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This is a book with a primary title that far overreaches its ambitions. Readers expecting a broad treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood would do well to pay closer attention to the subtitle. They will discover a more limited, but important, monograph focusing on the Muslim Brotherhood's second General Guide (al-murshid al-amm), Hasan al-Hudaybi (1951-73). Barbara Zollner accords al-Hudaybi an importance, she argues, he has long been denied, despite the significant role he played in rehabilitating the movement and steering it toward greater legitimacy during a period of "near defeat and destruction" (p. 2) that threatened its very existence.
Hasan al-Hudaybi succeeded the Muslim Brotherhood's charismatic martyred founder, Hasan al-Banna, in October 1951, after a divisive internal election. An outsider, certainly from the perspective of those who ran the movement's paramilitary units, al-Hudaybi sought to repair, even strengthen, ties with leaders of Egypt's dying parliamentary order. In his most controversial act, he paid a visit to the king, an event still recalled with bitterness by those who pursued more radical agendas. It remains unclear whether their real problem with al-Hudaybi was that he could never be al-Banna or that he kept at bay those who had usurped effective power from the founder and sought to redirect the movement to suit their militant leanings. A judge by profession and, in retrospect, a weak political leader, al-Hudaybi struggled to maintain amicable relations with the new Nasser regime and wound up alienating the officers; with few...