In a remarkable book, entitled “the hidden face of the Mullahs. The black book of the Islamic Republic of Iran”, Emmanuel Razavi, senior independent reporter, regular contributor to Global Watch Analysis, reveals how the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood inspired Khomeini’s Shiite political Islam. Exclusive extracts

Most specialists describe the Iranian sociologist and philosopher Ali Shariati, who died in England in 1977 and whom I have briefly mentioned in the preceding pages, as “the inspiration behind the Islamic revolution”. Shariati played an important intellectual and ideological role.

This former fellow traveller of the FLN and close friend of Jean-Paul Sartre, who studied for a time in Paris, was not always appreciated by the mullahs of pre-revolutionary Iran. And with good reason: his thought was somewhere between Shiite mysticism, Sufism and secularism, and he considered himself to be both an intellectual and a “prophet”. He was also a disciple of the French Catholic Islamologist Louis Massignon1, something that the most conservative future clerics of the Iranian regime could not accept, at least for those who had heard of him.

Like a number of Iranian thinkers who defended the principle of revolution, he was not particularly known for defending an Islamist line as obscurantist and perverse as that of Khomeini, although he was known for his radical speeches. And his thinking, which was highly complex – even confused at times – did not always tally with what can be found in the writings of the founder of the Islamic Republic.

So where did the Iranian revolution really find its ideological basis? One evening, while I was having dinner with an ex-Iranian diplomat, I got the beginnings of an answer: “Take an interest in the history of the Fedayeen of Islam, linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, and the relationship between the members of this organisation and Khomeini. Nobody talks about them, but it’s essential to know who they are and how they have influenced contemporary Iranian Islamist thought. You will understand that the Islamic Revolution, although led by a Shiite ayatollah, had its origins in the Sunni Arab world and that it had connections with the ideology advocated by certain leaders of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. You will also understand why the Islamic Republic supports Sunni terrorist organisations such as Hamas, which originated in the Brotherhood2, and why it has made systemic violence its trademark. You will see that, like Khomeini in his youth, the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood were fascinated by Nazism3, and that in many ways the methods employed by the mullahs and their police are those of the Gestapo and the SS, which is no coincidence. There are many similarities, sometimes even a kind of consanguinity, between all these totalitarian organisations, which are based on a mixture of political and religious doctrines, and which are above all anti-Semitic. In Iran, they have inspired the regime’s modus operandi, which protects its institutions by resorting to state violence. As far as the Islamic Republic is concerned, we can truly speak of fascist Islamism.”

I knew the Muslim Brotherhood very well, having reported on it several times in Egypt for Arte and Figaro Magazine. I had also written two books about it. I had studied its leaders’ fascination with Hitler.

Founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, an Egyptian teacher and theologian who graduated from Cairo’s Islamic university – al-Azhar – this brotherhood advocates the legal, economic and social organisation of society around the values of Islam. Since the caliphate4 had been abolished by Atatürk, Banna advocated its re-establishment by working for the return of a successor to the prophet Mohammed, the “Envoy of God”. To attract as many supporters as possible to the cause of pan-Arabism in vogue at the time, he based his project on anti-colonialism.

Although Egypt had officially become a sovereign state on 21 February 1922, the date on which the British protectorate came to an end, British influence and the presence of British troops in the country remained a reality that made some of the population uneasy.

Against this backdrop, the Brotherhood grew exponentially. By 1933, it already had almost 40,000 members, recruited from among the dockworkers on the Suez Canal, as well as from Islamo-nationalist circles. Its leadership very quickly came out in favour of creating militias, and set itself up as a state within a state, with social, economic and legal structures, and even an intelligence service. Its dogma, however, was particularly retrograde. Hassan al-Banna, who wanted to return to the original foundations of Islam, considered that women should be submissive to men and that Jews and Christians should not be able to obtain important positions in the administration. A fierce opponent of secularism, he decreed that co-education, non-religious music and homosexuality should be considered sins. His objective was clear: to establish a perfect Islamic state, under the tutelage of an all-powerful Supreme Guide – a new Caliph. The Brotherhood’s credo – “God is our goal, the Prophet our leader, the Koran our constitution, jihad our path, martyrdom our greatest hope” – was a good precursor of Khomein’s discourse four decades later.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic doctrine also recommends multiplying operational cells and establishing them in many countries in order to create an international network that penetrates all strata of society. The Brotherhood also created a special section whose members, trained in the use of weapons, took an oath of obedience on a Koran and a revolver. Clearly, despite an elaborate discourse, Banna based his religious project on brutality. Almost as fascinated by Hitler as he was by Islamic texts, he published a manifesto advocating the refusal of freedom of expression, control of the media and the establishment of a morality police. Above all, he advocated jihad wherever necessary.

