Brotherhood signs

By Omayma Abdel-Latif
Perhaps at no time has a public appearance by Mustafa Mashhour, the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood's supreme guide, been as significant as his visit last week to the group's headquarters in Cairo's Manial Al-Roda district. Rumours that the ageing leader was suffering from serious health problems have fuelled speculation over reports of group infighting over who will succeed him.
Witnesses said the 80-year-old leader appeared in "good shape" during the course of a routine visit to Dar Al-Da'wa, where he led the noon prayer. But Mashhour's appearance holds greater meaning than testament to his fitness. It has largely been viewed as a political message to the Brotherhood's opponents.
But Brotherhood sources, speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly, dismissed whispers of a succession crisis as "sinister." Essam El-Eryan, the former assistant secretary-general of the Doctors Syndicate and a senior Brotherhood figure, declared the reports were "completely false," explaining that "the process of succession has well-established traditions that are respected by all group members." He noted that Mashhour is in "very good shape" and intends to go to Saudi Arabia for the hajj (pilgrimage) this year.
Reports of a simmering succession crisis come at a time when the group is experiencing what one senior member described as a "lull" in its ongoing confrontation with the government. Repeated clampdowns on group members around the parliamentary elections last fall failed to hinder the group's success and, under Mashhour's leadership, independents running on their affiliation with the Brotherhood bagged 17 People's Assembly seats -- more than any official opposition party. Furthermore, government sources have conceded that the parliamentary performance of Brotherhood MPs has been "rational and neither hysterical nor extremist."
Mashhour told the Weekly that rumours of a succession battle were a ploy to incite the government against the Brotherhood once again. "Any talk of organisational or hierarchical disputes in the Brotherhood is very likely to arouse the government's ire, because it is a reminder that we are a well-organised entity," Mashhour said.
Described as a hawkish figure, Mashhour was imprisoned repeatedly in the 1940s and '50s on charges of involvement in assassination attempts on then Prime Minister Mahmoud El-Nuqrashi. He was later detained by the late President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, but released in 1974. His views on the nation's political system are hardly complimentary. He was recently quoted as saying that the political system in Egypt is "not Islamic" and predicted that an Islamic state "will see the light in the year 2028" -- nearly a century after the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Asked whether the group has concrete arrangements to avoid a possible power vacuum, El-Eryan would only say that "all matters are under consideration." According to the Brotherhood's statutes -- outlined by founder Hassan El-Banna in 1928 and amended in 1992 -- a candidate for the post of supreme guide should be a member of the group's shura council (advisory board), which has 120 members and represents the various governorates. The Brotherhood's chapters outside Egypt also have a say in the choice of the supreme guide.
But informed sources have indicated that there are no hard and fast rules about selecting a supreme guide and because the Brotherhood lacks legality, it is extremely difficult for the shura council to even convene and carry out the nomination process. "This process is determined mainly by the existing relationship between the government and the group," a source said.
Lending credence to this argument, El-Eryan says that few Brotherhood members would even concede that a shura council exists. The council has not met for the past five years -- an indication, Brotherhood opponents say, of the monopoly over the group's affairs still maintained by the old guard.
But Ma'moun El-Hodeibi, the group's spokesman and first deputy of the supreme guide, cites other reasons. "Convening the council is a sure reason for getting arrested," El-Hodeibi said. "The charge has always been shura council membership in an illegal group. We pay a heavy political price for this." He insisted, however, that despite the difficulties, the Brotherhood is still committed to the principle of shura, or consultation, and that there is no monopoly over decision-making. "Conflict arises when there are benefits and gains to be reaped. This hardly applies to Brotherhood members, who have been hounded and chased by security authorities for the past 10 years," he argued.
The main feature of the alleged succession crisis seems to stem from a conflict between the "hawks" (the old guard) and the "doves" (the new generation). The hawks -- particularly members of the "secret bureau" -- include such Brotherhood veterans as El-Hodeibi, Mashhour, Abbas El-Sissi and Mahmoud Ezzat Ibrahim, whose name has been mentioned as a possible successor to Mashhour. Other notables include Abdel-Moneim Abul-Futuh, secretary-general of the Arab Doctors Union; Mohamed El-Sayed Habib, once a science professor at Assiut University and a former MP; and Mohamed Mahdi Akef, former head of the Islamic Centre in Munich.
The younger generation -- the doves -- include figures like Ahmed Seif El-Islam Hassan El-Banna, a lawyer and son of the Brotherhood's founder; Essam El-Eryan and Ibrahim El-Zafarani. Seif Abdel-Fattah, a political science professor and expert on Islamic movements, suggests that this generation has a new vision of how to deal with the state. Abdel-Fattah notes that they are not burdened by the legacy of the past and "they have been in the frying pan of politics since their campus days."
The supposed generation gap -- dismissed by El-Eryan as "complete nonsense" -- came notably to the fore in 1997, when one member of the younger generation defected from the group and sought, in vain, to establish his own political party. Abul-Ela Madi, a former secretary-general of the engineers syndicate, repeatedly referred to the old guard's dominance in the affairs of the group -- a charge vehemently denied by El-Eryan.
El-Eryan, one of the masterminds behind the Brotherhood's recent political gains, pointed out that the group is the only political force in which the younger generation is fairly represented. "Eighty per cent of the Brothers elected to the People's Assembly are under 45, and the Brotherhood is the only political group that has five or six generations capable of shouldering responsibility," he said.
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