The Muslim Brotherhood’s New Challenges
Francesco Aloisi de Larderel, former Italian ambassador to Egypt, discusses Dina Zakaria’s interview 29 August 2011

The answers provided by the Muslim Brotherhood’s young representative in this interview with Reset are one scene from a film that is being shown on the Egyptian political stage since January 25th.

It is interesting to read that, as Zakaria says, “Our culture, and not our religion, leads us to show particular attention and care regards to women…” This statement, certainly true as far as Egypt is concerned, is equally true for most of the Arab and Middle Eastern world (Christians included) and let us not forget that it has been equally true in our own European countries until quite recently.

The great novelty in the “Egyptian Spring” is exactly a cultural renewal that has seen the birth of a more modern young generation that does not fear the authorities, wishing to be responsible for its own individual and collective future.

The generational renewal is at the same time the “Egyptian Spring’s” tragedy, because the groups of young people that achieved the overturning of the Mubarak presidency, (then carrying along with them workers and the Muslim Brotherhood) are currently not the majority in the country and are experiencing problems in creating a well-structured political movement and it is unlikely they will inherit power when elections are held. However, the Europeans of 1848 did not immediately achieve victory for the ideas they believed in, which did gain momentum a generation later!

That said, events in Egypt last January were an opportunity for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood while also posing the movement many problems.

Like everyone else, the Muslim Brotherhood was taken by surprise by the first mass protests against the Egyptian president and their ever-increasing success. The Brotherhood, whose political aspirations had been repeatedly thwarted by Mubarak’s regime, had effectively adapted to a situation of compromise that allowed it to pursue its main objective; not political power that always remained firmly in the hands of President Mubarak, but the spreading and stronger establishment of Islamic values in Egyptian society. This objective was pursued with a degree of success, also, as known, through a series of activities in the educational, health and social mobilization sectors that compensated for the shortage of government facilities.

During this phase the Muslim Brotherhood nearly always presented itself as a united block, because any eventual internal divisions would have been a serious danger and an additional problem in facing the widespread surveillance and pressure continuously imposed on it by the regime and its police.

But the fall of President Mubarak has, from the first day, brought forth a rich internal debate in the Brotherhood. It was the Ikhwan Youth Movement which, from the first, took part in the mass demonstrations against President Mubarak. From what can be gathered, this happened against the wishes of the movement’s leadership, which agreed to go along so as not to be marginalized at a later date and so as not to be alienated and not share in the success of the protests.

Since then various political divisions have emerged. The official party of the Brotherhood, “Freedom and Justice” found itself placed between another of the Brotherhood’s more moderate political movements, the “el Wasat” (the Center) party, and the Salafite political movements, clearly more extreme and fundamentalist, strongly supported from outside. It is well to remember, in this context, that the conservative monarchies of the Arab “gezirah”, like the Saudis, have long preferred to support Salafite political movements rather than the Muslim Brotherhood, whose support of electoral democracy is perceived as a threat.

We do not know what weight the Muslim Brotherhood will have at the next parliamentary and presidential elections, whether they will form de facto alliances with the military that for now controls the country’s destiny, or alliances the followers of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, who certainly did not vanished overnight.

We see the Muslim Brotherhood divided every day on fundamental questions, over the nature of the new Egyptian state, whether it should be secular or not, the role Islam should play in inspiring civil and criminal law, the possibility that the country’s president should be a Muslim or a woman, etc… On other fundamental questions, foreign and economic policies, the Brotherhood does not have a set philosophy, but these will emerge, presumably and in a dialectic manner, as the country will have to face the deterioration of the problems it has for sometime been experiencing.

To return to Dina Zakaria’s initial statement, the Brotherhood, like the whole country, will have to come to terms in the coming years with the cultural evolution of Egyptian society, whose first manifestation gave rise to the “Arab Spring.” Bearing in mind the supremely important role in creating a social fabric that both Islam and Coptic Christianity play in Egyptian society, its role could be of the utmost importance. Certainly, as Dina Zakaria suggests, women in the Brotherhood could provide an important contribution in overcoming cultural and non-religious barriers.

Translated by Francesca Simmons

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