Inside the Brotherhood by Hazem Kandil

Author:Hazem Kandil
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780745682914
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2014-09-04T14:05:29+00:00

The Power of Dreams

Sacred history is complemented by history made sacred. Brothers recorded their own past in hagiographic accounts, memoirs, and well-rehearsed anecdotes. The function of these records was to demonstrate Islamism's unique historical law in action, to show how God had in fact bent the rules for His pious servants. Brothers learn, for example, that, before Banna succumbed to his wounds, in February 1949, he implored God to devastate the realm of the king who ordered his assassination. And verily so: the 1952 coup overthrew the Egyptian monarchy. They are also told that when Nasser ratified the execution of Qutb, in August 1966, the second founder cursed him on his way to the scaffold. And in less than a year, Nasser's state was spectacularly defeated in war. Similarly, Sadat was assassinated days after he detained General Guide Telmesani, in September 1981 (Alfy 2013). And in September 2011, General Guide Muhammad Badei' declared in a visit to Upper Egypt that the 2011 revolt was “a blessing from God and not the product of any individual, group, or political party effort. All due is to God.”17

But many of these divine favors occur on the individual rather than the national level. The cultivation curriculum recounts how Banna was once invited to Cairo University (or the Muslim Youth Association, in another version) to refute the secular views of Taha Hussein, one of Egypt's literary giants in the 1940s. Once he took the podium, it was as if God held the book in front of him and allowed him to flip through its pages. This miraculous feat drove Hussein – who was hiding backstage – to meet him secretly afterwards and confess that he was so overwhelmed by Banna's critique that he was willing to revise his views (“Mabadi'” 2003: vol. III, 261; Sabbagh 2012: 84). Zeynab al-Ghazali recalled that, on her first night in prison, she was dressed in white and locked in a cell full of rabid dogs for 3 hours. She closed her eyes and began to pray. Claws and teeth tore into her flesh and she felt herself soaked in blood. When she was finally released from this horrendous ordeal, she opened her eyes and there was nothing. Her clothes were shining white and there was not a single scratch on her body (Ghazali 1999: 56–7). On another occasion, her captors sent a giant man to rape her. She bit him after yelling: “In the name of God!” The monster instantly fell dead at her feet. Next, her captors took her to a small room and released dozens of rats through the window. She recited a short prayer and the rats marched back out of the window in single file (Ghazali 1999: 118–20).viii Deputy General Guide Muhammad Habib experienced a less dramatic, though equally mystical, episode. Habib ran for the 1987 parliament in Egypt's southern province of Asyut. On the night of the vote, he saw in his dreams a prominent Islamic scholar running towards him, crying ‘God is great!’ He woke up and told Brotherhood campaigners not to worry and to leave it all to God.

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