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agents in February 1949. Despite losing its
charismatic founding leader and suffering
fierce repression which included the arrest
of four thousand members the
Brotherhood again proved resilient,
managing to retain the loyalty of
members and of its constituency.
hood to gain power. The Brotherhood
demanded power sharing and was in-
censed, among other things, over the
brother attempted to assassinate
Nasser. Or perhaps he was framed. Ei-
ther way, Nasser emerged a hero and
exploited the opportunity. He legally
dissolved the Brotherhood, had six
members hanged, imprisoned thousands, and
launched a protracted campaign of arrest and
torture that would last for a decade.
ment had not. He nationalized the Brother-
hood's social service provision network and
operated it as part of the Egyptian govern-
ment. That counterinsurgency strategy was
singularly effective: without its schools and
clinics the vast organization withered. To this
day it has not recovered its political strength
or organizational ability.
hood newspaper. In prison, Qutb developed
the extreme principles that became the basis
the Western values of individualism, colonial-
ism, capitalism and Marxism had not only
failed, they were a symptom of jahiliyya the
chaos that engulfed the world before the time
of the prophet Mohammed. This reversion to
pre-Islamic chaos had been brought on not
of the will of the Almighty.
abroad, and to establish Islamic states in their
place. Qutb preached that, under the circum-
stances, violent revolt was a religious duty,
even against Muslim nationalists. He called
on his followers to segregate Islamist commu-
nities from the secular culture until that re-
volt was feasible.
Qutb's theories, as do most Muslims. Mus-
lims generally interpret Islam as tolerant of
other cultures, permitting violence only in
self-defense and never in religious matters.