Who was first to attack the Muslim Brotherhood?

The picture is very clear now. It’s no longer blurry. The Muslim Brotherhood, its products and its rival, Al-Sururiya movement, are unwanted, slurred and prohibited.

In Saudi Arabia, we are now witnessing a “serious” effort to pursue the Brotherhood’s “cultural” presence. Confronting Qatar’s policies was part of this major conflict on the Brotherhood’s negative impact.

Today, I would like to point out a picture that I have noticed emerge in the growth of this campaign against the Brotherhood. The picture as it appears is that many activists on social media, some articles in newspapers and talks on TV are claiming that they are the ‘first’ to warn about the Brotherhood but nobody listened. God bless their modestly.

Actually, I once watched a conversation featuring a young reporter point out that she was the only one to attack the group when no one else did. I kid you not, she actually said that!

Ignorance results in much more than this, imagine what would happen if we add arrogance and unjustified audacity to the mix.

The Brotherhood’s criticism of its rivals, criticism within the Brotherhood itself, and the rest of the Islamists is as old as the group itself. It is still with us and it is extending over time.

If we go back in early history, we find the Syrian Scholar Mohammed Kurd Ali, who died in 1953, was the founder and the director of the Academy of the Arabic Language in Damascus, established in 1915.

Ali was quoting the words of a well-known journalist Said al-Talai, owner of Al Fayha newspaper in 1947, on the Muslim Brotherhood sportingly. He said: “The Muslim Brotherhood is a group dominated by selfishness, [they were taken away by life’s treasures and consumed by greed], so they worked to achieve fame, money and power using the easiest way; through religion.” (Mohamad Kurd Ali’s memories, Part 2. Pg. 531)

In Egypt, the Brotherhood’s criticism varied from inside the group. Just like the criticism between Sheikh Hassan al-Banna and his fellow founder of the Brotherhood Ahmad al-Sukari.

Criticism from outside the group included Sheikh Mohammed Nasiruddin al-Albani, an Albanian Islamic scholar who specialized in the fields of hadith and fiqh. We also find Egypt’s great writer, Abbas al-Aqqad frequently criticizing the Brotherhood.

Of his comments on the group’s assassination of Mahmoud el-Nokrashy Pasha, the former prime minister of Egypt, in a January 1949 article included: “The nation’s loss – el-Nokrashy – may he rest in peace, he put the country at peace by getting rid of several gangs, before this criminal gang, this includes the famous el-Khut gang. They made a mess in the midst of Upper Egypt, killing and stealing money. The gang never claimed to be a religious clergy, no one said that they were at the slightest knowledgeable nor did they have the ability to lie under the name of religion.”

Al-Aqqad’s attack affected the Brotherhood negatively to the extent that they threatened to kill him. They even attempted to shoot him while he was sitting on his chair in his famous salon, in a known plan.

This was early criticism on the Brotherhood, but from the 1950s to this day, people openly talk without shubstance – any amount of criticism that could be compiled in its own encyclopedia.

Have bit of humbleness and a lot of knowledge.