“The Brotherhood Ghetto”: A study in its structure and results

Hamid al-Musallami

The racist and narcissistic groups used to impose around themselves a steel fence that protects them, increasing their power, giving their members a sense of supremacy and superiority over those around them, and preventing them from full assimilation and integration into society. This makes the organization or group a solid mass that is unable to be broken or fragmented. The most important idea these groups resort to is the idea of the “ghetto” and isolation from integrating into the society.

The Muslim Brotherhood (founded in 1928), like all racist groups that resort to making themselves different from others, transformed from an ideological organization into a “biological entity” over time, with everyone in the organization intertwined.

The working member joins the rest of the organization’s members through a marriage or work relationship in what is called “the extended family of brothers”, in which the with the rest of the members of the organization. The Brotherhood family is a point of the group’s political structure, along with the “social unity” of each Brotherhood father and mother with their children. The group always recommends marriage among members,  as some of them guard the organization’s secrets and ensure that the wife bears any risks the husband is likely to be exposed to. In this framework the study seeks to try to interpret and analyze the idea of ​​the “ghetto” in the Brotherhood and its most important pillars.

The concept of “ghetto”

Racist groups and organizations, such as the World Zionist Organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Afrikaner Broederbond, have resorted to the idea of ​​a “ghetto”, whether regional or social. Some resorted to a “regional ghetto” on the ground, as did the World Zionist Organization and the Afrikaner Broederbond in the western Cape region of South Africa, while the Brotherhood in Egypt resorted to the “social ghetto” (Brotherhood only marries Brotherhood). To strengthen this “ghetto” they resorted to another psyche that gives the members of these organizations the feeling of excellence, superiority and arrogance. So the Jews are God’s chosen people, the Afrikaners are the masters of people, the Brotherhood is the mastership of the world.

The concept of “ghetto” refers to “the region where a religious or national minority lives, considered by the majority of people to be different from them and being from a particular ethnic, cultural, religious, sectarian or denominational background.” The Jewish quarters are the most famous ghettos in the world. The ghetto forces isolation upon a certain group from the rest of society since the group feels that they are different from the rest of society and fears assimilation, instead resorting to isolation and the life of the ghetto and isolation.

The pillars of the “ghetto”

Some think that the “Brotherhood ghetto” is only about marriage, which specifically prohibits females from marrying a stranger, such as any closed group or tribe that imposes dominion over their children in order to preserve land and wealth. However, the “social ghetto” of the Muslim Brotherhood depends on several other axes, including marriage, racist ideology, and shared feelings.

1. Racist ideology

This is related to how a member of the Brotherhood views himself, where he feels that he is the best and that he is the true Muslim without deficiency, and that is why he looks down upon others. Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the group, said in one of his works, “Your call is the highest call humanity has known.” Thus he claims to monopolize the absolute truth and that they are the only real Muslims.

He then points out that the Quran has made Muslims custodians over the inferior humans, saying in his memoirs, “This means that the Holy Quran establishes the Muslims as custodians over the inferior humans and gives them the right of dominance and sovereignty over the world to serve this noble tutelage. It is our duty, not the West’s; for the Islamic civilization, not the material civilization.”

Al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb developed the theory of the Brotherhood’s racism and made them guardians of society, believing that the whole society lives in ignorance and that it is upon the Brotherhood to resist this society. This intellectual legacy of the Brotherhood made the members feel that they are better than others, whom they then either despise or are violent against.

2. Shared feelings

The Brotherhood’s rooted sense of superiority, racism and guardianship over society and humanity led them to engage in violent clashes with society, having committed many crimes and assassinations against politicians, government officials, the judiciary, and religious figures. This has caused a backlash from society, which has tried to restrict their movements, subject them to the law and the judiciary, and sentence some of them to death or imprisonment for their crimes.

Society’s reaction bore the Muslim Brotherhood’s claim of oppression and sense of persecution from the society. This made the Brotherhood vulnerable and trapped within the “ghetto” of oppression. This is evident in the songs that the Brotherhood members sing on many occasions. Members of the group see themselves as outcasts of this world, and so they seek to change the society by force and create the world they want.

