Inside the Muslim Brotherhood

Inside the Muslim Brotherhood provides a comprehensive analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt since 1981. The book unpacks the principal factors that shape the Brotherhood's identity, organization, and activism, investigating the processes of socialization, indoctrination, recruitment, identification, networking, and mobilization utilized by the movement. Khalil al-Anani argues that the Brotherhood is not merely a political actor seeks power but also anidentity maker that aims to change societal values, norms, and morals to line up with its ideology and worldview. As a socio-political movement, he finds, the Brotherhood is involved in an intensive process of meaning construction and symbolic production that shape individuals' identity and gives sense totheir lives. The result is Brotherhood a distinctive code of identity that governs the norms, values, and regulations that bind members together, maintains their activism, and guides their behavior in everyday life. The book also explains the Brotherhood's durability and how it endured regime repression and exclusion over the past three decades, which al-Anani attributes to the organization's structure and coherence. A tight-knit structure coupled with complex membership system has allowed the Brotherhood to resist regime penetration. Lastly, the book explores the balance of power within the Brotherhood. It investigates the divisions and differences within the movement and how this affects its strategy anddecisions.

This is a must-read for understanding Islamist politics of our time...Essential., Al-Anani's book is a significant contribution to the literature on the Brotherhood, filling in a significant gap by closely examining and explaining the organizational role of ideology and group identity in the movements activism, organization, and decision-making. Though focused on the Egyptian Brotherhood, the book includes many relevant discussions to readers interested in Brotherhood groups in other countries as well as political Islam and Islamist movements more broadly. Theoretically sophisticated, it is written in clear prose and will be of great use and interest to students and researchers in Middle East politics, Islamic studies, and social movements.

Khalil al-Anani is Associate Professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies in Qatar.