A Gramscian analysis of political Islam : the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Da'wa magazine (1976-81) : a case study

• Main Author: Ayaz, Salman
• Published: University of East Anglia 2018
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.761594

This thesis utilises a Gramscian criterion of interpretation to engage in a historical dialectical materialist approach that seeks to explain key complexities and contradictions that denote the vast phenomenon that is Political Islam. In doing so, it emphasises the role of ideology as constituting a considerably more constitutive role in shaping the conjunctural terrain on which the forces of opposition organise to contest the reproduction of relations. It further seeks to break from the rigidity of liberal and Eurocentric frameworks that increasingly describe power dynamics and civil society in reductive terms so as to entrap the vast phenomenon into a reactionary and state-centric lens. The historical dialectical materialist approach is employed in the form of a case study that explores the political and ideological leadership of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The concept of hegemony is utilised in conjunction with passive revolution and the ‘dialectic of distincts’, which includes but is not limited to an interpretation of the hegemony-counter-hegemony, international-national, organic-conjunctural, basesuperstructure, revolution-restoration, qualitative-quantitative and progressive-regressive. The application of these concepts to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood are carried out non-rigidly and non-dogmatically in order to arrive at an alternative and nuanced understanding of how we ought to approach to organisation. This is further analysis on the ideological mouthpiece of the organisation Al-Da’wa magazine. An analysis of the magazine puts into perspective the ideological and political shifts in its intellectual framework and in its political strategy. The findings provide a nuanced and alternative historical account that postulates a history of passive revolution and deflected passive revolution as playing a formative role in shaping the complex and contradictory developments, which have formatively shaped the dialectical relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the State in Egypt. The original contribution of this thesis to knowledge is the alternative approach it offers towards understanding Political Islam.