After it succeeded in the legislative elections of 2011 and the presidential elections in 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood association turned to violence in 2013. A valid question comes to mind: Will it be a round trip for the Muslim Brotherhood from ballots in 2011 and 2012 to bullets in 2013, and back to ballots? In fact this question is among the important that have gone unanswered, particularly amid the ongoing violence — if not terrorism — espoused by the association in its desperate attempt to return to the 30 June status quo ante. Besides, the process of drafting a new constitution, where many have opined that there should be a ban on forming political parties on a religious basis, has added more urgency to the answer. Another factor that has rendered the question urgent has been the recent legal verdict dissolving the Muslim Brotherhood and confiscating its accounts and premises. Ironically, the government has been reluctant — if not apologetic — while enforcing the binding legal verdict. Within the same context, tremendous pressure has been exerted on the transitional regime in order to include or to exclude the Muslim Brotherhood in the new political order. Such pressure has come from different directions, inside and outside Egypt. Most profound and obviously influential has been the rising popular pressure that has near isolated the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters. In fact, the main crux has become the possibility — if any — of the reintegration of association members within the national fabric, not just the return of the association to the political scene. Moreover, the recent ban on the association may be followed by another court verdict dissolving the association's political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party. However, the association adapted to function as an outlawed organisation and will not cease to exist. The revolving door may become the outlawed association's approach, either forming a new party or piggy-backing on existing one in order to bypass the legal verdict and thus be able to re-enter the political arena. Definitely such a scenario has been dismissed by a growing number of citizens who have obviously opted for full exclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood and its members from participation in the new political order ordained by the revolution of 30 June. In a stark contrast to the exclusion option, reintegration of the Brotherhood within the new political order has been a primary request for some forces inside the body politick, and more seriously from among certain Western actors. And there has been a sort of synergy between these two, pushing for reintegration to become the acid test of the democratic nature of the emerging political system. On the other hand, the masses have begun to see containing the threat posed by the Brotherhood as the acid test of the success of the transitional regime. Meanwhile, the transitional regime has been ambivalent or actually divided on rejecting or accepting the proposed scenario of forgiving and forgetting. Paradoxically, it was the Muslim Brotherhood that rejected reintegration while reiterating its sole demand of reinstating the ousted political order with its atrophied pillars — the ousted president, the dissolved Shura Council and the suspended 2012 Constitution. Losing contact with reality has become of the association's efforts in pursuing such a surrealistic scenario. Meanwhile, the association has been carrying the banner of the peaceful victim while it has been endorsing violent as well as terrorist activities against the state and society. Unlike the first two dissolution events in its history, in 1948 and 1954, the Muslim Brotherhood's third destruction, as many have rightfully stressed, has been devastatingly profound in terms of the depth and breadth of popular visceral rejection. Irreversibly, the association has been discredited if not disgraced on an increasingly broad popular base that has witnessed live a demonstration of the atrocities committed by the Brotherhood's cadres and affiliates. Of particular significance has been the association's sectarian attitude towards Copts that has left a limited, if any, chance of future compromise with an indispensable portion of the Egyptian national fabric. On the other hand, the association's third destruction would have drastic impacts on the association's members, who have been shocked by the appalling failure of its once highly trusted leadership to manage the whole era with all its ebbs and flows. The credibility of this generation of leaders, if not the whole idea and mission of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been undermined. Moreover, such destruction has taken place at a time when the association thought its state would last for 500 years, as claimed by one of its leaders. It can be said that the gap between the promise and performance of the association and its leadership has already disillusioned growing sectors within its corpse. While in the first two events of 1948 and 1954 the vast majority of association members were put in jail, the ongoing security campaign of the third destruction has predominantly focused on Brotherhood leaders, leaving association members to face a highly hostile public. The Brotherhood leadership has obviously come to the end of its political career and will pursue nothing but maximising its sponsored violence as the only option in the face of its increasingly fragmented affiliates and constituencies. Such fragmentation will inevitably lead to the evolution of more radical offshoots, formed from those who have become disillusioned with the old leadership. Offshoots have been characteristically smaller in size and their emergence has been in many cases related to internal power dynamics in the parent association. Many could rightfully argue that a ban may not impact the association insofar as it has been repeatedly outlawed since its establishment. Yet it should be emphasised that such a fact should not be used as a pretext to allow the association to return to business as usual with no accountability for its long array of crimes against the state and society. The banning of the association came through a court verdict, not via exceptional measures from the executive, and it has been accompanied by mounting popular resentment, rejecting the association and its practices. These two factors have been delegitimising the Muslim Brotherhood, a fate that will impact on its expected efforts to regroup and indeed recruit new members. Extremist associations have been banned in many democracies while all acknowledge that such outlawed organisations clandestinely continue to operate. Meanwhile, the state should work thoroughly on identifying and addressing the transnational links, as well as the financial networks, of the outlawed association in order to minimise the threats associated with its potential reunion or highly probable offshoots. Other analysts and experts have emphatically stressed that banning the Brotherhood would be counterproductive and might lead to further radicalisation among marginalised members. However, Randy Borum suggests that radicalisation might best be viewed as a set of diverse processes, “not the product of a single decision but the end result of a dialectical process that gradually pushes an individual toward a commitment to violence over time.” Influenced by déjà vu of the Algerian scenario, some analysts have warned of a direct and causal relationship between banning the association and/or its political party and the radicalisation to violent extremism of some of its members. On the other hand, some analysts have excluded escalation of the ongoing violence to a fully-fledged war. Ashraf Al-Sherif, for example, believes, “such low-intensity violence would likely fall short of anything like the Algerian or Syrian cases.” The Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters will remain a security threat, but they cannot destabilise the current regime as long as it is resting on a wide popular base. Evidently, the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood association will maintain its current level of violence and both the state and entire society have to be prepared to live with such security threats. Many countries have been plagued with such extremism. The Muslim Brotherhood should be viewed as a typical example of an anti-system movement where, in the words of Giovanni Capoccia, “a party or a group with no democratic ideals” engage in “unconventional illegal or violent behaviour” or “is more or less isolated by the other political forces.” All these aspects can be seen in the ideology as well and practice of the Muslim Brotherhood association, now and throughout the years, under the different political regimes that have ruled Egypt since the establishment of the association in 1928. It is the time to reassert that the association is an outlawed entity, while developing the necessary legal and institutional mechanisms to enforce such a legal status. Banning the Muslim Brotherhood represents neither its end nor that of a deeply rooted religious fundamentalism that over centuries has had various emanations. Rather, it should be seen as an essential prelude to a much more comprehensive national plan with short and long-term strategies and objectives aiming at containing current and potential threats. Sociologists are very much needed to lay the premises of such a plan. In doing so, we should refrain from capitalising on readymade or “fast food” diagnoses and prescriptions. The current social landscape has to be read through Egyptian eyes. Many of those advocating laissez-faire, laissez-passer reconciliation have not been able to identify the would-be future catastrophes associated with a fundamentalist association assuming power. Meanwhile, the government should fulfil its duty of safeguarding national security by doing the right things — not doing things right from the perspective of certain blackmailing actors.
