Talk:History of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

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I have posted an entirely new text for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hassan al Banna articles, as well as several new articles:

This amounts to over 12,000 words of text, and is the result of months of research, discussed in Talk:Muslim_Brotherhood, using reputable scholarly texts found at the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Every paragraph in the main articles is marked with page-number references to the work it is based on.

I am not an expert on this subject, and nothing in these articles is original; I have simply summarised the material in the sources listed. Some of the sources are more favourable to the Muslim Brotherhood; others are more critical. By attempting to represent accurately the accounts given in these sources, I hope to have produced a set of articles that members of the Brotherhood, as well as well-informed critics of the organisation, could see as fair and balanced. However, these articles may well contain errors; if you believe that anything in the text is inaccurate, please correct it, referencing your sources, and leave a note here about the change.

If you are new to this subject, as I was when I began this process, please be aware that a great deal of misinformation can be found on the Internet, and in the press, about the Muslim Brotherhood. In order to keep these articles reliable and neutral, I suggest that, as far as possible, like my humble contributions, all contributions should be based on reputable academic texts by specialists in the field; journalistic sources should only be used for current events, and only if they appear in major national or international news outlets, preferably when the same information is reported by several sources. It is my hope that this policy will enable Wikipedia to be a more reliable source of information about the Muslim Brotherhood than much of what can be found on the Internet.

A few words about my own motivations for doing this: I am not a Muslim, but I respect Islam and I am opposed to imperialism. Although I am certainly not very knowledgeable about Islam, it seems to me that Western misunderstandings about Islam and the Muslim world are contributing to tragic conflicts, and that people need knowledge and understanding of one another in order to live in harmony. I hope that Wikipedia can be a small contribution to that goal, and that people who know more about this subject than I do will improve on this work.

--Beroul 21:06, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

This is excellent work Beroul. I wanted to remark that the sentence in the final paragraph about the student movements being independent from the Brotherhood is not enitrely true. As one who has been to college in Egypt, I know that the heads of the student groups in college were often junior members in the Brotherhood and at times, directions came from above with regards to what to do. One obvious example is when the government would actually declare 90% of their candidates for student offices as illegitimate just a day before the student body elections. They would go to court and get a temporary order to delay the elections or reinstate their candidates and so forth. This is not something your average 20 year old knows how to do.

--Karlosian 07:29, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Many thanks for your encouragement and help, Karlosian. Your observations of student groups are interesting; unfortunately we can't use them as such, since original research isn't allowed on Wikipedia. Do you know of any academic texts that deal with this? About your edit regarding the secret apparatus, I'm not sure I understand: do you mean that the existence of the secret apparatus hasn't been proven, or that it hasn't been proven that Banna accepted the creation of the secret apparatus? (Or that he accepted it reluctantly?) Can you elaborate on what's doubtful here, and point me to academic sources where I can learn more? About the attempted assassination of Nasser, I'm not sure what we should say here in the summary. In the main article, I've mentioned the idea that Nasser may have had his assassination attempt staged. Do you think we should mention this point in the summary? The wording you added, "was named as the perpetrator", seems too vague to me: named by whom? Also, he wasn't just named, he was hanged as well. I've changed this to "convicted of an assassination attempt", but I'm not sure this is the best wording. What do you think? --Beroul 12:17, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
I was referring to how well Hassan Al-Banna knew of the Secret Aparatus and how much was his idea vs how much he was "forced" into. I have read (in Arabic) opinions from all sides of the debate. Those who absolve him from ever founding such a device and those who see him as a pragmatic leader not above doing such a thing and neither side provide documented proof that he knew of it or that he did not approve of it. I'll see what I can find.
With regards to the assassination attempt, try something like "accused by authorities." Basically, just point out that it was the official accusation, not necessarily the opinion of historians. --Karlosian 11:09, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification; I've changed the wording on the assassination attempt to "accused by the authorities", and tried to clarify the wording about the creation of the secret apparatus so it reflects these doubts. It would be great if you could add references to studies in Arabic. Unfortunately my Arabic isn't yet good enough to enable me to read them myself. --Beroul 12:24, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I've removed the following:

Anwar al-Sadat was later assasinated by four members of the Brotherhood. FAS

First, because it's a web source, and web sources are not reliable as far as controversial subjects are concerned. Second, because it's incorrect; according to reputable printed academic texts such as Gilles Kepel's The Prophet and Pharaoh (ISBN 0520239342), Sadat was assassinated by the group Al-Jihad. --Beroul 08:55, 3 December 2005 (UTC)