The current Muslim Brotherhood crisis is an expected crisis, due to the intellectual and organisational rigidity of the group which has hindered its renewal and development.This rigidity led, among other factors, to the swift ascendency of the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt, and to their swift overthrow.
These events clearly revealed the mediocre performance of the elite leading the group and its rigidity, its turn inward, its denial of the crisis, its haughtiness towards the Brotherhood youth, and even towards the state’s institutions and Egyptian society.
Intellectual and organisational rigidity is the most important characteristic, in my view, of the group, since its re-establishment in the 1970s. This intellectual and organisational rigidity guaranteed the group’s strength and its ability to spread in society through social and economic activities.
The group did not practise politics in its real sense but reduced it to running in parliamentary elections, professional syndicates and student unions in universities, while avoiding workers’ syndicates and municipalities.
The group adhered to the ideas, directions and advice of its founder Hassan Al-Banna (1906 - 1949) in an ever-changing reality. Consequently, this created an intellectual and emotional isolation among the group’s cadres, which helped in its unity and cohesion.
This was achieved through the members’ obedience to the leadership. Undoubtedly, the generalisation and idealism of Al-Banna’s ideas and their claim to represent Islam helped the group’s cohesion and its organisational firmness.
I believe that the success of the group in being widespread, in its recruitment, and in entering the parliament starting in the 1980s, supported the famous Brotherhood postulate: “The organisation comes before thinking”.
Thus, the group’s unity and strength became a sacred priority that superseded thought, renewal of the group's ideas, advocacy, and working among the people. For that reason the group did not implement any intellectual or political initiatives except those that emanated from Al-Banna’s ideas, produced in the 1930s and 1940s.
The group’s leadership did not embrace new ideas. It considered any intellectual or organisational renewal a kind of breaking away from the group’s unity.
This led to the expulsion of some of the Brotherhood’s mid-generational leadership, such as Abul Ela Madi, Mokhtar Nouh, Mohamed Habib, Ibrahim El-Zafarani and Abdel-Moneim Abul-Futouh.
The expulsion of those members was not done solely for the preservation of the group’s unity but it was also linked to power conflicts over the guidance bureau.
It eventually ended with the dominance of Mohammed Badie’s faction, which was known for its rigidity, narrow-mindedness and its inability to contain mid-generation and youth, who became the majority of the group's members.
The group's unity was also strengthened by the constant feeling of persecution and of being hunted by Hosni Mubarak’s forces. This unity allowed the group’s leadership the ability to postpone, freeze, or circumvent conflicts, or to exclude the rebelious members with the minimum of losses.
I believe that the Brotherhood's ascendency to power and the attempt to control the state’s institutions reinforced the group’s unity and cohesion in the light of its many factions’ ambitions to obtain gains after years of suffering. Perhaps this ambition may explain the recklessness among some members who sought to appropriate the key positions of the state.
But the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi and the group shattered these ambitions and brought about a state of crisis, trials and tribulations for the group – something witnessed many times since its establishment in 1928.
But this crisis was the severest and bitterest; the group faced security and media hunts backed by the approval and support of the majority of Egyptians after 30 June 2013.
I believe that this transformation is the new aspect in the conflict between the Egyptian state, represented by the military, on one hand; and the Brotherhood on the other.
It can be said that in all the previous conflict cycles, whether during the monarchy or during the days of Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the majority of Egyptians were either neutral or sympathised with the Brotherhood.But in the conflict between the Brotherhood and President El-Sisi’s regime, the majority of Egyptians participated for the first time in overthrowing the Brotherhood.
Due to their failure in administering the state, their real intentions were revealed by their choice to ruling alone, and their attempt to “ikhwanise” the state and society.
It seems that the involvement of some Brotherhood elements in terrorist operations, the most famous of which was bombing electricity towers and harming the state’s institutions, ensured popular enmity and refusal towards the Brotherhood.
Moreover, it deprived them of the popular incubator they enjoyed during Mubarak’s rule ,which ensured their win of the parliamentary majority in 2012, and Morsi's presidential win.
I imagine that sympathy for the victim of injustice was the main gateway by which made the majority of Egyptians chose the Brotherhood in the various elections after the 2011 revolution. However, this sympathy reversed after the group's ascendency to power in one of the most important indicators of the transformation of Egyptian public opinion.
To cut it short, the bloody clashes between the Brotherhood and El-Sisi’s state, the security hunts and the trials which they face, has not allowed the group to avoid the enmity of the majority of Egyptians, or even in persuading them to stay neutral.
