Eric Trager
New Republic
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If the newly banned Brotherhood turns to violence, it will only validate a more thorough and perhaps permanent crackdown.
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In the 16 months after Hosni Mubarak's dramatic February 2011 ouster,
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood quickly rose from the cave to the castle,
winning the parliamentary and presidential elections, and then
appointing its members to executive positions across the Egyptian
government. But 15 months and an uprising-cum-coup later, even the
Brotherhood's former caves are off-limits to it. On Monday, a Cairo
court ruled the Brotherhood illegal and authorized the military-backed
government to seize its assets and properties.
To some extent, the court's decision reinforces the decapitation
strategy that the military has pursued against the Brotherhood since it
toppled Mohamed Morsi on July 3, which has hampered the organization's
capabilities significantly. But whereas decapitation left open the
possibility that rank-and-file Muslim Brothers might select new -- and
perhaps less aggressive -- leaders over time, Monday's court ruling will
have much longer term consequences, unless it is overturned on appeal.
The prohibition on "all activities" will affect the Brotherhood's social
service networks, through which it reaches out to the Egyptian public
and recruits new members, and might also invalidate its political arm,
the Freedom and Justice Party.
In the aftermath of the decision, many commentators have insisted that
outlawing the Brotherhood will not destroy Islamism in Egypt, and this
is certainly true. Theocratic ideologies will always enjoy support in
that notoriously religious country, and several Islamist parties --
including those that are more radical than the Brotherhood -- remain
untouched. But Islamism is also safe because, despite its insistence
that "Islam is the solution," the Brotherhood has never articulated a
coherent Islamist vision. Far from representing any specific concept of
what its stated goal of an "Islamic state" might entail, the Brotherhood
is, first and foremost, a cultish and hierarchal vanguard, whose
priority is internal cohesion and complete obedience to its own
institutional directives. And whereas ideas rarely die, cults often do.
Indeed, the outlawing of the Muslim Brotherhood could, in fact, destroy
it, at least within Egypt. But that would still leave perhaps hundreds
of thousands of rank-and-file former members, who are unlikely to
abandon the radical quest for total control -- "Islamizing the society"
and then "Islamizing the state," as they term it -- that the Brotherhood
indoctrinated them to pursue during the five-to-eight year "tarbiya"
process through which one becomes a brother. So what will these ordinary
Brothers do? I can anticipate three possibilities, two of which would
provide a basis for possible resurrection.
First, in lieu of the organization's nationwide command chain, ordinary
Muslim Brothers may generally look towards those leaders who have gone
into exile for guidance. The Brotherhood has already moved its media
operations to London, and at least three of its six top leaders are
outside of Egypt: Secretary-general Mahmoud Hussein is in Turkey and
deputy supreme guide Gomaa Amin is in London, while deputy supreme guide
Mahmoud Ezzat is believed to be in Gaza. (The whereabouts of a fourth
top leader, Mahmoud Ghozlan, are unknown.) From this foreign perch,
Brotherhood leaders have rejected an Egypt-based leader's attempt at
reconciling with the Egyptian public, and called on Muslim Brothers in
Egypt to continue protesting against Morsi's ouster -- which they have
done, albeit with much lower numbers than before. While the Brotherhood
would not be able to coordinate highly detailed activities from abroad
without a command-chain within Egypt, it could keep ordinary Brothers
engaged, thus keeping the ground fertile for Brotherhood leaders to
return and reestablish the organization if and when a political opening
emerges.
Second, ordinary Muslim Brothers may decide to participate in elections,
perhaps after a few years, as independents. Without a national
organization controlling their strategy, they might decide to run in
some areas and not others, and they would stand a better chance of
performing well than is currently appreciated. While it is true that the
Brotherhood is extremely unpopular at the moment, this could change as
Egypt's economy continues its decline under the military-backed
government. More importantly, given that the more local levels of the
Brotherhood's leadership have not been arrested, Muslim Brothers could
coordinate within districts to choose candidates and efficiently
mobilize supporters through interpersonal networks that will survive
even without the Brotherhood's hierarchy. The fact that Egypt's
political field is otherwise deeply divided among dozens of parties,
many of which are barely distinct from one another ideologically as well
as poorly organized, would advantage well-organized Brotherhood
independents. Brotherhood independents might then use those victories to
push for renewed freedom for resurrecting their now-defunct
organization.
Third, ordinary Muslim Brothers may abandon the Brotherhood and turn to
other Islamist movements, including violent ones. After all, younger
Muslim Brothers tend to be more radical than their strategically
conservative leaders, and they may now act on that radicalism. Moreover,
rank-and-file Muslim Brothers have used violence as a political tool in
the recent past -- most notably last December, when Brotherhood cadres
attacked, tortured, and killed protesters outside the presidential
palace in northern Cairo. And history is rich with examples of Muslim
Brothers who turned towards jihadi activities during periods of state
repression.
It is precisely this scenario that worries Egypt observers, and some
have argued that Washington should have firmly rejected Morsi's ouster
precisely to prevent Muslim Brothers from taking up arms. This argument,
however, creates the false choice between a violent Brotherhood out of
power and pacific Brotherhood in power: During Morsi's year in office,
the Brotherhood repeatedly demonstrated its totalitarian aims and its
willingness to use violence against its opponents in pursuing those
aims. This is a big part of the reason that millions of Egyptians rose
up against it in the first place.
But more to the point, individual Muslim Brothers' turn towards
terrorism would validate an even more thorough regime crackdown -- one
that would not only target the Brotherhood's organization, but its
rank-and-file members broadly. The appropriate analogy would be the
Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which was routed from Syria in 1982 after a
subset of its members known as the Fighting Vanguard took up arms
against the regime, and has been practically nonexistent in that country
for three decades.
In other words, Muslim Brothers' turn towards violence would simply make the effects of Monday's ruling permanent.
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Eric Trager is the Wagner Fellow at The Washington Institute.
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