82 Facts About Muslim Brotherhood

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was legalized in 2011 and won several elections, including the 2012 presidential election when its candidate Mohamed Morsi became Egypt's first president to gain power through an election, though one year later, following massive demonstrations and unrest, he was overthrown by the military and placed under house arrest.

Persian Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates followed suit, driven by the perception that the Muslim Brotherhood is a threat to their authoritarian rule.

The Brotherhood is heavily influenced by the early Salafiyya movement and regularly advocates Salafi revivalist themes that address the contemporary challenges faced by Muslims, calling for the establishment of an Islamic state through implementation of the Shari'ah and Jihad against disbelievers.

The Muslim Brotherhood preaches that Islam will bring social justice, the eradication of poverty, corruption and sinful behavior, and political freedom .

Prominent figures of the Muslim Brotherhood include Sayyid Qutb, a highly influential thinker of Islamism, and the author of Milestones.

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Osama bin Laden criticized the Muslim Brotherhood, and accused it of betraying jihad and the ideals of Qutb.

However, the Muslim Brotherhood is opposed to secularism and seeks the implementation of Shari'a as the basis of Egyptian legal system and insists on complying the political system with Islamic legal precepts.

Muslim Brotherhood Brothers consider their movement to be the practical extension of the pan-Islamist movement championed by Sayyid Jamal al-Din Afghani, Muhammad 'Abduh, and Sayyid Rashid Rida.

The methodology of the Muslim Brotherhood was characterised by the scholarly orthodoxy and conservatism of Muhammad Rashid Rida.

The Muslim Brotherhood movement sought the re-establishment of a World Islamic Caliphate which was envisaged to come through several Islamic national states, united in a league, and appointing a single leader to rule over them after Shura .

However, Al-Banna prioritised the immediate form of governance that the Muslim Brotherhood had to establish and did not advocate the radical overthrow of these structures, instead preferring gradualism.

Muslim Brotherhood favored a constitutional government with a representative parliamentary system that implemented Islamic law .

Muslim Brotherhood is a transnational organization as opposed to a political party, but its members have created political parties in several countries, such as the Islamic Action Front in Jordan, Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, and the former Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt.

The Brotherhood has been described as a "combination of neo-Sufic tariqa" "and a political party".

The Muslim Brotherhood was again banned and this time thousands of its members were imprisoned, many being tortured and held for years in prisons and concentration camps.

Ramadan built a major center for the Muslim Brotherhood centered on a mosque in Munich, which became "a refuge for the beleaguered group during its decades in the wilderness".

Internally, some leaders in the Muslim Brotherhood disagreed on whether to adhere to Egypt's 32-year peace treaty with Israel.

On 30 April 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood launched a new party called the Freedom and Justice Party, which won 235 of the 498 seats in the 2011 Egyptian parliamentary elections, far more than any other party.

Muslim Brotherhood put a draft constitution to a referendum that opponents complained was "an Islamist coup".

Opponents accused "Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood of seeking to monopolize power, while Morsi's allies say the opposition is trying to destabilize the country to derail the elected leadership".

In retaliation, Brotherhood supporters looted and burned police stations and dozens of churches in response to the violence, though a Muslim Brotherhood spokesperson condemned the attacks on Christians and instead blamed military leaders for plotting the attacks.

Muslim Brotherhood claimed that Muslims did not carry out the Botroseya Church bombing and claimed it was a false flag conspiracy by the Egyptian government and Copts, in a statement released in Arabic on the FJP's website, but its claim was challenged by 100 Women participant Nervana Mahmoud and Hoover Institution and Hudson Institute fellow Samuel Tadros.

The Muslim Brotherhood released an Arabic-language statement claiming the attack was carried out by the Egyptian security forces working for the Interior Ministry.

The Muslim Brotherhood released an English-language commentary on the bombing and said it condemned the terrorist attack.

Qatar-based Muslim Brotherhood members are suspected to have helped a Muslim Brotherhood agent carry out the bombing, according to the Egyptian government.

