Hasan al-Banna (Makers of the Muslim World)

I recently reviewed two papers on the life and world view of Hasan al-Banna. This book and a paper by Prof. Joseph Spoerl, a philosophy professor at St. Anselm's College. In fact, Prof. Spoerl includes comments on an earlier version of Kramer's book.Kramer's book is a generally very good, well-balanced and throughly researched account and assessment of the life and philosophy of al-Banna. I would strlongly recommend it to those wishing to understand the modern day Muslim Brotherhood and its political roots in the Egypt of the 1930s and 1940s and Egyptians' struggle against British colonial rule, out of which it grew. Below is my comparative review of Kramer's and Spoerl's papers. It gives my review of Kramer's book :Having read carefully both Gudrun Kramer's biography of Hasan al Banna and Prof. Spoerl's paper, I am rather surprised at the considerable inconsistencies between them. Kramer rightly portrays al Banna as a transitional figure, who lived in a period of colonial rule in Egypt and was taken up with the need for Egyptians to struggle politically - and if need be militarily - to free themselves from it. In her well documented account, al Banna is a man who advocated the creation of a new modern Egyptian society - that drew upon the best of Western science and technology, that created a new and more egalitarian form of government. But he did not advocate either capitalism or communism, but rather a third way. He did not advocate agrarian reform - having come from a land-owning family, but he did advocate the need for education and a spirit of community help as well as self-help. In all this, al Banna was both a moderate and a modernizer. Meanwhile, in matters or religion and society, he was more of a conservative. He was not in favor of a modern role for women, for example. But he was in favor of patience, peace and empathy with the less fortunate. Nowhere is he in favor of leading Islam to world domination - except perhaps aspirationally and spiritually. In this he saw - as many strong religious believers of other religions also do - his faith as the guiding light for all humanity. We know many Christian thinkers who thought this way at that time, of course.By contrast with Kramer's well-researched and nuanced account of al Banna, I am rather shocked at the blatant bias in Prof. Spoerl's presentation. By picking only upon the four aspects he does, he seems to portray al Banna not as a modernizer but the opposite. He sees al Banna as an Islamic supremacist and imperialist, which he clearly was not. As for anti-Semitism, Prof. Spoerl equates al Banna's opposition to the Zionist forces at work to create the state of Israel by expelling Palestinian Arabs by force of arms, with being somehow racist in his antagonism to Jews generally. But, from Kramer's account, there is no evidence whatever of this. To the contrary, al Banna could envisage a world in which the three people of the book lived in peace together. It was the political and military context of the 1930s and 1940s that pitted Zionists in Palestine against Palestinians and Arab nationalists. It is most important not to see this as racism, but as part of a political struggle.Prof. Spoerl devotes most of his note - a long section on shar'ia law - to advancing the claim that al Banna was in effect an arch-traditionalist bent on imposing strict conservative - Wahhabi style - shaar'ia as practiced in Saudi Arabia. From Kramer's book, by contrast, it is clear that al Banna was a modernist. He believed strongly in a peaceful, harmonious, egalitarian society where all had a voice and helped each other. As the beliefs and practices of the Muslim Brotherhood have shown in many decades since al Banna's assassination in 1949, the organization is committed to peaceful modernizing change and pluralism. By neglecting any mention of these important aspects, Prof. Spoerl's note appears fundamentally biased and misinformed. By giving the incorrect impression that Westerners have to fear a draconian and brutal imposition of an Islam that is repressive and harsh and retrogressive, he is both wrongly arousing anxieties about the Muslim Brotherhood government that took power in Egypt in 2011, and giving ammunition to those who would maintain the Western and Arab autocrats' suppression of their party.As has been pointed out by others, it is in fact the erroneous suppression of moderate Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood that has permitted the continuation of brutally repressive dictatorships in many Middle Eastern countries - as Egypt today. It has also left the field of political opposition narrowed to include only the truly extremist Salafist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda and Islamic Jihad. As such, Prof. Spoerl's mis-characterization is both misinforming as well as thereby potentially harmful. Hopefully, he will be persuaded to revisit and reconsider his views.

Purchased the kindle version since I had to return a loaned hard copy from a library, but then realized there is no way to keep track of page numbers when reading. Now this book is useless for my research project as I cannot properly cite page numbers from this book.

great product well packed prompt delivery Thanks!