THE POLITICAL ROLE AND PARTICIPATION OF THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD IN IRAQ (2003–2011): AN UNDERSTANDING OF DECISIONS, STRATEGIES, AND CHALLENGES

Date

2026-8-11

Author

Süleymanoğlu, İzzettin

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This thesis examines the political trajectory and organizational fracture of the Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and its political wing, the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), from the 2003 U.S. invasion to their 2011 administrative separation. It investigates a central analytical problem: why a movement that entered the post-Ba'athist era as the premier Sunni political force exited it in structural disarray, with its political wing severed and popular base depleted. The central argument posits that the movement's failure was driven by an irresolvable struggle to reconcile its comprehensive Islamist identity with the pragmatic demands of democratic participation under foreign occupation—a tension exacerbated by severe, pre-existing structural flaws. Relying on a qualitative, inductive methodology featuring original interviews with senior leaders, the study advances three core findings. First, decades of Ba'athist repression and a 1971 strategic freeze left the movement fragmented across generational lines, paralyzing leadership with a cautious "Mosque Mentality." Second, a fatal "Father-Son" dynamic allowed the clandestine religious movement to maintain unaccountable control over the IIP, stripping the party of the agility required for volatile Iraqi politics. Third, regional Arab states accelerated the IIP’s marginalization by funding secular-nationalist alternatives, triggering high-level defections. Analyzing critical junctures such as the Fallujah crisis and the 2008 SOFA agreement, this thesis demonstrates how reactive decision-making and structural contradictions made the 2011 separation inevitable, contributing novel frameworks to the study of political Islam.

Subject Keywords

Political Islam, Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood, Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), Post-2003 Iraq, Organizational Fragmentation

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/120026

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis