Amr El-Choubaki reviews the Muslim Brotherhood's 75 years of semi-political, semi- official history, and tries to answer the oft-whispered question: Can we trust them? The Society of Muslim Brothers has survived for over three-quarters-of-a-century against overwhelming odds, keeping its organisational cohesion intact, an achievement perhaps unparalleled in the Arab and Muslim worlds. The group went through periods of dissimulation and isolation, switching between offence and defence, engaging in dialogue then opting for confrontation. Still, they have yet to be fully integrated into the political process, some say because their particular brand of theology fails to meet the civic needs of modern democracy. Notably, in the current dialogue between the ruling party and the opposition, the Brotherhood was not even mentioned as a potential interlocutor. It nevertheless continues to thrive under organisational skills and flexible tactics that has endured monarchical and republican rule. The Muslim Brothers have long lived a double life. Under the monarchy, they advocated piety while maintaining a secret militant wing that occasionally acted independently of the larger organisation. Under the first and second republics they retreated to the shadows, officially disbanded, biding their time. For the past two decades the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has undergone a public resurrection. Events large and small on the Arab and Islamic stage, from Palestine to Iraq, don't play without MB involvement -- even if such involvement is indirect, for example the issuing of a fatwa (religious edict). Domestically, hardly a syndicate, a political activity or a student movement functions without the participation of Muslim Brothers. They offer views on a wide range of matters, down to allegedly obscene movies or irreverent books. Such prolific activity makes for trouble. Throughout their history they were targeted by the state. The worst crackdowns came in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Mahmoud Fahmi El-Noqrashi in 1948, as well as after the attempt on President Gamal Abdel-Nasser's life in 1954. THE EARLY BROTHERS: Certain qualities enabled the MB to maintain a cohesive organisational structure for so long. These qualities continue to define their current effectiveness as a cohesive organisation, constituted by members of various ages and doctrinal persuasions. MB longevity is embedded in the structure laid down by the group's founder, Hassan El-Banna, in 1928. The nature of this structure keeps El-Banna's ideas alive today, almost half-a-century after his 12 February 1949 assassination. It is possible to argue that much of what we now see as MB "tactics" are little more than a replay of the methods that El-Banna endorsed at the Fifth Congress of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1937. These methods established dualism as a modus operandi for the MB's complex doctrinal and organisational makeup. Open positions would be juxtaposed with hidden agendas. Despite the dualism of its doctrinal and organisational makeup, the MB's more prominent strand favoured peaceful means of effecting change over violent ones. A less prominent internal movement has at times condoned, and occasionally practiced, violence. In any case, the MB's multi-tiered system of organisation was a gimmick designed to attract a large following. The dominant MB organisational policy also reflects its populist character and penchant for political ambiguity. Against a seemingly monotone exterior, the MB's internal structure was detailed and creative, with precise tasks assigned and carried out by each type of member. Vibrancy within the MB started with the way members were invited, recruited and defined by their place in the organisation. Components of this internal structure may have changed over time, but not the general scheme. Conventional recruitment takes place on multiple levels. In Memoirs of a call and a preacher (Mudhakkarat al-da'wa wa al-da'i), El-Banna says that MB offices and major departments should give the members a moral and psychological education to enhance their commitment. To carry out this task, official MB membership -- open to the public -- was divided into three levels: 1. General membership is a right for every Muslim that the District Management agrees to enroll. Candidates have to declare their commitment to piety and provide personal information to become "assistant brothers". 2. Associate membership is a right for every Muslim the District Management agrees to enroll. Candidates, in addition to the aforementioned commitments, are required to "maintain the faith" and obey orders to become "associate brothers". 3. Active membership is a right for every Muslim that the District Management agrees to enroll. Candidates, in addition to the aforementioned commitments, are asked to provide full personal details, study the MB doctrine, attend weekly Qur'anic sessions and meetings of the District Department, promise to speak in Classical Arabic whenever possible, educate themselves in non-political public matters, and memorise a minimum of 40 Sayings of the Prophet to become "active brothers". The MB founders had a fourth type of membership separate from the above: jihad membership. Membership was reserved for active members hand-picked by the Guidance Bureau (Maglis al-irshad). Jihad brothers -- in addition to the aforementioned commitments -- are required to follow the Prophet's traditions, perform extra nighttime prayers, lead austere lives, avoid anything un-Islamic in worship and business, make financial contributions to the Guidance Bureau and the Call Fund, bequeath part of their estate to the MB, exhort pious behaviour and discourage sinful behaviour, carry a copy of the Qur'an at all times and undergo extra education sponsored by the Guidance Bureau. While the overall differentiation in recruitment levels was significant, jihad, "associate" and "active" members all might have professed loyalty to the MB's peaceful agenda. The range of MB activities matched its sophisticated modes of recruitment. In its weekly and monthly activity programme, approved by the 1937 Fifth Congress, the Guidance Bureau instructs members to reserve several days every month for certain tasks: (1) Advice Day is for members to urge their community to