The Muslim Brotherhood and Inside the Muslim Brotherhood

The Orientalist gaze is discernible in the three thematically related titles on the Muslim Brotherhood. Set against the backdrop of the Arab Spring and the amazing electoral success of the Islamist parties in the Arab world, these studies seek to fathom the phenomenon of Islamic revivalism in the region, though with a tinted glass. Carrie Rosefsky Wickham’s The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist Movement, though not alarmist, focuses on ‘change’ in the strategies and public pronouncements of the Islamist Movement. For the rise of the Islamist Movement will naturally impact the future political and economic developments not only of the region but also the world order at large. For her, this study is all the more urgently needed in that the Muslim Brotherhood organization has managed, since its inception, to “shield itself from public scrutiny”. (p. x) Moreover, the Islamist groups appear to her to be disfigured by “the illiberal features that characterized them in the past, including their support of violence, their rejection of democracy as an ‘alien’ system imported from the West, and their calls for the application of Shari‘a, or Islamic law, based on a conservative reading of Islam’s sacred texts and juristic precedents.” (p. 2) She pretends to undertake an objective study of these Islamist groups, as it appears from the description of her perspective. Nonetheless, the passage below betrays her lurking apprehensions and distrust: