MIDDLE EAST NEWS MAY 15, 2009
Muslim Brotherhood Falters as Egypt Outflanks Islamists


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By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt -- Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is on the defensive, its 
struggles reverberating throughout Islamist movements that the secretive 
organization has spawned world-wide.
 
Just recently, the Brothers' political rise seemed unstoppable. Candidates 
linked with the group won most races they contested in Egypt's 2005 
parliamentary elections, gaining a record 20% of seats. Across the border in 
Gaza, another election the following year propelled the Brotherhood's 
Palestinian offshoot, Hamas, into power.


Egypt's 'Brothers' Hit Bump






View SlideshowDominic Nahr for The Wall Street Journal
A family in downtown Cairo.

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Since then, Egypt's government jailed key Brotherhood members, crimped its 
financing and changed the constitution to clip religious parties' wings. The 
Brotherhood made missteps, too, alienating many Egyptians with saber rattling 
and proposed restrictions on women and Christians. These setbacks have 
undermined the group's ability to impose its Islamic agenda on this country of 
81 million people, the Arab world's largest.
 
"When we're not advancing, we are retreating. And right now we are not 
spreading, we are not achieving our goals," the Brotherhood's 
second-in-command, Mohamed Habib, said in an interview.
 
Across the Muslim world, authoritarian governments, Islamist revivalists and 
liberals often fight for influence. Egypt is a crucial battleground. A decline 
of the Brotherhood here, with its shrill anti-Israeli rhetoric and intricate 
ties to Hamas, strengthens President Hosni Mubarak's policy of engagement with 
the Jewish state. It could also give him more room to work with President 
Barack Obama, who is scheduled to visit Egypt next month, on reviving the 
Arab-Israeli peace process.
 
Brotherhood leaders caution against reading too much into the current troubles, 
saying the 81-year-old group has bounced back from past challenges. Others say 
the government's suppression of the Brotherhood, Egypt's main nonviolent 
opposition movement -- paired with arrests of Mr. Mubarak's secular foes -- can 
unleash more radical forces.
 
"If it continues this way, it's very dangerous and could lead to the return of 
extremism and terrorism in Egypt," says Ayman Nour, a liberal politician who 
ran for president against Mr. Mubarak in 2005 and was later imprisoned on 
campaign-fraud charges that the U.S. government condemned as politically 
motivated.
 
Formed in 1928 amid a backlash against European colonialism, the Muslim 
Brotherhood remains a deeply entrenched force, with hundreds of thousands of 
members and affiliates across the Middle East. Operating under the slogan 
"Islam Is the Solution," it aims to establish an Islamic state governed by 
religious law.
 
The Brotherhood engaged in assassinations and bombings in the past, and one of 
its ideologues, Sayyid Qutb, developed a radical theology that still motivates 
jihadi groups such as al Qaeda. Since the 1970s, however, the Egyptian 
Brotherhood renounced violence and rejected Mr. Qutb's more fiery theories. It 
has focused instead on building an Islamic society from the bottom up, through 
proselytizing, social work and political activism.
Biggest Opposition Bloc
Though it is outlawed by the Egyptian state, the Brotherhood operates here more 
or less in the open. It maintains hundreds of offices and fields electoral 
candidates. In part thanks to American pressure to liberalize Egypt's 
authoritarian political system, these candidates -- running as independents -- 
were allowed to contest 145 seats, almost one-third of the total, in 
parliamentary elections in November and December 2005.
By winning 88 races, the Brotherhood cemented its role as Egypt's dominant 
opposition force. The next-biggest opposition faction, the liberal Wafd party, 
garnered just seven seats.
 
The poll results, and the subsequent Hamas takeover in the Gaza Strip, provoked 
a government counterattack. In 2007, Egypt amended its constitution, skewing 
future representation in favor of registered parties and against independents, 
the only candidates the outlawed Brotherhood can field. When local council 
elections, initially due for 2006, were finally held last year, the state 
disqualified most Brotherhood candidates. The group boycotted.
 
