Andrea Mura, - A Genealogical Inquiry Into Early Islamism: The Discourse of Hasan Al Banna

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A genealogical inquiry into early

Islamism: the discourse of Hasan alBanna
Andrea Mura
Department of Politics and International Relations , University of

Aberdeen , Aberdeen , AB24 3YQ , UK
Published online: 17 Feb 2012.
To cite this article: Andrea Mura (2012) A genealogical inquiry into early Islamism: the discourse of
Hasan al-Banna, Journal of Political Ideologies, 17:1, 61-85, DOI: 10.1080/13569317.2012.644986
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2012.644986
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Journal of Political Ideologies (February 2012),

17(1), 6185
A genealogical inquiry into early

Islamism: the discourse of Hasan
al-Banna
Downloaded by [80.114.132.196] at 10:19 21 February 2015
ANDREA MURA
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Aberdeen,
Aberdeen AB24 3YQ, UK
ABSTRACT This article inquires into the ideological vision of Hasan al-Banna
(1906 1949), one of the most influential figures of Islamist thought. By assuming a
discourse theory perspective, I argue that al-Bannas Islamist discourse was
genealogically caught between a traditional pan-Islamic vocation and modern
ways of articulating political discourse, such as nationalism and Arab
nationalism. Following the traumatic encounter between tradition and modernity
that colonialism enacted, al-Banna increasingly integrated and valourized
modern national signifiers, downplaying early universalistic ethos. This denoted
a growing reliance on the language of modernity over the language of tradition,
though such reliance was instrumental to al-Bannas anti-imperialist political
project, entailing the very preservation of tradition as a moderator principle in the
appropriation of modernity.
In recent years, several scholars in the field of political sociology and international
relations have centred upon the relation between globalization and Islamism,
highlighting the manner in which a number of Islamist organizations have
increasingly adapted to a decentred context, privileging a transnational view.1
In contrast, others have pointed to a sort of nationalization of the Islamist
project. Prominent scholars, such as Gilles Kepel and Olivier Roy, have seen the
Islamist adoption of a national agenda as the result of the progressive erosion of
the original ideological and anti-secularist stance assumed by Islamist
movements.2 Naturally, this variety of interpretations testifies to the ideological
complexity of Islamism, evidencing the multiplicity of agendas that Islamist
movements foster within the Islamist galaxy.
This article examines the nationalized tendency alone, focusing on what could
be described as a sort of foundational discourse of this trajectory: the discourse of
Hasan al-Banna (1906 1949). I will show that Islamism reflected modern and
national characteristics since its very inception. Nationalization was not the
ISSN 1356-9317 print; ISSN 1469-9613 online/12/01006125 q 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2012.644986
andrea mura
outcome of years of failure, but the result of the inner discursive tendencies that
had been developed already by al-Banna, the founder of the first Islamist
organization of modern history, the Society of the Muslim Brothers (hereafter, the
Brotherhood or the Society). By exploring al-Bannas vision, it will be possible to
grasp some of the most relevant ideological features that nowadays still inform
what has been called a mainstream tendency of Islamism.3
In the first section, I will introduce the reader to the historical development of
the Brotherhood, examining two discourses informing al-Bannas genealogical
context, i.e. the discourse of Islamic universalism and the discourse of the nation.
The second section will then provide a focused presentation and analysis of
al-Bannas thought. A textual examination of al-Bannas pamphlets will be
pursued accompanied by a theoretical assessment of his ideas on community and
space. This will permit me to uncover the discursive strategies that al-Banna
devised in his attempt to elaborate his anti-imperialist project.
A genealogical frame
The historical context framing Hasan al-Bannas discursive trajectory in the first
half of the 20th century was one marked by harsh cultural and political tensions,
very much the result of the increasing penetration of colonial powers into Muslim
settings. Among the dramatic events preceding al-Bannas foundation of the
Brotherhood in 1928, the abolition of the caliphate by the westernized Young
Turks in 1924 had certainly represented a traumatic turning point, contributing to
the process of social and discursive desedimentation already begun under the
pressure of colonialism. In Egypt, the persistent and assertive presence of the
British exacerbated political tensions, in a social context already divided between
modernists, who advocated a stronger secularism in Egypt (emblematized by the
secularist position of intellectuals such as Taha Husain and Ali Abd al-Razik),
Muslim orthodox, who assumed a conservative stance and opposed most political
and cultural changes (epitomized by Al-Azhar University) and religious reformists
who advocated an assertive defence of Islam from secularism, while, at the same
time, demanding ijthad, which is some form of interpretation and reform of
religious doctrines (for instance, the position of Mummad Rashid Rida).4 But
divisions occurred also between pro-western lay nationalists, who celebrated the
Pharaonic and ethnic origin of the nation, and those nationalists who instead
wanted to preserve also the Islamic quality of Egypt.5
After the declaration of a British protectorate over Egypt during World War I,
the British recognition of Egyptian independence in 1922 remained a formal one,
with the right of Britain to retain control over Egyptian foreign and internal policy
in the name of British interests in the Suez Canal and Sudan.6 Egypt remained a
de facto colony dominated by the manoeuvrings of the Egyptian King and the
British who aimed at discrediting political opposition.7 The exclusion from power
and the obstacles faced by the popular nationalist party Wafd, despite its persistent
political and electoral success, slowly succeeded in undermining the image of
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a genealogical inquiry into early islamism

Egyptian liberal nationalism epitomized by the Wafd. At the same time,
however, this contributed to a discrediting of liberal politics in general.8
In discursive terms, colonial interference might be said to have produced the
overlapping of two different languages in the delineation of political projects, and
the constructions of notions of space and subjectivity. I am referring to the
encounter between the language of tradition and the language of modernity.
I should stress that I do not define here tradition and modernity as definite
historical epochs or sociological conditions characterized by some sort of
temporal sequence. I am rather interested is using these categories as convenient
indicators or indexes in the organization of discourses. I define tradition and
modernity as competing and fictional horizons of the linguistic space, imaginative
containers or vocabularies delineating a plurality of discourses and embodying for
that very reason the range of signifiers that each discourse articulates.
When considering the Islamic tradition, for instance, I agree with Samira Haj
that the term tradition should be thought of as a framework of inquiry rather
than a set of unchanging doctrines or culturally specific mandates.9 Haj points
here to Talal Asads conceptualization of tradition as the ensemble of those
discourses that seek to instruct practitioners regarding the correct form and
purpose of a given practice that, precisely because it is established, has a
history.10 Within this framework, I characterize the Islamic tradition, turath, in
terms of a vocabulary embodying a plurality of discourses on shariah (Islamic
law), fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), jihad (spiritual and military effort on behalf of
Islam), Sufism (mystical tradition), dar al-Islam (Islamic territoriality), waqf
(religious endowment), caliphate, Islamic universalism, and others.
Similarly, I define modernity as a discursive scenario condensing a plurality of
discourses around three main poles: a structural connotation (modernist socioeconomic discourses on industrialization, institutional differentiation,
scientific rationality, the belief in progress, etc.); an ideological connotation
(modernity as a political project articulating a set of discourses based on a binary
logic and resulting in the constitution of modern sovereignty and modern
subjectivity); and a moral connotation (discourses about the moral disquiets of
modernity, e.g. individualism, atomism, alienation, relativism, materialism, etc.).
Naturally, the inclusion of discourses within the discursive boundaries of
tradition and modernity very much reflects the way people themselves tend to
qualify a certain narrative, defining it, for instance, either as modern or
traditional (something that is evident in the harsh cultural debates between selfdefining modernists and traditionalists in Egypt in the 1920s).11 Moreover, the
allocation of discourses within these broad discursive scenarios is also explained
on the ground of the linguistic proximity that they express in converging in that
vocabulary, a proximity reflecting a certain discursive resonance in the way the
social is organized and accounted for. This proximity allows both tradition and
modernity to figure as a history of argument and debate over certain fundamental
doctrines in shared languages and styles of discourse.12 This means that although
a certain degree of fluidity is always present in delineating the discursive
boundaries of tradition and modernity, their symbolic function is sustained
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precisely by their capacity to appear as fixed and stable totalities, as selfcontained historical narratives. It is through this imaginary capacity that the
history of definite discursive practices is established, allowing tradition and
modernity to stand as sort of symbolic reservoirs.
Naturally, the imaginary and contingent origin of these reservoirs becomes
particularly evident when a traumatic process of social disintegration occurs
(e.g. the encounter with colonialism). It is here that the naturalization of discursive
practices is contested, social relations unsettled, the unity of certain fields of
discursivity disarticulated and meanings de-fixed.13 In considering the ultimate
encounter that colonialism promoted between modernity and tradition, this article
will focus on two discourses, playing a central role in the construction of space and
community at that time: the discourse of Islamic universalism (i.e. pan-Islamism)
and the discourse of the nation (both in its European and pan-Arab variant). Again,
the traditional character of universalism does not deny the ever-changing nature
of that discourse, its intellectual transformations. Rather, it simply reflects the
perception of universalism as belonging to a specific body of knowledge, to a
history or language different from modernity, that is, from that language
that modernists celebrated at that time when disseminating discourses on the
nation-state (we will see, for instance, that al-Banna himself associated the
discourse of the nation with modernity while ascribing a universalistic conception
of the world to a perceived Islamic legacy).
The discourse of Islamic universalism
According to the English scholar Dwight E. Lee, two distinct visions could be
identified with the expression Islamic universalism. On the one hand, there was
the classic tradition of Muslim unity, aimed at establishing Islamic society on a
global scale. Such a discourse was said to promote the realization of the Islamic
ideal, the unity of the world in Islam, the central direction under a leader (Imam) of
the world community.14 On the other hand, Islamic universalism, and its
terminological equivalent pan-Islamism, came to indicate a political movement
in the 19th century that was promoted by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, emperor of the
Ottomans, and inspired by the writings of Persian philosopher and Islamic
reformer Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (1838 1897). This movement called for the
unification of all Muslims in order to resist the growing political and military
influence of emerging colonial powers from Europe, re-articulating the tradition of
Islamic unity, and revitalising its symbolic appeal for anti-imperialist purposes.15
Despite the tendency to consider pan-Islamism as a movement epitomizing the
intellectual position of al-Afghani and other reformists in the pre-colonial and
colonial era, this section focuses on pan-Islamism as the traditional discourse of
Islamic universalism, a discourse that contributed to connote tradition as a
symbolic reservoir, and also inspired al-Afghanis vision. It is not possible here to
account for all the different doctrines and intellectual positions characterizing the
discourse of Islamic universalism throughout the centuries, from classical views in
Islamic thought (e.g. Abu al-Hasan al-Mawardi, Muhammad Shaybani,
64

