Surviving Repression

Reviewed by: Mushtaq Ul Haq Ahmad Sikander – Srinagar, Kashmir

Published by: Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2022, 158pp. ISBN: 978-1526149299.

The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is a contemporary revivalist movement which has played an important role in promoting Islamic consciousness in the Arab world. This movement has always believed in playing an active and prominent role in politics and its political activism has led to the persecution of its leaders and cadres at the hands of military dictators. The Arab Spring heralded a new era of democracy that made it possible for MB to win in the first democratic election in Egypt and form a government. The government lasted only for a short time, because the Egyptian deep state and other vested interests came together to mount a military coup against the legally and legitimately elected government of MB. The coup was brutal because the military under Abdul Fateh Al Sisi destroyed any vestiges of MB. MB cadres and families were killed in 2013, particularly at Raba’a massacre on 14 August, 2013, an ultimately the persecution resulted in thousands of civilian deaths. Islamist politics changed in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. MB is now banned in Egypt but it still remains a significant Islamist movement.

In her Introduction, Lucia Ardovini describes the challenges MB faced while trying to balance its preaching and political activities in the process of restructuring MB and forming its political party, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). By all accounts MB is not a revolutionary but evolutionary organization that tries to implement a bottom-up approach of Islamization (p.21), although its hierarchal structure caused problems for its reform attempts. Indeed, there is a subtle clash within MB between the reformists and conservatives.