His father wanted his eldest son to become a scholar and thus began Hassan's education with Qur'an lessons at the local village school.

If the Muslim Brotherhood wanted to continue as a political-religious movement instead of maintaining its reputation as a violent elite, they needed to improve their public image.

[4] Many of his demands were initially disregarded, including requests to appoint his supporters to key administrative positions as well as calls to dissolve of the Secret Apparatus of the Brotherhood.

Once al-Hudaybi entered office, he condemned the violence that engrossed the movement from 1946–1949 and ordered that the Brotherhood dissolve their secret military branch immediately.

This created deep tensions between him and other high-ranking members supportive of the Secret Apparatus, including Salih al-’Ashmawi and Abd al-Rahman al-Sanadi.

Emmanuel Sivan and Gilles Kepel have argued that the text is a refutation of Sayyid Qutb's Islamist manifesto Ma'alim fi al-Tariq (Milestones Along the Way).

[7][8][9] Scholar Barbara Zollner suggests that Qutb is not a direct target of the text, but rather that al-Hudaybi wanted to respond to a radical marginal group of the Brotherhood.