156. Karen Armstrongachieve a higher level of social justice, fight against illiteracy
and poverty and liberate Muslim lands from foreign domina-
tion. Under the colonialists, Muslims had been cut off from
their roots. As long as they copied other peoples, they would
remain cultural mongrels. Besides training the Brothers and
Sisters in the rituals of prayer and Quranic living, al-Banna
built schools, founded a modern scout movement, ran night
schools for workers and tutorial colleges to prepare for the
civil service examinations. The Brothers founded clinics and
hospitals in the rural areas, built factories, where Muslims got
better pay, health insurance and holidays than in the state sec-
tor, and taught Muslims modern labour laws so that they
could defend their rights.
The society had its faults. A small minority engaged in ter-
rorism and this brought about its dissolution (though it has
since revived, under different auspices). But most of the
members-who numbered millions of Muslims by 1948—
knew nothing about these fringe activities and saw their wel-
fare and religious mission as crucial. The instant success of
the society, which had become the most powerful political in-
stitution in Egypt by the Second World War, showed that the
vast mass of the people wanted to be modern and religious,
whatever the intellectuals or the secularist government main-
tained. This type of social work has continued to characterize
many of the modern Islamic movements, notably the Mu-
jamah (Islamic Congress), founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yasin in
Gaza, which built a similar welfare empire to bring the bene-
fits of modernity to Palestinians in the territories occupied by
Israel after the June War of 1967, but in an Islamic context.
What is a Modern Muslim State?
The colonial experience and the collision with Europe had dis-
located Islamic society. The world had irrevocably changed. It