Ibn Taymiyyah, etc.) to more recent elaborations among Islamist theorists
(e.g. Sayyid Qutb, Ali Shariati, etc.). An examination of this discursive
complexity lies outside the limits and the scope of this article. The attempt will be
rather to enucleate key historical features in the complex development of this
discourse, delineating the general model of spatial representation and subjectivity
formation that a universalistic framework enacts.
In broad terms, two main signifiers substantiated the discursive structure of
Islamic universalism sustaining its central ideal of Islamic unity: dar al-Islam
(the domain of Islam, also referred to as abode of belief) and the ummah
(Muslim community). On the one side, dar al-Islam incarnated the Islamic
conception of territoriality. Manoucher Parvin and Maurie Sommer tracked the
line of theoretical and historical development of what they saw as the dynamic,
accommodating processual notion of dar al-Islam.16 The dar al-Islam was
theologically defined as a sort of immediate presence, expressing the domain of
faith and the full realization of humanity. Against this original domain, however,
early jurists of Islam had to acknowledge the existence of lands ruled by
non-Muslims, which denoted the dar al-harb (the abode of war or chaos). In this
scenario, dar al-Islam remained for long time inclusive and accommodating,
regulated by difference and integration, with an outside (dar al-harb) treated as a
temporary external space to be subsumed, sooner or later, under the banner of the
Islamic universalism. As Middle East scholar Majid Khadduri observes, in fact,
the dar al-Islam, in theory, was in a state of war with the dar al-harb, because
the ultimate objective of Islam was the whole world.17 In mentioning Kitab
al-Mabsut (The Book of Expatiation), a key legal text by Central Asian Hanafite
jurist al-Sarakhsi, Khadduri notes that if the dar al-harb were reduced by Islam,
the public order of Pax Islamica would supersede all others, and non-Muslim
communities would either become part of the Islamic community or submit to its
sovereignty as tolerated religious community or as autonomous entity possessing
treaty relations with it.18 This meant that not real and permanent outside could be
thought of in the all-encompassing space of Islamic universality, for non-Muslim
lands were destined to be either integrated as internal differences (in the form of
tolerated communities) or Islamized and henceforth assumed as internal Muslim
constituencies.
In the early times of Islamic expansionism, this spatial model was revealed with
particular clarity, for Islamic territoriality, dar al-Islam, was (ideally) able to
absorb its non-Muslim outside (dar al-harb), realizing a kind of fully human/fully
Muslim universality which transcended closed, exclusive communities based on
soil, blood, culture, etc. But while dar al-Islam upset and broadened previous
groupings, it required commitment to a set of substantive rules and norms:
in other words, a commitment to a shared ethical form of life (i.e. shariah as an
all-inclusive and integral conception of life).
Naturally, positions towards the antagonistic nature of Islamic universalism
varied according to eschatological views and legal conceptualizations. Shafii
jurists, for instance, tempered the polarization between dar al-Islam and dar
al-harb by adopting a new legal category, dar al-ahd, (basically, a non-Muslim
65
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land not at war against Islam), which functioned as a moderator principle,
allowing treaty relations with non-Muslims.19 This legal category became more
and more important as the dynamic, yet expansionist movements of the early
Islamic age got gradually reduced in the face of the permanence and increasing
visibility of non-Muslim lands, which finally clashed with the universalistic ideal
of Islam that the initial expansion had sustained. A principle of pragmatism on
behalf of the Islamic interest, maslaha, led then the Shafiis legal school to assume
a more moderate approach towards Islamic universality, even though the ideal of
Muslim unity, as epitomized by the caliphate, kept expressing its symbolic appeal
throughout the centuries.20
In this complex and universalistic space, mention should be made of the dawlah,
the political entity that, following the increasing political fragmentation of Islam
after the decline of the Abbasids, began to appear as a sort of administrative unit of
dar al-Islam. Although the dawlah is often associated with the concept of the
nation-state, the two constructs reveal significant conceptual differences. Tamim
Barghuthi notes that the ruler of the dawlah was not only accountable internally
towards its domestic constituencies (the subjects of the dawlah) as it was the case
with the nation-state.21 An outward accountability was also established externally
with the caliph, which incarnated the whole Muslim community on a global scale.
Thus, the dawlah figured as a substantially open entity, expressing a complex
sense of loyalty that blurred the rigid distinction between domestic and foreign
entities at the heart of the national model.
As for the Muslim community (the Muslim ummah), this was also marked by a
universalistic notion of integration. This inclusive stance was best demonstrated
by the variety of ethnic groups that, at different times, took pre-eminence over the
ummah, assuming the historical role of its diffusion and expansion (i.e. in the
dominion of Arabs, Mongols, Turks, etc.). As with the case of dar al-Islam, a
religious and normative character of the ummah informed such a universality.
Talal Asad, for instance, claims that members of every community imagined the
ummah to be grounded in a specific character and related to each other on the basis
of that feature. The crucial point therefore is not that it is imagined but that what is
imagined predicates distinctive modes of being and acting.22 This means that
while functioning as a universal abstract principle, the shared ethical form of life
that the ummah expressed, in conjunction with its spatial transposal in the dar
al-Islam, was grounded in a multiplicity of representations, each one defining a
particular (cultural, historical), mode of being of that universality. Here,
normativity functions as the internal logic of universal space. It allows individuals
to emerge as self-governing, but not autonomous, as if individuality within the
ummah results from the very adoption of a common Islamic ethos rather than
preceding it as a pre-determined origin.23 This seems to resonate with classical
conceptualizations about the nature of multiplicities. In his recent account of the
multitude, for instance, Virno observes that although a multitude values
individuality, the latter should be thought of as the final product of a process of
individuation which stems from the universal, the generic, the pre-individual.24
I will now elucidate the way such a model differs from its national counterpart.
66
The discourse of the nation

