Brooke, Steven, and Neil Ketchley. "Social and Institutional Origins of Political Islam". American Political Science Review, Vol.112, No.2 (2018): 376-394.

Brooke, Steven, and Neil Ketchley. "Social and Institutional Origins of Political Islam". American Political Science Review, Vol.112, No.2 (2018): 376-394.

• Mass movements focused around Islam mobilized globally during the first decades of the 20th Century and were important players in many nationalist and anti-colonial movements. After independence, they were important in organizing political parties, developing extensive social welfare systems, and, occasionally, engaging in violent struggles (376).
• These groups could include hundreds of thousands of members and included the Khalifat movement in India, Sarekat Islam in Indonesia, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (377).
• The authors seek to test the validity of three common claims about Islamist movements by comparing these assumptions to the realities of early Islamist movements in Egypt. The claims are that Islamist groups grew out of areas within preexisting underground political and social movements, that Islamism originated in response to contact with Europeans and Christian missionaries, and that the spread of Islamism was determined by existing infrastructure (376).
• The methodology of this study is detailed on pages 376, 377, 380, 381, 382, 383, 384, 385, and 386.
• Islamism was more likely to develop in areas with higher rates of literacy and more non-agriculture workers, and in areas connected by railways. Christian missionary activities had no effect on the spread of Islamism. Islamism was less common, however, in areas with significant European populations or large numbers of state employees (377, 391).
• The authors also consider a number of other related claims about the factors responsible for the growth and attraction of Islamism:
• The early 1900s saw the growth of urbanization in the Muslim world, accompanied by the expansion of modern educational systems and widespread print journalism. It is claimed that this expansion of literacy resulted in the conditions for new political movements, including Islamism (377, 387).
• This proposition is strongly supported. Muslim Brotherhood branches were significantly more common in areas with rates of literacy (383).
• Many scholars have claimed that Islamism was particularly popular among recent immigrants to urban areas, who were cut off from traditional social connections. Islamism attracted these marginalized populations, while strong connections to folk Islam made rural areas resistant to Islamism (377-378).
• These views are not supported in Egypt. Muslim Brotherhood branches were actually must less common in cities with large and recent population growth (383).
• The incorporation of Muslim areas into colonial capitalist economies, and in particular driven by the material needs of WWI, led to the destruction of traditional rural economies. Islamism both provided a response to the declining economic position of Muslims and gave Islamists access to the movement's social welfare system (378, 387).
• Areas with more non-agricultural workers and with higher rates of unemployment were more likely to have populations that joined the Muslim Brotherhood (383).
• Direct experience and contact with Europeans may have driven individuals to join Islamist movements, since it was in exposure to Western businesses and institutions that exploitation was most keenly felt. This would explain why the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Ismailia, a city built to resemble European capitals and with a large European population (378, 387).
• This notion is not supported by data. Muslim Brotherhood branches were actually significantly less likely in areas with large European populations (383).
• The foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood is Ismailia is then an anomaly. This makes sense since significant European populations had existed in Egypt for decades, so the sudden appearance of resentment against this population in the 1920s would have been strange (387).
• Christian missionary activities has been viewed as particularly provocative to local Muslim populations, resulting in greater numbers of Muslims adopting Islamism. This is supported by the frequency of the Muslim Brotherhood's press attacks on missionaries (378).
• Missionary presence had no statistically significant effect on the likelihood of the local population joining the Muslim Brotherhood (383).
• Muslims often felt like they were being discriminated against in favour of non-Muslim minorities, in particular Christians and Jews. If these religious tensions made Islamism more appealing to Muslims, then it more Islamists would be expected in areas with a significant non-Muslim population (378).
• The presence of larger non-Muslim religious minorities had no statistically significant impact on the likelihood of the local population joining the Muslim Brotherhood (383-384).
• Islamist movements frequently created extensive social welfare organizations, often in areas without many state services. These social welfare movements attracted political support for Islamism. If these organizations were the primary reason for people to support Islamism, then it should be more common in areas with weak state services (379, 387).
• The appeal of the Muslim Brotherhood was greater in areas were the Egyptian state had less presence, with more people joining the Muslim Brotherhood in areas with fewer state employees (384, 387).
• Mass movements, including Islamist ones like the Muslim Brotherhood, depend on modern transportation infrastructure to maintain connections and organizational integrity. Islamist groups should, therefore, be stronger in regions connected by steamboats, telegraphs, and railways (379, 388).
• Railways were especially important in allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to expand its organization. Towns connected to Cairo by railway were almost four-times as likely to have a Muslim Brotherhood branch than towns without rail links (384).
• The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Ismailia in 1928, drawing on intellectual traditions from the late 19th Century that made critiques of modern society from a Muslim perspective. It became enormously successful and at one point maintained branches in nearly every Muslim country (379).
• The Brotherhood's founder, Hassan al-Banna, arrived in Ismailia in 1927 as an Arabic teacher. He inveighed against the passive and apolitical Islam practised in the city and attracted a large number of followers. In 1928, he and six of his students founded the Muslim Brotherhood (379).
• The Brotherhood soon spread across the towns along the Suez Canal and then nationally. In 1933, Hassan al-Banna moved the group's headquarters to Cairo (379). In Cairo, Brotherhood members preached in mosques, established newspapers, and travelled across the country establishing new branches (380).
• Hassan al-Banna, accompanied by his closest advisors, often took short train journeys or brief riverboat trips to raise support for the Brotherhood and retain strong connections between the different branches (388). During these trips, he would first make connections with local notables, like imams and doctors, and then leverage these connections to attract more interest in the Brotherhood (390).
• The Brotherhood experienced a new surge in popularity during the 1936 Palestinian Revolt, during which they raised funds to support the Palestinians. By the 1940s, they had become a major force criticizing British occupation (380).
• Whereas the movement had previously enjoyed good relations with the Egyptian monarchy due to King Farouk's belief that the Brotherhood could oppose the Egyptian parliament, its criticism of the relationship between Egypt and Britain soured relations and led to Hassan al-Banna's exile from the county following a brief period of arrest in 1941 (380).
• In 1944, British intelligence estimated that the Muslim Brotherhood had around 500,000 members, or approximately 3% of the total population (380).
• The group most likely to join the Muslim Brotherhood lived in a world shaped by Westernized institutions, in particular a non-agricultural capitalist economic system and high levels of literacy, but had not ever had significant interactions with Europeans or Christians. They were conscious of Muslim exploitation by Europeans, but did not encounter European businesses or missionaries in their daily lives (387).
• This pattern actually follows the patterns of anti-immigrant sentiment in European in the 2010s, were the populations with the fewest numbers of immigrants have the strongest opposition to immigration (387).
• Contrary to general perceptions of the Muslim Brotherhood as primarily a lay movement, the work done by the authors reveals the importance of local imams in generating support for the Brotherhood in their communities and the large number of imams giving lectures in both the Cairo headquarters and regional branches (391).