The Egyptian Muslim brotherhood and the road towards the Ummah

Abstract

The paper examines the contemporary developments of the Ummah, a concept which began to receive more attention due to the globalization of political Islam. Since the Ummah is one of Islam’s ultimate goals, the Muslim Brotherhood started to strive for this concept through its political activity over the past decades and through its involvement on the international stage. The essay is divided in three parts. The first part analyzes the concept of Ummah and its implications with regard to Arab and Islamic unity. The second part searches for the reasons of the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and around the Muslim and Arab World. Furthermore, this part scrutinizes the ideological and political factors that determined the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the strife for the Ummah. The third part looks into the role that the Muslim Brotherhood plays on the international stage concentrating on its foreign policy stances with regard to the all-inclusive Ummah. This essay concludes that the Egyptian Brethren became a model for political achievements through their moderate standpoint thus giving a real hope to those Muslims looking towards unifying the Ummah.