ABSTRACT
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani had called for religious revival as a source of social and political solidarity sufficient to drive out foreign adventurists. The 1967 defeat is often referred to as the turning point, the time when Arabs realized they had to either change their tactics or surrender their autonomy and their very identity to the monolithically perceived West. The states established by the European powers were controlled by leaders who implemented political orders alien to Islamic tradition. The Society of Muslim Brothers or the Muslim Brotherhood was begun by Hasan al-Banna, appropriately enough, in a village nearly one hundred miles northeast of Cairo. Egypt was never the center of a regime claiming, much less exercising, and legitimacy throughout the Islamic world. The search for identity was repeatedly highlighted in the Brotherhood’s attempts to distinguish Islamic culture from any other.
