It’s significant for counter-extremism experts to understand the rise and fall of Syed Qutb’s influence, and the role of Shaikh Al-Madkhali in exposing Qutb’s Islamist ideology.

Syed Qutb, an influential Egyptian Islamist thinker and writer, left a significant impact on the development of modern Islamist ideologies. 

His Qur’anic exegesis, ‘az-Ẓilāl’, once held the status of being the most widely produced and distributed book in the field of tafsir, surpassing all other works combined.

During his time, it seemed as though no one dared to critique or question his interpretations. However, the narrative around Syed Qutb has undergone a profound examination, largely due to the efforts of Shaikh Rabi al-Madkhali.

It’s significant for counter-extremism experts to understand the rise and fall of Syed Qutb’s influence, and the role of Shaikh Al-Madkhali in exposing Qutb’s Islamist ideology., and the current state of discourse surrounding these two prominent figures within the Muslim community.

The Ascendance of Syed Qutb

Syed Qutb (1906-1966) was an Egyptian writer, thinker, and prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood. His work, particularly his Qur’anic commentary ‘az-Ẓilāl,’ gained immense popularity in the mid-20th century. The reason behind this widespread acceptance can be attributed to the political and social context of the time.

Many Muslims in the Arab world were grappling with colonialism, authoritarian rule, and a perceived decline in Islamic values. Syed Qutb’s writings resonated with those who sought a return to what they perceived as “pure” Islamic ideals.

‘Az-Ẓilāl’, which translates to “In the Shade of the Quran”, was a multi-volume tafṣīr in which Syed Qutb offered his interpretation of the Quranic text.

His approach was deeply influenced by his experiences in the United States and his subsequent critique of Western society. He argued for a radical transformation of Muslim societies, advocating for the establishment of Islamic states ruled by sharia law.

The Cult of Silence Around Syed Qutb

During the peak of Syed Qutb’s influence, a veil of silence enveloped many Muslim scholars and activists who refrained from openly critiquing or questioning his interpretations of Islam.

This hush had its roots in a complex blend of factors, including a genuine fear of reprisals from Qutb’s fervent supporters and a deep-seated apprehension that any challenge to his ideas could be perceived as undermining the broader Islamist movement.

It wasn’t until scholars like Shaikh Rabi’ al-Madkhali and others began to critically engage with Qutb’s ideas that a more open discourse emerged, reshaping the narrative surrounding his so-called legacy within contemporary Islamic thought.

The Rise of Shaikh Rabi al-Madkhali

Shaikh Rabi Bin Hadi Bin Umayr al-Madkhali (born 1933), a Saudi Arabian Islamic scholar and a leading figure in the Salafi movement, played a pivotal role in challenging and exposing Syed Qutb’s work.

His scholarly journey led him to question Qutb’s ideas, particularly those that advocated for violent revolution and the establishment of an Islamic state through force.

Shaikh Rabi’ emphasized the importance of adhering to a more traditional interpretation of Islam and critiqued Qutb’s deviation from orthodox beliefs.

Shaikh Rabi’s critiques of Qutb were grounded in rigorous scholarship and a commitment to preserving the integrity of Islamic theology. He sought to expose the flaws in Qutb’s thinking and to clarify the misunderstandings that had arisen from his writings.

The Transformation of the Discourse

Shaikh Rabi’s efforts to challenge Qutb’s ideas gradually gained traction within the Muslim scholarly community. His approach encouraged scholars and intellectuals to critically assess Qutb’s writings and the consequences of his ideology.

Over time, many scholars, including those within the broader Islamist movement, began to distance themselves from Qutb’s more radical ideas.

The impact of Shaikh Rabi’s work is reflected in the reluctance of Qutb’s followers to mention his name or openly discuss his ideas. This shift in discourse is indicative of the changing perceptions of Qutb’s legacy within contemporary Muslim thought.

The efforts of Shaikh Rabi’ al-Madkhali and other scholars have led to a reevaluation of Qutb’s ideas and their compatibility with traditional Islamic theology. While Qutb’s writings continue to have an impact on various strands of political Islam, his influence has waned considerably, and his ideas have been met with critical scrutiny.

“Yes, our roots are in Muslim Brotherhood. We were and still are Muslim Brotherhood”, Mashal said. “Iran has helped us with weapons and technology. And everyone who helped us, we thank him”.

Muslim Brotherhood is an extremist group founded in Egypt in 1928. The key-backers of the group are Qatar and Turkey, however, as of 2015 the group was declared as a terrorist organization by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Russia, and Bahrain.