Mr. Habib, the Brotherhood's white-haired deputy chief, says its candidates are 
unlikely to win more than five to 10 seats in parliamentary elections slated 
for next year.
 
The regime launched a wave of arrests and military trials against the group, as 
well, the harshest such security clampdown on the Brotherhood in decades. This 
dragnet ensnared thousands of rank-and-file members.
 
It also netted some Brotherhood leaders who ran the financial apparatus that 
funnels millions of dollars in donations and investment proceeds into 
campaigning and social outreach. The group's third-in-command, businessman 
Khairat al Shater, was arrested in December 2006 and sentenced last year to 
seven years in prison for financing a banned group.
 
Government officials are unapologetic about the crackdown, which disrupted the 
Brothers' social services. "We're dealing with a clandestine organization," 
says Ali Eddin Helal, information secretary of the ruling National Democratic 
Party.
 
The regime pressed its public-relations campaign against the Brotherhood last 
month, when it said it had cracked a cell of Lebanon's Hezbollah militia that 
was spying in Egypt and smuggling weapons to Hamas. State media painted the 
Brotherhood as an unpatriotic hireling of Iran, which sponsors Hamas and 
Hezbollah.
 
The Brotherhood has put up little resistance, and its only attempt at showing 
its muscle backfired. A 2006 militia-style march by masked Brotherhood students 
at Cairo's Al Azhar University provoked public outcry, reminding many Egyptians 
of the group's violent past. More arrests followed.
 
"Their [nonviolent] strategy doesn't allow them to react -- it doesn't allow an 
escalation," says Issandr el Amrani, a Cairo-based analyst at the International 
Crisis Group think tank.
 
Brotherhood leaders say its base remains dedicated. "If they say we are 
weakened, why are they still afraid of us?" asks Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh, one 
of two dozen members in the Brotherhood's topmost body, the Guidance Council. 
"Let's have a free election, and we shall see who wins!"
Alexandria Duo
The government's strategy against the Brotherhood is playing out in 
Alexandria's Bab Sharq parliamentary district, set inland from this sprawling 
city's colonial-style beachfront mansions and boulevards. Once a freewheeling, 
cosmopolitan port, conservative Alexandria is now a Brotherhood stronghold.
 
Under Egyptian law, every district elects two lawmakers -- one a worker or 
farmer, the second a professional. The Brotherhood's Saber Abul-Foutouh, a 
45-year-old petroleum-industry union organizer who wears dapper suits and a 
jet-black moustache, won in the worker category in 2005. The professional seat 
went to local shipping magnate Mohamed Mouselhy, a member of the ruling NDP. 
Both are freshmen legislators.
Because of his parliamentary status, Mr. Abul-Foutouh has enjoyed immunity from 
arrest. Not so the staff at his three Alexandria offices: They have been in and 
out of jail since the elections.
 
Mr. Abul-Foutouh complains that government representatives have attempted to 
sabotage his activity on behalf of constituents. "They tell everyone in 
government offices not to deal with us -- and even those government officials 
who know us very well fear to help us because they can be punished," he says.
 
In such an environment, the Brotherhood's strategy has long been to run heavily 
publicized parallel social services, from job placement to child care to 
health. "We collect our own money to help the poor -- we serve the people and 
have a feeling for people's needs," boasts the lawmaker's top aide, Mahmoud 
Fathallah, who spent February through April behind bars. Two free Brotherhood 
clinics operate in the area, he added, serving dozens of patients every night.
 
But the Brotherhood's social-services pitch doesn't always match reality, in 
part because of the campaign against its financing.
 
On a recent evening visit to the two Brotherhood clinics, no doctor or patients 
could be seen. The clinics themselves turned out to be tiny rooms tucked into 
corners of Brotherhood offices. Behind the flimsy curtains, they contained 
little more than a cupboard full of pills, rickety furniture and a 
blood-pressure gauge.
 
Meanwhile, Mr. Mouselhy, the ruling-party lawmaker, has opened a clinic of his 
own in the area.
 
