During last year’s debate over Egypt’s new constitution and the various power-grabbing moves by President Muhammad Morsi that followed, the Muslim Brotherhood’s offices suffered a series of attacks and thefts. Anti-Brotherhood protesters clashed with supporters, leading to ten fatalities. This March, demonstrations erupted outside the Brotherhood’s Cairo headquarters once again. As before, many protesters focused on the claim that the organization is controlling President Morsi and called for the resignation of the attorney general and the interior minister, both Morsi appointees.
Though Morsi has officially renounced his membership in the Brotherhood, he continues to act as though he were very much a part of the organization. Members of the press critical of the Brotherhood, such as Hani Shukrallah, the editor-in-chief of the English version state-owned Ahram news service, have been forced out of their jobs. And minority opposition groups, feeling underrepresented, have resisted the new Islamist-backed constitution that provides weak protections for many of the rights fought for during the Arab Spring.
The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood (and its political offshoot, the Freedom and Justice Party) has accompanied the ascensions of other Islamist and Brotherhood-affiliated parties in the region, such as the ruling Ennahda Party in Tunisia, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Justice and Development Party in Morocco, and the Islamic Action Front in Jordan. After the Arab Spring, many of these groups gained increased prominence in their respective political spheres, where initially they had gained popularity as opposition movements. The Brotherhood has since changed its focus to accommodate its new role in the political landscape as it has been forced to deal with the realities of political party life. Simply put, the Muslim Brotherhood faces a unique identity crisis as it struggles to navigate between Islamism and political pragmatism.
Band of Brothers
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, an Egyptian schoolteacher, with the goal of spreading Islamic law and morality through the region. In some ways, it was a reaction to Western influence. “They came into existence in the 1920s as a response to Western colonialism … and heightened Christian missionary zeal,” Yvonne Haddad, professor of Islamic history and Christian-Muslim relations at Georgetown, explained in an interview with the HPR. “The missionaries at the turn of the 20th century were preaching that ‘Christianity is a total way of life,’ a phrase that has been translated into ‘Islam is a total way of life’ … the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
In most Arab nations, and especially in Egypt, the Brotherhood was long known as an opposition movement critical of established strongmen leaders such as Hosni Mubarak. After the anti-Mubarak protests of the Arab Spring ended with the overthrow of the old administration, the Brotherhood organized the Freedom and Justice Party and won almost half of the lower house of parliament in January 2012.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to prominence was propelled by its excellent organizational skills. Every Brotherhood member is required to be completely loyal to the Murshid (Supreme Guide), who is currently Muhammad Badie, a prominent member of the group’s conservative faction. The group also gained support through its various social service operations that run and fund a series of charities that are active in everything from education to public health.
Such social services allow the Brotherhood to display its “ideological commitment to alleviating poverty, reducing inequality and increasing social responsibility,” Nadine Farag, who has researched public health in Cairo’s slums, described in a PBS report. Furthermore, such activities allow the group to garner support across a wide swath of the population. “It built up a strong social presence during the period of authoritarianism that it could use to construct an impressive vote mobilization effort,” according to Nathan Brown, professor of political science at George Washington University, in an interview with the HPR. In other words, many of those who voted for the Freedom and Justice Party may not necessarily have been ideologically in sync with the party; however, due to the aid provided by the Muslim Brotherhood, they were willing to support it politically. And with the superior organizational infrastructure of the group, these people were more likely to turn out to vote.
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Until 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood was clearly defined as an oppositional movement, acting quietly against then-President Hosni Mubarak. According to Haddad, the fact that the Brotherhood had to operate for many years as a persecuted organization played a big role in establishing the perceived righteousness of the Brotherhood’s operations in recent years. But that cohesiveness—and very identity—was tied up with the Brotherhood’s role as a righteously persecuted group. Now, in post-Mubarak Egypt, this identity is increasingly in flux.