The group’s literature designed by Syed Qutb and Hassan al-Banna is considered as the foundational work for terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

The Muslim Brotherhood association with the Qatari regime helped accelerate the MB plans, thanks to the limitless funds by Qatar.

The 9/11 attacks of September 2001 were not a single secluded event, the attacks tie into past and present events, and the players who believe in the extremist Islamist ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and Sayed Qutb.

Among the strongest believers in the teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood was the Iranian Supreme leader Imam AlKhomeini.

The image below shows the love and cooperation between Sayed Qutb and Mahabati Nawab Safawi who was one of the most important players in the Khomeinist revolution.

Now you can see that the Sufi Muslim Brotherhood and the Shiite Iranian regime were never enemies, in fact they were best of friends, unlike how they are shown to be in the main stream media.

The Pan Arab Baathism, PLO, Mufti Husayni’s Arab Nazis and Socialist all are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood in very complex ways and relationships of power structures that are built on hate and ideas of racial, religious and sectarian supremacy.

By early 1999, Al-Qaeda was already a potent adversary of the United States, but since the early 90s both Saudi Arabia and Egypt who are America’s allies in the Middle East were the main targets of this terrorist group in the Middle East.

Osama Bin Laden and his chief of operations, Abu Hafs al Masri, also known as Mohammed Atef, occupied undisputed leadership positions atop Qaeda’s organizational structure.

Within this structure, Qaeda’s worldwide terrorist operations relied heavily on the ideas and work of enterprising and strong-willed field commanders who enjoyed considerable autonomy.

To understand how the organization worked and to introduce the origins of the 9/11 plot, I briefly examined three of these subordinate commanders: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) 9/11, Riduan Isamuddin (better known as Hambali) Bali bombing, and Abd al Rahim al Nashiri USS Cole.

We will focus on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the so-called chief leader of the “planes operations”. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, no one exemplifies the model of the terrorist fanatic leader more clearly than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The principal architect of the 9/11 attacks.

KSM followed a rather tortuous path to his eventual membership in Al-Qaeda. KSM a highly educated and equally comfortable in a government office job in Qatar and a terrorist asset to the Qatari regime at the time.

KSM applied his sick and twisted imagination, technical aptitude, and administrative skills to hatching and planning an extraordinary array of terrorist schemes.

These ideas included conventional car bombing, political assassinations, aircraft bombing, hijacking, reservoir poisoning, smuggling Al-Qaeda key members into other countries using Qatari passports and, ultimately, the use of aircraft as missiles guided by suicide soldiers.

Like his nephew Ramzi Yousef (three years KSM’s junior), KSM grew up in Kuwait but traces his ethnic lineage to the Baluchistan region straddling Iran and Pakistan. Raised in a religious family, KSM joined the Muslim Brotherhood at age 16.

KSM and Ramzi both became enamored of violent jihadist ideology at youth camps in the Kuwaiti desert organized by the Muslim Brotherhood of Kuwait in the early 80s.

KSM left Kuwait to enroll at Chowan College, a small Baptist school in Murfreesboro, North Carolina. After a semester at Chowan, KSM transferred to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, which he attended with Yousef’s brother.

KSM earned a degree in mechanical engineering in December 1986. Although he apparently did not attract attention for extreme Islamist beliefs or activities while in the United States. KSM plunged into the anti-Soviet Afghan Jihad soon after graduating from college.

Visiting Pakistan for the first time in early 1987, he traveled to Peshawar, where his brother Zahid introduced him to the famous Afghan Mujahid Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, head of the Hizbul-Ittihad El-Islami (Islamic Union Party).

The Hamas Connection—Sayyaf became KSM’s mentor and provided KSM with military training at Sayyaf’s Sada camp. KSM claims he then fought the Soviets and remained at the front for three months before being summoned to perform administrative duties for Abdullah Azzam.

KSM then took a job working for an electronics firm that catered to the communications needs of Afghan groups, where he learned about drills used to excavate caves in Afghanistan.

Between 1988 and 1992, KSM helped run a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Peshawar and Jalalabad, sponsored by Sayyaf. He was finally in, as a man the Islamists can trust and invest in his ambitious and successful business practices.

NGO’s play a significant role in the financing and logistics support for terrorist organizations. NGO’s is a tool in the arsenal of terrorism that yet to be successfully controlled by world governments fighting terrorism because of how complex they tend to be.

