By SCOTT SHANE
The Muslim Brotherhood Is Growing More Assertive In Egypt, Its Intentions Are Unclear
WASHINGTON — After maintaining a low profile in protests led largely by secular young Egyptians, the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s largest opposition force, appeared to be taking a more assertive role on Thursday, issuing a statement asking for President Hosni Mubarak to step aside for a transitional government.
“We demand that this regime is overthrown, and we demand the formation of a national unity government for all the factions,” the Brotherhood said in a statement broadcast by Al Jazeera.
In an interview just before the current wave of protests began in Egypt, Essam el-Erian, a leading figure in the Brotherhood, said the group did not seek to monopolize power. “We want an atmosphere for fair competition now that can allow us to compete for power in the future,” Mr. Erian said. “And we want stability and freedom for people, not chaos.” The Brotherhood, whose leaders are mostly much older than the protest organizers, joined the demonstrations only after they were under way. The hesitancy may reflect in part the grim history of the state’s ruthlessness, said Abdel Halim Qandil, the general coordinator of Kifaya, a secular opposition movement.
History of the Muslim Brotherhood In Egypt
The Muslim Brotherhood is the oldest and largest Islamist movement in the world, with affiliates in most Muslim countries and adherents in Europe and the United States. ...It was founded in 1928 by an Egyptian schoolteacher and imam, Hassan al-Banna, as a grass-roots association whose goal was to promote the reform of Muslim society by a greater adherence to Islam, through preaching, outreach and the provision of social services.
“It was a bottom-up, gradual process, beginning with the individual and ultimately reaching all of society,” said Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, a political scientist at Emory University and the author of “Mobilizing Islam,” a 2002 book on Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood. “It’s roughly analogous to the evangelical Christian goal of sharing the gospel. Politics were secondary.”
But Mr. Banna did speak of jihad, too, as a struggle against colonialism and Zionism, Ms. Wickham said. Quotations from the Brotherhood’s founder have been highlighted in recent years by Western critics who portray the movement as a militant threat. In the 1970s, after years of brutal repression by the state, the Egyptian president at the time, Anwar el-Sadat, permitted the Brotherhood to operate quietly and to open a Cairo office, and the Brotherhood formally renounced violence as a means of achieving power in Egypt. The group did not, however, reject violence in other circumstances, and its leaders have endorsed acts of terrorism against Israel and against American troops in Iraq.
A prominent Brotherhood thinker, Sayyid Qutb, who was imprisoned by the Egyptian government and executed in 1966, was an important theorist of violent jihad and a spiritual progenitor of Osama bin Laden, the founder of Al Qaeda, and Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical preacher now hiding in Yemen. But the Brotherhood took a different direction after Mr. Qutb’s death, and Qaeda leaders came to hold the organization in contempt.
A milestone in the Brotherhood’s evolution in Egypt came in 1984, when its leaders decided to compete in parliamentary elections. Since then, it has been alternately tolerated and repressed in Egyptian politics, where most estimates of its actual support begin at 20 percent of the electorate. “The paradox has been that the better the Brotherhood performs, the more repression it has attracted,” Ms. Wickham said. After it won 88 seats in Parliament in the 2005 elections, Mr. Mubarak’s government responded with a new crackdown.
The Obama Adminstration Has Its Eyes On the Brotherhood
The Obama administration has spoken cautiously about the future role of the Brotherhood, which has long been banned by Mr. Mubarak’s government, saying only that all parties must renounce violence and accept democracy. But one of the few near certainties of a post-Mubarak Egypt is that the Muslim Brotherhood will emerge as a powerful political force. ...
American politicians and pundits have used the Brotherhood as a sort of boogeyman, tagging it as a radical menace and the grandfather of Al Qaeda. That lineage is accurate in a literal sense: some Qaeda leaders, notably the terrorist network’s Egyptian second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, have roots in the organization. But Qaeda leaders despise the Brotherhood because it has renounced violence and chosen to compete in elections.
