Martyn Frampton. The Muslim Brotherhood and the West

Since the interwar period, Islam emerged as a major social and political force across North Africa and the Middle East. Religious figures played a prominent role in the nationalist struggles, and religious scholars provided legal justifications for resisting or accommodating aspects of European culture and rule. Over the past four decades, Islamic movements positioned themselves as the main bulwark against both repressive “secular” regimes and despotic monarchs. Today the Islamist movements and their affiliated parties are by any measure the most powerful political actor next to the military. At the center of the Islamists’ political ascendance lies the role of Western powers who came to influence, if not determine, the region’s politics during the last century. What role, if any, did the West play in Islamic political resurgence, and how did Islamic leaders construe relations with the West? In The Muslim Brotherhood and the West: A History of Enmity and Engagement, Martyn Frampton’s new title focusing on the history of British and American relations with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Frampton argues that Western governments’ approaches to political Islam have been a makeshift dynamic of distrust and pragmatism that remains unsettled, while the Brotherhood’s attitudes about the West have been consistently ideological. The idea is that Western attitudes toward Islamism varied from context to context and were affected by a multitude of local constraints and international considerations. In contrast, despite moments of cooperation, the Muslim Brotherhood’s attitude has been consistently driven by a stern world view that depicts the West as a monolith “other.” The bottom line is that Western governments, particularly Britain and the United States, couldn’t afford to ignore the Islamists’ growing political weight. They simply attempted to engage with the most “moderate” voices they could find to secure their interests in a predominantly conservative and authoritarian landscape.

Archaeology · Context (archaeology) · Distrust · Geopolitics · Ideology · Islam · Multitude · Muslim world · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender