Egypt: New leader of Muslim Brotherhood - full text
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A statement published on Jan. 23 on Ikhanweb, the English language website of the Muslim Brotherhood, warned of the possibility of a fresh "mass arrest campaign" by state security agents ahead of legislative elections scheduled to be held in October. The Brotherhood, the main opposition force to the government of President Mohammed Hosni Mubarak, had on Jan. 16 named Mohammed Badie as its new leader ("general guide"). Badies selection by senior members of the Brotherhood followed internal elections in 2009 in which conservatives performed well at the expense of prominent reformists.
Immediate Context
The Muslim Brotherhood (MB), Egypt's oldest and largest Sunni Islamist organisation, was founded by Sheikh Hassan al-Banna in 1928. Mixing political activism with charity work, the MB had inspired several offshoots in other parts of the Middle East. It gained notoriety as a vehement advocate of an Islamic state and one of the bitterest critics of Egypts secular politics, and was consequently banned in 1954. However, although it remained technically illegal, its rejection of the use of violence and support for democratic principles meant that it had enjoyed de facto recognition by President Mohammed Hosni Mubarak's regime since the 1980s.
In recent years the MB had made repeated calls for increased democracy, and in early 2005 it participated in pro-democracy demonstrations alongside the reformist Kifaya (Enough) movement. In the 2005 elections to the Peoples Assembly (the legislature), the MBs candidates, who stood as independents, won 88 of the 454 seats—its largest ever tally—and formed the largest opposition bloc, despite the arrest of hundreds of Brotherhood members.
In December 2002 Ma'mun al-Hudaybi had been appointed as the new leader of the MB, replacing Mustafa Mashhour, who had recently died. Hudaybi, the son of former Muslim Brotherhood leader Hassan al-Hudaybi, had hitherto served as the group's press spokesman. Hudaybi died in early 2004 and was himself replaced as MB leader by 75-year-old Mohammed Mahdi Akef, an "old guard" member. Akef had been convicted in 1954 of the attempted assassination of President Gamal Abdel Nasser and sentenced to death, later commuted to 20 years' imprisonment. He was again arrested with several other Brothers in 1995 at the start of the regime's new crackdown on the organisation.
In an unusual development, Akef announced in late 2009 that would not run for the leadership position again when his term expired in January. He reportedly made the announcement in protest after ultra-conservative members of the MB politburo had opposed a promotion for Essam Erian, who was associated with the group's reformist wing. The conservative wing was seen to consolidate its control in subsequent politburo elections, in which the group's deputy chief, Mohammed Habib, and reformist leader, Abdel Moneim Abul-Futuh, lost their seats. Abul-Futuh was regarded as the most forward-looking, and someone on whom progressive young Muslim Brothers and outsiders had pinned their hopes for change. His removal shifted the balance of power further in favour of hardliners who opposed a more active role in the political arena and wanted to preserve the internal cohesiveness and unity of the organisation.
In mid-January, Akef announced the appointment of Mohammed Badie as the new leader of the Brothers. The selection of Badie—an ultra-conservative figure who had worked as a veterinary professor at Beni Suef University—was made after a bitter dispute between conservatives in the group, who placed the emphasis on strengthening the organisation and ideological outreach, and reformists, who advocated a more active public role for the group. The choice showed clearly the continued dominance of the "old guard", a coherent but dwindling ideologically-inclined group of Muslim Brothers, most of whom were members of the late Sayed Kotbs paramilitary network. Kotb, master ideologue and theoretician of radicalism, had been executed by the Nasser regime in 1966. Many of Kotbs followers, like Badie, had spent about a decade in Egyptian prison camps and ever since their release in the mid-1970s had exercised an effective stranglehold over the Brotherhood.
Reaction and Outlook
Analysts were generally agreed that the selection of Mohammed Badie, a conservative, as the new leader of the Brotherhood was likely to steer the group away from political activism, and instead focus on religious and social work. Badie had rarely been involved in public work, but had instead focused his attention on ideological matters. Intense security force pressure on the Brotherhood, coupled with recent constitutional amendments that made electoral participation more difficult, made it highly unlikely that the BM would lay down a serious challenge to the government in the forthcoming legislative elections. The concern was that the Brotherhood's withdrawal from political life, coupled with the government's continuing crackdown on Islamists, might leave a vacuum that more militant voices could fill in the future.
The path the Brotherhood decided to choose under Badie would also have implications beyond Egypt and was closely related to other Islamist groups in the Arab world, many of whom were also debating the merits of political engagement. With branches in several Arab and Muslim countries, the Brotherhood portrayed itself as a more authentic, viable alternative to secular authoritarian rulers and religious extremists of the al-Qaida variety.
