90 Years In, The Muslim Brotherhood Faces An Uncharted Future

90 Years In, The Muslim Brotherhood Faces An Uncharted Future

https://www.investigativeproject.org/7408/90-years-in-the-muslim-brotherhood-faces

by Hany Ghoraba
Special to IPT News
April 19, 2018

The Muslim Brotherhood has managed to weather many storms during nine decades in Egypt. Presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak all tried to contain and suppress the Islamist movement, which ultimately seeks a global Muslim Caliphate. But opportunity suddenly presented itself after Mubarak's fall in 2011, and the Brotherhood won power a year later. Any high hopes among voters led to an ill-fated year under President Mohamed Morsi, who was ousted from power when millions of frustrated Egyptians took to the streets during the June 30, 2013 revolution.
A resulting military crackdown put top Brotherhood leaders in jail and sent others into exile. As a result, the Brotherhood celebrated its 90^th anniversary April 1 in Istanbul, Turkey, one of the group's last strongholds in the region. It attracted Ibrahim Munir, the group's London-based secretary general and de-facto supreme guide, and Khaled Meshaal, the former head of the Hamas political bureau. The two leaders bragged about the Brotherhood's survival   under what they labeled tyranny and oppression.

And they tried to project a united front to supporters despite factors that prove otherwise.
The first is an internal struggle over tactics exposed by communiqués denouncing members, such as former Secretary General Mahmoud Hussein, for criticizing deadly Muslim Brotherhood attacks on Egyptian police and the army.

Hussein, an official Brotherhood communiqué said, "not only sought to stop any attempt at rapprochement, he would occasionally go out in the media to reignite the atmosphere of disagreement and strengthen division within the ranks of the Brotherhood without regard to circumstances or regulations."

Egyptian public opinion toward the Brotherhood changed radically after Morsi's failed tenure, dropping from 80 percent support at the start of the Arab Spring to less than half of that by 2014. "When Egyptians voted in the MB in 2012, it was because they believed they would bring a better life to all," said Azza Radwan Sedky, a Canadian-based Egyptian political analyst and author of Cairo Rewind: The first two years of Egypt's Revolution. "It proved to be a sham."
The group's future never looked bleaker. According to Egyptian political strategist Ahmed Sarhan, "the group's local organization in Egypt has suffered severely under continuous successful security crackdown over the past 5 years, and it is now safe to assume that the leadership has been completely wiped off, most of the senior leaders are serving jail sentences, and [a ]few managed to escape to Qatar and Turkey."
Sedky agreed, saying that she doubts that the Muslim Brotherhood can survive as a powerful organization that can galvanize the majority of Egyptians behind it. Although the group managed to survive previous security crackdowns, it now lacks the public support that it relied on to endure the hard times. This is due to its open war strategy that it is accused of waging against the Egyptian army, police, public officials and even common citizens.

A loss of public support isn't the Brotherhood's only challenge. Financial and political support from countries such as Turkey and Qatar could be affected by mounting pressure from states opposed to the Brotherhood, such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose affinity for the Muslim Brotherhood is well known, defended Brotherhood activities in Turkey labeling them as  "ideological and not terrorist."

But that support for the Brotherhood isolates Turkey and Qatar politically and economically from neighboring states. Turkey's ailing economy and worsening relations with the EU pose immediate threats. That situation is not sustainable long-term, Sarhan said.

"Turkey and Qatar have offered safe haven to many of the MB middle level leaders, where they have helped establish media outlets to spread their message. Nevertheless, the future of the support given to MB members in these countries [is] questionable," Sarhan said.

Meanwhile, intellectual and organizational stagnation has the Brotherhood pushing the same political agenda it offered during the 1970s. That program focused on infiltrating Egypt's Parliament, vocational syndicates and student unions while promoting archaic social programs that don't fit modern times. This included attempts to ban forms of arts such as opera and ballet. During its one year in power, an aggressive program of "Brotherhoodization" of the Egyptian state was pursued through major government appointments of Brotherhood-aligned officials.

"Islamists in general, and MB sympathizers in particular, will always find their ways through the different political organizations in Egypt, especially labor syndicates and parties of the left movement," Sarhan said. "The only way [to stop that] is to open up the political landscape to the liberal parties, while keeping the pressure on Islamists."

Techniques that helped the Brotherhood survive for 90 years, when little was known about its activities, may be less effective under Egypt's current crackdown. Egyptians recoiled from Morsi's rule, and the Brotherhood's influence has suffered, both at home and abroad. The Brotherhood's past success fooling Western sympathizers into believing it was a moderate force in a chaotic region may be more difficult to preserve.

"MB groups in exile will eventually wither away," Sarhan said, "since they won't be allowed to return home. We can take lessons from Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiyyah in the 1990s, which collapsed under the security forces pressure, and their affiliates abroad ceased to exist."

All of these factors indicate that the Muslim Brotherhood in its traditional structure and cultural impact may fade away. It is possible that it will split into smaller entities.

"It will take the MB years to build a new hierarchical organization," Sarhan said. It may be able to build an organization in exile, biding time until conditions in Egypt are more favorable. He cited the example of Tunisia's Ennahda movement, whose leader Rached al-Ghannouchi lived in exile in London for decades before returning to lead the government coalition in 2011.

As Sedky said, "The dream of reigning supreme across the Muslim World and the whole world doesn't die easily."

Hany Ghoraba is an Egyptian writer, political and counter-terrorism analyst at Al Ahram Weekly, author of Egypt's Arab Spring: The Long and Winding Road to Democracy and a regular contributor to the BBC.