The symbolic function of modernity was also central, alongside tradition, in the
discursive arena of pre-revolutionary Egypt. A crucial role was played here by the
discourse of the nation that the main actors of Egyptian politics, i.e. the British,
the King, the ruling elite and the Wafd highly celebrated, testifying to the
increasing hegemonic power of nationalism.
In the European context, the nation-state had come forward as a historical
development of patrimonial and absolutist models of power. Central to the point was
the constitutional transformation of the modern state, which entailed the evolution
of modern sovereignty in search of a new source of legitimation. In modern juridical
doctrines, sovereignty had been conceptualized as the supreme power (summa
potestas) giving force and authority to a political order by way of its absolute
and perpetual (Bodin), exclusive and indivisible (Hobbes) essence.25 The
supreme power of a political order was thought of, therefore, as the original,
unrestricted and unique source of legitimacy of state control, which does not
recognize any superior principle of power outside itself. In this theoretical frame,
major shifts, however, regarded the locus of authority, that is, the subject incarnating
this supreme power of political order. In the doctrinal evolution of theories of
sovereignty, the locus of power ended up coinciding with the nation-state,
incarnating the people of the state and its territory. Sovereignty, people and
territory constitute three main signifiers of the discourse of the nation.
Within the borders of such a discourse, national identity has been described as a
creative energy, a product of the collective imagination marking the shift from a
passive to an active role of population (with the final transition from the feudal
subject to the modern citizen).26 A central step was the identification by local
populations with the signifying image of the people. In connoting this key signifier
of the national discourse, dualism provided an essential hierarchical principle. As
for other types of modern subjectivity formations, this entailed overemphasizing
similarities in blood, language and history and, at the same time, subsuming
differences within the unitary spiritual and henceforth transcendental dimension
of the people.27 Standardization of both national languages and historical
narratives, the emphasis on the racial character of the people, the juridical
conceptualization of national territory, with citizenship legally anchored to the
two principles of jus soli (right of the territory, citizenship based on actual birth
in the territory of the nation-state) and jus sanguinis (right of blood,
citizenship recognized on the basis of line of descent)(these were all features
marking, with different degrees of intensity, the construction of national identities.
So obtained, national identity was then taken to constitute an undividable
sacred Self, which was thought of in radical antagonism with its outside, the realm
of exclusion, what remained external to it (that is, competing nations). We saw
earlier that in the universalistic space, the inside was conceptualized as a necessary
and immediate presence in the face of the accidental and temporary manifestation
of the outside. Moreover, the relation between these two domains (inside and
outside) was an inclusive one. The peculiarity of the national model, instead, was
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that the two domains were thought of on the ground of an absolute negation:
alterity was used in the very production of Self through a reversal of its essences.
It was the antagonistic relation with other/outside that was necessary for the very
delineation of the self/inside. The world of modern sovereignty turned out to be a
Manichean world, marked by an infinite series of dichotomies defining the Other
as uncivilized, emotional, despotic, etc., and then depicting the Self as its very
opposite: civilized, rational, democratic, etc. Although some authors have seen in
this a pathological articulation of identity, the deployment of this dualistic logic
in the construction of nation-states has been amply acknowledged.28
Moreover, alongside this new re-formulation of selfhood and community, a new
cognition of space, in the form of the national territory, was also devised, which
substantially adopted the same binary mechanism of exclusion. The national
territory constitutes another central signifier of the discourse of the nation, one that
marks the very origin of its etymological root (from Latin nasci, the term nation
coveys the idea to be born into a certain land). The consolidation of the modern
state, especially in the form of the nation-state, in fact, required first and foremost
the creation of clear-cut frontiers. This entailed the absorption of those portions of
landscape that previously separated the land of different lords, and that were not
recognized by any state. An increasing process of rationalization of land and
population under modern notions of sovereignty was therefore promoted on the
ground of a dualistic logic.29 It is with the modern absolutist state and the
nation-state in particular that territory came to be fully symbolized, with frontiers
across European states being inherently organized on the basis of territorial
contact.30 Naturally, the rationalization of population and land was not the result
of some kind of structural telos. It required indeed the adoption of definite
symbolic criteria organizing the discursive and administrative formation of the
nation-state. As Mark Purcell observed, in the process of imagining the nation,
actors also imagine the territory that goes with that nation [ . . . ] National territory
is imagined to have certain characteristics, a certain landscape, certain boundaries,
certain focal points.31 Like the binary construction of the people, the national
concept of territory entailed a necessary and exclusionary model of imagining
space, as the end of my territory necessarily coincides with the beginning of yours.
The dualistic character entailed by this model rests not so much in the existence
and necessary relation with an outside, but in the very nature of such a relation.
As for the notion of the people, the territorial outside is not treated, in fact,
in terms of mere difference; rather, it is assumed as a necessary absolute negation,
where exclusion needs to be maintained for the very basic functioning of the inside
as a whole, as an Us.
By reflecting the form, par excellence, of identification based on the us and
them paradigms, the nation-state, with its binary construction of space and
subjectivity, was able to exert a significant control within its borders while
competing with other nation-states for political and economic dominion outside its
boundaries.32 Relating identity to territory, the doctrine of the nation-state exerted
a massive capacity of mobilization well beyond Europe. Although differences
have characterized the articulation of the national discourse in specific settings
68

(for instance, signifiers such as religion and race have played different roles in
connoting the signifier people in distinct environments), the dualistic structure of
this model remained substantially intact in colonial contexts. As Susanne Reimer
observes, the limited sovereignty and territory of the colony was already
imagined for the colonized by the colonizers.33
The foundation of the Brotherhood

It is in this genealogical context that the Egyptian young schoolmaster Hasan
al-Banna (1906 1949) founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, a movement
articulating a new kind of political discourse, which will henceforth be known as
Islamism. The Brotherhood was thought of as an organization aimed at providing
welfare services for the population, encouraging and defending morality, and
Islamizing society. In the 1950s and 1960s, modernist scholars tended to stress
the anti-modern character of this ethical dimension in the Brotherhoods agenda,
which was said to reveal a conservative stance.34 Unlike the understanding of
modernity advanced in these pages, modernist theories interpreted modernity
as a sociological condition coinciding with the process of industrialization, an
increasing institutional differentiation and specific cultural paradigms (scientific
rationality, secularization, the belief in progress). In this scenario, the Brotherhood
was not only reduced to the fundamentalist idea of a return to a mythical past,
which was said to reflect a dismissal of modernity as such, but also its emphasis on
social integration was seen as incompatible with the modern tendency towards
social differentiation.
In contrast, other analyses have emphasized the Brotherhoods socio-structural
adaptation to modernity.35 Branjar Lia, for instance, showed that the combination
of social and religious credentials and the deployment of a modern organization
and propaganda tools qualified the Muslim Brotherhood as a modern mass social
movement.36 Similar approaches have given greater emphasis to ideological
factors.37 Some have tended to highlight the intellectual relation between al-Banna
and the great reformists of the 19th century, such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and
Muhammad Abduh, evidencing the common attempt to modernize the Islamic
tradition.38 Others have focused on the political strategy of the Brotherhood,
highlighting its early commitment to a modern anti-imperialist politics.39 In this
context, although the increasingly troubled political context favoured the
radicalization of the Brotherhoods political philosophy and tacticsjust like its
secular nationalist counterpartsit has been observed that the main focus of the
Society remained for a long time on Islamization from below and the infiltration
of political and social institutions in Egypt.40
It should be noted, however, that the Brotherhood never stopped looking at the
entire Islamic world, promoting its Islamic call well beyond Egyptian borders.
For instance, Islamic universalism played a crucial role behind the Brotherhoods
pro-Palestinian campaign organized during the dramatic riots in Palestine in
1936 1937, and again behind the Brotherhoods military and ideological
contribution to the first Arab Israeli War in 1948, which eventually allowed the
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Society to gain a strong reputation among the Egyptian army and the population.41
Political focus, however, rested primarily on the reformation of Egyptian politics,
not a universal Muslim community.
This is something most of the above-mentioned studies have acknowledged,
emphasizing the Brotherhoods passionate commitment to the cause of national
independence. The speculative implications of such a perspective, however, have
remained largely unexplained from a political theory standpoint. What did either a
national or a universalistic agenda involve in terms of imagining community,
identity and territoriality or in the very construction of the other/outside? It is here
that the discussion presented earlier concerning the discourse of Islamic
universalism and the discourse of the nation assumes its relevance. In the
following pages, I address this range of questions, examining al-Bannas
intellectual trajectory vis-a`-vis the dominant languages of his times, such as
modernity and tradition. Going beyond scholarly acknowledgments about
al-Bannas geopolitical focus on domestic reality, the objective is to track key
discursive shifts in his vision, assessing the potential for contestation of his
writings. I will thus be able to evidence al-Bannas elaboration of what could be
called a territorial trajectory of Islamism, which denoted, in discursive terms, the
attempt to dislocate western monopoly over the discourse of the nation, pursuing a
counter-hegemonic articulation and valourization of national signifiers.
Hasan al-Bannas articulatory practice: a discursive inquiry42
The early writings (1928 1930) 43
Hasan al-Banna began his teachings in the coffee shops of Ismailia, a small town
near the Suez Canal where the presence of British soldiers and settlers, besides
marking a strong social inequality between Egyptians and Europeans, entailed the
direct and visible cultural influence of the West.44 In his first article after the
foundation of the Brotherhood in 1928, al-Banna explicitly criticizes the spiritual
quiescence of official Islam and the Egyptian political establishment in general,
together with their inability to counter western secularization and materialism:
What catastrophe has befallen the souls of the reformers and the spirit of the leaders? What
has carried away the ardour of the zealots? What calamity has made them prefer this life to
the thereafter? What has made them . . . consider the way of struggle [sabil al-jihad ] too
rough and difficult?45
From the very beginning, al-Banna focuses his attention on the way of struggle
(sabil al-jihad) for an Islamization from below, that is, the assertive endeavour to
awaken peoples conscience by calling for the sovereignty of God in every section
of society. Hence, a place of pleasure such as a coffee shop is transformed into a
platform for the Islamic call (dawa). In one of the early pamphlets written in
1934, To What Do We Invite Humanity? while inviting Muslims to rebuild the
community on the basis of Islamic tenets, al-Banna is adamant in considering
supreme outcome not as a consequence of a state initiative but as the ultimate
70

