History tells of family dynasties — such as the Bourbons of France and the House of Medici in Italy — that have succeeded in perpetuating their rule for centuries. It also tells of powerful and influential political families some of whose offspring reached the highest seats of power even in democratic republican systems. The names of Nehru in India, Bhutto in Pakistan, and Bush in the US come to mind. The Arab world today still boasts dynastic monarchies in the kingdoms of Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. In most human societies there have been leading families that have succeeded in perpetuating their influence, wealth and status for generations. According to some sociological studies, such families remain strong for about a century and a half, on the average, after which they fall into decline and cede the way to newcomers. The families I speak of above are all “biological families” as commonly understood in the fields of biology, sociology, medicine and genetics. The Muslim Brotherhood is a creature of a different order. Over decades of applying the principle that a Muslim Brother should marry a Muslim Brotherhood sister, this ideological organisation has evolved into a kind of organic entity in which politics and nature are wed in the service of the group. It is quite an unusual, if not unique, phenomenon. Arranged marriages between royal families from different countries were so common that their stories could fill volumes. The practice was a primary means to bolster a dynasty's power, wealth, political sway and prestige. But it is another kettle of fish when an ideological/political faction in a society ordains that its members should marry one another, not only because it would ostensibly be better for the resultant children's upbringing, but also — and more importantly — because this would advance their political project and safeguard its security. Kinship relations play many roles in human societies. Often they are the route to political office and leadership positions, although with the Muslim Brothers this route seems to have expanded into a highway. Perhaps it is because they are all interconnected by an intricate labyrinth of marriage bonds that the kin factor weighs so heavily in their appointments compared to other groups. But certainly another reason is to be found in their selection criteria, which prioritises the inherent “trustworthiness” of fellow members of “the family and tribe”, as the Muslim Brothers refer to themselves, over competence, know-how and other professional qualifications. This prioritisation derives from the Muslim Brotherhood's determination to take full advantage of its current opportunity for the “empowerment” of its ideological project and, simultaneously, from its pathological paranoia toward political and ideological “others”. It is little wonder, therefore, that the “Muslim Brother family” features as a level in the group's organisational/political structures, alongside “social unity” that regulates relations between Brotherhood spouses and their children. Everything is interwoven from the nuclear family unit upward. In fact, some local leaders are assigned the task of intervening in marital disputes in their regions, a responsibility that once fell upon Mohamed Morsi in his hometown in the Sharqiya governorate. The nuclear family is the basic cell or building block of the Muslim Brotherhood. Then follow in ascending order the “division”, the “region”, the Administrative Bureau, the General Shura (consultative) Council, the Guidance Bureau and the Supreme Guide. The family in this structure consists of five to seven individuals headed by a “lieutenant” one of whose tasks is to preside over weekly family meetings dedicated to the study of a set curriculum of Quranic exegeses (notably Sayed Qutb's Fi Zilal Al-Quran (In the Shade of the Quran), Hadith (Sayings) attributed to the Prophet Mohammed, the letters of Muslim Brotherhood founder Sheikh Hassan Al-Banna, and other such texts. Also in the course of these meetings, members discuss current events, the Muslim Brotherhood leadership's positions with respect to them and the attendant duties and obligations required from Brotherhood membership bases. The fields of individual and group psychology have long been divided between two rival approaches or schools of thought. One side championed the concept or theory of the “biological imperative,” which holds that character and behavioural traits are DNA-encoded and genetically transmissible. Accordingly, individual and group disparities in power and wealth, for example, are ultimately the product of the disparities in the distribution of genetically inherited traits or advantages among individuals and ethnic groups. The theory has long been a favourite among right-wing supremacist groups that rest their beliefs, perceptions and actions on their conviction that they are biologically favoured, and which therefore promote intermarriage among their members in order to regenerate themselves and keep themselves “pure”. The second school of thought — “the cultural imperative” — is the antithesis. It holds that individuals are but the product and reflection of their sociocultural environment and that personality traits and modes of behaviour are shaped by the individual's experiences in that environment and the panoply of rewards or punishments that propel him or her in this direction or that. According to this theory, individuals are born a “blank slate” ready to be written upon by the people that most influence their lives, from their parents to their teachers and peer groups. In Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human Nature, neurobiologist Steven Rose expounds on the differences between the two theories, neither of which is fully valid or scientifically sustainable on its own. In Rose's opinion, a combination of both theories, seen as complementary and interwoven in varying degrees, would bring us closer to an understanding of the behaviour of individuals or groups. It might therefore be useful to apply a more relativistic approach to an analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood family. Although the Muslim Brothers do not belong to a single ethnic group, they promote intermarriage among themselves in order to breed Muslim Brotherhood children