Hasan al-Bannā

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Hasan al-Bannā
Hasan al-Bannā with retinue (1935)

Hasan al-Bannā (completely Egyptian-Arabic Hassan Ahmed Abdel Rahman Mohamed El Banna , Arabic حسن أحمد عبد الرحمن محمد البنا, DMG Ḥasan Aḥmad ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān Muḥammad al-Bannā ; * October 14, 1906 in Mahmudiyya (about 50 kilometers east of Alexandria ); † February 12, 1949 in Cairo ) was the founder and first spiritual leader ( muršid ʿāmm ) of the Muslim Brotherhood , one of the most important and influential Islamist movements of the 20th century. Numerous Islamist organizations still refer to al-Bannā's ideas and those of his successors. Al-Bannā is known by his followers as "the martyr - Imam " (al-Imām aš-šahīd ).

Bannā's grandson is the influential Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan , son of a daughter of al-Bannā and the equally influential thinker Said Ramadan . The liberal Islamic scholar Gamal al-Banna was the younger brother of Hasan al-Bannā.

Youth and education

Hasan al-Bannā grew up in a petty-bourgeois, traditional family. His father was a watchmaker, but had also graduated from a religious school ( madrasa ) and wrote books on religious topics. From 1915 Hasan Al Banna attended the Madrasat ar-Raschād ad-Dīnīya school of Sheikh Muhammad Zahrān, a teacher to whom he felt lifelong. In 1923 his father registered him at the teachers' college "Dār al-ʿUlūm" in Cairo.

As al-Bannā writes in his memoir, he was outraged by the free spirit ( ilḥād ) and licentiousness ( ibāḥīya ) that had spread in Cairo after the First World War. He was particularly indignant about the activities of the Theosophical Society , which had opened an academy in Cairo. Here, as he writes, Muslims, Christians and Jews attacked the old religions in speeches and lectures and proclaimed a new revelation . In response, al-Bannā sought contact with Islamic activists and publicists such as Muhibb ad-Dīn al-Chatīb , who founded the Society of Muslim Young Men in 1926 .

Founding and building the Muslim Brotherhood

In 1927 Hasan al-Bannā started working as a primary school teacher in Ismailia on the Suez Canal . There he founded the Muslim Brotherhood ( ǧamʿīyat al-iḫwān al-muslimīn ) with six workers from the Suez Canal Society in 1928 to spread Islamic morals and support charitable activities. In 1930 the group built its own mosque in Ismailia. A school for 200 boys was built above it. An important companion of al-Bannās at this time was Muhammad Saʿīd al-ʿUrfī, a Syrian scholar and politician from Deir ez-Zor , who had been exiled from Syria because of his resistance activities against the French mandate and had fled to Egypt. He advised al-Bannā in setting up his new organization and recommended that the boys 'school he founded be named "Islamic Hirā' Institute" ( maʿhad Ḥirāʾ al-islāmī ) after the place where Mohammed received his first revelation .

Al-Bannā's missionary and educational activities, however, met with rejection from some scholars. One of them spread that al-Bannā was worshiped as a god by his followers. Al-Bannā reports in his memoir that he visited the scholar at home with various Muslim Brotherhoods to clear up the misunderstanding. In 1933 al-Bannā moved to Cairo and also relocated the seat of the Brotherhood there.

The Daʿwa speeches

Al-Bannā's early thinking can be recognized primarily from his writings, which he published in the association 's own journal al-Ichwān al-muslimūn . These include his two speeches Ilā aiyi šaiʾ nadʿū n-nās ("What do we call people for?"; Mid-1934) and Daʿwatu-nā ("Our Daʿwa"; 1935). In it he pointed out the need for the Daʿwa , the inner mission among Muslims who had lost touch with Islam. In his opinion, this daʿwa should also be carried out with modern means such as newspapers, plays, films, gramophone ( ḥākk ) and radio ( miḏyāʿ ).

The following passage from Daʿwatu-nā has a programmatic character, which makes it clear which far -reaching ideas al-Bannā connected with the Daʿwa and Islam:

“Listen, brother. Our Daʿwa is a Daʿwa that is Islamic in the broadest sense, because this word has a wider meaning than what people commonly assume. We believe that Islam is a comprehensive concept that orders all areas of life, provides information on each of their affairs and provides a fixed and precise order for them. He is not helpless before the problems of life or the systems necessary to advance human wellbeing. Some people have mistakenly assumed that Islam is limited to certain acts of worship or spiritual attitudes. So they have limited their understanding to these narrow circles. But we understand Islam differently in a clear and broad sense as something that regulates the matter of this world and the hereafter. We do not make this claim on our own initiative. Rather, we learned that from the Book of God and the way of life of the first Muslims. "

In both writings, al-Bannā also opposed the nationalism (qaumīya) that was widespread at the time , especially against those forms that were associated with a feeling of superiority and aggression. He contrasted it with his own Islamic nationalism, which should be based solely on union (wilāya) with God. The “Islamic colonial rule” (istiʿmār islāmī) of the past, he said, was much more humane than the colonialism of the present, because the Muslim colonial ruler (al-mustaʿmir al-muslim) only conquered the countries for the “word of truth” “ (Kalimat al-ḥaqq) to exalt and spread the teachings of the Koran.

