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The Muslim Brotherhood: Hasan al-Hudaybi and Ideology (Routledge Studies in Political Islam) By Barbara H.E. Zollner London-New York. Routledge, 2008
This book, the core of which is the author's Ph.D. thesis in Near and Middle East Studies at the S.O.A.S. in London, deals with a figure not widely analyzed in Western scholarship. It is a profound study of the post- 1949 Society of the Muslim Brothers during the most obscure period of Egyptian politics.
Being the successor of Hasan al-Bannä has meant that Hasan al-Hudaybl's importance in the history of the Brotherhood has been overshadowed. After the founder's murder, the Society had no official leader for almost two years. Brotherhood members were mostly kept busy with incarcerations, trials and troubles during this time. After the positive outcome of the trials, the Brothers could begin thinking about appointing a new murshid. He could be neither too well-known nor a compromising figure. Al-Hudaybi, linked to the royal family through a relative and with no scandal in his background, was the perfect candidate. He was nominated on October 19, 1951. The book provides brief biographical notes - al-Hudaybl was a lawyer who had known al-Bannä personally, but his official relationship with the Society was unclear until his nomination. Despite this, he was elected a temporary leader; it soon became clear though that he intended to be much more than a mere symbolic murshid. Al-Hudaybi planned to dismantle the Secret Unit, but he was not fully in control of the Brotherhood at that time.
The tumultuous immediate aftermath of the revolution is then analyzed, examining the rise and fall of the relationship between the Brothers and Abd an-Näsir's regime. Even though several meetings between exponents of the Brotherhood and the forming government took place after the revolution, al-Hudaybi had difficulty being accepted as a representative leader. According to Zollner, the Association did not have a clear political strategy at this time.
Al-Hudaybl's problem in providing clear leadership was the main factor in the changed relationships between the revolution and the Brotherhood (p.30).
Al-Hudaybi was deeply convinced that the Brotherhood was not a political party, but rather a religious association. In this section of the book, the author tries to describe the Brotherhood's internal dynamics, both at the level of...