The Muslim Brotherhood Demystified

It seems to me that in all of our collective hand wringing over the situation in Egypt, one of the most commonly asked questions is “What happens if the Muslim Brotherhood gains power?” People are making bold presumptions that tell me that they don’t have a clue about the Brotherhood. It is simply being lumped into some monolithic grouping of “Islamists,” and of course, “Islamist” equates to evil and violent in today’s American parlance. This is an incredibly facile understanding of the Brotherhood based more on fear-mongering than fact. As some of you know, I have been hard at work on my dissertation and I am currently working on revisions to chapter 2 which discusses…you guessed it—the Muslim Brotherhood. I hope I can demystify the Brotherhood and provide some insight into a group which has a long, complicated, and very dynamic history.

The Brotherhood was founded in 1928 in Ismailiyya in the Suez Canal zone by a school teacher named Hasan al-Banna. Egypt in the mid- to late-1920s was secularizing and demanding an end to British interference in its affairs. Concerned that Egypt—the cultural center and one of the religious centers of the Islamic world—was turning away from Islam, al-Banna and the six other men who formed the core group of the Brotherhood were committed to the spread of Islam through preaching and education. Al-Banna’s transfer to Cairo in the early-1930s allowed the Brotherhood to establish a headquarters in the Egyptian capitol. There, the Brotherhood’s relationship with the Egyptian monarchy when from good to mediocre to violent. Because of the king’s cozy relationship with the British, many opposition groups with some degree of nationalist aspirations found themselves at odds with the regime. The Brotherhood was no exception. A series of violent encounters between the regime and members of the Brotherhood’s “Special Apparatus”—its paramilitary group—led to the assassination of al-Banna in 1949.

As the Free Officers began gaining momentum in the years before their revolution, they did so with the assistance of the Brotherhood. However, relations quickly soured between the Brotherhood and Nasser as the Free Officers worked to consolidate their power. In late 1954, a member of the Special Apparatus tried and failed (miserably) to assassinate Nasser. This led to a major roundup of Brotherhood members, and death sentences were handed down for the top leadership of the organization. Many other Muslim Brothers were given lengthy sentences in Egyptian prisons where torture and abuse was the rule, rather than the exception. Many of these men emerged from prison after a general amnesty from Sadat in the early-1970s more radical than when they went in. In general, these guys broke away from the Brotherhood and became the foundation of the more violent groups—the Gama’at and Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The Brotherhood itself emerged from its experience in Nasser’s prisons much less willing to tangle with the Egyptian regime, and recommitted itself to the spread of Islam through preaching and social activism, rather than political action.

The Sadat years were pretty good to the Brotherhood. Sadat, the “Believer President,” encouraged Islamic activism on college campuses, allowed the Brotherhood (still an illegal organization) to publish its own newspapers, and freed all of the Brothers who had spent the better part of the last 15 years in jail. However, Sadat’s decision to make peace with Israel was not well received, and members of Islamic Jihad, one of the radical offshoots of the Brotherhood, assassinated him in October 1981. Mubarak largely ignored the Brotherhood in the early-1980s, choosing instead to consolidate his power within the ruling National Democratic Party. In 1984 the Brotherhood was allowed to run for seats in parliament, though members who wished to do so had to appear on the party lists of other parties, since the Brotherhood was still outlawed.

The bigger platform used by the Brotherhood at this point were the professional syndicates. These unions are the bulwark of Egyptian society, and they had long been the victim of financial mismanagement and corruption. The Brotherhood began to gain the majority of the seats in all of the major syndicates (Medical, Journalism, Law, Engineering) and reformed them, offering quality low cost health care, housing assistance, and other services to all of their members—regardless of religion or ideological persuasion. The leadership of the Brotherhood in the syndicates were part of what is known as the “Middle Generation,” those young professionals who came of age during the 1970s and Sadat’s more open stance toward religious activists. The Middle Generation showed a great deal of political savvy in navigating the politics of the syndicates, making alliances with other opposition groups to cement their power in the groups.

Under the Brotherhood, the syndicates also provided social services to the people of Egypt at large. When a strong earthquake hit Cairo in 1992, the Medical Syndicate immediately mobilized to provide triage care to the injured, and the Engineering Syndicate sent teams to investigate the rubble and test the structural integrity of the buildings that were damaged in the quake. The Brotherhood was the driving force behind the disaster response and they were on the scene 48 hours before the state, which humiliated Mubarak and led to some incredibly restrictive laws designed to curtail the strength of the Brotherhood in the syndicates. This also lead to more restrictions on the Brotherhood in the electoral arena. Mubarak began either passing laws or amending the constitution to make it more difficult for the Brotherhood to operate politically.

Even with those restrictions, the Brotherhood has continued to espouse a moderate agenda, issuing a reform initiative in 2004 which demanded the end of military rule, dismantling of the internal security service, free and fair elections, a free press, the ability of opposition parties to organize and run for office, term limits on the presidency, and solidarity between Egypt’s Muslim and Coptic Christian populations. The troubling part of their platform is their stance toward Israel as the Brotherhood wishes to abrogate the Camp David Accords with Israel.

The Brotherhood at this point faces an internal split: the old guard of the organization, those octogenarians who remember all too well what it was like in Nasser’s prisons, are not at all anxious to confront the regime directly. These are the guys in charge, and the General Guide of the Brotherhood, Muhammad Badie, has expressed his desire to move away from the political arena and back to a focus on preaching and social activism. The Middle Generation, who now make up the middle management of the Brotherhood, are much more politically active, having grown up in a much different environment than their elders, and want to be more invested in the political process in Egypt, not less.

The irony of Mubarak’s heavy handed policies against opposition parties is that secular opposition parties have not been able to really sustain any kind of meaningful organization, but the religious nature of the Brotherhood has made it relatively easier for the Brotherhood to grow and organize. After all, it would cause more problems than it would solve for the government to start interfering heavily in the day-to-day operations of Egyptian mosques. So in reality, the regime has set up a de facto two-party system in which the Brotherhood is the only legitimate opposition. That doesn’t mean that Egyptians are completely on board with the Muslim Brotherhood. Many support the Brotherhood today because it is the only real option. However, while the Egyptians are a very religious people by nature, they are not generally radical. Public opinion turning against the radicals in the 1990s played a big role in the defeat of the Gama’at and Islamic Jihad. Should all of this craziness result in regime change and an interim government, it is likely that the Brotherhood would have a large role in the interim government, but much more questionable that they would be able to maintain a majority once other opposition parties were able to organize and mobilize.

I find it doubtful that the Brotherhood, which denounced radicalism of its own accord, would be hospitable to the return of the radicals who have taken up residence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s also important to remember that the primary grievances of the protesters in Egypt are not religious; they are economic and political. Whereas Iranians were upset that the Shah was trying to rid Iran of its religious heritage, Mubarak has done no such thing. Infringements of religious expression are not one of the multitude of problems facing Egypt today, which makes the popular support of an Islamist government less likely.

At some point, the United States must start thinking long-term in the Middle East. Our short-sighted policies in the region for the last six-plus decades have only added to the anti-Western, reactionary tendencies which have led people to terrorism. If we are patient, if we understand that a free, open government in Egypt is more likely to weaken, rather than strengthen, the Muslim Brotherhood in the long run, we could find that democracy in Egypt is much easier to achieve and sustain than it has been in Iraq and that it can be achieved with little or no military intervention on the part of the United States. That would be a steal at twice the price. But it means the United States and her allies (especially Israel) have to be willing to sit down, shut up, and keep their hands to themselves for a little while as things sort themselves out.