIIT “is” the Muslim Brotherhood
Actually it is, I believe, part of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Field Apparatus of the
overarching group; field apparatuses often mirror the administration, roles, and
purposes of the overarching group
Also my research suggests a consistency in ideological/rhetorical patterns
based on the early Brothers‟ and Qutb‟s doctrines in IIIT educational theory
(see chapter sub-section analysis on IIIT educational theory)
And consistency in the structural and administrative purposes between the
society in Egypt and the one in Illinois (see files on the various sub-groups like
MAYA, MAS, etc.)
In addition, liaison section of original Muslim Brotherhood had a subcommittee for Muslims in the Americas, indicating the ISNA may have resulted
from the Brotherhood‟s study of North American “needs”
Why would members-in-exile in the US want to change their antecedents‟ most
basic & successful organizational structure and administrative system?
43. Are PIJ, HAMAS, Hizbullah, Al-Qaeda in North America
therefore part of some shadowy Secret Apparatus
affiliated with branches and other field apparatuses
and summer youth camps, as was the case with the
Brotherhood in Egypt?
44. ISNA
(see structure, Appendix C)
With minor modification, the structure is the same as Appendix A
Exceptions: Two Vice Presidents instead of one “Vice Guide”; no
known “Deputy”
Nomenclature is not exact, with North American posts in a few
instances taking on names that mirror North American
organizational customs but purposes and tasks are the same
(see file on ISNA for analysis)
Board of Directors/Majilis Ash Shura =Consultative Assembly
Executive Council = Guidance Council
Field Services Department = Technical Operation
45. Examples of ISNA Sections and Committees
(These maintain similar structures and purposes to the
Egyptian organization and administration)
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AMSE (see file for analysis)
AMSE (see file)
AMSS (see file)
AMJISS (see file)
Perhaps also various “society/center” mosques around
the country, given that MSANational says its database is
taken from the ISNA database of mosques
Also, content of 1998 program for ISNA convention
maintains a purpose similar to those in Technical
Operations, as defined in Mitchell (1968/1993), with
liaison and missionary-type issues
46. ISNA General Headquarters
• Non-traditional mosque design meant for overtly political
purposes (see The Mosque, by Frishman & Khan,
1994/2002)
• Built in 1979, has a mosque, library, and office space—
just like the Cairo headquarters (see “Import, Adapt,
Innovate” by Khalidi, 2001)
47. Types of Field Apparatuses
(see files for each)
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IIIT
Quba Institute, possibly
IIIASA/ICO
AMA National
MYNA
ICNA/MAS
MSA National
48. Portrait of an Academic “Missionary” in
North America
(see file on Hartford seminary
and notes on visa denial of Tarik
Ramadan, Al-Banna‟s grandson in
Switzerland)
Relationships with other ISNA upper-level leadership
Evidence of Muslim Brother-type “academic missionary”
work around world
Responsible for training religious leaders
As is often the case, a “political imam” & not a “traditional
imam”
49. What does this mean to us?
• Knowledge as tool for law enforcement investigation
• Shows lines of communication and organizational direction, and also
areas of potential conflict within organization
• Illustrates importance of educational fields to Brotherhood and use
of Western structure by anti-Western group
• Indicates possibility that Muslim Brotherhood is the “Comintern” of a
hitherto thought of “decentralized” mass movement
• Supports idea of declaring ideological enemy thus expanding types
of immigration law for securing borders and investigating individuals
• Does ISNA keep records in its headquarters like those that were
kept in the Cairo headquarters?
• How much of the structure in place in other regions the Brotherhood
began studying in the 1930‟s?
• Can we construct a world chart showing cross-regional
relationships?
• The questions go on ad infinitum…
