The Muslim Brotherhood: From Opposition to Power Paperback – April 9, 2013

This is an excellent book that traces the Terri rust group from its origins to the present time. The book is well written and easy to follow. The “Moslem Brotherhood “ is not just for academics or students of the Middle East but good for anyone who enjoys history.

While the Muslim Brotherhood has been around for over 80 years, the organization was largely unknown in the West until the Arab Spring. Pargetter provides a detailed and scholarly history of the Muslim Brotherhood, exposing its origins in Egypt after the First World War, to its growth and spread outside Egypt into the wider Arabic world.This alone warrants 5 stars - her writing is clear, succinct and she brilliantly explains complex interrelationships and distantly proximal relationships in a manner that is easy for the lay person to understand. What really impressed me in her authoritative discussion of the Brotherhood,though, was her analysis of how the organization struggled between its origins as a benevolent society and those members who wanted it to become a more militant organization. Her discussion of the evolution of the Egyptian organization after the Second World War into a more fundamentalist and politically influential organization was fascinating.Highly recommended for anyone wanting a more substantial understanding of an influential group and insightful analysis of the internal pressures and struggles it faces as it becomes a more influential player in Egypt and the region.

One of the best on this topic!

This is a very good study of a key social movement in the Middle East. It traces the origins of the movement in the aftermath of World War one and the vicissitudes with which it has had to cope. Fundamental to this is whether the Brotherhood really accepts the need for politics.The Brotherhood did not start out a political party. It wanted nothing to do with such grubby, worldly matters and thought the solution to the problems of Egyptian society – and Islamic society generally – was a return to the roots. Social change was to be brought about by individual change, purification and abidance by moral precepts, not political struggle.The movement spread throughout the Muslim-Arab world. It was not and is not a monolith. Like any other movement, it has been riven by splits, schisms, clashes of principles and of egos. Despite that, it has proved durable because its essential message is simple and beguiling. Like any opposition movement based on purist principles, ranged against corrupt incumbents in power, it has certain advantages. Its broadens its appeal with good works, providing visible contrast with the inept and corrupt government provision of rickety social services.The Brotherhood has come under great scrutiny and inspires fear and loathing in many quarters. Its members have been harassed, jailed and sometimes killed by authoritarian governments. Sometimes, regimes' fear is more than justified. The Syrian Brotherhood attempted a disastrous insurrection in Hama in 1982, with terrible consequences for the inhabitants of that city.Despite its high minded principles, are its democratic credentials better than their opponents? When it comes to the rights of women and minorities, or upholding individual rights in general, many of the Brotherhood’s spokesmen, especially if they are based in Europe, use the emollient language of reassurance. But it’s an open question whether the movement’s base wants to hear such talk. It probably expects the Brotherhood to enforce a ‘traditional’, conservative interpretation of Islamic values and is impatient with the requirements of secular politics with its emphasis on compromise and the balancing of competing interests. The closer its spokesmen are to its base, the harder the line they toe.It should come as no surprise that the Brotherhood was well placed to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the Arab Spring in 2011. Although the Egyptian Brotherhood did nothing to start it, it reaped the greatest electoral awards, trouncing secular and liberal parties. Even in Tunisia, where the Islamists' political space had been even more restricted than Egypt’s, the Islamists performed well, having seemed to have come out of nowhere. Tempted by power, the Brotherhood in Egypt began to sound a lot more hard line and uncompromising.The author skates over the reasons for the Brotherhood's electoral success, attributing it to superior organisation. But that cannot be the whole story. Talk of separation of church and state, of the division of powers, the right to freedom of worship and respect for sexual and religious minorities; this is not the sort of language that wins elections in the Middle East, not when the people are given a real choice, as they were in Egypt, briefly. I can recommend Shadi Hamid’s  Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East for an excellent discussion on this subject, on the rise of the 'illiberal democrats' in the Middle East. At its heart, the Brotherhood denies the need for politics, in the sense of reconciling competing conceptions of the good. For the Brotherhood, the good is absolutely obvious. Islam is the solution - for all manner of worldly ills, including the need for politics itself.This study came out in 2013, as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt enjoyed triumph in a century long quest for power. It was soon to be evicted from office by the army and many of its functionaries killed or jailed. It is unlikely to be the end of the road for the movement, though, so this book, in studying the history and development of the Brotherhood, is by no means a dated account. Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East

This is an informative guide to one of the organisations that has played a key role in the recent events in the Middle East. As an international movement that has considerable national autonomy, a movement that has been frequently outlawed and has had internal conflicts between the militants and those wanting to compromise with power, a preaching organisation with political ambitions, whose conservative message plays well with the rural peasantry and yet who has sided with the progressive urban liberals, it is a difficult group for outsiders to understand. In this relatively brief book Alison Pargeter gives a useful overview of its history and where it is today.This edition finishes before Morsi was removed from power in Egypt (after the Brotherhood overplayed its hand by trying to rule by decree). Hence the subtitle is now somewhat misleading - it is now from opposition to power and back to opposition again. No doubt this will be amended in a future edition.One slight quibble is that Islamic concepts (such as 'dawa') are sometimes used in the book with little or no introduction, requiring a little bit of research elsewhere to understand the text fully.