Hassan al-Banna, the Egyptian schoolteacher who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, is often portrayed as a religious reformer responding to colonial domination and moral decline in the Muslim world. However, a growing body of critical scholarship argues that his legacy is far more troubling, placing him at the intellectual roots of modern religious-political extremism.
Born in 1906, al-Banna came of age during a period of deep upheaval. The abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924 and Egypt’s continued subjugation under British influence shaped his worldview. Rather than seeing Western modernity as something to engage with selectively, al-Banna regarded it as a moral and spiritual threat. He concluded that Muslim societies themselves had fallen into a new state of Jahiliyya, a term traditionally used for pre-Islamic ignorance, which, in his reinterpretation, applied to any society not governed strictly by Islamic law.
Central to al-Banna’s thinking was the idea that Islam was not merely a faith but a comprehensive political system. His writings and political programmes envisaged an Islamic state that would regulate all aspects of life, abolish political pluralism, enforce strict social codes, and subordinate culture, law, and governance to a single religious authority. Critics argue this amounted to a blueprint for theocratic authoritarianism rather than moral reform.
Although al-Banna did not openly advocate mass violence, he oversaw the creation of a secret paramilitary wing within the Brotherhood and promoted a gradual strategy aimed at capturing society and the state from the ground up. The organisation combined social welfare, education, and charity with ideological indoctrination, creating what analysts describe as a “state within a state”.
Al-Banna’s influence extended well beyond his lifetime. Thinkers such as Sayyid Qutb radicalised his concept of modern Jahiliyya, providing theological justification for armed revolt against Muslim governments. These ideas later echoed through movements ranging from Egypt’s Islamic Jihad to Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the so-called Islamic State.
Assassinated in 1949, al-Banna did not live to see the global impact of his thought. Yet his legacy endures as a paradox: a movement capable of social mobilisation and political participation, whose founding ideology contains the seeds of intolerance, absolutism, and religious authoritarianism.