Who Supported the Early Muslim Brotherhood?

Scholarship on political Islam suggests that support for early Islamist movements came from literate merchants, government officials, and professionals who lacked political representation. We test these claims with a unique tranche of microlevel data drawn from a Muslim Brotherhood petition campaign...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Ketchley, Neil (Author) ; Brooke, Steven 1980- (Author) ; Lia, Brynjar 1966- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press 2021
In: Politics and religion
Year: 2022, Volume: 15, Issue: 2, Pages: 388-416
Further subjects:B Political Islam
B Egypt
B Muslim Brotherhood
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Summary:Scholarship on political Islam suggests that support for early Islamist movements came from literate merchants, government officials, and professionals who lacked political representation. We test these claims with a unique tranche of microlevel data drawn from a Muslim Brotherhood petition campaign in interwar Egypt. Matching the occupations of over 2,500 Brotherhood supporters to contemporaneous census data, we show that Egyptians employed in commerce, public administration, and the professions were more likely to sign the movement's petitions. The movement's supporters were also overwhelmingly literate. Contrary to expectations, the early Brotherhood also attracted support from Egyptians employed in agriculture, albeit less than we would expect given the prevalence of agrarian workers in the population. A case study tracing Muslim Brotherhood branch formation and petition activism in a Nile Delta village illustrates how literate, socially mobile agrarian families were key to the propagation of the movement in rural areas.
ISSN:1755-0491
Contains:Enthalten in: Politics and religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S1755048321000298