Umar al-Tilmisani

'Umar al-Tilmisani (ar:عمر التلمسانى) (Often transliterated Omar el Telmesany or variations thereof) (Nov. 4, 1904-May 22, 1986) was the third General Guide (Murshid al-'Am) of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers. He headed the Egyptian Islamist organization from 1972 until 1986. Al-Tilmisani (his name is a variation on Tlemceni, reflecting his family origin in the Western Algerian city of that name) headed the Muslim Brothers during a period of cooperation and, some observers suggest, cooptation by the Egyptian state. While the Brothers were not precisely legal during Tilmisani's term, they were tolerated and encouraged by President Anwar al-Sadat as a bulwark against both leftist opponents and more extremist Islamists.

Biography

Al-Tilmisani was born in the Darb al-Ahmar district of Cairo in 1904. A lawyer, al-Tilmisani joined the Brothers in 1933, and was inducted into the organization by its founding General Guide, Hassan al-Banna.

Al-Tilmisani was from a family of prominent landowners, which owned 300 feddans (acres) and seven houses. His deputy, and a later successor as General Guide, Mustafa Mashhur, was also from a family of wealthy landowners. Their prominence and social status led historian Robert Springborg to conclude at the end of the 1980s that, "It can reasonably be claimed that those currently in control of the Muslim Brothers are of the Islamic infitah bourgeoisie who 'bought' the organization with resources acquired through collaboration with the Sadat regime" [Springborg 1989, 236]

Despite heading the group during this period of cooperation with the state, al-Tilmisani was imprisoned three times, once in 1954, as an activist during the difficult Nasser years, and twice while at the head of the group, during Sadat's mass roundup of opponents in 1981, and again under Hosni Mubarak in 1984.

References

Bibliography

Springborg, Robert. 1989. Mubarak's Egypt: Fragmentation of the Political Order. Boulder: Westview Press.