The NGO, KSM worked for was designed to aid young Afghan mujahideen. In 1992, KSM spent some time fighting alongside the mujahideen in Bosnia and supporting that effort with financial donations. After returning briefly to Pakistan, he moved his family to Qatar.

The rise of the new terrorist dynamic, Qatar, Iran and Muslim Brotherhood Europe setup for the domain of the Middle East and the world

KSM finally found his calling and moved to Qatar at the suggestion of his good friend the former minister of Islamic affairs of Qatar, Sheikh Abdallah bin Khalid bin Hamad al Thani who saw the huge potential of KSM as a power piece to further expand the Qatari influence.

KSM took a position in Qatar as project engineer with the Qatari Ministry of Electricity and Water, in what was a clear cover job for KSM. KSM engaged in extensive international travel during his tenure at the ministry much of it in furtherance of terrorist activity.

KSM used his position to expand the Qatari network of “NGO’s” and would hold his position there until early 1996, when he fled to Pakistan with the aid of the Qatari government to avoid capture by U.S. authorities.

After Hamad Bin Khalifa assumed role in Qatar a huge spike in terrorism around the Middle East and the world spiked, the Muslim Brotherhood association with the Qatari regime helped accelerate the MB plans, thanks to the limitless funds by Qatar.

The first attack on American soil was carried by the Palestinian 69-year-old Palestinian immigrant Ali Hassan Abu Kamal opened fire on the observation deck of the Empire State Building killing a Danish musician and injuring six other people before committing suicide.

The Mostar attack that was carried out by Al-Qaeda, and targeted Croatian civilians and policemen as retribution against the Croatian Defence Council (HVO), which had fought Muslim forces for control of the city during the Bosnian War.

In Deir el-Bahari, Egypt, six Islamist gunmen from the MB military arm Gamaat Alislam Iya massacred 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians at the Temple of Hatshepsut.

Uyghyr separatists bombed three buses in Ürümqi, killing nine people, including three children, and injuring 74. Another bomb was found at Ürümqi’s main railway station but was defused.

Coimbatore bombings took place in 1998 in India. 13 bombs exploded over the course of two hours in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, killing 58 people. The bombs were planted by Islamic extremists Al Ummah organization and were meant to target Hindus as well as Hindu nationalist leader L.K. Advani.

Two United States Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania were bombed by members of Al-Qaeda and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad an Muslim Brotherhood affiliate. 224 people were killed in the blasts (213 in Nairobi, 11 in Dar es Salaam) and over 4,000 people were wounded.

According to the Federal Security Service, the bombings utilized a mechanical mixture of Aluminium powder and Ammonia nitrate as the explosive.

Hezbollah’s favorite bombing method and one of their most commonly used to carry on attacks.

The terrorists have received instruction in training centers run by Khattab and Basayev in Chechnya.

1999 Tashkent bombings: Six car bombs targeting government buildings and Uzbek president Islam Karimov exploded over the course of an hour and a half.

1999 Jessore bombings: Islamist group Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami used two time bombs to attack Bangladesh Udichi Shilpigoshthi, killing 10 people and injuring another 150.

The paradigm shift in terrorism, the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide efforts are aligned: The target is America

In December 1999–January 2000. Hambali accommodated KSM’s requests to help several veterans whom KSM had just finished training in Karachi Pakistan.

They included Tawfiq bin Attash, also known as Khallad a handler who organize, recruit and carry on directive and administrative roles for Al-Qaeda attacks, he later would help bomb the USS Cole, and the future 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar.

A three-day-long meeting was held in the hotel room of Yazid Sufaat, a former Malaysian Army captain and businessman, in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

The summit’s purpose was to plan future attacks, which included the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and the 11 September 2001 attack plot. The attendance consisted of Arab veterans of the Soviet–Afghan War.

Among the most notable was Hambali a Pakistani senior leader of Al-Qaeda, Ramzi bin al-Shibh a Yemeni, and a “key facilitator for the September 11 attacks”, Nawaf al-Hazmi a Saudi fighter, Khalid al-Mihdhar a Yemeni-Saudi fighter, and Tawfiq bin Attash a handler for Al-Qaeda.

Before the meeting, the United States intercepted a telephone call to Yemen by al-Mihdhar concerning arrangements for the trip. Osama bin Laden had called that number dozens of times.

On request of the CIA, the Malaysian authorities videotaped the meeting, but no sound recordings were made. Are you frigging kidding me?

The men were also photographed when they came out of the meeting. American investigators did not identify these men until much later. That Bin al-Shibh attended the meeting, and it was discovered by the investigators by looking into his credit card records.

Sufaat was later arrested, but he denied that he knew any of the men and said that Hambali had arranged the meeting.

Do look at the facts, the planner of the 911 attack was a Pakistani with ties to Qatar KSM, the facilitators were Yemanis Attash and AlShibah, and the recruiting was done by a German Syrian Mohammed Haydar Zammar who was part of the Hamburg cell.

The German Connection

On November 1, 1998, future-hijackers Mohamed Atta an Egyptian member of Al-Qaeda and the leader of the hijackers, Marwan al-Shehhi an Emarati hijacker-pilot of United Airlines Flight 175, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh a Yemeni facilitator for AlQaeda moved into an apartment together on Marienstraße.

Here they formed the secretive Hamburg cell, which also included other participants in the 9/11 plot including Mohammed Haydar Zammar who recruited the hijackers.

They met together three or four times a week to discuss their strategy and the anti-American and anti-Israeli views that enabled them to recruit foot soldiers.

The 9/11 Commission Report notes in Chapter 5 that, “According to Bin al-Shibh now in U.S. custody, a chance meeting on a train in Germany caused the group to travel to Afghanistan instead. An individual named Khalid al Masri (or Khalid al-Masri) approached bin al-Shibh and Shehhi (because they were Arabs with beards, bin al-Shibh thinks) and struck up a conversation about jihad in Chechnya.

“When they later called Masri and expressed well in going to Chechnya, he told them to contact Abu Musab in Duisburg. Abu Musab turned out to be Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a significant Al-Qaeda operative who, even then, was well known to U.S. and German intelligence, though neither government apparently knew he was operating in Germany in late 1999”.

For me, that’s the load of non-sense as the sequence of events shows it was planned. Moreover, it makes no sense since Abu Musab is a key player and leading figure of Al-Qaeda who is well recognized since the med 80s, he was also on the most wanted lists of Saudi, Egyptian and American intelligence agencies at the time.

9/11 Hijackers and the Recruiter

Zammar’s family moved to Germany when he was 10, and he first tried to participate in armed conflict in 1982, far earlier than has previously been reported.

He traveled to Jordan in an attempt to enter Syria to join the armed wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Fighting Vanguard, which was engaged in an earlier uprising against the ruling Assad family.

He was turned back by the Jordanian authorities, but on the trip he met a man who would play a big role in his future: Mohammed al-Bahaiya, known as Abu Khaled al-Suri, who would later become a key figure in the current Syrian war.

Over the next decade, Zammar moved through the militant-Islamist circuit, traveling regularly to Afghanistan, volunteering for a stint with al-Qaeda-affiliated militants in the war in Bosnia and visiting London where he befriended the Jordanian Palestinian preacher Abu Qatada, a prominent figure long suspected by the United States of having links to Al-Qaeda.

Meanwhile, Zammar was developing a circle of followers at Hamburg’s al-Quds mosque, which had become a magnet for young Muslims in the city and eventually the hub of radicalization of young men and recruiting them as cannon fodder in the service of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Zammar says he failed to qualify as an imam or preacher at the mosque because he was unable to memorize the Koran, but he held regular gatherings with small groups of the men who went there to pray, seeking to convince them that they had a duty to wage jihad on behalf of Muslims worldwide and to travel to Afghanistan for military training.

The first member of the Hamburg cell, he remembers meeting Ramzi Binalshibh a known facilitator that outrank Zammar. Next he met Mohamed Atta, the hijackers’ ringleader, who piloted the first of the two planes that struck the World Trade Center towers.

Zammar recalls Atta as a “good guy” with “high moral standards”. Then came the others: Marwan al-Shehhi, a citizen of the United Arab Emirates who steered the plane that struck the second tower. Ziad Samir Jarrah, the Lebanese who piloted the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers overpowered the hijackers, and four others from the group whom Zammar also persuaded to travel to Afghanistan.

Zammar says, “It was not easy. It took time. They were studying at the university”, he said. “I was telling them, for example, someone is going to attack you, your honor, your property, while you cannot even use a pistol. There is no country in the world that does not have an army to defend itself, while we Muslims do not”.

Notice his words are that aligned with the creed of the Muslim Brotherhood. Zammar claims he didn’t know, obviously he is lying.

The hijackers arrival to the United States and the attacks of 9/11 zero hour

The first hijackers to arrive in the United States were Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who settled in San Diego County, California, in January 2000.

