West Asia At War: Repression, Resistance and Great Power Games

by Talmiz Ahmad

The Muslim Brotherhood had been founded in Egypt in 1928 by an educationist, Hassan al Banna, to preserve Muslim faith and belief in the face of challenges from Western secularist and materialist blandishments. The Brotherhood had supported the revolution of 1952 in Egypt, but fell out with the new rulers as the latter failed to shape their revolution on an Islamic basis and instead pursued a secular order. Following a crackdown by Nasser after a failed assassination attempt, the group migrated to Saudi Arabia, where they were joined by their co-members from Syria in 1963, when the Ba’athists turned against them. From the late 1950s, as the Saudi–Egyptian divide widened, King Faisal turned to the Brotherhood for help, as they were themselves victims of Nasser and capable of taking him on ideologically by using the instrument of Islam.