Over the forthcoming five years, the Brotherhood would in all likelihood be more preoccupied with increasing its membership, already more than 1 million-strong, than lending a helping hand to the opposition to bring about peaceful change in Egypt. It was expected that the new leadership would refrain from provoking the Mubarak regime, which had recently cracked down hard on the Brotherhood and imprisoned hundreds of its members. In fact, the Mubarak regime was the main beneficiary of the continued dominance of isolationist hardliners within the Brotherhood. Effectively sidelining itself, the MB would no longer threaten the dominance of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) in October's legislative elections, which would pave the way, many Egyptians believed, for the succession of Mubarak's son, Gamal.
Furthermore, constitutional amendments approved in March 2007 effectively established a legal framework for excluding the Brotherhood from the electoral process, laying the groundwork for a return to a party list electoral system and specifying that no party could be formed "based on a religious frame of reference". Regarding judicial supervision, the constitutional amendments removed the traditionally strong and semi-independent judiciary from direct supervision of elections, replacing the judges with an electoral commission more likely to be subject to government influence. It would be unlikely that the Brotherhood would want to find itself in another situation like that of the 2008 municipal elections, in which, despite months of effort, the MB had little choice but to call for a boycott of the very elections it fought to enter.
The Brotherhood remained an expansive movement with political, social, and religious aspects, but there was as yet no consensus within it about further electoral participation. The Brotherhood leaders in charge of deciding whether or not to participate in the forthcoming elections had many constituencies to keep in mind, from street sweepers to students to young professionals to members of the military and the business elite. The Muslim Brotherhood as an organisation would survive, as it had for 81 years. The only question would be which tendencies in the organisation would grow stronger, as pressure built beneath the current leaders from at least two distinct generations—and different factions within those generations—waiting to move into positions of authority their elders controlled.
Historical Context
Egypt was the first country to develop a politically organised society—a Predynastic culture that exploited land and used domestic animals, and was able to support craftsmen, developed around 5000 BC. From about 4,000 BC, two kingdoms arose in the Nile Valley and in the Delta, which were unified under one Pharaoh about 1,000 years later. In the following 3,000 years, the Egyptian state was ruled by 30 dynastic families: the agriculture-based Old Kingdom (3rd-6th dynasties) erected the pyramids; the Middle Kingdom (2060-1785 BC) evolved a more complex administrative system and expanded trade with Asia; under the New Kingdom (1580-1085 BC), a great imperial era began with the realisation of great architectural works.
Persian kings ruled from 525-404 BC, and Alexander the Great conquered the state 332 BC. Alexanders general, Ptolemy I Soter, and his successors continued the traditions of Pharonic rule until the defeat of the last Ptolomaic ruler, Cleopatra, in 30 BC. As Egypt became part of the Roman Empire, new cultural traditions were imposed, including the arrival of Christianity in AD 40.
The Muslim Arab conquest of AD 632 brought little change to the traditional form of government, but Arabic had become the official language by the 8th century. Following a second expedition by the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad in 905, the country was thrown into turmoil until the arrival of the Shia Fatimids, who originated in the Maghreb. Under Fatimid rule, Egypt became wealthy as the focus of East-West trade, and Cairo, founded in 969, became a centre of cultural and intellectual life.
In the 12th century, Saladin attempted to drive Christianity out of the eastern Mediterranean, and imposed Sunnism on Egypt. His successors, the Ayyubids, continued his policies, so that Egypt could become an Islamic centre. In the mid-13th century, the Mamelukes (originally slave soldiers) rebelled, overran the Ayyubid Empire, set up the first regional army, and made Egypt a Sunni Muslim stronghold, ruling until the Ottomans seized Cairo in 1517. Although the Turks ruled until 1914, their control was nominal after Napoleons occupation (1798-1801).
In 1804, an Albanian officer in the Turkish army, Mohammad Ali, seized power and became recognised as the Viceroy of Egypt by the Sultan of Constantinople. Ali established an industrial base, modernised the countrys institutions, and, crucially, organised the army on the European model. By 1875, Alis successors had won total responsibility for governing Egypt. However, in order to accelerate modernisation, and to sustain his colossal personal wealth, Khedive Ismail (1863-79) borrowed so heavily that his financial difficulties opened the way to foreign intervention. The Suez Canal, opened in November 1869, was jointly owned by Egypt and France, but in 1875 Ismail was forced to sell his shares to the UK, and to accept British and French dual control of the budget. The British and French governments, however, were unable to bring the economic situation into any kind of balance, with Ismail resisting their increased interference until they successfully put pressure on the Ottoman sultan to order Ismail to abdicate in June 1979.
