The Fourth Ordeal: A History of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, 1968-2018.

• Author: Sipal, Omer

By Victor J. Willi

Cambridge University Press, 2021, 489 pages, $82, ISBN: 9781108902649

Ordeals were commonplace during the colonization period for the people of the Middle East and the states alike. This is no surprise. With the colonized powers gone, contrary to the dreams of lives without ordeals, expectations of ending the issues in the region have not been met. The old normalcy has become the de facto reality for those in the region and on occasion the de jure of peoples' lives. Egypt in general and the Muslim Brotherhood have been a vivid embodiment of these kinds of ordeals. The Fourth Ordeal: A History of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, 1968-2018 written by Victor J. Willi, a book on "the fourth ordeal" befalling the Brotherhood after the coup d'etat in 2013, is a narration of a history culminating in one of the bloodiest periods of Egypt's modern history. The book details this narration by passing through the first ordeal of 1949, the long second ordeal of the 1950s and early 1960s, and the third ordeals of the second half of the 1960s (pp. 7-9).

Chapter 1 talks about the basics of the Muslim Brotherhood as an organization. Before giving details about the skeleton of the organization, the author touches briefly on the precursor to the organization's founder Hasan al-Banna. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani's, Mohammed Abduh's and Rashid Rida's efforts to resist colossal Western challenges through Islamic modernism were great inspirations for al-Banna. "While al-Banna was the first to articulate the idea of Islam as a 'complete and comprehensive' religion with such clarity," the author argues, "he stood within the intellectual tradition of Islamic modernism" (pp. 18-19). Perhaps what makes this chapter important is its focus on the ideology and the structure of the organization. Ten pillars of the oath are introduced. Then the author dwells upon the strategic plan concerning how an Islamic state will be actualized. The last part of the chapter touches on the "Brotherhood's indoctrination process" (p. 36) and the "organization of chart of the Brotherhood" (p. 43). The comment that the success of recruitment depends mainly on "the personal relationship between the recruiter and the recruit" is the last point needed to be highlighted.

Chapter 2 is about the rebirth of the Brotherhood from the ashes in the prisons. With the death of the second General Guide Hasan al-Hudaybi and Umar al-Tilmisani the third Guide, a new era began for the...