Al-Ikhwan fil Hokm (The Brotherhood in Power) by Abdel-Kader Shohaib, Cairo: Dar Al-Maaref, 2011. pp.181

At the peak of the crisis following Egypt’s 25 January uprising, embattled president Hosni Mubarak appointed Omar Soliman as his deputy. Soliman had previously served as head of Egyptian intelligence.

Soon after his appointment, Soliman received representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) opposition movement, declaring that the group should not refuse the offer or it “would regret it.”

But shortly after its first meeting with Soliman, the MB announced its refusal to parley. Yet they didn’t really miss their “only chance,” as Soliman had warned, since, days later, the Mubarak regime collapsed.

Last week, Abdel-Kader Shohaib published “Al-Ikhwan fil Hokm,” his second book since the revolution. The first was "The Final Hours of Mubarak's Rule," published only weeks after Mubarak stepped down.

His latest book, published only days before Egypt’s first post-Mubarak parliamentary polls, is subtitled “The Opportunity of a Lifetime.” It summarises what Shohaib sees as the MB’s new chance to become a legitimate part of Egyptian political life.  

According to Shohaib, the upcoming elections will represent the real challenge to the MB – to forego its old methods of switching allies at the last minute and vying for parliamentary seats via improper means, especially in light of the fact that the group will enter these polls as a licensed political party, the Freedom and Justice Party. This latter fact is bound to cost the MB considerable popularity among those who had supported it as an oppressed group under the former regime.

Shohaib goes back 80 years, to the MB’s establishment and founder Hassan El-Banna's exceptional ability to forge coalitions and deals with everyone, from the British occupation to the reigning king of Egypt. El-Banna later abandoned these coalitions at a time when the MB began using force, which eventually led to the assassination of El-Banna himself following the MB's assassination of Prime Minister El-Nokrashy.

Only two years afterward, the group’s new leader, Hassan El-Hodaiby, followed El-Banna’s lead, cutting deals and manoeuvring, to the extent that he accompanied a delegation from the MB Guidance Bureau to the royal palace to declare the group’s loyalty to the king, despite the monarch’s role in the death of their slain leader.

This policy worked for a while, until the MB's ambitions grew and it attempted to increase its influence and power. For example, when they were offered three seats in the cabinet but their nominees were rejected, they left the entire cabinet and requested that all draft laws be presented to an MB committee before being passed in return for loyalty to any new ruler of the country, namely the military.

Following the MB's alleged attempt to assassinate President Nasser in 1954, the relationship between the Brotherhood and the regime became highly antagonistic, and the latter lost a rare chance to join political life like any other group or party.

Shohaib now sees the January 25 Revolution and the subsequent polls as the most important and grandest opportunity for the group, describing it as "safe and peaceful, as it's offered through the election ballot boxes following their legal status and their appearance in public and official media."

But recent indications suggest that the MB is likely to miss this opportunity too. Its unspoken deal with Egypt’s ruling military council, for example – as opposed to agreement with the majority of political forces for the March referendum – certainly resembles its traditional methods.

According to the main thrust of Shohaib’s latest book, the tactics and strategies employed by the MB for the last 80 years will no longer suffice in the wake of the revolution.