do good and avoid sins; (2) Reckoning Day is for members to visit graves and contemplate mortality and judgment in the afterlife; (3) Visitation Day is for members to visit sick Muslims and (4) Acquaintance Day is to enhance friendship among organisational members. Parallel to these social and moral activities were the more programmatic ones. The three pillars of the weekly Brothers' activity were: (1) Study Night, devoted to studying the weekly lesson delivered by an officer known as the General Guide; (2) Brigade Night, devoted to willingness to endure distress and fight one's temptations for God's sake; and (3) Camp Day, devoted to martial training and readiness for jihad. Hoping to form an Islamic army, the MB took particular interest in the latter. Commenting on martial activities, which should include a weekly military parade that will serve "as a model for others", the Guidance Bureau says, "we hope that the Brothers would pay particular attention to this latter endeavour." These two levels of organisational structure -- a peaceful one including the majority of the MB, and a militant one preparing a minority of members for armed conflict, without openly inciting them -- were at the basis of the MB's dualist embrace of general as well as special cadres. An "invisible" and "parallel" outfit thus evolved after 1940 in conjunction with the main MB apparatus. While MB insiders referred to the former as the special outfit (al-tanzim al-khas), outsiders preferred to call it simply the secret outfit (al- tanzim al-sirri). According to Mahmoud Abdel-Halim, a co- founder of the special outfit, the MB managed to stay in full control of the special outfit for about eight years after its founding. Reaction to the domestic social and political scene as well as regional events surrounding the 1948 Palestine War eventually led to divisions between the special outfit and the rest of the organisation. The training programme of the special outfit involved the following: 1. Members were divided into groups, with a clear chain of command, and ordered to participate in all aspects of MB public activities. 2. Members were instructed to engage in careful study of jihad in Islam, focussing on Qur'anic passages, Sayings of the Prophet and Classical Islamic history. They were also ordered to follow a strict regimen of worship and prayers. 3. Members were trained to perform strenuous manual labour, distribute propaganda leaflets, use coded messages and weapons. 4. Members were trained to unquestioningly obey orders and keep secrets. Members of the special outfit were unleashed during the 1948 Palestine War. Domestically they placed bombs in Cairo, occasionally targeting Egyptian Jews and Jewish- owned shops. In an operation that drew much local attention, two members of the special outfit assassinated Ahmed El-Khazendar, a prominent judge who had sent to prison a fellow member for attacking British soldiers at a nightclub. State backlash was relatively mild compared to what would become the norm during the republican years. The two were sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour. El-Banna was detained briefly but released for lack of evidence. Also in 1948, the Egyptian authorities found a weapons depot in the Ismailia farm of Sheikh Mohamed Farghali, leader of the MB brigades in Palestine. In the same year, a member of the special outfit assassinated El- Noqrashi. The outfit continued its activities even after the revolution. In 1954, a member tried to kill Abdel-Nasser. The episode proved, especially to MB leaders, the outfit's capabilities of acting independent of the group's structure. The attempt on Abdel- Nasser's life was costly. In December 1954, six Brothers were hanged and thousands of others were arrested. The group was "defanged", according to prominent MB scholar Richard Mitchell. The conflict between the MB and the revolution lasted for over 16 years, leaving its mark on the group's discourse. The conflict highlighted the schism between the MB's public and secret cadres. It also demonstrated the MB's inability to maintain balance in terms of its internal contradictions in times of crisis, for which the semi-liberal monarchical era did not prepare it. The MB became aware that its original choices put it on a collision course with the republican government. As a result, divisions erupted inside the group over the question of violence and reform. For the most part, however, the MB entered a state of quietism and public seclusion that lasted, albeit in different forms, until the assassination of President Anwar El-Sadat in October 1981. Aside from student activities in universities, the MB played no significant political and social role in Egypt during the 1970s. The MB was able to combine hard-liners with reformers, Sufis with revolutionaries, political activists and moral preachers through the period of relative calm that lasted from 1928 to 1948. But the subsequent period of domestic and regional upheaval disrupted its organisational structure and its political discourse. THE NEW BROTHERS: It was not until the 1980s that the MB managed to reinvent itself. In doing so, it abandoned the dualism of violence and peace that marked its doctrine into the mid-1960s. But its mindset remained just as complex as ever. In the early 1970s, the MB severed its ties with militancy, spoke solely in peaceful terms, and reinvented the political, organisational and theological traditions on which the secret outfit was based. The MB abandoned one form of dualism only to adopt another. Out went the juxtaposition of peace and violence and in came the juxtaposition of religion and politics. Since the 1980s the MB has transcended, theoretically and practically, the "preparation for violence" that marked its work during the 1940s. Indeed, the syndicate and parliamentary elections the MB contested in the 1980s were a far cry from the militarism of the 1940s and 1950s. For the first time, the MB contested parliamentary elections in alliance with other political groups. In 1984 it forged an alliance with its historic nemesis, the Wafd Party, bringing seven MB members into the People's Assembly. In 1987 the MB constituted the backbone of the so-called Islamic Alliance. In that year's elections, 35 MB members won seats, out of a total of 60 seats gained by the Islamic Alliance. In 