result of individual spiritual efforts (sabil al-jihad, spiritual effort in the path of
God):
Muslims, this is a period of rebuilding: re-build yourselves, and your Umma will as a
consequence be rebuilt!46
This signals al-Bannas early attempt to assume a moderate and gradualist

bottom-up approach to Islamization (from the individual to the society). In this
same pamphlet, moreover, the main objectives of the Brotherhood are defined in
clear terms:
To establish Allahs sovereignty over the world. To guide all of humanity to the precepts of
Islam and its teachings (without which mankind cannot attain happiness).47
A few caveats are needed, however, in consideration of this key statement. First,
al-Banna starts his own discussion by putting the emphasis on sovereignty whose
transcendental nature the Brotherhood recognizes and strives to affirm. The idea
that sovereignty belongs to God (al hakimiyya li-l-lah) constitutes a central
signifier in the articulation of all Islamist discourses, and is rooted in traditional
legal procedures. Naturally, this evidences the relevance of tradition as an
imaginary horizon embodying an entire universe of signification. Fiqh
(jurisprudence of Islamic law), shariah, social and legal norms regulating the
personal status of Muslims, Islamic theology, traditional discourses on jihad,
traditional elements drawn from Sufism (spiritualism, organizational matters, etc.),
references to the discourse of the caliphate and Islamic universalismall constitute
traditional discursive fields from which al-Banna draws on when articulating his
own discourse. Besides the symbolic relevance of tradition, however, another
language plays a central role since this very beginning, inspiring al-Bannas
discourse: modernity. At a general level, in fact, al-Banna strives to pursue an
Islamization of modernity while, at the same time, modernizing tradition.
In consideration of al-Bannas assertion of Gods sovereignty, for instance, its
implementation by modern states is not only explained with the doctrinal
argument of shariah incarnating the transcendental sovereign power of God. It
is also the self-sufficiency of Islam vis-a`-vis competing systems of ideas that
makes shariah, with its practical ability to solve human concrete needs, a natural
source of legislation for the nation.
Every nation has a set of laws in which the people partake their ruling. These sets of laws
must be derived from the proscriptions of the Islamic Shareeah (drawn from the Noble
Quran, and in accordance with the basic sources of Islamic jurisprudence). The Islamic
Shareeah and the decisions of the Islamic jurists are completely sufficient, supply every
need, and cover every contingency, and they produce the most excellent results and the most
blessed fruits.48
Transcendence is here shadowed by the immanent ability of jurists decisions to

respond to human needs, and to cover every contingency.49 In later writings, when
discussing the Islamic government, this point will be stressed in a much more
energetic way.
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A second caveat is needed. In al-Bannas early writings, the tension between
national and pan-Islamic drives remains largely unresolved. On the one side, a
national perspective is sometimes assumed, though the conceptualization of the
very idea of the nation remains mostly unexplored, acknowledged only as a matter
of fact in the face of western imperialism. In an article written in 1933, al-Banna
emblematically affirms the importance of the founding of souls as functional
primarily to the achievement of the nations goals and aspirations:
The solution is the education and moulding of the souls of the nation in order to create a
strong moral immunity, firm and superior principles and a strong and steadfast ideology. This
is the best and fastest way to achieve the nations goals and aspirations, and it is therefore our
aim and the reason for our existence. It goes beyond the mere founding of schools, factories
and institutions, it is the founding of souls [insha al-nufus ].50
On the other side, a strong and clearly defined pan-Islamic ethos is articulated in
al-Bannas early discourse, superseding national forms of loyalty. The result is that,
at this stage, pan-Islamism and nationalism are roughly combined together, with
pan-Islamism very often playing a pre-eminent role in terms of both
conceptualization and celebration. In To What Do We Invite Humanity? al-Banna
proclaims the universalistic nature of Islam as founded upon a notion of
brotherhood. As mentioned earlier, a Sufi influence affected al-Bannas
conceptualization of the Society, largely as the result of the young al-Bannas
involvement in a Sufi order. Such influence can be seen in the focus on the spiritual
notion of brotherhood, as well as on symbolism, rites, the obedience and discipline
of adherents (through the traditional oath of loyalty, bayat), the title and the strong
charismatic tone assumed by al-Banna as the Supreme Guide (al-murshid
al-amm), and the spiritual emphasis in al-Bannas message.51 Tradition reflects
therefore a central symbolic reservoir at this stage. The notion of Islamic
brotherhood is particularly telling because it informs the criteria according to which
the horizon of the Islamic homeland is defined. It is the Islamic brotherhood, in the
light of its intrinsic humanitarianism, that transforms the expansion of Islam into a
movement for justice and equality, legitimizing such expansion, and distinguishing
it from those forms of conquest and aggression based on mere geographic, ethnic
or racial factors such as nationalism and patriotism. In a section entitled
A Brotherhood Which Proclaims Humanitarianism, al-Banna states:
Whenever the light of Muhammads (Peace Be Upon Him) guidance shone upon the souls of
people, all differences were obliterated, wrongs were wiped out, justice and equality
prevailed in their midst, along with love and brotherhood [ . . . ] The notion of nationalism
thenceforth melts away and disappears just as snow disappears after bright, strong sunlight
falls upon it. It is in contrast with the Islamic concept of brotherhood, which the Quran
instils in the souls of all those who follow it.52
Being in contrast with the Islamic concept of brotherhood, the notion of

nationalism is radically rejected here. Apparently, no attempt is made to integrate
local nationalism within the broader universalistic framework expressed by the
notion of Islamic homeland, as al-Banna will do later on. At this stage, a link is
72

made instead between the notion of Islamic brotherhood and the need to preserve
the territorial integrity of Islam vis-a`-vis its aggressors:
Islamic brotherhood compelled every Muslim to believe that every foot of ground supporting
any brother who held to the religion of the Noble Quran was a portion of the larger Islamic
homeland [ . . . ] For Islam, when it points this concept out to its people and fixes it firmly
within their souls, imposes upon them the unavoidable obligation to protect the territory of
Islam from the attack of the aggressor, to deliver it from occupation, and to fortify it against
the ambitions of the transgressor.53
The strong anti-imperialist attitude that already marks the discussion at this
stage reflects the embracing of a sort of re-active stance in al-Bannas words.
The idea that the Islamic homeland despite its transcendental and spiritual
dimension is rooted in a territory that its people are obliged to protect from
the attack of the aggressor indicates the adoption of a defensive stance vis-a`-vis
the infiltration of the West. This reflects Muslims awareness during colonial times
of western powers as physically penetrating into the Islamic homeland.
In this context, although the idea of the nation is not articulated and celebrated
yet as a key component of al-Bannas discourse, he is aware of the hegemonic role
that nationalist discourses play in the desedimented space of colonized
populations. In the 1935 pamphlet, Our Message, al-Banna acknowledges the
ability of nationalism to provide Muslims with an important tool in the fight for the
political emancipation of the colonized world, therein enabling subaltern subjects
to deploy western language against the West itself, e.g. in the form of Arab
nationalism or Egyptian irredentism:
People are at times seduced by the appeal to patriotism, at other times by that of nationalism,
especially in the East, where they are aware of the abuse that the colonial West directs
against them, abuse which has injured their dignity, their honor, and their independence.54
In the attempt to appeal to the wide audience of nationalism, therein challenging

the influence of the nationalist Wafd, al-Banna began in this pamphlet to come to
term with the idea of the nation, for instance, by listing those aspects that were
compatible with Islam and those that were incompatible; then, by maintaining that
those that were compatible were indeed prescribed by what could be defined the
master signifier Islam; that is, the central element around which all signifiers
(discursive components) of a certain discourse converge, so achieving their
particular significance.55 When describing patriotism and nationalism,
for instance, he stated that if these concepts mean affection (love for ones
homeland), freedom and greatness (every effort to free the land from its ravagers,
to defend its independence), community (to reinforce the bonds which unite
individuals within a given country), conquest (the conquest of countries and
sovereignty over the earth)then Islam has already ordained that. He pointed
out, however, that if patriotism and nationalism meant factionalism, aggression
(racial self-aggrandizement to a degree which leads to the disparagement of Other
races), and fanaticism (the revival of pre-Islamic customs)then they were
incompatible with Islam. As he put it:
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The bone of contention between us and them [western powers] is that while we define
patriotism according to the creed of Islam, they define it according to territorial borders and
geographical boundaries.56
Although nationalism is not yet assumed as a central component in the discourse

of al-Banna, we see here a first attempt to acknowledge the relevance of national
signifiers, showing that Islamism works on the side of national independence.
National elements are therefore partially integrated, though still in an unbalanced
manner. For instance, on the one side, al-Banna rejects here local forms of
nationalism, like Pharaonism, Arabism, Phoenicianism, or Syrianism, and on the
other side, he states immediately after that:
Nevertheless, we are not denying that the various nations have their own distinct qualities
and particular moral characters [ . . . ] We believe that in these respects Arabism possesses the
fullest and most abundant share, but this does not mean that its peoples should seize upon
these characteristics as a pretext for aggression.57
The strategic attempt to address a youth particularly sensitive to the national

