0
Monday 4 May 2009 - 09:31

Hasan al-Banna

Story Code : 4229
Hasan al-Banna
Hasan al-Banna, 1906-1949, the Egyptian schoolteacher who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, collapsed the Quranic definitions of fighting (qital) and the inner spiritual struggle against evil (jihad) into a single call to engage in holy war against not only infidels but also People of the Book (Christians and Jews), a war he called "jihad." In his tract, "On Jihad" (in Five Tracts of Hasan al-Banna, trans. by Charles Wendell (Berkeley, 1978), pp. 142, 150, 154, al-Banna writes:

In this Tradition, there is a clear indication of the obligation to fight the People of the Book, and of the fact that God doubles the reward of those who fight them. Jihad is not against polytheists alone, but against all who do not embrace Islam...Today the Muslims, as you know, are compelled to humble themselves before non-Muslims, and are ruled by unbelievers. Their lands have been trampled over, and their honor besmirched. Their adversaries are in charge of their affairs, and the rites of their religion have fallen into abeyance within their own domains, to say nothing of their impotence to broadcast the summons [to embrace Islam]. Hence it has become an individual obligation, which there is no evading, on every Muslim to prepare his equipment, to make up his mind to engage in jihad, and to get ready for it until the opportunity is ripe and God decrees a matter which is sure to be accomplished...Know then that death is inevitable, and that it can only happen once. If you suffer it in the way of God, it will be your profit in this world, and your reward in the next.
Comment