Brotherhood Struggles to Remain Relevant in Egypt

            The Muslim Brotherhood is struggling to maintain its relevance in Egyptian politics since the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi in 2013. A new paper by Ashraf El-Sherif at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analyzes the organizational and ideological changes in the Brotherhood since 2013 and potential scenarios for its future role. The Brotherhood must contend with state crackdowns, dwindling popular support, and its own internal fragmentation. But it remains resilient, and could revive political Islam in Egypt if its leaders address the challenge of “introducing the transformations necessary to better address popular demands for an inclusive, pluralist, and egalitarian political space.” The following are excerpts from the full paper.

            Is political Islam in Egypt finished? Many analysts began raising this question following the dramatic change of fortune experienced by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt starting in 2013. After the ouster of then president Mohamed Morsi on July 3, the Brotherhood quickly fell from grace, losing not only the presidency but also control of the parliament and the constitution it had promulgated. A bloody regime crackdown followed, reaching its height when the interim government that followed Morsi’s administration designated the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization on December 25.

            The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is a useful case study for exploring the shifting external and internal dynamics of Egyptian Islamist organizations. The Brotherhood’s current status and future path has implications for Islamists and democratization in Egypt.

The Brotherhood Since Morsi’s Ouster

            The military-backed regime that took power after the ouster of Mohamed Morsi cracked down ruthlessly on the Brotherhood, arresting supporters, leading trials, and dispersing demonstrations and marches with force. On August 14, security personnel forcibly cleared pro-Morsi sit-ins at Rabaa al-Adawiya and al-Nahda Squares in Cairo, resulting in the killing of almost 1,000 people. The events in Rabaa were part of increasingly violent confrontations between Islamists and the regime.

            The unprecedented intensity of confrontations taking place in 2013 and 2014 has shown no prospect of abating anytime soon. Violence perpetrated by jihadist groups in the Sinai Peninsula has escalated since Morsi’s ouster. While the Brotherhood has not been directly involved in these attacks, some see its theocratic ideology and Morsi’s toleration of radical Islamist groups (in the hopes of broadening his political base) as proof of the organization’s key role in the ongoing violence.

            The military regime has utilized such accusations to broaden its crackdown on the Brotherhood. While the designation of the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization—the first time in the organization’s long history that it has been formally branded as such—is legally and practically disputed, its political consequences cannot be underestimated. The regime moved to confiscate many of the Brotherhood’s economic investments, believing successful control over the organization’s finances could paralyze its activities.

Organizational Changes in the Brotherhood

            As a result of the dramatic events since Morsi’s overthrow, the Brotherhood has undergone a series of organizational and ideological changes. The regime’s ongoing suppression of the group has forced the Brotherhood to decentralize. The arrests of most high-level leaders and activists in the first to third tiers of the group’s leadership—including members of the Guidance Bureau (the group’s top decisionmaking authority), the Shura Council (the group’s parliament), and heads of governorate administrative bureaus—broke hierarchical links in the organization. It gave increasing leverage to lower tiers of leadership on the local level, including junior officials in administrative bureaus who now organize and lead protests along with semiautonomous local networks. Micro-organization has become the preferred tactic for the time being.

            In general, decentralization has proven to effectively preserve the proselytizing activities and networks of the Brotherhood and distract the regime from repressive activities, but its efficacy in protests is doubtful. 

Ideological Shifts

            These organizational changes have led to ideological shifts as well; most notably, Brotherhood members have returned to relying on traditional doctrine as their source of identity.

            The Brotherhood’s ideology effectively solidifies the group’s perseverance on religious bases, but it is less effective at facilitating political initiatives. The organization has been quick to tactically adapt but slower to reformulate its strategy, and it lags behind when it comes to intellectual and doctrinal revisions. Furthermore, in the protests following Morsi’s ouster, the Brotherhood has not only retained its ideological ambivalence on the major questions of violence and tolerance of the political and religious other, but it has also become more vague, to the point of indefensibility.

Political Islam and Democracy in Egypt

            The role of religion in democracy in the Middle East remains up for debate. Some Islamists reject democracy altogether on theological bases. They believe the democratic principle of rule of the people negates the totality of the divine sovereignty over human life (hakimiya). These Islamists include Salafists and jihadists.

            The biggest challenge Islamists have faced is the reconceptualization of democracy as an indigenous process rather than a Western import. Instead of pursuing pragmatic adaptation and intellectual debates about a type of democracy that is considerate of Islamic specificity, democratically inclined Islamists should have invested their energy in situating democratic processes within the vernacular discourse. The Islamists could have retained their long-standing assumptions about the centrality of religious traditions and values, nevertheless embarking on reinterpreting these religious teachings in the direction of liberal or participatory pluralist democracy and eventual separation of the state and religion.

            As for inspiring historical models of democratic Islamism in the Middle East, Islamist parties in Turkey and Tunisia both developed under robust pressure from secular state structures and in competition with strong non-Islamist political movements. Morocco had the advantage of a deeply entrenched monarchy able to define the rules of political and religious pluralism. However, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has remained unable to carry out the necessary transformations in the face of a perceived existential threat. Even when they were in power, the most progressive piece of reform that the Brothers considered, without great success, was separating politics from proselytizing. The Brotherhood’s dogmatic, organizational, and historical legacies were too complicated to let it be content with becoming just another faction within a pluralist democratic polity in Egypt.

Conclusion

            The Brotherhood remains an important force in Egypt, but it no longer occupies the same space it did before Morsi’s overthrow. More broadly speaking, the dream of establishing an Islamic political and social order will survive in the imagination of many Islamists, but whether Islamism will ever again appeal to wider segments of Egyptian society will be determined by the choices its leaders make. Islamist actors will be forced to transform in a political climate more hostile than the 1970s through the 1990s—when Islamist social outreach was at its zenith.

            The current turmoil in Egypt—including social strife, polarization, and violence—has cast shadows on the potential for Islamist integration as well as the regime’s ability to achieve political stability and normalcy. The Islamists and the old state share a common interest in excluding other actors. Islamists pursued a clean takeover of the existing authoritarian order and, when that failed, resistance against the old state. Any path for democratic political and social change—a third way—has not been welcomed by the old state or the Islamists, who remain unwilling to engage with other actors or foster democratic change. This leaves political Islam, like the old state in Egypt, as part of the ongoing problem rather than the solution.

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