This chapter focuses on the major socio-economic and ideological developments having shaped the Brotherhood’s evolution during the nineties. Picking up the story of Khairat al-Shatir from Chapter 2, the narrative centres on the Brotherhood’s internal transformations during the second decade of Mubarak’s rule. Against larger transformations taking place within Egypt’s political economy, caused by the impact of neoliberal policies, the chapter shows how the deepening disagreements between the followers of ‘Omar al-Tilmisani on the one hand, and an increasingly assertive group of business-minded vanguardists on the other, was progressively tilted in favour of the latter group. The chapter ends by recounting how, against the backdrop of an intensifying wave of regime repression, the Brotherhood was pushed back into the underground – all the while the debates about the Society’s role in Egyptian politics continued to challenge it internally. Based on Oral History interviews with eyewitnesses of the events in question, memoires and available online material, original texts published by the Brotherhood and a reading of the available literature, the chapter expose how an increasingly acrimonious internal conflict among the Brothers gradually morphed into the formalization of distinct political coalitions, each of which advocated for conflicting visions of the Brotherhood’s political future.

One of the most important questions that was asked by the members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and which continues to haunt them until today, was why their experiment with power had failed so abruptly and so disastrously. Why was it that the Muslim Brotherhood, after having spectacularly won almost half of the seats of Egypt’s parliament in early 2012 and then clinched the presidency six months later, was ousted in such a dramatic fashion, and after only one year?

This chapter looks at the Brotherhood’s evolution in the decade after 9/11, and how debates about principles gradually morphed into an identity crisis concerning the organization as a whole. Against the setting of an unstable global security environment, marked first by a US-led ‘global war on terror’ and then by US-sponsored projects for the ‘democratization’ of the Middle East, the chapter highlights the debates between the followers of the Tilmisani school on the one hand, and the vanguardist faction on the other. The chapter also introduces the youth members of the Muslim Brotherhood who, in the context of an increasingly potent social protest movement, found themselves increasingly at odds with their leadership. The chapter ends with the contentious Guidance Office elections of the winter of 2009, when the vanguard leaders asserted total control of the Brotherhood’s executive office. Based on Oral History interviews with key Brotherhood members from across all organizational ranks, memoires and available online material, original texts published by the Brotherhood, an analysis of the Brotherhood-related diplomatic correspondence of the US Embassy in Cairo as published by Wikileaks, and a reading of the available scholarly literature, the chapter recounts how the Muslim Brotherhood, while meandering through an unstable global security environment, became further entrenched within its own internal bickering and squabbles to yield a weakened organization unready to meet the challenges of the Egyptian uprising of 2011.

This chapter sketches the Brotherhood’s early intellectual and political history, starting with its ideological precursors in the late 19th century to its founding in 1928 and up until 1966, when Sayyid Qutb was executed. It outlines the general historical context and some of the major concerns having led to the Brotherhood’s foundation before laying out an overview over the group’s central ideological features and key organizational characteristics. The chapter is based on a wide range of Oral History interviews that were conducted with Brotherhood rank-and-file members in 2012 and 2013 in Egypt, as well as a wide reading of the secondary literature about the Muslim reformers.

This chapter focuses on the two-and-a-half years from the outbreak of the Egyptian uprising on 25 January 2011 to the removal of Mohammed Morsi on 3 July 2013. The chapter excavates the debates between the Brotherhood’s revolutionary activists and the vanguard leaders in the Guidance Office, revealing an organization that grappled with questions of power and whose leaders, finding themselves increasingly at odds with the demands of the revolution, dismissed its own youth members in favour of an alliance with the military. The chapter focuses on the increasingly acrimonious debates within the Brotherhood during the transition and Morsi’s one-year presidency to reveal an organization that was incapable to adapt to the rapidly changing circumstances of a revolutionized society. It further shows how the Society’s decision-makers committed a series of fatal errors that enabled the board popular opposition against the Morsi government, which in turn allowed a resurgent military regime to oust the president. Based on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Egypt, over one hundred Oral History interviews with current and former Brotherhood members from across all organizational ranks, dozens of interviews with eyewitnesses, a wide reading of Brotherhood-related online sources and social media accounts, the reading of memoirs and articles, as well as of the available literature, this chapter traces the Brotherhood’s rapid rise and sudden fall within the unpredictable, fast-moving context of a revolutionized society.

This chapter traces the ascendency of the Brotherhood’s traditional leaders within the Brotherhood after its formal reconstitution in 1982, and the ways in which this development conflicted with the aspirations of an upwardly mobile class of former student activists. Starting with Hosni Mubarak’s early presidency, the chapter shows how the recently graduated student activists came to assume important positions within key institutions of the Egyptian state, and how the senior leaders sought to counter their influence by asserting control over the Brotherhood’s organizational joints – both at home through the ‘Egypt Office’ and internationally through the ‘International Organization’. The chapter ends with the Iraqi attack on Kuwait in August 1990 and the subsequent US-led intervention. This event showed the extent to which the Brotherhood’s stance on international politics meant the temporary demise of the International Organization, which led to a weakening of the organization in Egypt. Based on memories of key Brotherhood leaders, Oral History interviews with organizational members and eyewitnesses, a reading of original texts published by the Brotherhood, prison-writings, pamphlets and magazines, and a survey of the scholarly literature, the chapter traces how, despite emerging internal organizational disagreements, the Brotherhood was able to expand its activities and membership numbers.

This book tells the story of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt between 1968 and 2018. It is a tale of the rise and fall of a socio-religious movement and a political organization, which for a short period had reached the pinnacle of power, only to be pushed out again after one year.