Nevertheless, it considered that revolutionary action would not be enough to win the struggle, and realised that it was necessary to be present wherever the State was absent. At the same time as denouncing the Egyptian monarchy, the Brotherhood invested financially in charity work, schools and dispensaries, and set up a network of correspondents at all levels of society.

Its operations are often financed by wealthy families from the Persian Gulf, who are sensitive to its rigorous vision of society. And in a corrupt Egypt under Western influence, the Muslim Brotherhood became so popular that by the mid-1940s it had two million supporters.

This did not prevent Banna from being assassinated in 1949, probably by agents of the Egyptian government. Be that as it may, the man turned his organisation into a structure of influence in a whole part of the Middle East. In July 2007, during an interview I had with his brother Gamal for the Arte channel, he told me: “At the time, there was a religious vacuum. Hassan filled it with his Brotherhood. In the beginning, it was a modest movement, with just six members. It was made up of manual workers, drivers and craftsmen who worked on the [Suez] Canal. Few people understood the meaning of its work […]. Even within the organisation. I think he was an idealist who had a real vision of what political Islam could be. However, we need to put his actions and what he said into a historical context that is no longer relevant. I think that while he had a profound influence on today’s Brothers, few of them appreciate the significance of his texts.”

One man, deeply affected by the thinking of Banna and the Brotherhood, was to have a major influence on Khomeini. His name: Seyed Qutb. Born in 1906 in southern Egypt, this intellectual, both poet and journalist, was an anti-Semite and a fierce opponent of the Egyptian government, which he accused of being in thrall to the West. And his career, like his theories, was to influence the destiny of Iran.

When Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew the monarchy in favour of a republican regime in 1952, the Muslim Brotherhood, which had supported his putsch, expected the new rulers to return the favour. But to no avail. It was at this time that Qutb became the Brotherhood’s main theoretician. Pissed off at Nasser, he radicalised his discourse and encouraged his troops to engage in armed violence, coups d’état in the name of jihad and the systematic elimination of apostates and non-Muslims, against whom he advocated terrorism. For this exalted fanatic, “the leadership of humanity by the West is coming to an end, not because Western civilisation has failed in material terms […] but because the Western world has fulfilled its role and exhausted its fund of values that enabled it to ensure the leadership of humanity […]. Islam alone has these values and this line of conduct5”.

More than any other, it singles out the Jews as the enemy: “This is how the Qur’an confronted the Jews by removing their veils of falsehood, warning the believers of their tricks in the light of their own history and advising them of the best way to confound them. This circumscribed their impact in the midst of the community of believers and eventually neutralised them. But today’s Muslim community no longer knows how to learn from this lesson […]. Today, as in the past, their stratagems lead this nation astray from its Koran and its religion, which constitute its battle tank and its protective armour. They are at peace as long as this nation remains cut off from the source of its power and insight […]. They are at peace as long as this nation remains distracted from the only truth of which it perceives the existence6”.

These extremely violent remarks were relayed as far as Iran, and influenced Khomeini. One of those close to Khomeini was a Shiite activist called Navvâb Safavi, who in 1946 founded the Fedayeen movement, whose aim was to establish an Islamic state in Iran. Although the Fedayeen Islamists are Shiite and the Muslim Brotherhood Sunni, ideological and revolutionary convergences have forged links between the two structures, which aim to organise society around the values of ultraconservative Islam, which can be described as far-right Islam.