However, the Muslim Brotherhood has remained remarkably resilient to ideological change. It is “organizationally more rigid but ideologically more flexible than other [Islamist] groups,” Brown explains. “First, it is hierarchical and disciplined; second, it is gradualist and inclined toward compromise.” Despite the strong internal infrastructure of the organization, the Muslim Brotherhood allows enough room for a wide variety of viewpoints, from conservatives to reformers, political pragmatists, and religious fundamentalists.
This diversity in opinion has prompted various conflicts within the group. Usually, the younger Brothers are more amenable to reform, while the elders are reluctant to abandon their strong Islamist underpinnings. Right before the protests that ended the Mubarak government, conservative Brothers kicked out many of the reformers. Many of these former members now criticize the movement and are beginning to ally themselves with the Brotherhood’s secular opponents.
Yet despite this intra-party conflict, the Brotherhood has become increasingly pragmatic and moderate. According to Brown, the priorities of the Morsi government are “governance and reform of the state apparatus”—not the establishment of sharia law, as some Egyptians feared. In an interview with the HPR, Steven Cook, a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, added that Morsi and the Brotherhood share the same priorities: “it is clear that the Egyptian president does not make decisions without input [of] the Muslim Brotherhood’s guidance office,” as has been the organization’s longstanding practice of consultation among its leadership.
Thus, in some sense, as the Muslim Brotherhood has attained political power, it has become a political entity. No longer can its leaders focus exclusively on promulgating a religious agenda, because that strategy simply will not win votes. As Khalil Al-Anani at Durham University argued in an October 2012 article for Mediterranean Politics, “the language of politics is overshadowing [the Brotherhood’s] religious rhetoric.” Many Islamist groups are replacing outdated fundamentalism with pragmatism, attempting to co-opt major secular issues while maintaining their old structure and hierarchy.
Though the reality of competing for votes with liberal democratic parties has pushed the Muslim Brotherhood in a moderate direction, at the same time, the organization is still pressured towards conservatism. “Religion and speaking in a religious vernacular is a way for the Brotherhood and Salafist groups to advance their political agendas,” Cook notes. “In some ways, the most interesting and dynamic aspect of Egyptian politics is the competition among the Brotherhood, Salafis [adherents of a strict Sunni movement], and Al Azhar [an important university dedicated to Islamic learning] over who speaks for Islam.” The Salafist Al Nour Party finished second to the Muslim Brotherhood in the 2012 elections, demonstrating its significant growth. It is clear, then, that religion still garners votes in Egypt, and that the Brotherhood and the FJP feel pressure to use such rhetoric and policies in their political battles.
Step Brothers
The Muslim Brotherhood is presenting a mixed message: it appears to simultaneously communicate conservatism and inflexibility even while attempting to come across as moderate and willing to cooperate with the West. The Brotherhood’s response to a proposed UN declaration demonstrates these competing trends. On March 13, the organization objected to various aspects of a proposed UN declaration that condemned violence against women, joining the governments of religiously conservative states such as Iran, Libya, Sudan, the Vatican, and Honduras who disagreed with the declaration’s references to gay rights, abortion, and marital rape. The Brotherhood included suggestions that wives should be unable to file legal complaints against their husbands for rape, and that daughters should not receive the same inheritance as sons. However, the Egyptian envoy at the proceedings, Mervat Tallawy (a member of the liberal Egyptian Social Democratic Party) nonetheless voted for the declaration.
And while battles over the Brotherhood’s identity as a political force continue, the Egyptian government has failed to deliver on many of its proposed solutions to pressing problems. Police brutality remains rampant as security forces continue to kidnap and beat activists. Unemployment, the budget deficit, and inflation continue to rise, and the government is hoping for $4.8 billion in loans from the International Monetary Fund. Morsi was amenable to the deal, but “the FJP was concerned about having to run in elections after the government signed a deal with an unpopular international financial institution,” according to Cook.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been forced to confront new issues that it never would have considered prior to the Arab Spring. Now that it holds much of Egypt’s political power, the organization is forced to adopt new, more pragmatic policies. In a way, prioritizing governance has shifted the Brotherhood’s focus away from religion—an action that may fracture its old identity. Nevertheless, such a recalibration may prove politically beneficial for the Brotherhood in the long run.
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