Brotherhood wooing the Taliban

Mohamed Youssri

There are strong historical and intellectual relations between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Taliban, even before the Afghan movement’s inception.

These relations date back to the founders of the Taliban, who were influenced by the ideas of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Sayyid Qutb, the movement’s theoretician.

In this, the Taliban is like a large number of other movements that were influenced by the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Relations between the two sides came to the fore soon after the Taliban took over the whole of Afghanistan, including capital Kabul, a few weeks ago.

The Brotherhood was quick to congratulate the Taliban on its takeover of power in Afghanistan again.

Brotherhood leaders around the world rushed to congratulate the Afghan movement and wish it well.

Some of the officials of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, which is headed by Brotherhood mufti Youssef al-Qaradawi, also congratulated the Taliban.

Backgrounds

Islamist movements started taking root and growing in Afghanistan as of the 1950s.

Almost all these movements were influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood. Brotherhood influences reached these movements through Gholam Mohammad Niazi, an Afghan academic who studied in Egypt and returned to Afghanistan to become a leading professor at Kabul University. Niazi then founded the Islamic Movement.

In 1957, Niazi launched the Muslim Youth Brotherhood, opening the door for the emergence of political Islam in Afghanistan.

This changed all political realities in the whole of Afghanistan.

However, there are major differences between the Taliban and the Brotherhood, even as the two movements share a lot of similarities.