<p>After maintaining a low profile in protests led largely by secular young Egyptians, the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s largest opposition force, appeared to be taking a more assertive role, issuing a statement asking for president Hosni Mubarak to step aside for a transitional government.<br /><br />“We demand that this regime is overthrown, and we demand the formation of a national unity government for all the factions,” the Brotherhood said in a statement broadcast by Al-Jazeera last Thursday.<br /><br />The Obama administration has spoken cautiously about the future role of the Brotherhood, which has long been banned by Mubarak’s government, saying only that all parties must renounce violence and accept democracy. But one of the few near-certainties of a post-Mubarak Egypt is that the Muslim Brotherhood will emerge as a powerful political force.<br /><br />The unanswered question, according to experts on the region, is whether that will prove a manageable challenge for the US and Israel or a catastrophe for American interests in West Asia.<br /><br />The Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, is the world’s oldest and largest Islamist movement, with affiliates in most Muslim countries and adherents in Europe and the US.<br /><br />Its size and diversity, and the legal ban that has kept it from genuine political power in Egypt for decades, make it hard to characterise simply. As the Roman Catholic Church includes both those who practice leftist liberation theology and conservative anti-abortion advocates, so the Brotherhood includes both practical reformers and firebrand ideologues.<br /><br />Which of those tendencies might rise to dominance in a new Egypt is under intense discussion inside the Obama administration, where officials say they may be willing to consult with the Brotherhood during a political transition.<br /><br />Bruce Riedel, a veteran observer of the Muslim world at the Brookings Institution, said the US has no choice but to accept the group’s role.<br /><br />“If we really want democracy in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is going to be a big part of the picture,” said Riedel, who was the Egypt desk officer at the CIA when Mubarak came to power in 1981. “Rather than demonising them, we ought to start engaging them now.”<br /><br />US politicians and pundits have used the Brotherhood as a sort of bogeyman, tagging it as a radical menace and the grandfather of al-Qaeda. That lineage is accurate in a literal sense: Some al-Qaeda leaders, notably the terror network’s Egyptian second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, have roots in the organisation. But al-Qaeda leaders despise the Brotherhood because it has renounced violence and chosen to compete in elections.<br /><br />“The Brotherhood hates al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda hates the Brotherhood,” said Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Centre in Qatar. “So if we’re talking about counterterrorism, engaging with the Brotherhood will advance our interests in the region.”<br /><br />Hamid said the Muslim Brotherhood’s deep hostility to Israel — which reflects majority public opinion in Egypt — will pose difficulties for US policy. Its conservative views on the rights of women and intolerance of religious minorities are offensive by western standards. But he said the group was far from monolithic and was divided between those who will never accept Israel’s right to exist and those who accept a two-state solution in which Israel and Palestine exist side by side.<br /><br />The Muslim Brotherhood was founded by an Egyptian schoolteacher and imam, Hassan al-Banna, as a grassroots association whose goal was to promote the reform of Muslim society by a greater adherence to Islam, through preaching, outreach and the provision of social services.<br /><br />A militant threat<br /><br />But Banna did speak of jihad, too, as a struggle against colonialism and Zionism. Quotations from the Brotherhood’s founder have been highlighted in recent years by western critics who portray the movement as a militant threat. In the 1970s, after years of brutal repression by the state, the Egyptian president at the time, Anwar el-Sadat, permitted the Brotherhood to operate quietly and to open a Cairo office, and the Brotherhood formally renounced violence as a means of achieving power in Egypt. The group did not, however, reject violence in other circumstances, and its leaders have endorsed acts of terrorism against Israel and against US troops in Iraq.<br /><br />A prominent Brotherhood thinker, Sayyid Qutb, who was imprisoned by the Egyptian government and executed in 1966, was an important theorist of violent jihad and a spiritual progenitor of Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda, and Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born radical preacher now hiding in Yemen. But the Brotherhood took a different direction after Qutb’s death, and al-Qaeda leaders came to hold the organisation in contempt.<br /><br />A milestone in the Brotherhood’s evolution in Egypt came in 1984, when its leaders decided to compete in parliamentary elections. Since then, it has been alternately tolerated and repressed in Egyptian politics, where most estimates of its actual support begin at 20 per cent of the electorate.<br /><br />After it won 88 seats in parliament in the 2005 elections, Mubarak’s government responded with a new crackdown. In an interview just before the current wave of protests began in Egypt, Essam el-Erian, a leading figure in the Brotherhood, said the group did not seek to monopolise power.<br /><br />“We want an atmosphere for fair competition now that can allow us to compete for power in the future,” Erian said. “And we want stability and freedom for people, not chaos.”<br /><br />The Brotherhood, whose leaders are mostly much older than the protest organisers, joined the demonstrations only after they were under way. The hesitancy may reflect in part the grim history of the state’s ruthlessness, said Abdel Halim Qandil, the general coordinator of Kifaya, a secular opposition movement.<br /><br />“The Brotherhood was rebuilt over the last three decades as a social religious movement,” Qandil said. “They are having difficulty transforming that into a political movement.”<br /><br />Qandil nonetheless estimated that in a free election, the Brotherhood would win about a third of the seats in parliament, support that he suggested might ebb as competing parties gained attention.<br /><br />Asked about the Muslim Brotherhood, Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said last Monday that the US would work with any group that showed “adherence to the law, adherence to nonviolence, and a willingness to be part of a democratic process, but not use that democratic process to simply instill yourself into power.”<br /><br />Some experts on the Brotherhood say the group has met the requirements of nonviolence and participation in elections in Egypt for decades.<br /><br />Even among specialists, the degree of uncertainty about the Brotherhood’s future is striking. Several admitted they could not say for sure whether participation in government would have a moderating effect on the group, or whether moderation might prove to have been a convenient false front to be cast off if the group attained real power.<br /><br />Skeptics point to the example of the Palestinian group Hamas, the Brotherhood offshoot that has often used terrorism. <br /><br />Is the Brotherhood willing to be one party among equals in Egyptian politics, or is it merely biding its time before seeking a monopoly?</p>
<p>After maintaining a low profile in protests led largely by secular young Egyptians, the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s largest opposition force, appeared to be taking a more assertive role, issuing a statement asking for president Hosni Mubarak to step aside for a transitional government.<br /><br />“We demand that this regime is overthrown, and we demand the formation of a national unity government for all the factions,” the Brotherhood said in a statement broadcast by Al-Jazeera last Thursday.<br /><br />The Obama administration has spoken cautiously about the future role of the Brotherhood, which has long been banned by Mubarak’s government, saying only that all parties must renounce violence and accept democracy. But one of the few near-certainties of a post-Mubarak Egypt is that the Muslim Brotherhood will emerge as a powerful political force.<br /><br />The unanswered question, according to experts on the region, is whether that will prove a manageable challenge for the US and Israel or a catastrophe for American interests in West Asia.<br /><br />The Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, is the world’s oldest and largest Islamist movement, with affiliates in most Muslim countries and adherents in Europe and the US.<br /><br />Its size and diversity, and the legal ban that has kept it from genuine political power in Egypt for decades, make it hard to characterise simply. As the Roman Catholic Church includes both those who practice leftist liberation theology and conservative anti-abortion advocates, so the Brotherhood includes both practical reformers and firebrand ideologues.<br /><br />Which of those tendencies might rise to dominance in a new Egypt is under intense discussion inside the Obama administration, where officials say they may be willing to consult with the Brotherhood during a political transition.<br /><br />Bruce Riedel, a veteran observer of the Muslim world at the Brookings Institution, said the US has no choice but to accept the group’s role.<br /><br />“If we really want democracy in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is going to be a big part of the picture,” said Riedel, who was the Egypt desk officer at the CIA when Mubarak came to power in 1981. “Rather than demonising them, we ought to start engaging them now.”<br /><br />US politicians and pundits have used the Brotherhood as a sort of bogeyman, tagging it as a radical menace and the grandfather of al-Qaeda. That lineage is accurate in a literal sense: Some al-Qaeda leaders, notably the terror network’s Egyptian second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, have roots in the organisation. But al-Qaeda leaders despise the Brotherhood because it has renounced violence and chosen to compete in elections.