claim, as well as to a strong form of irredentism, is evident.58 It is emblematic that
al-Banna, for instance, aims to re-assure those nationalist sceptics that fear
Islamism for its potential to divide the nation because of religious issues:
I would like to draw your attention to the glaring error in the leading figure who says: that
acting on this principle [Islam] would tear apart the unity of the nation, which is composed of
different religious elements [ . . . ] Do you not now see exactly how much we are in agreement
with the most ardent patriots regarding love of the countrys well being, sincere struggle for
the sake of its liberation, its welfare, and its progress.59
In summary, although national signifiers at this stage were acknowledged, they

were not yet celebrated as central to al-Bannas articulation. That is, a
universalistic ethos here was still privileged, promoting a certain criticism towards
the more un-Islamic aspects of nationalism (the western focus on ethnicity and
borders vis-a`-vis the Islamic ability to preserve an inclusive spiritual fraternity).
The late 1930s
It is in the late 1930s that al-Bannas drawing on the language of modernity was
translated into a stronger integration and celebration of national signifiers. This
testified to a gradual nationalization of al-Bannas own premises, with the
progressive adoption of a binary understanding of both territoriality and
community. Such a twist reflected al-Bannas growing awareness of the massive
appeal that nationalism was able to elicit in the region, with local populations more
and more frustrated by the persisting control of British over Egyptian affairs.60
Naturally, this was also a response to the international arena and the difficult
climate preceding World War II. In Egypt, the hope to exploit the tension among
European nations to gain full independence had, in fact, contributed to stir
nationalist feelings.61 It should be noted, however, that such a transition in
al-Bannas articulation did not entail the dismissal of tradition.
74
Traditional elements were, in fact, still combined with national elements,

therein allowing for a counter-hegemonic deployment of the national language.
As Lia puts it, the Brotherhoods ideological vision in these years served in
many ways as a bridge between the traditional and modernist camps by
its insistence on Islam as its only ideological tenet, but incorporating at the
same time many aspects of modern ideologies and thinking.62 This moderator
function can be seen, for instance, in the notion of a multi-level identity
elaborated by al-Banna in the 1937 pamphlet, Towards the Light.63 We find here
the first systematic integration of the idea of the nation within a harmonious
multi-dimensional model where pan-Islamic views are merged together with
national signifiers. For the first time, al-Banna defines the Islamic homeland as
consisting of:
(1) The country itself.
(2) The other Islamic countries, for all of them are seen as a home nation and an
abode for the Muslim.
(3) This extends to the first Islamic Empire [ . . . ]
(4) Then the homeland of the Muslim expands to encompass the entire world.64
This passage is of paramount importance since it signals the transition to a
formal recognition of nationalismeven in its local forms of loyalty.
The country is taken here as a basic component of a wider homeland of the
Muslim. Therefore, al-Banna promotes a first clear articulation of national
signifiers with the master signifier Islam; as al-Banna puts it in the same
pamphlet: thus did Islam reconcile the sentiments of local nationalism with that of
a common nationalism, in all that is good for mankind. More than simply
acknowledging the existence of nationalism or its importance vis-a`-vis foreign
occupation, al-Banna here integrates nationalism as a new moment in the
discourse of Islam. By theorizing identity as the complex overlapping of greater
concentric circles, each one denoting a form of loyalty (the country itself
denoting the national loyalty, the first Islamic Empire denoting the Arab circle,
and then the other Islamic countries entailing also an eastern and a global
conception of Islamic homeland), al-Banna begins celebrating modern
nationalism, interpreting it in the light of the purifying force of Islam.
If the nation possesses all these reinforcements: hope, patriotism, science, power, health, and
a sound economy, it will, without a doubt, be the strongest of all nations, and the future will
belong to it. Especially, if to all this one adds that it has been purified of selfishness,
aggressiveness, egotism, and arrogance, and has come to desire the welfare of the whole
world.65
In this pamphlet, al-Banna maintains and promotes most of the features that
modern nations were expected to develop in that specific historical time, thereby
reproducing nationalist discourses on national greatness, militarism, public
health, science, economics, etc. In the attempt to Islamize modernity,
celebrating the purifying power of Islam towards modernity itself, al-Banna,
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however, points also to a series of moral problems related to modernity that
Muslim nations would be able to avoid when grounded in Islam:
Along the path of Europe are to be found enticement and glamour, pleasures and luxuries,
laxity and license, and comforts that captivate the soul, for all of these things are loved by the
soul [ . . . ] But the path of Islam is one of glory and fortitude, truth, strength, blessing,
integrity, stability, virtue, and nobility. Take the nation along this path, may Allah grant you
success!66
Interestingly, we can note that al-Bannas re-active appropriation of modernity

is preserved in the earlier passage and expressed through the deployment of an
Occidentalist narrative.
As well known, in the remarkable work of Edward Said, Orientalism was
conceived as the western systematic depiction of Oriental societies and cultures
fostered by a long-standing production of political, literary, anthropological literature
on the Orient.67 It methodically merged forms of power and knowledge based on
binaries and essentialisms into a practice functional to both western colonial
expansion and the very definition of European identity (and modern subjectivity).
In al-Bannas discourse, Occidentalism entailed the attempt to reverse
Orientalist binary representations redefining the Orient from a privileged position.
Reductionisms and essentialisms are here used to reverse the logocentric approach
deployed by Orientalist discoursesIslam becoming therefore the place of
integrity, stability, virtue, and nobility and resurgence in the face of western
enticement and glamour, pleasures and luxuries, laxity and license and moral
decline. Such representation may be conceived through what Sartre called the
moment of the boomerang, a strategy aimed at counterbalancing the positive
dialectic of colonialism with an opposing revolutionary and negative dialectic.68
In this regard, it is interesting to note that since the pamphlet, To What Do We
Invite Humanity? the Oriental East is not rejected on the ground of being a
European and abstract concept; rather, the Islamic East is acknowledged a number
of times and positivized in the face of the western Other. This reproduces the very
dialectical mindset that informed the colonial discourse, even though this is done
from an anti-imperialist perspective. Hence, al-Bannas reactive emphasis on the
notion of the East, with statements such as the East would rise up and compete with
the nations which have stolen its rights and oppressed its people.69 This approach
entails the counter-hegemonic attempt to dislocate the western monopoly over
modern political paradigms, articulating modern signifiers around the master
signifier Islam. Thus, the orientalist negative term East is positivized by the very
articulation of the master signifier Islam: the foundations of modern Eastern
resurgence [emphasis mine] are built on the basic principles of Islam.70
The increasing appropriation of the language of modernity is also manifest in
the following pamphlet, Between Yesterday and Today (1939), where Islam itself
appears as a unified nation satisfying both material and spiritual needs:
There is no nation in the world that is held together by linguistic unity, participation in
material and spiritual interests, and similarity of both suffering and hope that the Muslims
are.71
76

Interestingly, a peculiarity of the Islamic nation is located here in its linguistic
unity. We see that despite al-Bannas criticism of western racial and territorial
nationalism, Arab language and ethnicity are somehow exalted and posited as the
very foundation of the Islamic community. A passage best illustrates this point:
The transfer of authority to non-Arabs: Persians at one time, the Mamluks, Turks, and others
at another time who had never had a taste of genuine Islam, and whose hearts had never been
illuminated with the light of the Quran because of the difficulty they encountered in trying to
grasp its concepts, even though they read the Words of Allah.72
In a speech delivered during the Fifth Conference of the Brotherhood in 1939,