They were followed by three hijacker-pilots, Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah in mid-2000 to undertake flight training in South Florida.

The fourth hijacker-pilot, Hani Hanjour, arrived in San Diego in December 2000. The rest of the “muscle hijackers” arrived in early- and mid-2001. Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi were both experienced and respected jihadists in the eyes of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

As for the pilots who would go on to participate in the attacks, three of them were original members of the Hamburg cell (Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah).

Following their training at Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, they were chosen by Bin Laden and al-Qaeda’s military wing due to their extensive knowledge of western culture and language skills, increasing the mission’s operational security and its chances for success.

The fourth intended pilot, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a member of the Hamburg cell, was also chosen to participate in the attacks yet was unable to obtain a visa for entry into the United States. He was later replaced by Hani Hanjour, a Saudi national.

Mihdhar and Hazmi were also potential pilot hijackers, but did not do well in their initial pilot lessons in San Diego. Both were kept on as “muscle” hijackers, who would help overpower the passengers and crew and allow the pilot hijackers to take control of the flights.

In addition to Mihdhar and Hazmi, thirteen other muscle hijackers were selected in late 2000 or early 2001. All were from Saudi Arabia, with the exception of Fayez Banihammad, who was from the United Arab Emirates.

The Root of all Evil

Please watch this video for the conclusion of what all I said. The root of all evil are Iran and Qatar.

It’s very evident and quite obvious that, a Muslim Brotherhood or popularly known as Ikhwanul-Muslimeen in the Arab world was the back-bone in terms of ideological upbringing and the armed-support of the terrorists and terrorist organizations. The international communities have to wake up to this reality and collectively defeat this ideology in order to defeat modern terrorism.

Khaled Homoud Alshareef holds PhD in Business and he earned Masters in Philosophy. He often writes about Islamism, Islamist factions and modern Terrorism. He tweets under @0khalodi0.

The American bet on the Brotherhood returned again with the entry of the new millennium…

All evidence confirms that terrorism and the Brotherhood organization are two sides of the same coin. The Brotherhood has pursued a method of murder rooted in the hands of their leader Hassan Al-Banna nearly 90 years ago that still governs the organization’s ideas until now.

History confirms that for decades the Brotherhood did not abandon the idea of ​​bloodshed, so all terrorist organizations emerged from the womb of the Brotherhood and gathered them together as a single jurisprudential cloak and employed texts in favor of the Brotherhood murder project, so Egypt and our Arab region suffered from a series of assassinations and terrorist operations that claimed lives throughout history.

With the year 2011, the Brotherhood began writing a new chapter in the history of the killing, even after they seized power in Egypt and many crimes committed by the terrorist organization after the June 30 revolution.

A black history of the Brotherhood over more than 90 years, from their inception in 1928 with the support and funding of the British, to their strategic alliance with the United States of America in recent decades to achieve common interests.

In 1936, the British offered a grant to the founder of the Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, with the aim of supporting and expanding the group’s activities to strike the ranks of the national movement at this time.

In March 1954, Eisenhower met the thirty-fourth President of the United States, the top leaders of Islamic movements around the world, and this is what the American writer Robert Dreyfus explains in his famous book “The Devil’s Game”.

Among those whom Grandfather Eisenhower met was a young Egyptian in his twenties, “Said Ramadan”, who is the son-in-law of Hassan Al-Banna and the husband of his youngest daughter, and the father of Tariq Al-Banna, a Muslim Brotherhood preacher who was arrested months ago in France and charged with sexual rape. More than 27 years at that time, but the American administration found its way in this young man who had at least 10 years of experience in Islamic groups and their armed organizations in the Middle East, and this experience extended from Cairo to Karachi and Amman.

The United States saw that the Brotherhood at that time could be an advanced tool and spearhead in Arab countries and some of the Asian countries in which Islam is spreading to confront communism, and despite that, communism spread and the group failed America and its plan against communism at its time.

Despite this, the American-Brotherhood relations continued and Ramadan moved after that to Switzerland, and the beginnings of the establishment of the international organization of the Brotherhood, and the Brotherhood at that time expanded and became the organizational sponsor for successive generations of extremist groups that emerged from the womb of the terrorist group and expanded in many Arab and Western countries, and over the four decades that after the meeting of Ramadan and Eisenhower, the first turned into an activist figure in various fields, all of which unfortunately were devoted to presenting Islam as an extremist, heavenly version, but it originated among its followers of these ideas, and from here extremist Muslims appeared in Pakistan, and provided a safe haven for Al Qaeda in the 1990s.