The Ottomans installed in Ismails place his son Tewfik, but saw a growing threat to Ottoman control in an emergent "Egypt for the Egyptians" movement, led by Col Ahmed Orabi and focused on the Egyptian army. In a show of strength, Britain and France sent a joint squadron to Alexandria, where serious rioting in June 1881 offered a pretext for their intervention. The British fleet bombarded Alexandria and Britain then sent a powerful expeditionary force under Sir Garnet Wolseley, who routed Orabis forces at Tel el-Kebir and occupied Cairo in 1882.
Hereafter British control was to be the dominant force in Egypt, exercised from 1883 to 1907 by Sir Evelyn Baring (Lord Cromer) as consul-general, although there was no formal British colonial authority, the Egyptian khedive remaining nominally autonomous under Ottoman suzerainty, until Britain declared Egypt a protectorate in 1914. Nationalism gained ground after World War I when Egypt sought independence from its protectorate status. Britain, unwilling to give up its imperial communication line and control of the Suez Canal, refused to negotiate with the nationalist leader, Saad Zaghlul. In order to quell widespread unrest, Britain unilaterally declared a limited independence for Egypt in February 1922, but safeguarded its defence arrangements. In spite of nationalist resentment, Egypt became a constitutional monarchy, under King Fuad I, with a bicameral legislature, in 1923. An election of January 1924 brought Zaghlul to power as the first democratically chosen prime minister at the head of the Wafd party.
The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty was signed in August 1936 providing for the British military occupation of the Suez Canal zone, allowing Britain to mount its North African campaign in World War II to defend Egypt and the Suez from combined German and Italian forces. The ending of the 25-year-old British mandate over Palestine and the proclamation of the state of Israel in 1948 seriously destabilised the Egyptian monarchy as right-wing elements, through a series of violent protests, gained control of political momentum. Political parties failed to mobilise any mass support, especially after Egypts defeat in the war against Israel. In July 1952, the Free Officers Movement led by Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser forced the abdication of King Farouk and a republic was proclaimed in June 1953, and under Gen. Mohammed Neguib, then Col Nasser (1954-70), a complete economic and constitutional reorganisation was undertaken.
Under Nasser, Egypt became a leading radical force throughout the Arab world, advancing his concept of pan-Arab socialism. Shifting away from the West, Nasser approached the Soviet Union for military and economic aid and, in 1956, he nationalised the Suez Canal, intending that its operation should finance the Aswan High Dam project, from which the UK and the USA had withdrawn promises of assistance. Britain, France and Israel responded militarily, but the affair ended in fiasco and strengthened Egyptian and Arab support for Nasser. In furtherance of pan-Arabist objectives, in 1958 Egypt joined Syria in forming the United Arab Republic, although Syria withdrew three years later. Egypt supported Palestinian guerrilla attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip, but suffered a humiliating defeat in the June 1967 Six-Day War, losing Gaza and the Sinai peninsular.
After Nassers death in September 1970, Anwar Sadat—a close associate of Nasser in the Free Officers Movement—was elected president. Initially regarded as an interim leader, Sadat consolidated his personal authority by ousting or arresting his political opponents and in 1972 began the reversal of the Nasser's pro-Soviet stance, this policy culminating in the abrogation in March 1976 of the 1971 treaty of friendship and co-operation with the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, Egyptian forces had succeeded in recapturing the eastern bank of the Suez Canal in the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war, thereby greatly increasing Sadat's prestige at home and in the Arab world (even though the fighting eventually ended in stalemate). Despite the conclusion of limited disengagement agreements, little progress was made towards a comprehensive settlement in the succeeding two years, with the result that President Sadat in November 1977 undertook the first official visit ever made to Israel by an Arab head of state. With US mediation, the two sides agreed to a peace accord (the Camp David Agreements) in October 1978, leading to the peace treaty of March 1979 and Israels staged, phased withdrawal from the Sinai.
President Sadat was assassinated in October 1981 by Islamists and was succeeded as president by Mohammed Hosni Mubarak, the leader of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). Mubarak sought to continue the cautious policies of the Sadat administration, while successfully attempting to re-insert Egypt into the mainstream of Arab politics. Throughout Mubaraks administration, waves of unrest, often in protest at economic difficulties, have been exploited by Islamist fundamentalists. With the aim of easing some of the tensions that had been created by Sadats pro-Western policies, as well as consolidating the legitimacy of the new regime, Mubarak set out to create a broad national front against the threat posed by Islamist extremists. This he did by tolerating the Muslim Brotherhood and other relatively moderate political forces. In September 2005, Mubarak won a fifth, six-year term in office in the countrys first genuinely contested presidential contest. In elections held over the course of the following three months, the Brotherhood emerged as the largest opposition bloc in the legislature.
