The explosion of antisemitism since October 7 is sometimes erroneously treated as if it appeared suddenly in response to the war in Gaza. History tells a much more troubling story. Modern Islamist antisemitism was built over generations, combinin older religious prejudices with some of the most poisonous ideas imported from European antisemitism: conspiracy theories about Jewish power, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Nazi propaganda and the portrayal of Jews as a secret force manipulating governments, finance and society. One organization has played an important role in transforming these ideas into a political ideology: the Muslim Brotherhood.
Founded in Egypt in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood did not invent antisemitism in the Middle East. It took anti-Jewish themes, European conspiracy theories and opposition to Zionism and incorporated them into a modern Islamist political worldview. That intellectual tradition subsequently influenced movements including Hamas. Understanding this explains why some of the hostility directed at Israel cannot be resolved simply by “changing Israeli policies”. For ideological movements descended from this tradition, the objection is not merely to what Israel does. It is to Jewish existence itself.
Key Findings
• Modern Islamist antisemitism developed through the fusion of older anti-Jewish religious themes with European antisemitic conspiracy theories. The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, became an important vehicle for popularizing this fusion in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
• Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb’s “Our Struggle With The Jews” portrayed conflict with Jews in explicitly religious and historical terms
• During the 1930s, the Muslim Brotherhood developed contacts with Haj Amin al-Husseini, the antisemitic Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who later collaborated with Nazi Germany.
• European antisemitic material, particularly the fabricated “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, became incorporated into Islamist propaganda.
• Hamas emerged from the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and its 1988 charter explicitly invoked the Protocols of the Elders of Zion hoax.
Antisemitism: Imported & Adopted
Jews lived throughout the Muslim world for centuries. Although their status was not one of equality, and periods of discrimination, persecution and violence occurred, there were also noteworthy periods of coexistence, cultural exchange and Jewish flourishing. European colonialism brought European ideas into the Middle East, including European antisemitism. Blood Libel entered regional political discourse, while translations of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, one of history’s most antisemitic forgeries, spread conspiracy theories about supposed Jewish control of governments and world affairs.
These ideas were subsequently combined with political opposition to Zionism and selectively interpreted religious texts. The result was something distinctly modern.
Brotherhood: Islamic & Antisemitic
The founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt provided this emerging ideology with an organized political vehicle. The Brotherhood sought a society governed according to its conception of political Islam and viewed the growing Zionist movement through a religious rather than simply territorial or nationalist framework. A distinction that was enormously important. Conventional territorial conflict can theoretically be resolved through borders, treaties and political compromises. A religious struggle against Jewish sovereignty is considerably more difficult to resolve.
And thus the Muslim Brotherhood increasingly portrayed Zionism not merely as a competing national movement but as part of a wider Jewish threat to Islam. By 1948, the movement had grown to around one million members, giving it extraordinary capacity to disseminate its worldview.
Nazis: Muftis & Muslims
The development of this ideology also intersected with one of the darkest chapters of twentieth century history. Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, established contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood during the 1930s. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum records that Brotherhood representatives traveled to Palestine in 1935 and met with al-Husseini, who welcomed their support.
Al-Husseini subsequently became a notorious collaborator with Nazi Germany. During World War II, at the personal behest of Adolf Hitler, the Grand Mufti participated in Nazi propaganda efforts aimed at Arabic-speaking audiences and promoted extreme antisemitism throughout the region. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other European conspiracy theories became part of this propaganda ecosystem.
Qutb: Ideologue & Intellectual
Perhaps no Brotherhood thinker was more important to the development of modern Islamist ideology than Sayyid Qutb. His writings influenced generations of Muslims far beyond Egypt. In “Our Struggle With the Jews”, Qutb presented conflict between Muslims and Jews not primarily as a dispute arising from twentieth century politics, but as a struggle stretching back to the beginnings of Islam. This interpretation had profound consequences. If the conflict began in 1948, political decisions might potentially resolve it. If on the other hand it began in the seventh century and reflects an inherent struggle between Jews and Islam, territorial compromise becomes almost irrelevant.
This outlooked transformed antisemitism into something more powerful than prejudice. It became ideology.
Hamas: Hatred & Inheritance
The connection to the contemporary Israeli-Palestinian conflict is direct. Hamas emerged from the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. Its original 1988 charter reflected that ideological heritage explicitly. It framed the conflict in religious terms, contained antisemitic themes and even invoked the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as supposed “evidence” of a global Jewish conspiracy, despite the Protocols having been thoroughly exposed as a total fabrication decades earlier.
Reducing Hamas to a conventional Palestinian nationalist organization misses an essential part of its ideological identity. Its worldview was molded by the Muslim Brotherhood’s tradition of radical political Islam, within which hostility toward Zionism became intertwined with a much broader religious and conspiratorial understanding of Jews. The October 7 Massacre cannot be understood entirely separately from that ideological history.
Anti-Zionism: Gas & Chamber
Israel is a sovereign state and its government’s policies can be criticized like those of any other country. The problem arises when the vocabulary of political criticism reproduces classic antisemitic ideas, such as:
- Israel secretly controls governments
- Zionists control the media
- Jewish money dictates American foreign policy
- Israel is responsible for wars around the world
- Jews or “Zionists” operate a hidden global network manipulating events
These are not fundamentally new arguments. They are modern variations of extraordinarily old conspiracy theories. The vocabulary changes, but the architecture remains remarkably familiar.
Conclusion: Impact & Legacy
The Muslim Brotherhood’s greatest historical impact is more ideological than organizational. Governments can ban organizations, leaders can die, political movements can fracture. Ideas are much harder to eliminate.
The worldview developed and popularized by twentieth century Islamist thinkers has traveled far beyond the Muslim Brotherhood’s original Egyptian organization. It has influenced political movements, terrorist organizations, religious discourse and propaganda across borders. Its themes and ideas now appear in Western debates, sometimes stripped of their explicitly religious vocabulary. Understanding where these ideas originated makes them easier to recognize because the role of modern Islamist movements in disseminating antisemitism cannot be ignored.
During the twentieth century, the Muslim Brotherhood transformed disparate strands of religious hostility, political anti-Zionism and imported European antisemitism into a powerful ideological framework. Sayyid Qutb gave that worldview intellectual justification, while movements emerging from the Brotherhood tradition carried elements of it into subsequent generations, with Hamas becoming one of the most consequential. This history matters because it demonstrates why defeating antisemitism requires more than “debating Israeli policy”. When Jews are portrayed as conspirators controlling governments, when Zionism becomes shorthand for a hidden global evil, or when Jewish sovereignty is treated as inherently illegitimate regardless of borders or policies, the argument has moved beyond criticism of Israel, and has entered the territory of an older and much darker ideology.