The American bet on the Brotherhood returned again with the entry of the new millennium, specifically with the rise of US President Barack Obama, and the group was able to reach power in Egypt in 2012 after January 25, 2011, which the Brotherhood used to implement their plans.

Despite all support, according to Michael Walker, a researcher at the London Center for Research and Studies, there is a secret presidential document bearing No. 11 issued by the former US president, Barack Obama, that explained the strategic relationship of the United States and its alliance with the Brotherhood, to bring about change in the Middle East and everywhere in the world.

The recent leaked Hillary Clinton documents revealed the Brotherhood’s recruitment to achieve US interests in Egypt and the region, and the exchange of private messages between the organization and the Obama administration.

For his part, Dr. Ikram Badr al-Din, a professor of political science, said that the Brotherhood sold their country to achieve the benefit they found with the Americans, noting that the Obama administration had earlier taken the Brotherhood as a strategic ally in the region, and betting on the group’s rule in Egypt to be the tool of the United States in the entire Arab region, and to achieve the scheme of division and influence the nation state.

Details of the establishment of “Hasm” and why did Washington not list the Brotherhood as a terrorist group?

A meeting of the Egyptian Brotherhood leaders in Istanbul, in which they decided to establish the movement and train its members through Turkish intelligence in Sudan and Malaysia decisively puts Turkey and the Brotherhood against America. The Brotherhood denied its relationship with its terrorist cell and the American administration stated that its leaders are the Brotherhood and Turkish institutions are threatened with freezing their funds because of their relationship with Samahi, Moussa and the blood leaders.

The US State Department has included “Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis” group, the ISIS branch in Sinai, Egypt, and the “Egyptian arms movement” known as “Hasm” on the list of global terrorism.

The classification also included personalities associated with the “Hasm” organization, namely, Alaa Al-Samahi, the founder of the movement, who is Egyptian and currently in Turkey, and another leader in the movement called Yahya Moussa, who also resides in Turkey.

Here, an important question arises, which is if the movement affiliated with the group was included in the terrorist lists, then why was it not, by extension, that the planner and the financier, the “Brotherhood” group, was included and classified as a terrorist group?

The details of the establishment of the movement start from the year 2014, when the Brotherhood leaders who fled to Turkey agreed to revive the armed action of the group inside Egypt, through the formation of a new armed organization that takes several names such as “Egypt’s Arms” and “The Revolution Brigade”, and selecting its members who have the foundations. Physical and psychological elements of the revolutionary movement, and their inclusion of armed combat groups and their training inside and outside Egypt, and assigning them later to target institutions and symbols of the state to weaken the system and cause safe chaos.

The Egyptian security services revealed information that the leaders of the group residing in Turkey, namely Yahya al-Sayed Ibrahim Muhammad Musa, a teacher at the Faculty of Medicine at Al-Azhar University, Mahmoud Muhammad Fathi Badr, an engineer, Ahmed Muhammad Abdul-Rahman, a doctor, Ali al-Sayyid Ahmad Batikh, a doctor, and Jamal Heshmat Abdel Hamid, a doctor, Qadri Muhammad Fahmy Mahmoud al-Sheikh, a pharmacist, and Salah al-Din Khaled Salah al-Din Fateen, a communications engineer. The aforementioned met in Istanbul, and decided to form an operations room abroad to coordinate with leaders of the group fleeing inside Egypt, including Muhammad Muhammad Kamal al-Din, a doctor from Assiut governorate and responsible for the quality committees within the group. Muhammad Rafiq Ibrahim Manna, a journalist from Alexandria governorate, and Magdy Musleh Shalash, a teacher Faculty of Studies at Al-Azhar University, Hamdi Taha Abdel-Rahim, a former member of the People’s Assembly during the Muslim Brotherhood era, and Mohamed Fouad.

All agreed to implement the mandate of the group’s senior leaders to form an armed military wing under the name “Hasm”. The information indicated that the leaders of the group agreed that Turkish intelligence agents would combat training in training camps in the State of Sudan during the regime of ousted President Omar al-Bashir, in camps in the Burri and Azhari neighborhoods in the capital Khartoum, and other camps in the city of Atbara. Its responsibility is assumed by the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Tariq Syed Ahmed Abd al-Wahhab Farraj, while it was found that the members of the movement had been trained on intelligence work in Malaysia and Turkey.

