The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan

Description

Since its founding in 1945, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood has enjoyed decades of almost continuous parliamentary presence and state acceptance in Jordan, participating in elections, organising events and even establishing a hospital. In this detailed account of the Muslim Brotherhood's ideological and behavioural development in Jordan, Joas Wagemakers focusses on the group's long history and complex relationship with the state, its parliament and society. It shows how age-old concepts derived from classical Islam and the writings of global Islamist scholars have been used and reused by modern-day Jordanian Islamists to shape their beliefs in the context of the present-day nation-state. Far from its reputation as a two-faced global conspiracy bent on conquering the West, the Muslim Brotherhood is a deeply divided group that has nevertheless maintained a fascinating internal ideological consistency in its use of similar religious concepts. As such, it is part of, and continues to build on, trends in Muslim thought that go back hundreds of years.

Joas Wagemakers is Associate Professor of Islamic and Arabic Studies at Utrecht University. He has published extensively on Islamist ideology and Islamic movements, including A Quietist Jihadi: The Ideology of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi (2012) and Salafism in Jordan: Political Islam in a Quietist Community (2016), which won the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize in 2017.

'Joas Wagemakers' latest book is not only an excellent history of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, it is also an innovative theoretical work, in the sense that he has successfully used Michael Freeden's theory of ideologies to give a compelling analysis of the different currents within the Muslim Brotherhood and its route towards moderation.' Roel Meijer, Radboud University 'Joas Wagemakers is already regarded as a premier scholar of Salafism and other aspects of Islamism, but this book will only add to his record. This book will deservedly be seen as one of the definitive works on the Muslim Brotherhood, on Islamism, and on Jordan for years to come.' Curtis R. Ryan, Appalachian State University