The Muslim Brotherhood

The Abolition of the Khilafah by Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938) in 1924 was the most traumatic experience that the Muslim ummah had experienced. Although the Khilafah was just a symbol of Muslim unity, Muslims had an emotional attachment for this 1400 year old institution. This led Muslim thinkers to investigate the causes of Muslim decline, from Indonesia to Morocco. Thus, an array of scholars throughout the Muslim world wrote extensively on the causes of decline and they suggested remedial measures to change the situation. Among them were Hasan al-Banna (1906–1949) in Egypt, Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938) and Sayyid Mawdudi (1903–1979) in British India, Shakib Arslan (1869–1946) in Lebanon, Malek Bennabi (1905–1973) in Algeria and Said Nursi (1877–1960) in Turkey and many others. It is no coincidence that most of them arrived at the same conclusion for the revival of the ummah. Each worked in his own sphere of influence. Thus Hasan al-Banna set up the Ikhwan al-Muslimun in 1928 and Sayyid Mawdudi started the journal, Tarjuman al-Qur’an in 1932 which led to the formation of Jama[at-e Islami in 1941. Both these movements, although started in different parts of the world without any contact with each other, came to a similar solution for the revival of the ummah as both based their work strategy on the Qur’an and the Sunnah.