His renovated two-story building, attached to a mosque, is a grander affair. 
Inside, a framed photo shows the grinning parliamentarian side-by-side with 
Gamal Mubarak, President Mubarak's son and rumored successor. On a recent 
evening, pink-clad nurses primed dental, gynecological and pediatric equipment 
as the clinic's manager, urologist Ahmed Abdul-Aty, received patients.
 
Dr. Abdul-Aty says the clinic charges patients a symbolic thee Egyptian pounds 
per visit, or about 50 U.S. cents. For the poorest, it waives even this fee.
 
Sitting on the pavement in front of their small used-goods store in Bab Sharq, 
enjoying the evening breeze, several members of the Abdelghani family discussed 
the relative merits of their two representatives. "Mouselhy wants to be 
popular, and so he helps out. He gives 20 pounds to anyone who is poor," said 
66-year-old Mohamed Abdelghani. "As for the other guy, the only time we saw him 
here was when the Brothers were collecting money for Gaza."
'Like Everyone Else'
Mr. Abdelghani's 22-year-old daughter Karima, a newly minted lawyer, 
interrupted to voice her disappointment. "In the beginning, the Brotherhood had 
a lot of popularity -- people thought they'd achieve something," she said, 
cradling her year-old son. "But once they got into parliament, they've become 
just like everyone else."
 
The nature of parliamentary politics has forced the secretive Brotherhood to 
take a stand on issues it often preferred to keep vague, chief among them the 
role of Islam in running the state. "Before, they could just use their big 
slogan -- 'Islam Is the Solution.' But now in parliament, they've had show 
their true colors," says Mohamed Kamal, a professor at Cairo University and a 
senior NDP lawmaker.
 
When constitutional changes came to a parliamentary vote in 2007, an 
NDP-sponsored amendment to Article 1 defined Egypt as a state "based on 
citizenship" -- overshadowing a later clause about Islam being "the religion of 
the state." The new text was meant to enshrine equal rights between Muslims and 
the Christian Copts, who make up an estimated one-tenth of Egypt's population.
 
The Brotherhood has long insisted it holds no prejudice against Christians. Yet 
an Islamic state -- based on faith, not citizenship rights -- remains the 
group's core belief. So the Brotherhood lawmakers, unwilling to vote for or 
against the amendment, ended up walking out of the parliament floor.
 
Later in 2007, the Brotherhood attempted to clarify its vision by distributing 
a draft program for a political party it aims to establish. The document stated 
that a woman or a Christian cannot become Egypt's president, and called for the 
creation of a special council of Islamic clerics to vet legislation.
 
The draft appalled the government media, the secular opposition and even some 
relatively liberal members of the Egyptian Brotherhood itself.
Essam el Erian, the head of the Brotherhood's political bureau, says he has 
worked on a draft party program for years. The version that ended up being 
distributed by the group, he quipped, is so wrong that it probably "has been 
exposed to a virus."
 
Stung by the criticism, the Brotherhood's senior leadership eventually said the 
document it had released was not final. The group, whose 80-year-old supreme 
chief, Mahdi Akef, plans to retire in January 2010, froze the program's 
drafting.
 
The latest controversy surrounding the Brotherhood stemmed from its behavior 
during Israel's Gaza war, a campaign initially seen as a boon to the Islamist 
movement. Harnessing widespread popular feelings of sympathy with the 
Palestinian cause, the Brotherhood organized two massive street demonstrations 
in Alexandria and Cairo during the war, attacking President Mubarak's regime 
for failing to help Gaza's Hamas rulers.
 
But these protests soon fizzled. Calls by some Brotherhood leaders to send 
fighters to Gaza alienated many Egyptians who have no desire to see their own 
country, at peace with Israel since 1979, embroiled in war once again.
 
"They went too far and just frightened the street," says Mahmoud Abaza, the 
leader of the Wafd party who, because the Brotherhood faction is technically 
made up of independents, serves as the leader of opposition in parliament. "It 
was a miscalculation."
 
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofi...@wsj.com Printed in The Wall 
Street Journal, page A1

Hasni Essa
Islam for Pluralism

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