Mathew Kaminski reviews In “A Mosque in Munich” for The Wall Street Journal. Ian Johnson’s book that examines how the Muslim Brotherhood found a haven in Europe. Johnson will be on hand to discuss the book at the OPC on Tuesday, May 11.
The review begins:
As we know too well by now, sometime in the past century the religion
of Muhammad was weaponized—that is, there was a coupling of terrorism
and Islam among its militant believers. This development didn’t take
place in isolation, however. Islamism, as we now call a radical version
of the faith, emerged in close contact with the West. In the decades
before 9/11 Western governments often turned a blind eye to Islamist
agitation or, in a few cases, naïvely nurtured the very people who
today inspire or lead terrorist attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and other
parts of the world—even, as we were reminded by last week’s attempted
bombing in Times Square, in the U.S.
As a practical philosophy, Islamism can be traced back to an Egyptian
schoolteacher named Hasan al-Banna. In 1928 he founded the Muslim
Brotherhood, a group devoted to restoring a fundamentalist idea of
Islam to government and society alike. At the time, thinkers in the
Muslim world were obsessed by the West’s colonial dominance and by
their own civilization’s decline. Banna was a populist who aimed his
idea of Islamic revival at a wide audience by putting his thoughts—and
his rigid interpretation of the Koran—into plain words. The movement
tried to broaden its appeal still further by emphasizing social justice
and providing welfare services. The Muslim Brotherhood’s methods have
inspired Islamists ever since, including, today, the members of al
Qaeda and Hamas.