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hospitals, in mosques and in cafés, women were sequestered, often with back-of-the-bus care, when they were not banned outright. (Many women found comfort in these “protections,” and a few were allowed positions of prominence in the group, provided they did not question man’s preeminence—somewhat as women are in the Catholic Church.)
    The Brotherhood held that those who strayed beyond the true Islam were enemies of God, to be won back to Islam if they could, to be condemned if not. It followed that Egypt’s government, which was far more secular than religious, would have to fall to sharia , the body of law based on the Quran and hadith that is best known in the West for the severing of thieving hands and of blasphemous heads. The most extreme of the Brothers wanted sharia not just in Egypt but in all the lands of the medieval caliphate. They envisioned a single holy kingdom, without individual states, stretching from North Africa to South Asia. The Brothers were divided on whether God’s rule should be brought about peacefully or forcefully. Those who argued for peace said that if the Brotherhood continued its good works, fallen Muslims would see the superiority of piety and return to the true Islam, that over time the numbers of the pious would so increase that the governments of men would have to yield to that of God. Those who argued for force said no government would let the Brotherhood (or any other group) threaten its power and that Egypt in particular would crush the Brothers long before sharia arose. If the Brothers wanted to see God’s kingdom on earth, they would have to put it there by the sword, as Muhammad had in Arabia and as his followers had across the Mediterranean and Near East. For authority they cited the Quran, which said, “The punishment of those who wage war against God and His Messenger and who strive with might and main for mischief throughout the land is execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting offof hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land.” And, “Fight in the cause of God those who fight you, but do not transgresslimits; for God loves not transgressors. And slay them wherever you catch them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out.”
    Al-Banna wavered between violence and peace for several years, but at last he created a militia known as the Secret Apparatus, which might be thought of as the godfather of the many Islamic terrorist groups that have disturbed the world since. At its peak, the Apparatus probably had a few thousand militiamen and was hidden even from much of the Brotherhood. The Apparatchiks bombed hotels and restaurants frequented by the godless and murdered Egyptian officials and British soldiers. In 1948 the Apparatus assassinated King Faruk’s prime minister, but Pyrrhically: six weeks later, the regime assassinated al-Banna. The Egyptian populace was as divided on the violence as the Brothers themselves had been. On the one hand, the people had little sympathy for the decadent autocrats who ruled them—they had got what was coming to them. On the other, murder was appalling, particularly of civilian innocents. For the next half century the Egyptian mood would wander between these two poles, now a little nearer one, now the other.
    Although Nasser had given the Brothers a small role in his coup in 1952, once in power he signaled that his modern Egypt had no room for their archaic cause. Two years later a Brother tried to assassinate him as he addressed the nation from a square in Alexandria. (The would-be killer thought God would guide his bullets, but if He did, He was a poor Marksman: eight of His eight shots went awry.) Most Egyptians, still grateful to Nasser for liberating them from the kings of Egypt and England, deplored the attempt, and the liberals of Alexandria were aghast. Nasser responded by banning the Brotherhood, hanging six of its leaders, and sending nearly a thousand of its members (many innocent) to long terms