The open letter "Towards the light"

In October 1936, al-Bannā turned to the Egyptian King Faruq and other political and religious figures in the Islamic world with an open letter entitled Naḥwa n-nūr ("Towards the light") , calling on them to take an active part to establish an Islamic social order. The Muslims, he demanded, should remember that God had designated them in the Koran (Sura 3: 110) as the best community that had arisen for mankind. In contrast to European nationalism, as expressed in the formulas “Germany over everything”, “Italy over everything” or “Britain, rule!”, This should not be understood in the sense of Asabiyya and false pride. Rather, the sense of community that Islam generates aims at the realization of an ethical principle, namely the area of ​​the right and the prohibition of the reprehensible mentioned in the Koran . Al-Bannā advocated a return to original Islam and the establishment of an Islamic order in this book. The general statutes of Islam, he said, are the best that have ever existed in human history. The political, legal, and administrative reforms he called for in this pamphlet include:

  1. Elimination of political parties and leadership of the Ummah political forces in a united front
  2. Reform of legislation in accordance with Islamic Sharia law in every detail
  3. Strengthening the army, increasing the number of youth teams, igniting their fighting spirit on the basis of Islamic jihad
  4. Strengthening relations between Islamic countries, especially between Arab countries, in order to facilitate serious reflection on the matter of the lost caliphate
  5. Spreading the Islamic spirit in government agencies
  6. Observation of the personal behavior of the civil servants, because there must be no difference between personal and professional life
  7. Determination of working hours in such a way that they enable the performance of worship duties
  8. Eliminate corruption and favoritism
  9. Alignment of all governmental requirements (holidays, office hours) with Islamic regulations
  10. Recruitment of Azhar graduates in military and administrative positions.

Politicization of his movement

In 1938, in the treatise The Death Industry, al-Bannā glorified the death of individual believers for religious reasons as a means of enforcing political demands.

The Muslim Brotherhood grew rapidly. In 1941 it already had 60,000 members, at its peak in 1948 there were 500,000 and hundreds of thousands of sympathizers. It was tightly organized, had its own mosques, companies, factories, hospitals and schools and occupied important positions in the army and trade unions.

After the Second World War, in 1946 al-Banna published an eulogy for Mohammed Amin al-Husseini , the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, to whom he found himself politically and religiously connected:

The mufti is worth as much as a nation. The mufti is Palestine and Palestine is the mufti. O amine! What a great, indomitable, great man you are! Hitler's and Mussolini's defeat didn't frighten you. What a hero, what a wonder of man. We want to know what the Arab youth, cabinet ministers, rich people and the princes of Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Tunisia, Morocco and Tripoli will do to be worthy of this hero, yes this hero who, with the help of Hitler and Germany, will be worthy Empire challenged and fought against Zionism. Germany and Hitler are no more, but Amin el-Husseini will continue the fight.

Confrontation with the Egyptian government and assassination

After the Muslim Brotherhood had succeeded in gaining great influence in the Egyptian state after the Second World War, tensions between the Brotherhood and the government increased until the power struggle between the Muslim Brotherhood and the strengthened Wafd party finally escalated .

After attacks by alleged Muslim Brotherhoods on politicians and the suspicion of an imminent coup on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood, Prime Minister Mahmoud an-Nukraschi Pasha banned the Brotherhood in 1948, whereupon he himself fell victim to an attack by militant Muslim Brotherhoods in December 1948.

Al-Banna was shot dead in Cairo on February 12, 1949. The assassin was not caught. Muhammad Hāmid Abū n-Nasr, the fourth spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, reports that after al-Bannā's murder, the Muslim Brotherhood was at a loss as to who might be his successor. While he himself favored Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, other Muslim Brotherhood had offered this office to Mustafā as-Sibāʿī , the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria . However, he refused. Eventually the office went to Hasan al-Hudaybi .

