You don’t want the Brotherhood, take Daesh

The accusation that has always been ready to be directed at the Muslim Brotherhood is that they are the allies of the system, any system. This accusation is based on a very important fact which is that the movement is not a secret movement, but rather sought official “licensing” from the state it is operating in, as it possesses a dynamic that enables it to adapt to the laws and constitutions adopted in their countries of operation. The movement adopted the method of participating in public life, adhering to the ballot boxes, and even acted as part of the executive authority in other countries. Wouldn’t it be easy to monitor and prevent the “danger” posed by a movement with such features and which operates in broad daylight within the rule of the law, according to the beliefs of the security forces in this country or that?

This movement actually played the role of a “sponge” absorbing the energy of the youth, as it was a haven for those enthusiastic about preaching, and every time the Muslim Brotherhood was persecuted and its headquarters were shut down, in any Arab country, the opportunity for the establishment of groups described as extremists arose. Perhaps Daesh, and before it Al-Qaeda, along with other Takfirist and violent groups are the starkest examples of this, especially since nature does not accept vacuums and the enormous youth energy could have filled the vacuum with an organised idea that serves the community instead of being filled with others.

The policy of “banning” the moderate Islamic groups, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, proved to be a failure. Not a failure to eliminate the idea on which the group was founded, rather the ban formed an incubator suitable for the growth of extremist and fanatical groups, such as Daesh and others. In addition to this, the Muslim Brotherhood is not an organisation, only a movement or action sense. It is an idea and a movement, and those who are ideologically affiliated with the “idea” are double and triple those who are organisationally affiliated with the movement. Banning the organisation undoubtedly is influential in the legal aspect, but not in the ideological aspect, as it has no impact at all. I would even go as far as saying that organisationally banning it would benefit it much more than it being an organisation above ground, with public headquarters and activities. This is because this group is much better at working far from the eye than working in broad daylight. In other words, the Muslim Brotherhood has mastered the role of being persecuted, imprisoned and banned more than it has mastered the role of promoting an official slogan.

History has proven that anyone that has banned the Muslim Brotherhood eventually disappeared, while the Brotherhood continued to grow, expand and multiply. If we consider that all the times the Muslim Brotherhood faced persecution and challenges in the Arab and Persian countries, it should have disappeared, but it survived and its opponents departed. This is not because its leaders are geniuses, but because it is a simple idea based on the foundations of its life, which is based on the simplicity of Islam and its nature. Therefore, it is impossible for any government to erase it from history, and even though there are those who were good at trying to do so, no one was better than General Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia or El-Bekbashi Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt.

There is a very important question circulating amongst the Arab elites: How can a state (any state) succeed in its war on the “extremist” jihadi groups, although they have also waged a war on the Muslim Brotherhood which has been, and still is, completely moderate, has always been part of the Arab political system, and effectively participated in political life even reaching the extent of being in a ministry? Who can convince the eager Muslim youth, after targeting the most moderate Islamic movement, of the feasibility or use of “peaceful” preaching efforts, adhering to the ballot boxes, and participating in the “democratic game”?

The policy of banning of the Muslim Brotherhood in a non-Arab country has provided a cover for other countries, such as Israel, to ban organisations with the same ideologies, even if they do not share the same name, such as the Islamic Movement in 48 Palestine, also known as the Southern Islamic Movement. This led some social networking activists to the conclusion that this group poses a “threat” to both the Arab governments and Israel. This necessarily means that the two sides are in the same trenches. It is unfortunate that they both receive great support from Western governments and they both receive military and economic aid that would allow them to adopt policies that would ultimately harm Western interests and open the opportunity to exporting “extremism” to them as long as these “extremists” do not have anywhere to express their opinions or to even live in light of dictatorship and tyranny. In other words, the brutality of the governments has led to the brutality of the organisations. In a world that has become as small as ours, where it is easy to move about and communicate with others, when any fire ignites in a country, there is no guarantee that the spark will not move to another country, even far away.

The West, and perhaps even the entire world, is now paying the price of their support for the tyrannical, oppressive and coup regimes because these regimes failed in the equation: feed them against hunger and security against fear. The eager youth are looking for themselves in the brutal regimes, after the brutality of the regimes turned them into creatures that prefer to ascend to the sky after the world has become too difficult for them, and they wouldn’t mind “killing” the “infidels” and anyone else they get their hands on, on their way to “getting closer to God”.

Translated from Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, 19 November 2015.

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