The crisis within the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood

A crisis exists within the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. It is described at times as the generational conflict. At other times it is seen as a dispute over the strategy of standing up to the 3 July 2013 regime.

Since the movement has, for the past two years, been facing an unprecedented extermination campaign, some people, especially the Brotherhood’s foes, have imagined that the crisis is nothing but an indication that its long march is finally coming to an end. The truth is that this is nothing but a natural and expected crisis; it is even inevitable. Those who announce the death of the movement, which has been in existence for nearly a century and has been a principal player in all the major transformations in Egypt’s modern history, are doing so prematurely.

Like all forces within the Islamic trend, the Muslim Brotherhood rose to prominence after the Egyptian revolution in 2011 by virtue of being the main weighty force in the political arena. It was the most important and most effective party in the discussions with the Supreme Military Council, which took charge following the toppling of Mubarak. It went on to accomplish a major victory in the elections of the People’s Assembly (the Egyptian parliament), the first and the last after the revolution. Then, after a lot of hesitation, the Brotherhood competed in the presidential elections, delivering Dr Mohamed Morsi to the presidency of the republic. Yet, the counter-revolution was lying in wait not only for the Muslim Brotherhood but also, and principally, for the process of democratic transformation in Egypt.

The People’s Assembly was dissolved by means of a weird and unjustifiable judicial order. The Egyptian state stood in the president’s way as he attempted to reconvene the assembly. His efforts were also hampered by the division that split the revolutionary camp over this matter. Only one year after assuming the presidency, and notwithstanding the debate about the extent to which he had effective control over government and over the state, the first elected civilian president of the republic was toppled by the power of the army and the state institutions amid a sharp division among the people and unprecedented overt support for the coup from Arab Gulf states. In some way, since the Brotherhood was the party that benefited more than anybody else from the revolution and the launch of the process of democratic transition, it ended up incurring the biggest loss as a result of the coup against the revolution and the interruption of the democratic march. Yet, there is still worse than this.

The orchestrators of the 3 July coup and those in the Arab neighbourhood who supported them realised that the Muslim Brotherhood was the sole political force to be reckoned with in the Egyptian arena and that they might never enjoy effective control of power in the country without uprooting the movement completely.

Consequently, an extermination campaign was launched of a kind never before known in Egypt, not even during the most intense periods of conflict between the Egyptian state – monarchical or republican – and the movement. Hundreds of Brotherhood cadres were chased into exile, while thousands were detained and brought before kangaroo courts that pronounced, and continue to pronounce, unprecedented summary sentences. Scores of Brotherhood members have been killed, either shot in the streets or under torture in the most brutal detention conditions. Thousands of public sector employees suspected of links to the Brotherhood have been sacked from their jobs or have been moved from their positions. Hundreds of schools, hospitals and social welfare and civil society organisations have been shut down because their owners or those who manage them happened to be members of the group or its sympathisers. In such a climate of rapid and sudden inversion in the capabilities of the group, as well as in its role and position, it should not have been surprising that some kind of debate should erupt internally and that such debate might develop into what looks like an internal crisis.

However, the image of the crisis may appear to be much bigger than it really is. There is undoubtedly some disagreement within the ranks of the Brotherhood over whether it might have been more feasible to proceed along the option of reconciliation with the regime and therefore minimise the size of its losses or continue to engage in opposition revolutionary activities until a new balance of power emerges. This disagreement has to do with a deeper dispute about assessing the essence of the Egyptian state and the truth of what happened on 3 July, and about whether the Egyptian people may ever regain their freedom in the future and reassert their will through governance without a radical change to the structure of the state.

Irrespective of the nature of the dispute, however, it was clear as early as the first week of the coup that the leaders of the new regime were the people who were going to decide what kind of reconciliation was on offer and when. It was not the wishes of the other side that were going to count. The regime not only shut the door to a comprehensive national reconciliation; it also went further and deserted and even banished many of its own early partners who were neither members of the Brotherhood nor even Islamists. In addition, there is some sort of clash, or generational gap, between leaders who grew up and lived in a reconciliatory climate of concessions and pragmatism, and young middle-ranking leaders who have been turned more radical by the experience of the past four years. However, there is no doubt that the elections conducted earlier this year inside and outside Egypt have generated the conditions for a rush towards decision-making positions.

Yet, the Muslim Brotherhood is indeed the political force that is the oldest in Egypt’s modern history, the force that is deepest in its roots and is the most proliferous across all levels of Egyptian society. The Brotherhood is today, in a manner that surpasses any previous phase in its history, the backbone of the Egyptian national community. It is the reservoir of values for this community and the guardian of its existence and continuation.

It suffices that its members, together with those who sympathise or support them, are still taking to the streets in their tens of thousands on a daily and weekly basis in towns and villages across the country in order to affirm their opposition to the regime in a movement that is unprecedented in Egypt’s modern history. As in previous cases of confrontation with the Egyptian state, the Brotherhood is today being subjected to a vilification campaign led by state institutions with the participation of media and press agencies, both official and unofficial, as well as by the prosecution, judiciary and security institutions.

However, as has also happened before, such public division, which allowed this campaign to make some gains, will not last for long. Gradually, the Egyptian people will realise that the Brotherhood was not the primary target of what their country suffered on 3 July 2013, and that the movement’s only “crime” is that it is the more deep-rooted, more solid and biggest political force.

The actual target was the entire process of transition toward freedom and democracy. The state institutions simply could not live with such a process and could not imagine being subdued to its course. The alternative that regained power has been nothing but the same old order that existed for nearly the whole century that preceded the eruption of the January 2011 Revolution. Should the Egyptians wish for a better future for their children, they have no option but to renew their faith in their ability to bring about change and enforce their will over the state institutions and the regime.

The Muslim Brotherhood was born in the nineteen twenties. It was not founded as a political force. Only in the thirties did the group become a player in the political arena at a time when conflict over Egypt’s future and inclinations raged fiercely.

The group developed quite rapidly to become of the biggest and most effective manifestations of Islamic revivalism. At the political level, there has hardly been a single turning point in Egypt’s modern history since the late thirties without an active role for the Brotherhood in determining the course of the country and its direction. The driving force of the movement and its ability to endure in the face of the storms of the twentieth century did not emanate from the size or cohesiveness of the organisation nor from the support of influential local strata or regional powers.

The group’s real strength is that it was not generated from a previous version. It did not come under the influence of a designed ideological vision. Indeed, it has sustained the ability to regenerate itself with extreme dynamism in light of the objective changes surrounding its march. What we see today in terms of a crisis is nothing but another necessary moment of reflection in the stream of self-consciousness about the Muslim Brotherhood’s role and position, as it engages in the process of rebuilding the vision once more.

Translated from Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, 24 June, 2015

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.