WATANI International
28 November 2010
Founded in Egypt in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood has grown into a worldwide movement that promotes Islam through charity work, grass-roots activism and electoral politics. Though formally banned in Egypt in 1954 following decades of tension with the government, the group has been tolerated to varying degrees over the years by Egyptian regimes that have found it both threatening and useful. In the 1970s, the group formally renounced violence, though its Islamist teachings have inspired violent groups like Hamas. Both Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri were influenced by the movement##s embrace of political Islam. Since the 1980s, it has become the most active opposition force in Egyptian politics.
The regime has responded to the group##s rising popularity with periodic crackdowns. This has hardly stemmed its popularity. Rather, perseverance through imprisonment is a source of pride for its members.
The Brotherhood##s dogged survival presents the question: What would happen if it were allowed to compete in a free democracy? Its opponents have no doubt about its nature. General Fouad Allam, a former chief of Egypt##s internal security services who spent decades monitoring the Brotherhood, says it is similar in scope to the international communist movement but “more organized and more engaged.” He hints at international funding of the group and raises the specter of an Islamist takeover of a key U.S. ally. “Egypt would regress 100 years if the Brotherhood came to power,” he says, describing a scenario in which women could be forced indoors and Egypt##s current peace treaty with Israel “would change 100%.”
The Brotherhood rejects such claims as politically motivated fearmongering, while Egypt##s secular opposition argues that the government stokes fear of the Brotherhood to quash real democratic change. “This is the myth that Mubarak has been selling for 30 years,” says Ibrahim Issa, the former editor of the influential newspaper al-Dustour, who was recently dismissed because, he says, of his overt criticism of the regime.
Mubarak isn##t alone in making a bogeyman of the Brotherhood: governments across the Arab world regard it with varying degrees of suspicion. In Syria, for instance, the group has clashed with the secular Baathist regime and now operates almost entirely underground. Western governments aren##t always sure how to view it.
Just how scared should we be of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood? In numerical terms, it doesn##t present much of a threat. Membership is in the low hundreds of thousands, and in a fair election, the Islamists would not be expected to win — in 2005, only 3% of the population voted for the Brotherhood. And some of those votes were in protest of an inept regime rather than wholehearted endorsements of the Islamist cause. “Many of the people who vote for the Muslim Brothers are doing it in order to vote against the National Democratic Party,” says Sayed al-Badawi, the head of the Wafd, Egypt##s oldest legal opposition party.
Since the Brotherhood##s bloc in parliament has achieved little over the past five years, it may now receive some of the popular skepticism previously reserved for the official parties. Legal recognition could diminish the Brothers## appeal, says human-rights activist Hossam Bahgat of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights: “Once you allow them into the political race, they become politicians, and they are judged as politicians.” Legal status would also undermine the Brotherhood##s claim to victimhood.
Members of the Brotherhood point out that this year, as in 2005, they are contesting less than a third of the parliamentary seats — not nearly enough to capture the majority needed to amend the constitution. Members say their immediate goals are grass-roots organization and political participation, not regime change. “We are not out to win and form a government,” says Brotherhood member and parliamentarian Mohsen Radi. “Participation, not victory, is our new slogan.”
Still, despite its limited effectiveness, the Brotherhood has appeal. Egypt has more than 20 legal opposition parties, but they##re widely viewed as regime puppets, timid political bodies that exist more on paper than on the Egyptian streets. Such a limited choice serves the regime well — the few parties that manage to upset the balance are quickly quashed.
But these parties have a lot of catching up to do before they can challenge the Brotherhood. The Islamists have been building a grass-roots organization for decades, using university campuses, charities and close-knit family networks for recruitment. The Brotherhood##s charity operations have been especially effective in earning admiration. Many Brotherhood members are doctors and pharmacists who help fill the health care void left by Egypt##s woefully ill-equipped government hospitals. The Islamic Medical Association, a Brotherhood-linked charity, operates 29 hospitals throughout the country, providing inexpensive but comprehensive services for poor Egyptians.
It##s a powerful strategy for winning loyalty, one other political groups are trying to copy. After business mogul al-Sayyid al-Badawi took over the liberal Wafd Party in May, part of his efforts to revive it revolved around a personally funded charity to provide medical services and community-development projects in the name of the Wafd. “We put a large amount of money towards human services, medical services and to share with people during disasters,” he says. “So we have come to compete with the Muslim Brotherhood using the same methods that they do.”
The same ambivalence about the Brotherhood##s aims can be seen in the U.S. Egyptian intellectuals credit the Bush Administration with pushing for the democratic reforms that allowed multiparty elections. But U.S. support for regional democracy waned after the Brotherhood made significant gains and Hamas won the Palestinian elections of 2006. To the dismay of many Egyptians, that wariness seems to have continued. Instead of aggressively pushing for democratic freedoms, President Obama##s State Department has sought to strengthen ties with the Mubarak regime, with an eye toward an Egyptian role in peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. But Egypt##s opposition says U.S. tacit support for Mubarak does far more damage to the moderate, secular parties that Washington would most like to see in power. “We are not asking you to impose democracy,” says newspaper publisher Hisham Kassem. “We are asking you to stop imposing dictatorship.”
Even among those who criticize the U.S. and the Mubarak administration, however, there are doubts about the Brotherhood. Some fear that if it rose to power, it would curtail the rights of liberals, women and minorities. “If fanatics were to run Egypt, there would be no room for Copts [Egyptian Christians] or people like myself,” says novelist Alaa al-Aswany. Brotherhood members insist that such fears are baseless, pointing out that Christians receive the same care as Muslims in Brotherhood-operated clinics. When al-Qaeda threatened Egyptian Christians in early November, the Brotherhood condemned the threat.
The group has long been a vociferous critic of Israel. Its prescription for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is total abandonment of peace talks, coupled with international support for Palestinian armed resistance. Not surprisingly, Israel views the Brothers warily. “It##s not like the Muslim Brotherhood has adopted a more lenient or moderate line,” says one Israeli official, when asked about the potential impact of a Brotherhood-led Egyptian government.
That said, the Brotherhood routinely dismisses fears of its ambitions beyond the country of its birth as overblown. Spokesman Mohammed Morsy insists that the Islamists## main goals are purely domestic: “We want to have a Muslim state in Egypt — not in Ireland.”
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TIME Magazine (abridged)