Introduction

Over a period of more than three decades, the path to Dr Zahar’s door has always been a potholed dirt and sand affair. That much was a constant. In the 1980s a visit to this veteran ‘Brother’ was a low-key affair. The approach was unimpeded by obvious signs of security or surveillance. Once inside his modest home, a meeting with him would entail being an audience to a lengthy diatribe coloured by Islamic commentary and medical analogies. During one such meeting, Dr Zahar lamented the fate of the Muslim Brotherhood and the ‘cancer’ of Israel’s occupation against the Palestinian people. His ire was then apparent as he recalled his early adulthood spent studying medicine at Ain al-Shams University in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, and the punitive repression of President Gamal Abdel Nasser against the Muslim Brotherhood. Zahar outlined his aspirations for his movement: ‘We want an Islamic state … an Islamic alternative … a pan-Islamic state.’ ¹ He cautioned that much work would still be needed to achieve this goal. And he spoke of the Muslim Brotherhood as ‘one movement … one entity … laws, economics, political life all connected’. ² But Zahar knew he had a long way to go as he spoke of his fellow Brotherhood leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was incarcerated and ‘shackled’ and ‘subject to harsh treatment’ in Israeli custody, and compared him to Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna. He called both men ‘catalysts’ who ‘evoked the consciousness of the people’ and were ‘able to arouse a whole nation’. ³ He acknowledged that his movement had many enemies and existed in a political environment that was inimical to its goals, but he cautioned patience and said that all would pay off for the Brotherhood in the end.