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The Brotherhood cited some of Hassan al-Banna's sayings calling for brotherhood between Muslims.

Mekameleen TV, a Turkey-based free-to-air satellite television channel run by exiled Muslim Brotherhood supporters, mourned his death and claimed it was "martyrdom".

When it came to power, the Muslim Brotherhood indeed tried to establish armed groups of supporters and it sought official permission for its members to be armed.

In Bahrain, the Muslim Brotherhood ideology is speculated to be represented by the Al Eslah Society and its political wing, the Al-Menbar Islamic Society.

Iraqi Islamic Party was formed in 1960 as the Iraqi branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, but was banned from 1961 during the nationalist rule of Abd al-Karim Qasim.

Muslim Brotherhood was an active participation in the "Faith Campaign".

In 2006, the Muslim Brotherhood supported Hezbollah's military action against Israel.

In 1987, following the First Intifada, the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas was established from Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated charities and social institutions that had gained a strong foothold among the local population.

On 9 November 1945 the Association of the Muslim Brotherhood was officially registered and Abu Qura became its first General Supervisor.

Muslim Brotherhood established close ties with Palestinian Islamists during his educational life which led him to be jailed for several months in Jordan for criticizing Arab armies in the war.

The radicalization of the Muslim Brotherhood began to take place after the peace process between Egypt and Israel, the Islamic Revolution of Iran, as well as their open criticism towards the Jordan-US relationship in the 1970s.

Support for the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood aided the radicalization of the group through open support and training for the rebel forces in Syria.

Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood has formed its own political party, the Islamic Action Front.

The Muslim Brotherhood claimed its acceptance of democracy and the democratic process but only within their own groups.

In 2011, against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood "mobilized popular protests on a larger, more regular, and more oppositional basis than ever before".

In 2015, some 400 members of the Muslim Brotherhood defected from the original group including top leaders and founding members, to establish another Islamic group, with an allegedly moderate stance.

Jordanian authorities state that the reason of closure is because that the Muslim Brotherhood is unlicensed and is using the name of the defectors' licensed group.

In 2020, a Jordanian Court of Cassation decided that the local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood will be dissolved after the branch did not renew its license after a new law was issued on organizations.

Muslim Brotherhood left Qatar to return to Egypt shortly before the 2011 Egyptian Revolution.

However following the Arab Spring and the crackdown on the Egyptian Brotherhood, the Saudi government has put "pressure on other states that have Muslim Brotherhood adherents, asking them to decree that the group is a terrorist organization", and the local Kuwaiti and other Gulf state Brotherhoods have not been spared pressure from their local governments.

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Inside the kingdom, before the crushing of the Egyptian MB, the Muslim Brotherhood was called a group whose "many quiet supporters" made it "one of the few potential threats" to the royal family's control.

Relations between the Saudi ruling family and the Muslim Brotherhood became strained with Saudi opposition to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the willingness of Saudi government to allow US troops to be based in the Kingdom to fight Iraq.

The Muslim Brotherhood supported the Sahwah movement that pushed for political change in the Kingdom.

In 2002, the then Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef denounced the Muslim Brotherhood, saying it was guilty of "betrayal of pledges and ingratitude" and was "the source of all problems in the Islamic world".

Muslim Brotherhood is said to have "resurrected itself" and become the "dominant group" in the opposition by 2012 during the Syrian Civil War according to the Washington Post newspaper.

Emirati Al Islah member Tharwat Kherbawi said the Muslim Brotherhood finds the present UAE government to be an "impediment", and the country itself to be a "treasure and a crucial strategic and economic prize".

On 7 March 2014, the Muslim Brotherhood was designated as a terrorist group by the UAE government.

Muslim Brotherhood Brothers fought with North Yemen in the NDF rebellion as Islamic Front.

The Muslim Brotherhood is the political arm of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform, commonly known as Al-Islah.

Muslim Brotherhood reached Algeria during the later years of the French colonial presence in the country .

The Muslim Brotherhood subsequently refused to join the violent post-coup uprising by FIS sympathizers and the Armed Islamic Groups against the Algerian state and military which followed, and urged a peaceful resolution to the conflict and a return to democracy.