The Brotherhood hates Al Qaeda, and Al Qaeda hates the Brotherhood,” said Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. “So if we’re talking about counterterrorism, engaging with the Brotherhood will advance our interests in the region.”
To Read More>>>
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/world/mi...
“We demand that this regime is overthrown, and we demand the formation of a national unity government for all the factions,” the Brotherhood said in a statement broadcast by Al Jazeera.
In an interview just before the current wave of protests began in Egypt, Essam el-Erian, a leading figure in the Brotherhood, said the group did not seek to monopolize power. “We want an atmosphere for fair competition now that can allow us to compete for power in the future,” Mr. Erian said. “And we want stability and freedom for people, not chaos.” The Brotherhood, whose leaders are mostly much older than the protest organizers, joined the demonstrations only after they were under way. The hesitancy may reflect in part the grim history of the state’s ruthlessness, said Abdel Halim Qandil, the general coordinator of Kifaya, a secular opposition movement.
History of the Muslim Brotherhood In Egypt
The Muslim Brotherhood is the oldest and largest Islamist movement in the world, with affiliates in most Muslim countries and adherents in Europe and the United States. ...It was founded in 1928 by an Egyptian schoolteacher and imam, Hassan al-Banna, as a grass-roots association whose goal was to promote the reform of Muslim society by a greater adherence to Islam, through preaching, outreach and the provision of social services.
“It was a bottom-up, gradual process, beginning with the individual and ultimately reaching all of society,” said Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, a political scientist at Emory University and the author of “Mobilizing Islam,” a 2002 book on Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood. “It’s roughly analogous to the evangelical Christian goal of sharing the gospel. Politics were secondary.”
But Mr. Banna did speak of jihad, too, as a struggle against colonialism and Zionism, Ms. Wickham said. Quotations from the Brotherhood’s founder have been highlighted in recent years by Western critics who portray the movement as a militant threat. In the 1970s, after years of brutal repression by the state, the Egyptian president at the time, Anwar el-Sadat, permitted the Brotherhood to operate quietly and to open a Cairo office, and the Brotherhood formally renounced violence as a means of achieving power in Egypt. The group did not, however, reject violence in other circumstances, and its leaders have endorsed acts of terrorism against Israel and against American troops in Iraq.
A prominent Brotherhood thinker, Sayyid Qutb, who was imprisoned by the Egyptian government and executed in 1966, was an important theorist of violent jihad and a spiritual progenitor of Osama bin Laden, the founder of Al Qaeda, and Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical preacher now hiding in Yemen. But the Brotherhood took a different direction after Mr. Qutb’s death, and Qaeda leaders came to hold the organization in contempt.
A milestone in the Brotherhood’s evolution in Egypt came in 1984, when its leaders decided to compete in parliamentary elections. Since then, it has been alternately tolerated and repressed in Egyptian politics, where most estimates of its actual support begin at 20 percent of the electorate. “The paradox has been that the better the Brotherhood performs, the more repression it has attracted,” Ms. Wickham said. After it won 88 seats in Parliament in the 2005 elections, Mr. Mubarak’s government responded with a new crackdown.
The Obama Adminstration Has Its Eyes On the Brotherhood
The Obama administration has spoken cautiously about the future role of the Brotherhood, which has long been banned by Mr. Mubarak’s government, saying only that all parties must renounce violence and accept democracy. But one of the few near certainties of a post-Mubarak Egypt is that the Muslim Brotherhood will emerge as a powerful political force. ...
American politicians and pundits have used the Brotherhood as a sort of boogeyman, tagging it as a radical menace and the grandfather of Al Qaeda. That lineage is accurate in a literal sense: some Qaeda leaders, notably the terrorist network’s Egyptian second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, have roots in the organization. But Qaeda leaders despise the Brotherhood because it has renounced violence and chosen to compete in elections.
The Brotherhood hates Al Qaeda, and Al Qaeda hates the Brotherhood,” said Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. “So if we’re talking about counterterrorism, engaging with the Brotherhood will advance our interests in the region.”
To Read More>>>
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/world/mi...
All I know is that we better not (in the West) under estimate the Brotherhood and their agenda in the World.