{"id":466947,"date":"2010-01-26T10:10:06","date_gmt":"2010-01-26T10:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mecouncil.org\/?p=466947"},"modified":"2022-09-21T10:14:23","modified_gmt":"2022-09-21T10:14:23","slug":"a-radical-turn-for-the-muslim-brotherhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/a-radical-turn-for-the-muslim-brotherhood\/","title":{"rendered":"A Radical Turn for the Muslim Brotherhood?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"muslim_brotherhood001_16x9\"On January 16, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt<\/a> \u2013 the largest and most influential Islamist movement in the Middle East \u2013 announced the election of a new General Guide, the organization\u2019s top leadership post. There has already been considerable speculation, though relatively little in English, on what this might mean for the Brotherhood and broader Islamist trends in the region. The emerging consensus is that the election of Mohammed Badie, a veterinary professor and purported hardliner, signals Islamist \u201cradicalization\u201d and ideological regression on the part of an organization that had been hailed, until quite recently, as an increasingly moderate force.<\/p>\n

Less than two years ago, these same arguments were made when the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, for the first time in its history, elected a leader of Palestinian origin. Hammam Said was seen \u2013 correctly \u2013 as a fiery pro-Hamas conservative. Analysts Matthew Levitt and David Schenker cautioned at the time that the Brotherhood \u201ccan no longer be considered \u2018loyal\u2019 to the kingdom.\u201d But a strategic shift did not occur. Instead, once elected, Said toned down the abrasive rhetoric, emphasized domestic issues, and reached out to the Jordanian government.<\/p>\n

The current alarmism over the election of the similarly controversial Badie \u2013 an associate of Sayyid Qutb\u2019s in the 1960s \u2013 is just as likely to prove unwarranted. Unlike many of its secular counterparts, the Muslim Brotherhood has never depended on individuals and personalities, but rather on strong organizational and institutional structures. Moreover, the group has already issued definitive ideological statements on a number of contentious issues, including women\u2019s rights and political pluralism (in 1994). In 2004, it unveiled with great fanfare its \u201creform initiative,\u201d in which it publicly affirmed many of the foundational components of democratic life.<\/p>\n

The precedent of these past documents was evident in Badie\u2019s January 16th<\/sup>acceptance speech<\/a>. He struck a conciliatory note, and emphasized the Brotherhood\u2019s commitment to women\u2019s equality under the law, protection of minority rights, and the centrality of democratic reform. Badie\u2019s sincerity in this regard, while perhaps questionable, is beside the point. Perceptions matter. And for a group very much affected by how others perceive it, organizational commitments trump the beliefs of individual leaders. Ever since the attacks of September 11, and particularly since the Bush administration\u2019s \u201cfreedom agenda,\u201d the Brotherhood has proven acutely sensitive to outside criticism. This episode is no exception.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, in a surprise move that should have been less surprising, Badie appointed the relatively unknown Mahmoud Hussein, rather than the powerful conservative Mahmoud Ezzat, as Secretary-General, one of the group\u2019s most influential positions. As journalist and former Brotherhood member Abdel Monem Mahmoud remarked to me, \u201cit seems Badie wanted to give the impression he will be independent and develop his own source of charisma.\u201d<\/p>\n

That said, elections have consequences. The ousting of well-known \u201cmoderates\u201d from leadership posts \u2013 through electoral manipulations and procedural violations \u2013 means that the Brotherhood has lost two of its more forward-thinking politicians, Mohammad Habib and Abdel Monem abul Futouh, who some in the organization had dismissively labeled \u201cEgypt\u2019s Erdogan.\u201d<\/p>\n

But had the internal elections yielded a different result, it is unlikely it would have made much of a difference. The Brotherhood, perhaps today more than ever, is a prisoner not of its leaders but of its circumstances. As Mahmoud points out, \u201c[the Brotherhood] won\u2019t leave the political arena, but the question is who will allow it to participate?\u201d Clearly not the Egyptian regime, which has launched one of the most extensive crackdowns on the group since the 1960s. During one particularly repressive spell in 2008, I asked Esam al-Erian, a prominent Brotherhood reformist now in the Guidance Bureau, about the group\u2019s plans for the upcoming parliamentary elections. He laughed: \u201cIf things continue as they are until 2010, the Brotherhood won\u2019t have any seats at all!\u201d This is a slight exaggeration but probably not by much. The organization is having its share of internal difficulties \u2013 difficulties that are leading some to cast doubt on its commitment to reform \u2013 but the Brotherhood\u2019s bigger, more intractable problem is a regime that wishes to erase it from the Egyptian political arena.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On January 16, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt \u2013 the largest and most influential Islamist movement in the Middle East \u2013 announced the election of a new General Guide, the organization\u2019s top leadership post. There has already been considerable speculation, though relatively little in English, on what this might mean for the Brotherhood and broader… Continue reading A Radical Turn for the Muslim Brotherhood?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"publication_archive_type":[297],"class_list":["post-466947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","publication_archive_type-issue-brief","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466947"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":467237,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466947\/revisions\/467237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466947"},{"taxonomy":"publication_archive_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication_archive_type?post=466947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}