This paper attempts to recover parts of the overlooked history of the early period of the Muslim Brotherhood by focusing on some downplayed components of Hasan al-Banna’s ideology. Going beyond the exclusive focus on Islamism, the paper examines how al-Banna positioned his da‘wa or what we now call Islamism in relation to other nationalist, transnationalist, and internationalist ideologies of the first half of the twentieth century. More specifically, it examines how al-Banna placed what he called “the Muslim Brothers’ Islam” against territorial nationalism, Arabism, liberal internationalism, Western modernity and other transnational ideologies like Nazism, Fascism, and Communism. The paper argues that al-Banna’s Islamism was shaped by secular ideologies as much as it was influenced by his informal Islamic education and upbringing. The latter tends to be over-emphasized in the literature at the expense of the former. However, al-Banna probably shared with his contemporaneous “modernists” more than what he shared with successor Islamists. The essentialist approach to studying the Muslim Brotherhood emphasizes what it deems to be an inherent conflict between Islam and modernity and asserts that Islamism emerged as a reaction to this conflict. In doing so, it underplays the crucially important “non-Islamic” factors that shaped al-Banna’s ideology. Furthermore, his writings demonstrate that he himself was not aware of his own “effective history.” Hence, his ideology seems incoherent. For instance, he criticizes territorial nationalism and then embraces it, rejects racial nationalism then develops racial arguments against non-Arabs and blames them for what he labels “the decline of Islam.” The paper also challenges the contextualist approach to studying Islamism, which I argue, added to the provincialization of al-Banna. The paper demonstrates that Al-Banna presented his Islamism as a solution not only to local but also global problems. In developing his internationalist weltanschauung, al-Banna borrowed several elements from other international and transnational ideologies. He also shared the internationalists’ concerns for world safety and prosperity. While his inconsistent nationalist ideas were probably a result of confusion, al-Banna’s internationalism was likely a deliberate synthesis of Islam and modern ideologies. This is another point that has been obscured by essentialism.