It was agreed that Yahya al-Sayyid Ibrahim Musa, Ahmed Muhammad Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Hadi, and Alaa Ali Ali al-Samahi would assume the actual and field leadership of the movement.

The information confirmed that Brotherhood officials had chosen the group’s members who were physically and psychologically prepared, and equipped them to carry out terrorist operations and assassinations.

The movement began to carry out several operations in Egypt, including the assassination of Counselor Hisham Barakat, the former Public Prosecutor, the attempt to assassinate Dr. Ali Gomaa, the former Mufti of Egypt, the failed assassination attempt of Counselor Zakaria Abdulaziz Othman, the Assistant Public Prosecutor and Director of the Judicial Inspection Department at the Public Prosecution, and the attack on the police ambush Agizi in Menoufia.

Political researcher Ahmed Al-Bakri says that classifying the Hasm movement as a terrorist organization at a time when everyone knows that it is one of the military arms of the Muslim Brotherhood requires by extension the inclusion of the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, adding that since 2017 there have been discussions in America to include “Hasm” a terrorist organization, and the decision was issued.

After 4 years, which implies that the group should be on the list of terrorism and its inclusion and classification as a terrorist organization in the near future, especially since all information confirms the affiliation of the movement to the Brotherhood.

He added that the US administration included the branches on the list of terrorism, and the original Brotherhood group is still far from being classified, stressing that the Egyptian security services have succeeded in dismantling “Hasm” and aborted all their plans, and the movement has become non-existent or active on the ground since 2019, but the parent organization is still The Brotherhood is present, and it is possible to reproduce its armed and military arms with new names instead of those listed on the lists of terrorism.

He said that the ideal decision that everyone awaits is the inclusion of the Brotherhood as a terrorist group, for they are the root of the affliction, and the birthplace of all groups of violence and darkness, and from which all armed movements branched out.

He concluded by saying that the decision to include “Hasm” a terrorist organization is worthless, because there is virtually no presence on the ground in Egypt or in the world there is a movement called Hasm, while there is a terrorist group in the whole world and in Egypt that carries arms and produces violence that takes lives called “Brotherhood”.

Waleed Al-Ghamdi is Saudi-based independent researcher and political analyst. He tweets under @nofr2021.

Syed Qutb never offered Friday prayers, and used to say unless the Khilafah is established there is no obligation of Friday prayers.

Alot of people listen to the speeches of Dr. Israr Ahmed, however they are not aware of his understanding and methodology. It is said that in religious affairs and judgements, he explains the problems in an appreciable manner beyond emulating the established denominations. Quite right. However, his creed “Aqeedah”, political thought process and methodology contain deviancy.

Dr. Israr’s affinity with Jamat Islami is similar to that of Syed Qutb’s with Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen (Musim Brotherhood). Therefore, the moment Syed Abulala Maududi flipped from his earlier ideology to embrace and pursue democratic politics, Dr. Israr left his side to form his own separate revolutionary organization called Tanzeem Islami.

As long as Dr. Israr lived, he believed all Muslim governments to be in the hands of and manipulated by the “Taghoots” meaning false gods referring to every Muslim government who is in alliance with western countries, thereby seeking the end of those governments through revolutions.

This is why he presented as model states two countries, one Iran where Khomenei established his government through Shiite revolution – one Dr. Israr considered an Islamic revolution. Similarly, the one in Sudan where an army revolt established an Ikhwani government of Ikhwani Hassan Tarabi.

Likewise, Hassan Banna formed a revolutionary organization initially by the name of Dawah Party, but after 20 years began to participate in politics … and befooling the nation demanded to establish Shariah through parliamentary democracy.

Syed Qutb first entered Jamat but later formed a separate revolutionary organization called the Organization 65, the aim of which was to overthrow the Egyptian government through rebellion.

Afterwards, this organization carried out attacks and bombings on a large scale but to their failure, and alot of people affiliated to the organization including Syed Qutb were arrested. Syed Qutb was hanged for these very crimes of his after confessions.

He also believed there existed no Islamic government, and that all were slaves of Taghoot. This was the reason why Syed Qutb never offered Friday prayers, and used to say unless the Khilafah is established there is no obligation of Friday prayers.

This should be known that Syed Qutb and Dr. Israr are held in reverence amongst the Shittes.

On the other hand, just as Syed Qutb carried the dogma of وحدت الوجود or pantheism, so was Dr. Israr convinced of this very creed, and atheists support this creed of Ibn Arabi too.

