The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, or al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, is more than a radical network, comparable to al Qaeda; more than an ideological phenomenon, like the followers of Khomeini in the 1979 Iranian Revolution; and more than a political insurgency, similar to Pakistani jihadism. It is an Egyptian Islamist subculture of great depth and influence.
It is therefore also much more than a product of political decisions made by Hosni Mubarak. The Brotherhood was powerful before Mubarak, before his predecessor Anwar Sadat, and before their elder comrade, Gamal Abdel Nasser.
But the Brotherhood today is not identical with the paramilitary Arabist-Islamist Ikhwan that functioned in the 1930s through the 1960s. After those decades, the Brotherhood underwent a social and political transformation that was both impressive in its novelty and disturbing in its effect.
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