Brothers Behind Bars

A superb piece of scholarship. Based on an impressive array of hitherto unknown or unexplored primary sources, Ghyoot offers an entirely new reading of a formative phase of Islamist thought and practice. His work on the Egyptian Muslim Brothers’ prison years is one of the most exciting contributions to the study of Islamism in the modern Arab Middle East-and beyond-to appear in many years. * Gudrun Krämer, author of Hasan al-Banna *Between 1948 and 1975, the Muslim Brothers underwent three waves of long term incarceration in Egypt. Brothers Behind Bars is a definitive account of their experiences. Based on an extensive body of sources, mostly in Arabic, the book provides a richly detailed account of the varied conditions to which the Brothers were exposed in prison, the wide range of their responses, and the fragmentation of their movement that ensued. Today, the Brothers are undergoing a fourth wave of imprisonment in Egypt, giving the book a sharp contemporary resonance. * Michael Cook, Class of 1943 University Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University *

Mathias Ghyoot is a Ph.D. student in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He studies the social and intellectual history of the modern Middle East and South Asia with a particular interest in the history of Islamism.