Group of the Muslim Brotherhood came to the Libyan kingdom in the 1950s as refugees escaping crackdown by the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, but it was not able to operate openly until after the First Libyan Civil War.

The group held its first public press conference on 17 November 2011, and on 24 December the Muslim Brotherhood announced that it would form the Justice and Construction Party and contest the General National Congress elections the following year.

Libyan Muslim Brotherhood has lost much of its popular support since 2012 as the group was blamed for divisions in the country.

In October 2017, spokesman of the Libyan National Army colonel Ahmed Al Masmary claimed that "branches of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated to al-Qaeda" had joined forces with ISIS in Libya.

Somalia's wing of the Muslim Brotherhood is known by the name Harakat Al-Islah or "Reform Movement".

Muslim Brotherhood ideology reached Somalia in the early 1960s, but Al-Islah movement was formed in 1978 and slowly grew in the 1980s.

Until the election of Hamas in Gaza, Sudan was the one country where the Muslim Brotherhood was most successful in gaining power, its members making up a large part of the government officialdom following the 1989 coup d'etat by General Omar al-Bashir.

However, the Sudanese government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated National Islamic Front has come under considerable criticism for its human rights policies, links to terrorist groups, and war in southern Sudan and Darfur.

The conference voted to establish a Unified Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood Organization based on the teachings of Imam Hassan Al-banna.

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One of the notable organization that was influenced and inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood is Ennahda, which is Tunisia's major Islamist political grouping.

On certain issues such as religious freedom, women's rights and homosexuality Muslim Brotherhood spokespersons espouse ideas contrary to mainstream European values and basic human rights.

The PKS's relationship with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was confirmed by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a prominent Muslim Brotherhood leader.

In 1963, the U S chapter of Muslim Brotherhood was started by activists involved with the Muslim Students Association .

The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions.

Cruz further stated that the bill would "reject the fantasy that [the] parent institution [of the Muslim Brotherhood] is a political entity that is somehow separate from these violent activities".

Muslim Brotherhood was criticised by Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2007 for its refusal to advocate the violent overthrow of the Mubarak government.

Essam el-Erian, a top Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood figure, denounced the al-Qaeda leader: "Zawahiri's policy and preaching bore dangerous fruit and had a negative impact on Islam and Islamic movements across the world".

Muslim Brotherhood referred to the Muslim Brotherhood as "dictators" who want "Islamist rule in all the Gulf States".

Similarly, some analysts maintain that whatever the source of modern Jihadi terrorism and the actions and words of some rogue members, the Muslim Brotherhood now has little in common with radical Islamists and modern jihadists who often condemn the Muslim Brotherhood as too moderate.

The next day, the Muslim Brotherhood's leadership announced that they welcomed the diplomatic overture.

The New York Times reported: "Although the Muslim Brotherhood's views are not nearly as conservative as the puritanical, authoritarian version of Islamic law enforced in Saudi Arabia, the Saudis and other gulf monarchies fear the group because of its broad organization, its mainstream appeal and its calls for elections".

In February 2003, the Supreme Court of Russia banned the Muslim Brotherhood, labelling it as a terrorist organization, and accusing the group of supporting Islamist rebels who want to create an Islamic state in the North Caucasus.

The terrorist designation for the Muslim Brotherhood is opposed by Human Rights Watch and The New York Times, both liberal-leaning institutions.

The New York Times set forth its opposition in an editorial that claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood is a collection of movements, and argued that the organization as a whole does not merit the terrorist designation: "While the Brotherhood calls for a society governed by Islamic law, it renounced violence decades ago, has supported elections and has become a political and social organization".

Gehad El-Haddad, a Muslim Brotherhood member, denied that terrorism was practiced by the Muslim Brotherhood in an editorial published by The New York Times.

Qatar's relationship with Muslim Brotherhood has been a persistent point of contention between Qatar and other Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt, which view the Brotherhood as a serious threat to social stability in those countries.