<br /><br />“The Brotherhood hates al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda hates the Brotherhood,” said Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Centre in Qatar. “So if we’re talking about counterterrorism, engaging with the Brotherhood will advance our interests in the region.”<br /><br />Hamid said the Muslim Brotherhood’s deep hostility to Israel — which reflects majority public opinion in Egypt — will pose difficulties for US policy. Its conservative views on the rights of women and intolerance of religious minorities are offensive by western standards. But he said the group was far from monolithic and was divided between those who will never accept Israel’s right to exist and those who accept a two-state solution in which Israel and Palestine exist side by side.<br /><br />The Muslim Brotherhood was founded by an Egyptian schoolteacher and imam, Hassan al-Banna, as a grassroots association whose goal was to promote the reform of Muslim society by a greater adherence to Islam, through preaching, outreach and the provision of social services.<br /><br />A militant threat<br /><br />But Banna did speak of jihad, too, as a struggle against colonialism and Zionism. Quotations from the Brotherhood’s founder have been highlighted in recent years by western critics who portray the movement as a militant threat. In the 1970s, after years of brutal repression by the state, the Egyptian president at the time, Anwar el-Sadat, permitted the Brotherhood to operate quietly and to open a Cairo office, and the Brotherhood formally renounced violence as a means of achieving power in Egypt. The group did not, however, reject violence in other circumstances, and its leaders have endorsed acts of terrorism against Israel and against US troops in Iraq.<br /><br />A prominent Brotherhood thinker, Sayyid Qutb, who was imprisoned by the Egyptian government and executed in 1966, was an important theorist of violent jihad and a spiritual progenitor of Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda, and Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born radical preacher now hiding in Yemen. But the Brotherhood took a different direction after Qutb’s death, and al-Qaeda leaders came to hold the organisation in contempt.<br /><br />A milestone in the Brotherhood’s evolution in Egypt came in 1984, when its leaders decided to compete in parliamentary elections. Since then, it has been alternately tolerated and repressed in Egyptian politics, where most estimates of its actual support begin at 20 per cent of the electorate.<br /><br />After it won 88 seats in parliament in the 2005 elections, Mubarak’s government responded with a new crackdown. In an interview just before the current wave of protests began in Egypt, Essam el-Erian, a leading figure in the Brotherhood, said the group did not seek to monopolise power.<br /><br />“We want an atmosphere for fair competition now that can allow us to compete for power in the future,” Erian said. “And we want stability and freedom for people, not chaos.”<br /><br />The Brotherhood, whose leaders are mostly much older than the protest organisers, joined the demonstrations only after they were under way. The hesitancy may reflect in part the grim history of the state’s ruthlessness, said Abdel Halim Qandil, the general coordinator of Kifaya, a secular opposition movement.<br /><br />“The Brotherhood was rebuilt over the last three decades as a social religious movement,” Qandil said. “They are having difficulty transforming that into a political movement.”<br /><br />Qandil nonetheless estimated that in a free election, the Brotherhood would win about a third of the seats in parliament, support that he suggested might ebb as competing parties gained attention.<br /><br />Asked about the Muslim Brotherhood, Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said last Monday that the US would work with any group that showed “adherence to the law, adherence to nonviolence, and a willingness to be part of a democratic process, but not use that democratic process to simply instill yourself into power.”<br /><br />Some experts on the Brotherhood say the group has met the requirements of nonviolence and participation in elections in Egypt for decades.<br /><br />Even among specialists, the degree of uncertainty about the Brotherhood’s future is striking. Several admitted they could not say for sure whether participation in government would have a moderating effect on the group, or whether moderation might prove to have been a convenient false front to be cast off if the group attained real power.<br /><br />Skeptics point to the example of the Palestinian group Hamas, the Brotherhood offshoot that has often used terrorism. <br /><br />Is the Brotherhood willing to be one party among equals in Egyptian politics, or is it merely biding its time before seeking a monopoly?</p>