In 1953, Sayyid Qutb met Safavi in Jerusalem7, according to the words of the Iranian writer and researcher Ramin Parham8, an eminent specialist in the revolution with whom I have had the opportunity to speak on several occasions. In addition to their vision of Islam, Qutb and Safavi had many things in common, starting with their anti-colonialism against the British and their anti-Semitism.

The two men got on so well that a year later, the Fedayeen of Islam signed an agreement with the Egyptian brotherhood, agreeing to represent it in Iran. From then on, they would be called the “Ikhuan al-Muslimin”, in other words the Iranian “Muslim Brotherhood”. At this time, Safavi was rubbing shoulders with Khomeini, whom he visited regularly. Drawing on his influence, he passed on to him everything he had learned from Qutb. Khomeini was immediately taken by Qutb’s texts, as well as by Qutb’s politico-religious conception of the Sharia.

Another person, who was very close to Khomeini during his exile in France in the winter of 1978-1979, confirmed this story to me in May 2023: the Iranian historian Mohsen Sazegara, who co-founded the Revolutionary Guards. During our conversation, I asked him: “Is it true that Ayatollah Khomeini was linked to the Fedayeen Islam organisation, which presented itself as the Iranian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood? It is said that he was greatly influenced by the speeches of their founder, Navvab Safavi.” His answer was brief but clear: “Yes. In his youth, when he was starting out as a clergyman in Qom, Khomeini was very much influenced by Navvab Safavi and the Fedayeen of Islam. When he became a great ayatollah, he had several friends among the bazaar merchants who were part of this organisation. He had a strong relationship with them.”

“We certainly cannot ignore the fact that Khomeini was immersed in an ecosystem linked to the Fedayeen of Islam and that Safavi had a great influence. But nearly half a century has passed since the revolution, moderates Ramin Parham. That’s why we need to be cautious, because today, not all the leaders of the Islamic Republic are directly related to Safavi. There are several opposing currents. For example, there are ideologues lulled by the ideas of the Fedayeen of Islam, and pragmatists who are not in favour of Iran going to war with Israel, because they know that would lead the country into chaos. So today we are witnessing a split between the heirs of the Brotherhood ideology and the others”.

Accused of masterminding several attacks on politicians and attempting to assassinate the Shah’s Prime Minister, Safavi was arrested in 1951 and hanged on 18 January 1956 in Tehran. Khomeini then became the “Guide” of his organisation. On 29 August 1966, Sayed Qutb was executed after being found guilty of plotting to assassinate the Egyptian President. However, the deadly ideas of both men spread in both Egypt and Iran.

Although banned under the monarchy, the Fedayeen movement was transformed into a political party after the advent of the Islamic revolution. Safavi, considered by the regime’s ideologists to be the real inspiration behind the revolution, is revered as a martyr9 in Iran. There is therefore a clear link between the Egyptian Brotherhood, the Fedayeen of Islam and the Islamic Republic of Iran. It should also be noted that, like Khomeini, Ali Khamenei met Safavi in his youth, an important encounter that immersed him in the study of Qutb’s texts. He translated two of his books into Persian, the most famous being In the Shadow of the Koran10. In fact, Qutb’s influence is so strong among Khomeinist clerics that in 1984 the Islamic Republic of Iran printed a stamp bearing his image11.

Sayyid Qutb’s ideological stance undeniably influenced the revolutionary ideals of Iran’s Shiite Islamists. There is thus a real strategic axis between the future dignitaries of the new Islamic Republic of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. As I have already mentioned, this is based on the establishment of an “Islamic State” in which Sharia law is to regulate all aspects of life – social, legal and economic – as well as on an expansionist vision of radical Islam throughout the world, which should serve to unify Muslims the world over under a single banner. Another fundamental pillar of this alliance between Shiite and Sunni ideologues is anti-Semitism, which remains a key element of Iranian policy to this day.

One man also played an important role in establishing lasting links between the Brotherhood and the mullahs: Ebrahim Yazdi12, who became the Islamic Republic’s Minister of Foreign Affairs in 197913.

