This chapter deals with Sunni Islamic political thought with regard to the state, political participation and societal rights and freedoms (religious minority rights, women’s rights and civil liberties) from the time of the Prophet Muhammad to the twentieth century. It does so for three reasons: firstly, classical Islamic political thought forms an important source of the Brotherhood’s ideas; secondly, dealing with the classical tradition also shows the continuity and change of Sunni Islamic political thought from the advent of Islam to modern-day Jordan; and thirdly, this chapter introduces many of the basic concepts that will be dealt with in greater detail later on. This chapter concentrates on Islamic political thought until the twentieth century, showing that sharīʿa-centred, umma-centred and balanced approaches to Islamic political thought could already be discerned in classical times with regard to the three themes mentioned above. These serve as the basis for the analysis of the problems that the modern-day Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood has to deal with. Based mostly on secondary sources, this chapter is divided into three main sections: the first concentrates on the state; the second focusses on political participation; and the third deals with societal rights and freedoms.

This chapter deals with the variety of thought among the thinkers of the early Muslim Brotherhood about the three subjects of the state, political participation and societal rights and freedoms in the period of the late 1920s to the late 1970s. It indicates what main stances can be discerned about the three issues mentioned among the major thinkers associated with the organisation. This is important because the ideological divisions in the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood still run along the lines of sharīʿa-centred, umma-centred or balanced thinking and, as with classical Islamic political thought, have also been heavily influenced by the early Brotherhood’s beliefs. As such, the ideological outlook of these three different trends has shaped the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood’s overall stance towards the subjects of the state, political participation and societal rights and freedoms dealt with in this chapter.

This chapter deals with the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood’s views on societal rights and freedoms. It starts with an analysis of whether and how Islamic law should be reformed according to global Islamist scholars who have influenced the Jordanian Brotherhood as well as the members of that organisation itself. It then moves on to analyse religious minority rights, women’s rights and civil liberties from the perspective of both global Islamist scholars that Jordanian Brothers cite and the latter themselves. Although this chapter shows the Brotherhood’s relative unity on the issues dealt with, this – conversely – nevertheless furthers our understanding of why the divisions within the organisation are so important with regard to the ‘inclusion-moderation’ thesis.