3 – Marriage

The most important element of the Brotherhood’s physical ghetto, which works to create a separate society, is that Brotherhood members marry only Brotherhood members. This is for many reasons, including matters of inheritance, increasing the number of Brotherhood members through procreation, and the belief that only Brotherhood members are good enough for Brotherhood members.

4. Regional ghetto in Europe and the West

This concept was explained by the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, in his 1990 book “The priorities of the Islamic movement during the next phase”, which is a constitution for the movements of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West in general. The book includes reference to Muslims in the West and the expected rise in their numbers, as well as the dangers of their full assimilation within these Western societies, since they represent the minority. In this context, Qaradawi promoted the idea of ​​establishing a separate society for Muslims in the West called the “Muslim ghetto in the West”.

The importance of the ghetto to the Brotherhood

It is worth asking an important question: what does the Brotherhood benefit from the ghetto?

Despite the restrictions imposed by the ghetto on its members, it provides them with many important benefits that cannot be easily achieved for the average person, especially when a person has a modest capacity. The ghetto creates jobs for its members, even if they are not intellectually or skillfully qualified. It is enough that they have the confidence of the rest of the ghetto’s community.

Several reports have been published on the policy of the brotherhood of the state during the Muslim Brotherhood’s rule in Egypt. We are not talking here about the brotherhood of the government, which is like all democracies, where the ruling party appoints its own ministers and political positions to help carry out the platform for which it was elected. However, the Brotherhood followed a dual policy based on the brotherhood of the government on the one hand and the brotherhood of the state on the other, by controlling the administrative apparatus of the state, despite the need for this apparatus to continue and be made up of technocrats, not changing with the change of party.

The Brotherhood relied on the policy of brotherhood, appointing people it trusted at the expense of knowledgeable, practical and efficient people in an attempt to penetrate the joints of the state and control of its administrative apparatus. To this effect, the Brotherhood had managed to appoint a number of Brotherhood members to governorships and administrative positions, as well as dominating the parliament and the constitutional assembly.

The Brotherhood’s control of the state and its infiltration into every aspect of political and social life in Egypt contributed to increasing popular discontent, which in turn led to the popular revolt on June 30 against the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, which ended in the demise of their rule on July 3, 2013.

The impact of the ghetto on society

Life within isolated ghettos leads to serious social distortions in society and the state, which can affect the social peace of the former and completely overwhelm the existence of the latter, including:

– Feelings of continued alienation, making those isolated nonobjective in analyzing and reacting to situations and events.

– Making the community islands isolated from each other, which threatens to make situations explode between them at any moment.

– Leading to the social fragmentation and even actual division of states.

– Leading to political corruption by giving choosing trusted people over competent people for executive and political positions.

– Leading to elements of the ghetto adopting violence against the state.

Conclusion

It is clear from the above how the Muslim Brotherhood works on the idea of ​​establishing a ghetto, which provides them with multiple benefits, including maintaining the organization, its secrets and its strength, as well as preventing individuals from leaving the group. Brotherhood members are the sons of a Brotherhood families, so leaving the group can be very expensive and difficult for the individual, who could be rejected by his family and lose his money and work.

Life of the “ghetto” in general leads to the persecution of others belonging to a world other than it, which is evident from the superiority these organizations and groups feel over others. This could be seen with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Afrikaners in South Africa.

It is difficult to resist the state of these isolated ghettos and islands in the medium and near term without entering into the spiral of violence and extremism by members of these ghettos. Every action is interpreted as an attempt by society to assimilate this community culturally within society.

In the long term, however, it is possible to adopt clear and rational educational policies that promote human values ​​such as equality, acceptance of the other, religious and sectarian pluralism, equal treatment of all citizens, the development of citizenship, and pride in belonging to the nation and seeking its promotion and advancement, as well as the right to freedom of belief, opinion, expression, assembly, movement and other freedoms, in addition to criminalizing incitement to hatred, violence and discrimination.