also printed as a pamphlet under the title Oh Youth, al-Banna reiterates such
points.73 Besides reasserting his distance from any form of racial discrimination,
and criticizing those international agreements that have torn the Islamic nation
into small and weak mini-states that can easily be swallowed by their aggressors,
he directly calls for the national loyalty of all Muslims for their homeland in their
fight against foreign power.74 Defence must follow then the multi-dimensional
complexity of Muslim identity. This entails that a primary focus be put on the fight
for independence of ones country, followed by broader loyalty towards the whole
Islamic homeland:
Muslims strive hard for a motherland such as Egypt, exert their utmost effort for its cause and
exhaust themselves in the Jihad because Egypt is a part of the Islamic land and the leader of
its nations. Moreover, Muslims do not confine these sentiments within its limits, but they
enjoin within these sentiments each Islamic land and nation.75
This passage well illustrates al-Bannas position at the end of the 1930s, with
Egyptian nationalism acknowledged and combined with a pan-Islamic ideal,
Egypt is a part of the Islamic land, yet increasingly celebrated at the point of
justifying the utmost effort for its cause as the leader of its [Islamic] nations.
In the following years, it will be possible to observe an even greater valourization
of national signifiers.
Al-Bannas discourse in the 1940s: the national priority
By the end of the 1930s, the Brotherhood had become the most influential mass
movement in Egypt, followed only by the Wafd whose political appeal, however,
was gradually declining.76 From the beginning of the 1940s, the idea of an Islamic
government received more attention from al-Banna in a way that sometimes
superseded the early emphasis on the Islamization from below. In a pamphlet that
appeared in the early 1940s, The Message of the Teachings, after having defined
the aspirations of the Brotherhood as aimed at reforming the self, establishing
Islam as an ideology which calls for righteousness and encourages virtue, and
which strives to liberate the homeland from all un-Islamic or foreign control,
al-Banna expressly advocates:
Reforming the government so that it may become a truly Islamic government, performing as
a servant to the nation in the interest of the people. By Islamic government I mean a
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government whose officers are Muslims who perform the obligatory duties of Islam, who do
not make public their disobedience, and who enforce the rules and teachings of Islam [ . . . ]
Rebuilding the international prominence of the Islamic Umma by liberating its lands [ . . . ]
until once again the long awaited unity and the lost Khilafah is returned.77
Besides the highly rhetorical and irredentist tone of this quotation, asking for
the liberation of the Islamic homeland and the restoration of the caliphate
(the lost Khilafah is returned), the significance of this passage is that al-Banna
defines in clear terms what he means by Islamic government.78 It is interesting to
note that while defining Islamic government as a Muslim administration, where
officers are Muslims and where Islamic rules and teachings are enforced, the
language used to articulate such an administration is a nationalist one, for a truly
Islamic government is the one performing as a servant to the nation in the
interest of the people, that is, neither in the interest of Islam itself nor in that of
shariah. This is a point of pivotal importance for it signals a kind of adaptation of
the Islamic government to the nation-state model in al-Bannas discursive
trajectory, though this adaptation was not new in absolute terms.
Since the late 19th century, the encounter between the language of modernity
and the language of tradition had given rise to an ongoing debate about the nature of
the Islamic government. Crucially, a great reformist like Muhammad Abduh
(18491905) had used the legal notion of maslaha, the common good in Islamic
jurisprudence, to re-consider the traditional prerogatives of the government,
influencing the cultural climate preceding the foundation of the Brotherhood in the
1920s.79 Since the 13th century, the concept of maslaha had undertaken important
conceptual shifts, allowing for doctrinal innovations (I mentioned earlier that
the principle of maslaha was used by Shafii jurists to moderate universalistic polarity
introducing the domain of dar al-ahd).80 Al-Bannas focus on the interest of the
people came to sanction these ongoing cultural transformations, bringing the Islamic
notion of common goodwhich had to maintain some moral and theological
characterization as expression of the will of Godclose to the liberal concept
of public interest or general welfare, to use Robert Mitchells translation of
this term.81
When describing the constitutive features of the discourse of the nation,
I mentioned that a common juridical tendency among European modern doctrines
of sovereignty had been to conceptualize the supreme power of political order as
an absolute and exclusive power that does not recognize any principle of
legitimacy outside itself (summa potestas). In particular, modern sovereignty
entailed the passage of this exclusive and absolute power from the transcendent
dimension of God to the immanent authority of the state, though differences
among theorists regarded the locus of sovereignty: the king, the people, the law,
etc. In the previous pages, it was noted that while acknowledging the transcendent
power of God in principle, al-Bannas transcendent advocacy was shadowed on a
practical level by the emphasis he put on the immanent ability of jurists
decisions to cover every contingency.82 The earlier passage intensifies this
early emphasis on the immanent character of sovereignty, defining a truly Islamic
78

government as a servant to the nation in the interest of the people [emphasis
mine]. It is not God or shariah that defines the ultimate interest of which the
Islamic government is an expression, but the people, here incarnating the locus
of sovereignty and the space of public interest. This signals the integration and
re-elaboration of modern national signifiers and the substantial resonance with
modern theories of sovereignty of the state, in itself a further expression of
al-Bannas re-elaboration of the language of modernity.
This transition defines al-Bannas representation of the Islamic order as a sort of
modern nation-state, deprived of its secular characterizations, with shariah
inspiring legislative provisions rather than literally supplanting them. Such a
position is testified to by al-Bannas increasing opening to western parliamentary
political and institutional procedures in the early 1940s. Although on several
occasions al-Banna had rejected the party system as a factor of social and political
division (we do not support these political parties), and invited Muslims
to boycott non-Islamic courts and judicial systems that draw on western juridical
principles, he acknowledged liberal tools in principle (for instance, the separation
of powers, or state institutions such as the Parliament).83 He formally engaged,
for instance, in the mainstream political process, even advancing his candidature
to the parliamentary election of 1942.84 Although his candidature was withdrawn
under pressure from the King and the Wafd in exchange for the promise to
introduce some Islamic laws prohibiting gambling and prostitution, this event
reveals that al-Banna had begun considering the modern state as offering all the
tools needed for the implementation of an Islamic system. More precisely, the
Islamization of the modern statist structure was seen as an antidote to the dangers
of the secular state. Later on in the 1940s, while describing the course of
modernity, al-Banna praised the emancipatory nature of the democratic system,
alerting the reader, however, to the risks entailed by modernity.
The democratic system led the world for a while, encouraging many intellectuals as well as
the masses to think of it as the ideal system. Nobody can ignore the freedom it has secured for
peoples and nations alike, and the justice it has introduced to the human mind in allowing it
to think freely [ . . . ] However, it was not long before people realized that individuality and
unlimited liberty can lead to chaos and many other short-comings, which ultimately led to
the fragmentation of the social structure and family systems, and the eventual re-emergence
of totalitarianism.85
Al-Bannas use of modern language is exemplary here. Central to the point is

his emphasis on the risks of modern individualism (here described in terms of
individuality) and the ultimate fragmentation of the social structure and family
systems. Since the 19th century, a long-standing speculative tradition in Europe
had assumed moral disquiets such as individualism, atomism, alienation,
relativism and materialism to be eminently modern features, therein contributing
to consolidate a sort of moral connotation of modernity (von Humboldt,
Tocqueville, Durkheim, etc.). In this sense, al-Banna fully reflects the attempt to
appropriate the language of modernity for counter-hegemonic purposes, pointing
to the modern loss of sociability that had hitherto been associated with the
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emergence of industrial societies. Hence, al-Bannas emphasis on Islamic

brotherhood as a remedy against the fragmentation of family systems,
social structure and community is in line with modern social criticism.
At this stage, al-Bannas recognition of local nationalism as an integral part of
dar al-Islam is fully achieved. In a passage, al-Banna makes his own devotion
towards Egyptian nationalism explicit:
Egyptian nationalism has a definite place in our call. It is its right that it should be defended.
Surely we are Egyptians; the most honourable place on this Earth to us, we were born and
raised up here. Egypt is the land, which has been an abode of belief. It gladly embraced Islam
and gave it a new territory [ . . . ] This is only a part of the entire Arab homeland. Therefore,
whatever effort we make for the welfare of Egypt, would in reality be for Arabia, The East
and Islam.86
We see that al-Banna re-articulates nationalism preserving the idea of the

nation, and transforming it into an expression of Islamic loyalty: whatever effort
we make for the welfare of Egypt, would in reality be for Arabia, The East and
Islam.
In the 1940s, the idea of the growing concentric circles (each one referring to a
specific form of identification, e.g. Egyptian, Arab, Eastern, Islamic) that was first
expressed in Towards the Light in 1937 became an integral part of al-Bannas
discursive articulation. We have just seen in the last two lines of the previous quote
that al-Banna clearly links Egyptian nationalism, and the effort made for the sake
of national independence to the upper levels of loyalty, to the upper strata of the
Islamic homeland. Each of these circles maintains its modern binary structure
when defining space and subjectivity, for instance, by relying on an exclusionary
notion of territory or defining people as a unified community grounded on
common history, religion and language. This is best demonstrated by
al-Bannas conceptualization of Arab subjectivity in the Arab circle:
Islam cannot be revived, unless the Arabs start to revive and become a unified force. It is for
this reason that we regard every inch of the native land of the Arabs as part of our own
homeland. How can these geographical boundaries and political divisions, terminate the
value and feelings of the Arabic/Islamic Unity, which united in the hearts of myriads, one
hope and one goal, turning all these countries into one nation?87
In the previous section, I argued that the binary structure organizing nationalism
entailed the transformation of local populations into a nation, that is, the
subsumption of all differences into a unified self, the national people, which was
furthermore put in radical opposition with its outside (competing nations).
The earlier passage is particularly telling in this respect. Al-Banna acknowledges
that differences inform the contemporary reality of Arabs, but he advocates the
need to overcome such divisions becoming a unified force, to unite in the hearts
of myriads, one hope and one goal, turning all these countries into one nation. It is
the movement of national unification that transforms the various Arab populations
into a people, and that allows Islam to be revived.
80