Fonts

Hasan al-Bannā's memoir
  • Muḏakkirāt ad-daʿwa wa-d-dāʿiya. Maṭābiʿ al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, Cairo, circa 1951. Online version available here . - English translation under the title: Memoirs of Hasan al Banna Shaheed , translated by NM Shaikh. International Islamic Publishers, Karachi, 1982.
Text editions and translations of al-Bannā's tracts

literature

  • Brynjar Lia: The Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt: The Rise of an Islamic Mass Movement . Garnet, Reading, UK 1998, ISBN 0-86372-220-2 .
  • Johannes Grundmann: Islamic Internationalists. Structures and activities of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic World League . Reichert, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-89500-447-2 , review by I. Küpeli.
  • Gudrun Krämer: Hasan al-Banna . Oneworld, Oxford, 2010.
  • Richard P. Mitchell: The Society of the Muslim Brothers . Oxford University Press , London 1969, 1993. ISBN 0-19-215169-X , ( Middle Eastern monographs 9)
  • Thomas J. Moser: Politics on God's Path, On the Genesis and Transformation of Militant Sunni Islamism . IUP, Innsbruck 2012, pp. 49-59. ISBN 978-3-902811-67-7
  • Imad Mustafa: Political Islam. Between the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Hezbollah. Promedia. Vienna, 2013. ISBN 978-3-85371-360-0 .

See also

Web links

Commons : Hasan al-Bannā  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Krämer: Hasan al-Banna 2010, pp. 2–6
  2. ↑ See Krämer: Hasan al-Banna . 2010. p. 7.
  3. ↑ Hasan al-Bannā: Memoirs. 1982, p. 110.
  4. ↑ See Lia: The Society of the Muslim Brothers . 1998, p. 40.
  5. ↑ Hasan al-Bannā: Memoirs. 1982, pp. 173-176.
  6. ↑ Hasan al-Bannā: Memoirs. 1982, pp. 198-201.
  7. ↑ Hasan al-Bannā: Memoirs. 1982, p. 44.
  8. ↑ On the dating cf. Israel Gershoni et al. James Jankowski: Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930-1945 . Cambridge 1995, p. 235.
  9. ↑ Cf. Daʿwatu-nā in ar-Rasā'il ath-thalāth . Cairo: Dār aṭ-ṭibāʿa wa-n-našr around 1977. http://www.2muslims.com/directory/Detailed/227082.shtml#methods (here the gramophone is not translated).
  10. ↑ See http://www.2muslims.com/directory/Detailed/227082.shtml#our_islam
  11. ↑ See Daʿwatu-nā pp. 18-23, engl. Translated from http://www.2muslims.com/directory/Detailed/227082.shtml#nationalsim
  12. ↑ See his text Ilā aiyi šaiʾ nadʿū n-nās p. 45, engl. Translated from: http://www.2muslims.com/directory/Detailed/227148.shtml#nationalism_basis
  13. ↑ See Ilā aiyi šaiʾ p. 66, engl. Translator: http://www.2muslims.com/directory/Detailed/227148.shtml#humanitarianism
  14. ↑ See al-Bannā: Naḥwa n-nūr p. 87 In English. German print version see below
  15. ↑ Cf. al-Bannā: Naḥwa n-nūr p. 98f. In English
  16. ↑ Cf. al-Bannā: Naḥwa n-nūr (109f) German text of the complete appeal: Aufbruch zum Licht, in Andreas Meier, ed .: Political currents in modern Islam. Sources and Comments. Federal Agency for Civic Education , BpB, Bonn 1995 ISBN 3-89331-239-0 ; and Peter Hammer Verlag , Wuppertal 1995 ISBN 3-87294-724-9 , pp. 78-84. This edition also as a special edition. the state center for political education North Rhine-Westphalia with the same ISBN. All editions are abridged versions of The Political Mission of Islam. Programs and Criticism between Fundamentalism and Reforms. Original voices from the Islamic world. Peter Hammer, Wuppertal 1994, pp. 175–185, with the introduction of the publisher - In English
  17. ↑ Thomas Schmidinger, Dunja Larise (ed.): Between God's State and Islam. Handbook of political Islam , Vienna 2008, p. 77
  18. ↑ Jeffrey Herf (Ed.): Hitler's Jihad. National Socialist Radio Propaganda for North Africa and the Middle East. in Zs. Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , Oldenbourg, Munich April 2010, no. 2. ISSN  0042-5702 pp. 259–286, here p. 285
  19. ^ Richard P. Mitchell: The Society of the Muslim Brothers . London 1969
  20. ↑ Cf. Muḥammad Ḥāmid Abū n-Naṣr: Ḥaqīqat al-ḫilāf baina l-iḫwān al-muslimīn wa-ʿAbd an-Nāṣir . Cairo 1987. p. 51.
personal data
SURNAME Bannā, Hasan al-
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hasan Ahmad ʿAbd ar-Ramān al-Bannā (full name); حسن أحمد عبد الرحمن البنا (Arabic)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (Muslim Brotherhood)
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Mahmudiyya near Alexandria
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 1949
Place of death Cairo