Originally written in Urdu by Dr. Ajmal Manzoor Madani, translated by Afreen Baig.

Bahgat Saber who has 143,197 followers on Facebook, vowed that if he gets sick with coronavirus, he will go to the Egyptian consulate in New York to infect everyone he can. He then urged his followers who are sick with coronavirus or any flu to purposefully meet the government and intelligence officials, police and military officers to infect them.

He made the speech in Arabic for his fellow Brotherhood members, which was later translated in English by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Saber said, “Whoever has flu-like symptoms – cold, fever, sneezing – should pay a visit to his ‘friends’ who work for Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s government. The moment you get flu-like symptoms like a cold or a fever, go to the public prosecution office that is closest to your house”.

“Go to any building where they might illegally incarcerate people. If you can, go to a building of the Security Investigations Service, and if you can’t, just wait for them and sneeze on their cars when they pass by”, he added.

Saber claimed that coronavirus will topple Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and God will be doing anything for them if they properly make use of the situation to infect others.

Muslim Brotherhood is an extremist group founded in Egypt in 1928. The key-backers of the group are Qatar and Turkey, however, as of 2015 the group was declared as a terrorist organization by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Russia, and Bahrain. The group’s literature designed by Syed Qutb and Hassan al-Banna is referred as foundational work for terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

The two key concepts these thinkers borrowed from Leninism were the “state” and “revolution”.

Radical and revolutionary Islam, which emerged as reactions to colonialism, were inspired more by socialist values than by liberal democratic values, and they formulated their principles in line with this outlook. It was common in the Islamic world until the 1980s to consider Islam as a source of ideology as well as a revolutionary ideology.

It was particularly the Iranian revolution, which became and inspirational reference for Islamic movements at that time. In this period, Islam was taken by Muslim thinkers of Iranian origin as well as by those of North African origin, almost as a kind of state religion, a revolutionary ideology, and a theocratic political structure.

Such interpretations of Islam can be traced back, in the case of some North African countries, to the period between the second half of the nineteenth century and up to the first half of the twentieth century.

At that point in time, Muslim countries began to suffer a long period of painful setback in the face of the incredible economic growth and development western countries were experiencing. 

Moreover, the colonial ambitions of western countries directly over Islamic territories evoked strong reactions from Muslim thinkers of North Africa who began to think in terms of Leninism. This explains a great deal about the distance, which Muslims began to feel toward liberalism, democracy, capitalism, and other similar systems and ideas.

The two key concepts these thinkers borrowed from Leninism were the “state” and “revolution”. It was in their view, the state that symolized social justice, social unity, and the struggle against the West. Such a state could only be established through revolution, this being under the leadership of a pioneering group.

The works of Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian Islamic intellectual who was hanged by the Nasser regime in 1966, for instance, emphasize the role of a revolutionary group. 

Largely on account of his Leninist background, Qutb envisaged the establishment of an Islamic state by means of a revolution led by a specially trained group versed in Islamic values. The project towards the creation of such a group, indeed, can be seen as an attempt to replace Lenin’s proletariat vanguards with their Muslim counterparts. For Qutb, the salvation of Muslims, as well as the entirety of humanity depended on an Islamic state that would represent a third way, i.e., an alternative to socialism and capitalism.

Although critical of socialism, many Islamic intellectuals, as in the case of Sayyid Qutb, operated on values that might be combined with a Leninist style of state socialism in some form through its emphasis on collective brotherhood, revolution, equality, salvation, a centralized state, anticapitalism, and antidemocracy amongst others.

Hence, both authoritarian regimes and Muslim intellectuals with a first-hand experience of colonial domination completely refused the West, and sought to set up alternative institutions, which were authoritarian in character. 

When realizing the traditional interpretations of Islam fell short of enabling the deployment of adequate means by which to resolve existing problems, they began to borrow concepts and perspectives from Russian socialism, which was anticapitalist and antiliberalist in character, to develop an Islamic myth as an alternative.

Thought the writer is writing from the perspective of explaining the lack of democracy, or opposition to democracy in the Muslim lands, his analysis of the origins of ideologies based upon the notions of “state” and “revolution” and borrowed from Russian Bolshevism are extremely accurate.

This can be seen in the likes of Abu A’la Mawdudi and very clearly in the writings of Sayyid Qutb.

Excerpt taken from Islam and the West, Critical Perspectives on Modernity” (compiled by Michael Thompson), Omer Caha writes (pp. 44-45).