The Muslim Brotherhood

The Muslim Brotherhood

            The Muslim Brotherhood is an organization that is Islamic in nature and was founded in Egypt, specifically in Ismailia by Hassan al-Banna as a religious, social as well as a political movement. It was and still is considered as one of the largest and well organized political force. It campaigned for the return to the use of the Quran and Hadith as a standard or determining a course of action for purposes of a healthy modern Islamic organization or society (Hesham, 1). The founder, an Egyptian schoolteacher preached the implementation of the traditional sharia law when life is viewed from a particular direction from daily experiences to the government organization. The initial focus of the brotherhood was education as well as works of charity but later it evolved to become a huge political force too. In the years 1939-1954, the Brotherhood championed the source of poor Muslims. In addition, it played an important function in the Egyptian nationalist movement, evacuating the British who had initially occupied the region.

According to Hesham, (1), its early stages, the Brotherhood only revolved around religion as well as education activities.it was viewed as a provision of the much required social services and from this point, its membership increased quickly to politicizing its outlook and as an element to oppose or stop the advancement of the ruling Wafd party. Similarly, during the Second World War, the brotherhood planned popular and strong objections against the government. During this activities, an armed branch was organized at the beginning of the 1940s and was responsible for acts of violence, assassinations which were majorly on political grounds and bombings. An example of such violence was the murder of the Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi because of the administration’s trial of dissolving the Brotherhood. In addition, Hasan al-Banna was similarly assassinated shortly after the assassination of the Prime Minister.

Upon the arrival of the revolutionary mode of rule or management, the Brotherhood withdrew its military forces to underground and another assassination attempt led to the brotherhood’s suspension forcibly with six of its leaders tried and executed with the act of betraying one’s government as well as providing support and comforting the enemy. In line with this act, many other members of the brotherhood were imprisoned and the organization officially surrendered violence. The Muslim brotherhood later regained renewal as part of the sudden rise of the religious proceedings in Islamic states. The brotherhood new goals aimed at the reorganization of the government as well as the society in accordance with the Islamic beliefs which were strongly anti-western (Krogt& Christopher, 2). It emerged to contend in legislative elections in Egypt as well as Jordan.

Despite its earlier participation in the elections of 1980, by the elections in 2000, the Brotherhood was still banned. However, with the brotherhood adherent contending as individual participants in the elections, they got a chance to win 17 seats which was a big portion of the opposition politicians in the Egyptian parliament (Krogt& Christopher, 2).  An additional win to 88 seats by the Brotherhood was still met with extra restrictions as well as arrests, forcing them to boycott the 2008 elections. They continued to suffer through arrests as well as barring of voters in the strongholds of the brotherhood. After the winning of the National Democratic Party which was Mubarak’s, with 209 of the 211 positions without an election repeat, the Muslim brotherhood were effectively eliminated from parliament leading to their second boycott.

In January 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leaders supported a non-religious youth dissent movement, calling upon their members to join in the demonstrations (Krogt& Christopher, 2). With the ongoing protests, Mubarak was forced to step down as president clearing the path for Muslim brotherhood’s accessible participation in the Egyptian politics. The leaders of the brotherhood later outlined a tentative political plan for the organization stating that they were not to seek a majority legislature or candidate nomination for the presidency. In April 2011, the brotherhood founded the freedom and justice party, applying for awareness from the Egyptian temporary administration. The leaders of the party elaborated that each of the policies of the political platform would be based on the Islamic code of conduct since the party entailed women as well as Christians, would be non-confessional (Hesham, 1).

The Muslim Brotherhood was later disqualified from running by the elections commission by announcing that Khairat al-Shater one of the high members of the organization and a businessman was to run for the presidency (Hesham, 1). This is because it was not in accordance with their assurances of the organization, not participation in seeking the presidency. Later, when the Muslim Brotherhood demonstrated for the removal of a leader that was democratically elected by citing it as illegitimate, tension broke out into violence. As a result of the actions that took place after the beginning of the demonstration by the Brotherhood, the Egyptian government put into practice a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood. For this reason, the organization decided to freeze its operations and activities with all affiliate organizations and programs. Later that year the group was considered as a terrorist group after the government’s blame on the organization for a suicide bombing that took place outside a police station (Krogt& Christopher, 2). However, the organization denied any involvement with the bombing and condemned the attack.

In conclusion, despite the self-righteousness of the Muslim Brotherhood and the need to come up with a government and rules based on sharia law and the Quran, its hidden motives of some of its leaders seeking for presidency could not remain hidden. The organization only used boycotts and unsafe methods to achieve their desire rather than solving the issues through mediation. As an organization that didn’t manage to keep its earlier promises, the people of Egypt lacked faith in the organization in providing a just and honest leadership system.

Cited works

Al-Awadi, Hesham. “Islamists in Power: The Case of The Muslim Brotherhood In Egypt”. Contemporary Arab Affairs, vol 6, no. 4, 2013, pg. 1. University Of California Press, doi:10.1080/17550912.2013.856079.

Van der Krogt, Christopher J. “The Muslim Brotherhood in Contemporary Egypt: Democracy Redefined or Confined?” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, vol 26, no. 3, 2014, pg. 2. Informa UK Limited, doi:10.1080/09596410.2014.987556.