When the Shah of Iran went into exile in January 1979, several Brotherhood delegations spontaneously hailed Ayatollah Khomeini’s victory. In 1982, Umar Telmesani, then leader of the Islamist Brotherhood, explained in an Egyptian newspaper: “We supported Khomeini politically because an oppressed people had succeeded in getting rid of an oppressive leader and regaining their freedom”. In fact, the Brotherhood sees the advent of the Islamic Republic “as a victory for their vision and the first Islamic government since the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate14”

The links between Tehran and the Muslim Brotherhood are so strong that in his book Inside the Muslim Brotherhood, The Truth about the World’s Most Powerful Political Movement (John Blake, 2012), Youssef Nada, known as the Brotherhood’s banker, recounts that the Brotherhood even allowed Iran to import basic necessities during the war with Iraq.

In 1989, when Ali Khamenei succeeded Khomeini, he quite logically imposed the teaching of the texts of the Muslim Brother Sayyid Qutb in the training schools of the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

In fact, almost the entire political and administrative system of the Islamic Republic of Iran is based on the models advocated by al-Banna and Qutb. From the Supreme Guidance Council imposed by Khomeini, which is nothing more than a copy and paste of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Guidance Council, to the establishment of a paramilitary branch – the pasdaran – everything was in fact theorised well before the revolution… in Egypt!

1. Islamologist, diplomat, Eastern-rite priest and supporter of inter-religious dialogue, Louis Massignon (1883-1962) is considered one of the founders of Islamology.

2. See also Jean-Pierre Filiu, “Les fondements historiques du Hamas à Gaza (1946-1987)”, Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, 2012, 115, p. 3-14.

3. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who was close to Hassan al-Banna, supported Hitler and Nazism, not least because of his anti-Semitism. See Alban Dignat, “26 August 1966. Nasser hangs the ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood”, Herodote.net, 27 May 2019. Hassan al-Banna himself made no secret of his admiration for Nazism and al-Husseini: “Germany and Hitler are no more, but Amin al-Husseini will continue the fight” See Ian Hamel, “Quand les Frères musulmans égyptiens s’inspirient de l’Allemagne nazie”, Le Point, 8 March 2017.

4. “The caliphate is a spiritual and temporal institution that has its roots in the very origins of Islam and has organised the Muslim community for nearly thirteen centuries. The caliph is the successor to the prophet Muhammad (Mohammed), the ‘substitute for the Envoy of God’.” Lisa Romeo, “Caliphate: origin, role and evolution in history”, Keys to the Middle East, 14 January 2011.

5. Sayyid Qutb, “Jalons sur la route de l’islam”, 1964.

6. Sayyid Qutb, In the Shade of the Qur’an (Fî Zilâl al-Qur’ân), p. 140.

7. See also Ramin Parham, “Arc de crise et stratégie combinatoire”, Outre-Terre, 2011/3 (no. 29), pp. 483-488. Some sources mention their meeting in Cairo in 1954.

8. Ramin Parham is the author of “L’histoire secrète de la révolution iranienne”, (Paris, Denoël, 2009) Né à Ispahan, (Paris, Pierre-Guillaume de Roux, 2013) and Iran-Israël : jeux de guerre (Dijon, Dhow éditions, 2015).

9. In Tehran, an underground station bears his name.

10. See Teheran Times, June 11, 2019: “Leader’s Persian translation of ‘In the Shade of the Quran’ published.”

11. Yusuf Ünal, “Sayyid Quṭb in Iran: Translating the Islamist Ideologue in the Islamic Republic”, Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies, Indiana University Press, vol. 1, no. 2, November 2016.

12. Born in 1931, Ebrahim Yazdi died in 2017 of cancer. A supporter of Khomeini during his exile in Paris, he held senior ministerial posts before resigning as Foreign Minister after the hostage-taking at the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.

13. See also Gérard Prunier, “Les Frères musulmans soudanais, Une nouvelle diplomatie révolutionnaire”, in Ousmane Kane (ed.), Islam et islamismes au sud du Sahara, Paris, Éd. Karthala, “Hommes et sociétés”, 1998, p. 169-182.

14. Lahcen Hammouch, “La relation entre les Frères Musulmans et les Chiites”, The European Times, 1 March 2022.