2000, with the MB outlawed as an official political party, 17 MB members were elected as independent candidates. They also controlled several professional associations in Egypt throughout the 1980s. In the new millennium MB members continue to hold a strong position in the Lawyers Syndicate. Two MB members have also gained seats in the Journalists Syndicate. As the MB succeeded in democratically controlling several key professional syndicates, it became more politically savvy. The interaction between MB members and other political and party groups encouraged some of the former to explore a "middle way", recognising, theoretically at least, the right of the "other" to exist. In practice, they sought to exclude "the other" politically, but this was now being done through the ballot box, a sea change from older -- sometimes violent -- methods. In short, the MB has refined its political discourse and propaganda skills. The MB of today is different from the one that grew up under the monarchy and pulled back under Abdel-Nasser and El-Sadat. It would be difficult to argue that the 1980s MB evolution has featured a wholesale adoption of democratic and pluralistic politics, either in theory or in practice. Though a certain separation between political and doctrinal practices may have been politically expedient, the line between the two remains intentionally blurred. This, however takes nothing from the sophistication of MB politics in their electoral manifestation. Today's MB platform is specifically designed to attract the votes of doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, engineers, and journalists, as well as the general public. What makes it hard, however, to consider the MB a solely political movement is that it still blends the sacred with the secular, the political with the moral. The MB maintained its organisational cohesiveness and political influence because it was ready to change as needed. When its aim was to rally broad support during the 1930s, the MB developed a discourse of piety and charity that appealed to the public mood. When it wanted to benefit from the political openness of the 1980s, the MB abandoned the violent discourse of Sayyid Qutb, their leading doctrinaire. Eventually, the group was able to turn its organisational structure into a peaceful one, adopting a discourse that mixes politics with a serving of the divine. Now, the violent discourse of the 1930s is but a faded memory. Currently, politics is more prominent than theology in the group's discourse, but the MB does not see itself as an exclusively political group. Members, particularly in the middle level and the old guard (as well as many who joined the MB on the basis of their conservative and religious background) act as if they are spokesmen for Islam, as if their beliefs are ultimate religious tenets and as if those who differ in opinion are religiously misguided. Thankfully, most MB members refrain from levelling accusations of blasphemy on their opponents. The group, however, is not likely to abandon what some call "Islamic ideology" anytime soon. What it seems willing to do is accept differences in perception, hold to its position, and take matters to the electorate. The challenge facing the MB in this century is how to separate the religious from the political. This is a task the MB needs to accomplish in order to become more credible as a civic political group seeking to achieve power through peaceful and democratic means, not as one seeking to impose Islamic practices though control of modern civilian institutions, namely the parliament and the professional syndicates. One reason for the MB's hesitance to address the questions surrounding its "political identity" is its non-acceptance as a legitimate political player. The MB has no motive to change its discourse while it lacks a legal status. Here the dualism between theology and politics comes in handy, for it allows the group, whenever harassed, to assault its opponents on a religious basis, an effective weapon in swaying public opinion. Were the MB to be validated as a political party, and were it to accept once and for all the rules of democracy and party pluralism, this would be a step forward for democracy. To do so, the MB should recognise the rights of all political forces, including secular and communist ones, to have their own parties. To do so, the MB should come up with a political programme -- however Islamic in tone. Such a development would boost the group's legitimacy in the public's eye. Yet, the MB is likely to wait until it is granted legal status and treated as a legitimate political partner. The matter of integrating one of the most important factions of political Islam, the MB, in the process of democratisation in the country is worthy of study by intellectuals and researchers. It is worth admitting that the Egyptian democratic process will not be complete unless the "problem" of political Islam in general, and the MB in particular, is solved -- and not through extraordinary measures concocted to exclude and excise these trends. Over the past decades, the MB has come up with a modern formula stressing the "domestic component". Through that formula, the group has proved capable of influencing the country's social and political reality. Other trends and groups, including human rights activists, have adopted formulas with an "external component", but their influence on Egyptian social and political reality remained limited when compared with the massive appeal of the peaceful brand of political Islam. This is why the integration of peaceful Islamist currents in the democratic process is more than just a solution for a 75-year-old problem. Such a move would enfranchise a large section of the public through their belonging to a political movement, through voting and through accepting the outcome of voting. The modernisation of peaceful political Islam would encourage the major political forces in Egypt and the Arab world to move closer to democracy. We have to trust the democratic process's ability to influence the interpretation of divine texts and enhance our understanding of Islam. Perhaps it is time that Islamists are given the opportunity to become full partners in the process of democratisation. * The writer is an analyst at the Al-Ahram Political and Strategic Studies Centre.
