Hassan al-Banna

Hassan al-Banna was an Egyptian schoolteacher and imam who founded the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the largest and most influential Islamist movements. Born in Mahmudiyya in the Nile Delta, he trained at Dar al-Ulum in Cairo and taught at a primary school in Ismailia, where in March 1928 six workers of the Suez Canal Company made him their leader. He held Islam to be a comprehensive system of life and criticized Western materialism and British imperialism. By the late 1930s the Brotherhood had branches in every Egyptian province, and a decade later 500,000 active members. After the government outlawed it in December 1948, he was shot in Cairo and died on 12 February 1949.