The general adoption of a binary logic is also reflected in the Occidentalist
representation of the East as a unified Self, opposed to a western outside accused
of invading the orient. In the 1940s, the strategic and reactive function of
Occidentalism that aimed at reversing Orientalist discourses is openly professed:
Orientalism: This also has a position in our invitation, although it is based entirely on
ephemeral and transitory things. It so happened that the West became unduly proud of its
civilisation. Accordingly, it abandoned and isolated the Eastern nations, dividing the world
into two parts: one was named the East, and the other, the West [ . . . ] This made the
Easterners feel that they were one battalion, ready to meet the ranks of the West.88
It is interesting to note that Occidentalism fully reverses the logocentric approach

of Orientalist discourses. The East is here positivized against the West from which
it was abandoned and isolated. This is done, again, by subsuming differences
within a higher unity set against an outside, that is, transforming a plurality of
Eastern manifestations into one battalion. Occidentalism is therefore a further
example of the importance that al-Banna ascribed to binary representations,
revealing, as described throughout this section, an increasing valourization of the
modern symbolic reservoir.
We see here that the idea of the nation is integrated and maintained as a strategic
device in the discourse of al-Banna. The celebration of local nationalism as a first,
more intimate circle within broader forms of loyalty (Arab, Eastern, Islamic), the
very structure used to construct any of the identity circles that al-Banna foresees
(as if the Arab, the Eastern and the Islamic circles are national circles in their own
right)(all this denotes the delineation of a territorial trajectory. This entails the
adoption of a binary logic defining forms of space (territory) and subjectivity
(people), with tradition maintained nonetheless as a moderator principle in the
counter-hegemonic process of re-signifying the space of modernity from a counterhegemonic perspective.
Conclusion
This article inquired into the discourse of Islamist thinker and militant Hasan
al-Banna. I first provided the reader with a historical contextualization of al-Bannas
times, and then proceeded to a textual examination of his writings. I showed here
that al-Bannas discourse was initially caught between nationalism and panIslamism, two discourses defining al-Bannas genealogical discursive context and
characterizing the desedimented space of Middle Eastern colonized settings.
Despite the moderator function of tradition, I showed that nationalism ended
up fulfilling a central symbolic function across the years. Since the 1940s,
al-Bannas recurrent reference to Egypt as a leader of Muslim nations, and his idea
that the fight for Egyptian independence must precede any other political struggle,
testified to the increasing importance of the nationalist model in his discourse.
Besides evidencing the strategic attempt to face the challenges of a colonized
context, this reliance on a nationalist model reflected the ultimate adoption of a
binary approach to space representations and subjective formations, denoting what
81
andrea mura
could be termed a territorial trajectory of Islamism. This was best revealed by
al-Bannas immanent approach to sovereignty, with the interest of the people
posed as the prior requirement for any truly Islamic government. Al-Bannas
notion of Islamic government or system (al-nizam al-Islami) paved the way
to the theorization of an Islamic state that was central in the political agenda
of Islamist groups in the following decades, the Brotherhood included.
The nationalization of al-Bannas discourse, however, signalled that the target
was not the restoration of a traditional Islamic government but rather a sort of
counter-hegemonic appropriation and Islamization of the nation-state structure,
with shariah maintained as an ethical source for state legislation.
From a general level, al-Bannas trajectory reveals that the nationalization of the
Islamist message was somehow intrinsic to the very discursive development of
early Islamist representations, rather than emerging as a sort of political expedient
in recent decades. Although one should acknowledge that significant differences
have come to characterize the Islamist galaxy across the years, with globalist and
universalistic tendencies being revitalized among several groups and theorists, this
is certainly true as far as a territorial trajectory of Islamism is concerned, one that
finds in al-Banna a kind of foundational discourse. This is the case with the
Brotherhood, which remained in some respects a creature of its founder even after
its leaders death occurred in 1949 under the alleged instruction of the governments
secret police.89 But al-Bannas vision remained an exemplary way of engaging
with symbolic reservoirs such as modernity and tradition for all those groups that, in
different manners and with various degrees of intensity, have assumed the
Brotherhood as a proto-typical Islamist movement. For all these groups is true
what Peter Mandaville observed in his analysis of contemporary Islamism, that they
all owe a debt to the project Hasan al-Banna initiated in 1928. 90
Notes and References
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D. R. Springer, Islamic Radicalism and Global Jihad (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press,
2008); O. Roy, Globalized IslamFundamentalism, Deterritorialization and the Search for a New Ummah
(London: Hurst, 2004).
2. G. Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002), and O. Roy, The Failure of
Political Islam (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994).
3. M. Ayoob, The Many Faces of Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Muslim World (Ann Arbor, MI:
University of Michigan Press, 2008).
4. M. Colombe, LEvolution de lEgypte19241950 (Paris: G.P. Maisonneuve et Cie, 1951).
5. I. Sedar and H. J. Greenberg, LEgypte entre deux mondes (Paris: Carrefours Du Monde, 1956).
6. G. R. Warburg, Egypt and the SudanStudies in History and Politics (London: Frank Cass, 1985); W. Yale,
The Near EastA Modern History (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1953).
7. G. M. Munoz, Politica y Elecciones en el Egipto Contemporaneo19221990 (Madrid: Agencia Espanola
de Cooperacion Internacional, Instituto de Cooperacion con el Mundo Arabe, 1992).
8. M. Deeb, Continuity in modern Egyptian history: the Wafd and the Muslim brothers, in AAVV (Ed.)
Problems of the Modern Middle East in Historical Perspective: Essays in Honour of Albert Hourani
(Reading: Ithaca Press, 1992).
9. S. Haj, Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition: Reform, Rationality, and Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2009), p. 4.
10. T. Asad, The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam (Washington, DC: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies,
Georgetown University), p. 14.
82

