THE ROOTS OF TERRORISM: PART 4

USPA NEWS - The movements of political Islam, specifically the Muslim Brotherhood, have started to appear since the first half of the twentieth century as a result of a number of changes and situations at the Arab and Islamic level, the most important of which are:

1.The fall of the last experience of Islamic history in ensuring the political limit that guarantees Islamic unity, namely the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924, which represents the center of the Islamic Caliphate in the world, which is considered the largest international event in the twentieth century.
2.The Turks abandon the caliphate and move towards building a modern Turkish state based on the European model, which is constructed on the separation of religion and state.
3.The issuance of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to establish a national home for the Jews in Palestine and the Sykes-Picot treaties to divide Islamic countries among colonial states.
4.The beginning of the comprehensive Western attack against the Arab and Islamic nation, which was an attack that consisted of military and intellectual invasions, campaigns of dismantling and fragmentation, imposing dependency and erasing identity, after the subjugation of Egypt and other Arab countries, under the control of Britain and France.
5.The spread of democratic principles in many parts of the world has made people and governments demand national independence, call for liberation, and call for the establishment of parliaments.

The previous events and their intellectual and political implications represented the beginning of thinking to formulate an ideological project based on a religious basis, to confront the results of these developments. So the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928 was one of the manifestations of this project, as Hassan al-Banna's establishment of the group was not spontaneous, but according to planning and arrangement. Many international and regional parties contributed to its implementation, most notably the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where Al-Banna received moral and financial support from King Abdulaziz Al Saud, the founder of the third Saudi state. Al-Banna also received financial support from Britain at the time. In addition to the great financial support, that Hassan Al-Banna was receiving at the beginning of the establishment of the group in the Ismailia Governorate in Egypt from some officials and notables, according to Hassan Al-Banna's admission of this in his notes published in his book (Memoirs of the Call and the Preacher).

And since the religious factor is one of the most important factors affecting the political and social arena in the various stages of the history of the Islamic world, and given the importance of the Islamic religion in the movement and development of Islamic societies in general. So the movements of political Islam exploited religion and worked on its basis, as the movements of political Islam relied on Islamic principles and references. So that the description of fundamentalism refers to those movements and ideologies that assumed a relationship between the Islamic religion and the state, meaning that the state must apply the beliefs of the Islamic religion, foremost of which is Sharia, to all aspects of social, economic and political life.

In the same context, the movements of political Islam originated in the same environment that suffered from poverty, deprivation, marginalization, and lack of social justice, which made it stronger in adopting a societal project in which the Islamic religion is adopted to effect change, and moving towards the politicization of religious work. It constitutes from itself the main opposition force to political authority. After it was able to impose a renewed presence in the field of social and political relations in Arab and Islamic countries, as a major actor in shaping its public scene, so that it is no longer possible to objectively express the state of the political movement in isolation from the movements of political Islam, which today play an influential role in political life for Muslims.

Here it is possible to refer to the role of Muslim scholars and religious leaders, as countries of the Islamic world still suffer from a decrease in political awareness and an exacerbation of illiteracy, and this is what made clerics represent the conscious-oriented elite in Muslim societies. In addition, their status as religious leaders gave them a great influence in their societies. There are also some religious scholars, who have political activities and have a basic role in political decision-making, and their “fatwas” have played an important role in some political events.

Based on the foregoing, political Islam, with its various groups and organizations, has formed and is still an influential phenomenon in events and policies in the Middle East and the world. The decision-making circles in the world have begun to pay attention to the phenomenon in order to know it and how to deal with it in the future, especially after the recent transformations in the Arab world. As political Islam, groups topped the front, and it seemed as though they would control the political scene, specifically after the Arab Spring protests, so interest in these groups increased locally and internationally, especially with regard to the credibility of the slogans that they promoted during the popular protests, slogans that emphasized the values of freedom and democracy.