This means that the crisis or the injustice which the Brotherhood talks about in confronting the regime did not produce the same effects which the group employed for its benefit during its previous historical clashes with the state. The majority of Egyptians are still against the Brotherhood.
The group also did not preserve its cohesion and unity as it used to in past confrontations and clashes with the state; on the contrary it was afflicted with conflicts and divisions.
Those conflicts and divisions are significant transformations for the benefit of the state at the current stage. But these situations may change in the future according to the ability of El-Sisi’s regime to make achievements on the ground from which the majority of Egyptians benefit.
The assumption which I make here is that the removal of the "popular incubator" from the Brotherhood and the end of popular sympathy for them has accelerated the differences and divisions within the Brotherhood.
The group's isolation and failure to affect the street during El-Sisi’s rule has created a climate that encouraged the emergence of differences and conflict within the Brotherhood.
This was clearly evident during the internal elections to select a committee to administer the group in February 2014 after the majority of the Guidance Bureau and Shura Council members were either imprisoned or abroad.
With the conflict with El-Sisi’s regime continuing, and the failure to change the street’s position, the conflicts within the group were exacerbated and dangerous divisions started to surface, threatening its unity and cohesion.
The core of the dispute is between two factions: the first includes the elements from the group’s mid-generation and the youth backed by some of the Brotherhood members abroad. The second faction comprises the current leadership and its supporters; most of this faction belongs to the older generation.
The first faction believes that it is necessary to escalate the acts of opposition and resistance against the new regime before it stabilises itself, in an attempt to overthrow it.
This requires, from their point of view, that the previous leadership must confess its mistakes, open up to other revolutionary forces opposing El-Sisi’s regime and work with them, in a real partnership that differs from the traditional pragmatic approach of the Brotherhood.
This approach was evident when Mohamed Morsi became president and did not let the civil forces participate in governing as he has previously promised them.
On the other side, the second faction perceives that there is no alternative but the peaceful reform method of the Brotherhood. It does not advocate practising violence or threatening to use it, and also argues in favour of halting the regular demonstrations and rallies which have seen huge losses for the group, and have made it lose the sympathy of the street.
The old leadership aspires to make reconciliation with El-Sisi that guarantees the group’s existence and continuity and commutes the death sentences against the supreme guide and the group’s other leaders behind bars.
It is evident that the old guard is motivated by the reconciliation experiences between the Brotherhood and Anwar El-Sadat and the co-existence with Hosni Mubarak’s regime as well as Islamic jurisprudence principles of crisis and suitability, and maybe dissimulation.
Despite the severe polarisation between the two factions, they uphold the notion of legitimacy, the group's election results, and a creative peaceful strategy. with a difference in interpreting the meanings and employing concepts and terms.
The old guard prioritises the historical and institutional legitimacy of the group while the middle and the young generations assert the legitimacy of the last elections and the legitimacy of existence and continuous action in the streets against El-Sisi's regime. It also reinterprets the creative peaceful strategy as the right to disable state institutions and destroy the regime's stability.
The conflict is not only connected with adopting a peaceful strategy in the face of practising levels of violence or adopting a peaceful strategy in the face of embracing a revolutionary one.
It is also concerned with evaluating the guidance bureau's performance following the revolution, especially the stage of the group's ascendancy to power, the rules of administering the group and decision-making, the standpoint towards El-Sisi's regime and the group's future.
My belief is that the Brotherhood failed in terms of their creative peaceful formula; I also believe that the revolutionary approach or practising levels of violence as a self-defence mechanism will lead inevitably to terrorism.
I also believe that the conflict does not revolve around intellectual or political interpretations but is instead a generational struggle and a pursuit of power and maybe other interests. In other words, the dispute is still organisational and administrative and does not touch on a revision of the way the group treats people.
For advocacy, and the mission to spread the group's values, is the main gateway to the survival of the group, according to both factions. Exploiting the crisis and the historical injustice towards the Brotherhood will also help to to preserve the group's unity and gain the public's sympathy. But the efforts of Brotherhood mediators, abroad and at home, to bridge the gap between the competing factions has failed.
The question is: who will end the conflict for their own benefit? Will the old guard succeed, or will the middle and the youth generations come out triumphant, thus changing the group's nature and its modus operandi towards a more hardline stance, and towards terrorism?
Is it true that he who has more financial resources will be more able to end the conflict to his benefit?
In all cases, prolonging the conflict will not be in the interests of the Brotherhood, which may fragment internally into several sub-groups under new names.
The writer is dean of the Faculty of Communication and Mass Media at the British University in Egypt (BUE).
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