11. Colombe, LEvolution de lEgypte, op. cit., Ref. 4.
12. M. Q. Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2002), p. 4.
13. E. Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London: Verso, 1990).
14. D. E. Lee, The origins of pan-Islamism, The American Historical Review, 47(2) (January 1942), p. 280.
15. N. R. Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Dn
al-Afghan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983).
16. M. Parvin and M. Sommer, Dar al-Islam: the evolution of Muslim territoriality and its implications for
conflict resolution in the Middle East, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 11(1) (February 1980),
p. 18.
17. M. Khadduri, The Islamic Law of Nations: Shaybanis Siyar (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966),
p. 13.
18. Khadduri, ibid., p. 232.
19. B. Lewis, The Political Language of Islam (Chicago, IL/London: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
20. It is interesting to note that, in face of the increasing fragmentation of Islamic political power, the unifying
and universalistic symbolic appeal of the caliphate remained substantially intact. The Ottomans, for instance,
had to promote the myth of a formal passage of the caliphate from the last descendant of the Abbasids to them
to legitimize their declining power during the 18th century; cf. K. H. Karpat, The Politicization of Islam:
Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State (New York/Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001).
21. T. Barghuthi, The Umma and the Dawla: The Nation State and the Arab Middle East (London: Pluto Press,
2008).
22. T. Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2003), p. 197.
23. Asad, ibid., p. 197.
24. P. Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life (Los Angeles, CA:
Semiotext(e), 2004).
25. J. Bodin, On Sovereignty: Four Chapters from the Six Books of the Commonwealth (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1576/1992); T. Hobbes, Leviathan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1651/1998).
26. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin of the Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso,
1983).
27. E. Balibar, Racism and nationalism, in E. Balibar and I. Wallerstein (Eds) Race, Nation and Class
(London: Verso, 1991), and R. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race
(London: Routledge, 1995).
28. G. Delanty, Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995).
29. M. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Colle`ge de France, 1977 1978
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
30. G. Marramao, Passaggio a Occidente (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2003).
31. M. Purcell, Place for the copts: imagined territory and spatial conflict in Egypt, Ecumene, 5(4) (1998),
p. 433.
32. A. Norval, Trajectories of future researches in discourse theory, in D. Howarth, A. Norval and
Y. Stavrakakis (Eds) Discourse Theories and Political Analysis (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2000).
33. S. Reimer, Benedict Anderson, in P. Hubbard, R. Kitchin and G. Valentine (Eds) Key Thinkers on Space
and Place (London/New York: Sage, 2004), p. 20.
34. J. Heyworth-Dunne, Religious and Political Trends in Modern Egypt (Washington, DC: Author, 1950);
C. P. Harris, Nationalism and Revolution in EgyptThe Role of the Muslim Brotherhood (The Hague:
Mouton & Co., 1964); R. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (London: Oxford University Press,
1969).
35. I. M. al-Husayni, The Moslem BrethrenThe Greatest of Modern Islamic Movements (Beirut: Khayats
College Book Cooperative, 1956); B. Marechal, The Muslim Brothers in Europe: Roots and Discourse
(Leiden/ Boston, MA: Brill, 2008).
36. B. Lia, The Society of the Muslim Brothers in EgyptThe Rise of an Islamic Mass Movement 19281942
(London: Ithaca Press/Garnet Publishing, 1998).
37. F. Bertier, Lideologie politique des fre`res musulmans, Orient, VIII (1958); I. M. Abu-Rabi, Intellectual
Origins of Islamic Resurgence in the Modern Arab World (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press,
1996); A. S. Moussalli, Hasan Al-Bannas Islamist discourse on constitutional rule and Islamic state,
Journal of Islamic Studies, 4(2) (1993), pp. 43 57.
83
andrea mura
38. T. Ramadan, Aux sources du renouveau musulman: dal-Afghani a` Hasan al-Banna, un sie`cle de reformisme
islamique (Paris: Bayard Editions/Centurion, 1998); A. Abdel-Malek, La pensee politique arabe
contemporaine (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970).
39. F. Rosenthal, The Muslim brethren in Egypt, Muslim World, XXXVIII (October 1947); I. Gershoni and
J. P. Jankowski, Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 19301945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995), pp. 27891.
40. O. Carre and M. Seurat, Les fre`res musulmans (19281982) (Paris: LHarmattan, 1983); G. Kepel, Muslim
Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and Pharaoh (Berkeley/Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press,
1984).
41. A. al-Fattah el-Awaisi, The conceptual approach of the Egyptian Muslim brothers: towards the Palestine
question, 19281949, Journal of Islamic Studies, 2(2) (1991); I. Gershoni, The Muslim brothers and the
Arab Revolt in Palestine, 19361939, Middle Eastern Studies, 22 (1986).
42. The most organic and general treatise, comprising biographical and some ideological discussion,
is al-Bannas memoir, Memoirs of the Call and the Preacher (Mudhakkirat al-Dawa wa al-Daiya)
(Cairo: Dar al-Tawzi wa al-Nashr al-Isamiyya, 1947/1986), (first parts published in instalments in 1942).
Most of the themes discussed in his memoirs, however, were anticipated in his rasals, letters traditionally
assuming the form of religious treatises which were used by al-Banna to address specific topics (translated
either as tracts or as pamphlets). The following textual examination will consider most of the rasals he
wrote across the years.
43. Italics will be used in this section to stress specific points I want to emphasize or, alternatively, when typing
words in languages other than English. Single quotation marks will be deployed to quote al-Bannas own
words as found in the original text.
44. Harris, Nationalism and Revolution in Egypt, op. cit., Ref. 34.
45. H. al-Banna, Dawa ila Allah, Majallat al-Fath, n8100, 1346/1928, in Lia, The Society of the Muslim
Brothers in Egypt, op. cit., Ref. 36, p. 33.
46. H. al-Banna, To What Do We Invite Humanity? (Cairo: n.p., 1934); Also appeared as a pamphlet in 1936,
available at http://thequranblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/_2_-to-what-do-we-invite-humanity.pdf
(accessed March 2011).
47. al-Banna, ibid.
48. al-Banna, ibid.
49. A. S. Moussalli, for instance, notes that although al-Bannas political discourse is abstract and
uncompromising as in proposing the necessity and legitimacy of Gods hakimiyya, his method, because it is
conducted by humans, is practical and compromising, op. cit., Ref. 37, p. 169.
50. H. al-Banna, Aghrad al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin, Jaridat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin, 7(1352/1933), in Lia,
The Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, op. cit., Ref. 36, p. 67.
51. On the influence of Sufism in moulding the spiritual character of the Brotherhood, see Lia, ibid., p. 116; For a
discussion about al-Bannas early involvement in Sufi orders, see al-Husayni, The Moslem BrethrenThe
Greatest of Modern Islamic Movements, op. cit., Ref. 35, pp. 28 30; E. Pace, Sociologia
dellIslamFenomeni religiosi e logiche sociali (Roma: Carocci, 1999), p. 178.
52. al-Banna, To What Do We Invite Humanity? op. cit., Ref. 46.
53. al-Banna, ibid.
54. H. al-Banna, Dawatuna (our message), in Jaridat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin (1353/1935); Also appeared as a
pamphlet in 1937, available at http://thequranblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/_6_-our-message.pdf
(accessed March 2011).
55. B. S. Sayyid, A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism (London: Zed Books,
1997).
56. al-Banna, Dawatuna, op. cit., Ref. 54.
57. al-Banna, ibid.
58. The attempt to attract students and young adherents was also translated in the creation of a number of
paramilitary bodies in these years, including a military wing or secret section; Lia, The Society of the
Muslim Brothers in Egypt, op. cit., Ref. 36, pp. 170175. For the influence of Fascist and Nazi paramilitary
organisations in the creation of these bodies, see al-Husayni, The Moslem BrethrenThe Greatest of Modern
Islamic Movements, op. cit., Ref. 35.
59. al-Banna, Dawatuna, op. cit., Ref. 54.
60. It should be noted that a crucial event in these years had been the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, which
paved the way to the abolition of the capitulations in Egypt, reinvigorating the problem of a substantial
national independence as the centre of political debate; W. M. Abdelnasser, The Islamic Movement in
EgyptPerceptions of International Relations 19671981 (London: Kegan Paul International, 1994).
61. G. Kirk, The Middle East in the War (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1952).
84

62. Lia, The Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, op. cit., Ref. 36, p. 74.
63. H. al-Banna, Towards the Light (Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi, 1936), available at http://thequranblog.files.
wordpress.com/2008/06/_1_-toward-the-light.pdf (accessed March 2011).
64. al-Banna, ibid.
65. al-Banna, ibid.
66. al-Banna, ibid.
67. E. Said, Orientalism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978/1995).
68. With this expression, the French philosopher used to refer, in political and practical terms, to the African
movement of negritude; see J.-P. Sartre, Preface, in F. Fanon (Ed.) The Wretched of the Earth (New York:
Grove Press, 1963), p. 20.
70. al-Banna, ibid.
71. H. al-Banna, Between Yesterday and Today (Cairo: n.p., 1939), available at http://thequranblog.files.
wordpress.com/2008/06/_7_-between-yesterday-today.pdf (accessed March 2011).
72. al-Banna, ibid.
73. H. al-Banna, Oh Youth (pamphlet, 1939), available at http://thequranblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/
_9_-oh-youth.pdf (accessed March 2011).
74. al-Banna, ibid.
75. al-Banna, ibid.
76. This period coincided also with the Brotherhoods expansion in terms of organization and popularity; see
Lia, The Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, op. cit., Ref. 36.
77. H. al-Banna, The Message of the Teachings (Cairo: n.p., appeared in the early 1940s), available at http://
thequranblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/_3_-the-message-of-the-teachings.pdf (accessed March 2011).
78. On al-Bannas ideas on the caliphate, see Bertier, Lideologie politique des fre`res musulmans, op. cit.,
pp. 161 174.
79. W. B. Hallaq, A History of Islamic Legal Theories: An Introduction to Sunni Usul al-Fiqh
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
80. F. Opwis, Maslaha in contemporary Islamic legal theory, Islamic Law and Society, 12(2) (2005),
pp. 182 223.
81. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers, op. cit., Ref. 34, p. 239.
83. al-Banna, The Message of the Teachings. See M. Borrmans, Les Freres Musulmans, Comprendre, 70 (XIV)
(April 1969), pp. 1425.
84. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers, op. cit., Ref. 34, pp. 2728.
85. H. al-Banna, Peace in Islam (Cairo: n.p., 1948), available at http://thequranblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/
06/_4_-peace-in-islam1.pdf (accessed March 2011).
86. al-Banna, ibid.
87. H. al-Banna, Our message in a new phase (Cairo: n.p., appeared in the 1940s), available at http://
thequranblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/_5_-our-message-in-a-new-phase.pdf (accessed March 2011).
88. al-Banna, ibid, n. pag.
89. P. Mandaville, Global Political Islam (New York, NY: Routledge, 2007), p. 72.
90. Mandaville, ibid., p. 85.
85

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Journal of Political Ideologies

A genealogical inquiry into early

Department of Politics and International Relations , University of

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Journal of Political Ideologies (February 2012),

A genealogical inquiry into early

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a genealogical inquiry into early islamism

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a genealogical inquiry into early islamism

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a genealogical inquiry into early islamism

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The discourse of the nation

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a genealogical inquiry into early islamism

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The foundation of the Brotherhood

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a genealogical inquiry into early islamism

This signals al-Bannas early attempt to assume a moderate and gradualist

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Transcendence is here shadowed by the immanent ability of jurists decisions to

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Being in contrast with the Islamic concept of brotherhood, the notion of

a genealogical inquiry into early islamism

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In the attempt to appeal to the wide audience of nationalism, therein challenging

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Although nationalism is not yet assumed as a central component in the discourse

The strategic attempt to address a youth particularly sensitive to the national

In summary, although national signifiers at this stage were acknowledged, they

a genealogical inquiry into early islamism

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Traditional elements were, in fact, still combined with national elements,

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Interestingly, we can note that al-Bannas re-active appropriation of modernity

a genealogical inquiry into early islamism

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In a speech delivered during the Fifth Conference of the Brotherhood in 1939,

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a genealogical inquiry into early islamism

Al-Bannas use of modern language is exemplary here. Central to the point is

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emergence of industrial societies. Hence, al-Bannas emphasis on Islamic

We see that al-Banna re-articulates nationalism preserving the idea of the

a genealogical inquiry into early islamism

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It is interesting to note that Occidentalism fully reverses the logocentric approach

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a genealogical inquiry into early islamism

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a genealogical inquiry into early islamism