“What has decisively ended is not political Islam, but its cultural and social dominance,” says Ashraf Sharif, a researcher in political Islamic affairs. “It will never be able to restore its past performance as a movement that can overwhelmingly impose its vision through popular support.”
“What has decisively ended is not political Islam, but its cultural and social dominance,” says Ashraf Sharif, a researcher in political Islamic affairs. “It will never be able to restore its past performance as a movement that can overwhelmingly impose its vision through popular support.”
Sharif differentiates between the Islamic movement as a whole and the Brotherhood as one of the movement’s groups. He believes that the Islamic movement is facing unprecedented social antagonism, evident in attacking Islamic aspects the movement has disseminated through social empowerment since the 1970s. Incidents, in which preachers were taken down from the pulpit, have taken place on several occasions. They happened when these preachers tried to incite worshipers politically or attacked Defense Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. These antagonistic attitudes, says Sharif, are associated with the Islamic movements’ political underperformance when it was in power.
Sharif believes that the Islamic movement as a whole has to reproduce itself in different forms and introduce new methods of addressing the Egyptian street. This opportunity is possible through intellectual renovation and change. “After all, this movement enjoys a strong popular support and historical originality and is deeply rooted in the Egyptian culture and traditions.”
Sharif argues that the recent developments in Egypt have revealed that the Brotherhood’s major weakness was essentially the source of its power over the past 80 years; namely, its organizational structure. That structure experienced no significant changes during that period, which was viewed as a burden for the Brotherhood, manifested in slow decision-making and a failure to adapt to changing circumstances.
“If the Brotherhood had only positively responded to these changes, there would have perhaps been certain revisions that were likely to develop it and renew its ideas,” Sharif says. “But, the prevailing situation is characterized by an overriding negative reaction. The crisis has urged the Brotherhood and its allies of the Islamic movement to be re-aligned together. They believe they are fighting an existential war against the state and the people, which makes any revisions or arising disputes a deferred secondary case. It was only after the January 25 Revolution that voices able to engage in debates and arguments emerged inside the Brotherhood.”
In need of a new structure
At present, claims Sharif, those voices have been significantly dampened, given that the Brotherhood leaders escalate the flaring situation whenever they feel imminent threat to avoid popular accountability.
“Extensive changes and survival of the Brotherhood are subject to a revision of its organizational structure. A radical leader like Khairat el-Shater, for example, is not merely a person, but a functional entity, and may be replaced by another, if he were to disappear.”
Sharif believes that the Brotherhood, as a group, is incapable of resorting to violence, given its identity as a reformist movement whose policy is a gradual change of society, and is most likely to return to that basic situation. The violence discourse is merely designed to serve an ongoing battle, but as a group, the Brotherhood is not up for confrontation and is, unlike the other Islamic parties, keen on maintaining the democratic mechanism as the only available tool that enables it to return to power again.
Back to school
Ahmad Samir, a journalist who focuses on political Islamic affairs, and a former member of Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh’s presidential campaign, believes that the crackdowns will not affect the Brotherhood’s survival since its organizational structure allows the introduction of new leadership in case of the arrest of any of it leaders. In addition, the Brotherhood is a decentralized group that has a branch in each street, and its members gather in mosques and houses, something that cannot be controlled, Samir claims.
“The Brotherhood’s engagements outside the framework of the state are a normal situation. And even when in power, the main demands the Brotherhood rejected were about working through the state,” Samir adds.
He believes that the Brotherhood, in light of the prevailing social animosity, will revert to its natural incubation areas, such as universities and schools. Samir’s observations are based on the fact that despite the Brotherhood’s failure in the recent students’ union elections, it gained a large number of votes compared to other separate movements and parties. Besides, they will mobilize within religious constituencies. “Suffice it to say that five and a half million Islamists voted for Morsi in the first election round,” Samir adds.
In deep water
The social strike is more serious than the security strike, according to Samir. It is the real danger that faces the Brotherhood with their loss of the middle class, which was willing to vote for them in the unions, Parliament, and Shura Council elections.
The present danger, says Samir, does not lie in the radical attitude of the Brotherhood’s leaderships, but in its young generations. “They have seen how people were clearly happy for their fall and they feel antagonism from society. The sight of relatives and friends falling dead or getting arrested by the police, and the fact that a number of civil figures outside the Islamic movement’s circles supported them before coming to power, but later revolted against them after taking power, caused their rhetoric to be more violent than their aging leaderships. As a consequence, they have lost confidence in others, and are now talking about taking up arms and refusing to join politics. And the leaderships are trying to contain them,” claims Samir.
Crackdowns bring new leaders
The founder of Rassd Network, Anas Hassan, who is also an Islamic movement media figure, stresses that the Brotherhood is unable to escalate violence, given its members’ upbringing, which is based upon obedience. It is much easier for a Brotherhood supporter to die as a victim than take up arms. Hassan however does not rule out the use of violence by other groups within the Islamic movement.
He believes that the hatred is a consequence of a psychological and media warfare, which calms down whenever its propagators feel they have triumphed. Its psychological impact on large segments of the population would then dissipate. Hassan supports his argument by referring to the transformation of the Interior Ministry during the past years from an archenemy to a party with a well-polished image.
Although Hassan recognizes that impact of the crackdowns and social isolation of the Brotherhood, he believes these crackdowns have “created a social dimension, centered around the Brotherhood, and reduced the controversial ideological gap between it and the Salafist factions, in favor of a unified Islamic movement.”
“The Brotherhood has ended”
Given the present uncertainties, Hassan has no conclusive opinion. He nevertheless claims that there are ongoing discussions among the Islamic movement’s members vis-à-vis the fact that democracy is not a valid concept for it, and has been found to be an easily toppled down game.
The Brotherhood in its current form has ended and its leaderships have lost control, according to Hassan. The arrest of its second and third echelon leaders has given rise to a greater mobility as a result of the introduction of younger leaders who might make up for the losses sustained by the Brotherhood over the past 80 years. Apart from the writings of Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al-Banna’s principles, says Hassan, there is no effective reference authority or an Islamic philosophy, which exclusively belongs to the Brotherhood.
A more ample opportunity for the return of the Brotherhood will happen as a consequence of the failure of the army’s mixed discourse, based on presenting itself as a defender of the state, in addition to old national narratives that may not succeed, says Hassan.
Hassan strongly believes that the negotiation option has failed due to the ruling authority’s unwillingness to engage in a dialogue.
Yet he concurs with Ahmad Samir’s view that given the revenge, injustice and violence the Brotherhood’s youth have been subjected to, they now refuse negotiation, contrary to their leaders’ conceptions. But the leaderships may deal with the return to pre-Mubarak era option as an advantage that allows them sufficient room to breathe and make their way into society again. Creating a strong state-designed secularist movement will certainly mean intensified power of the Islamic movement.
