The Architect of Islamism

Since its founding in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood has been one of the most influential contemporary Islamic movements, to which the origins of the Palestinian Hamas, the Turkish AKP, and many other organizations can be traced. Using previously largely unknown Arabic sources, Gudrun Krämer outlines how Hasan al-Banna turned a Sufi-inspired education and charitable association into a mass organization with hundreds of thousands of followers, invoking religion to achieve political aims. In the shadow of World War II, a secret apparatus was founded alongside a separate Muslim Sisterhood. In late 1948, the Muslim Brotherhood was outlawed, and al-Banna was assassinated a little later. Gudrun Krämer describes the intellectual history, social environment, and political context of this movement, portrays campaigners and opponents, and analyzes a key chapter in the history of modern Islam by looking at the biography of Hasan al-Banna.