with the same genetic traits of their parents. However, this has not always proved a recipe for biological success, to which testify numerous instances in which offspring of Brotherhood leaders have rebelled against the group. Nor do I believe that this inbreeding, regardless of how long it persists, will give rise to what might be perceived as a distinct ethnic group or a group marked by discernible genetic traits, even if we can note a certain overlap between the behavioural patterns of a closely-knit ethnically homogeneous society in a relatively isolated geographical area and those of the Muslim Brotherhood society and organisation. At the same time, there exists compelling evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood works assiduously to “condition” its members in order to generate hundreds and thousands of replicas of what it regards as the ideal component of the group and its envisioned society. It has internal educational curricula tailored to family members of all ages and to the various levels of devotee, supporter, affiliate and active worker. Courses are held regularly and the subject matter can be modified to suit particular needs and circumstances. Material and training is also graded according to rank within the group. For example, “lieutenants” receive special courses in how to preach to and guide members of their family “cell”. The substance of the courses given to working members, or Muslim Brotherhood ranks, is different from that given to Brotherhood sympathisers and to those who are on the verge of joining. One of the general purposes of the training is to equip recipients at all levels with the capacities to address society at large, from which the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to recruit its members and in which the organisation seeks to win sympathy and support, or at least to neutralise opposition. The Muslim Brotherhood is equally keen to assimilate its working members into the “extended Brotherhood family” through marriages, business relations and indoctrination programmes, all of which are intended to make members more thoroughly Muslim Brother in mind, heart and soul. Because of its perpetual paranoia, the Muslim Brotherhood strives to glue its members together through a thick adhesive web of personal relations and codes of loyalties. These bonds, it believes, form the securest guarantees for keeping the secrets of its thinking, actions and ways of life from being leaked to its “enemies”. Accordingly, Muslim Brotherhood offices throughout the country contain regularly updated lists of eligible Muslim Brotherhood bachelors and bachelorettes, and offer a kind of conjugal matchmaking service to forge Muslim Brotherhood couples on the grounds that these will be more tightly wed to the organisation and dedicated to the preservation of its secrecy. Further incentive is given through the organisation's commitment to the moral and material support of the Muslim Brotherhood spouse, in the event that her husband is carted off to prison and she is left to tend to the home, the children and the preservation of his honour in the group. Brotherhood leader Sobhi Saleh once aired his organisation's view that marriage outside the group would protract the realisation of its ultimate success. External marriages would result in “mistakes in the upbringing [of children]” which would “delay the victory”. He went further to extract a Quranic verse — “Replace that which is the closest with that which is better” — out of context and enlist it to his argument, thereby delineating the contours of a swell in a type of racism grounded in the sense that the Muslim Brothers are somehow inherently superior to others. The Muslim Brotherhood uses the family members as a means to pressure anyone who ventures so much as to contemplate leaving the organisation. Wives are turned against husbands, husbands against wives, parents against children, in order to bring such “recalcitrant” elements back into line. The method has worked to discipline many and to force them to suppress their discontent so as to avoid the breakup of their families or ostracism among their families and friends. Not long ago I listened to the plight of a Muslim Brotherhood member in his mid-40s who was aggrieved by the deterioration of the Muslim Brotherhood's public image as the result of the inconstancies in its positions and its poor handling of managing the country. At one stage he was so pained and incensed by the gap between the lofty-sounding words he used to hear from Muslim Brotherhood leaders and their actual attitudes and practices that he began to post his comments and criticisms on a social networking website. Then, one day, he received a stern admonition from his immediate superiors in the organisation. He ignored the warning and continued with his commentaries. Suddenly, his wife began to threaten to pursue divorce proceedings and his mother swore to disown him if he refused to obey the warning. Because the man did not want to see his home and family ruined, he refrained from further comments on the Internet. However, he added, he remains willing to enumerate the faults and follies of the Muslim Brothers, in person, to anyone curious enough to ask. As for the member who follows through on his determination to leave the group, he must gird himself against the relentless wrath of the Muslim Brotherhood. This will generally take the form of a horde of furies unleashed to circulate among friends, neighbours and colleagues; vicious rumours to the effect that “He's been recruited by State Security,” or “He's been seduced by earthly temptations,” or “His faith has weakened.” Naturally, such systematic defamation campaigns are not only designed to destroy the reputation of the former member and ensure his rejection by former friends and colleagues, but also to deter others from being foolish enough think of following in his footsteps. Although the Muslim Brotherhood can deal with people outside the group who criticise and disparage it, it has no tolerance whatsoever for those among its ranks who leave it. These it spurns absolutely, regardless of how long they had been members, or the sacrifices they may have made for the group, or the contributions they may have made to the group. Some of ostracised ones spend the rest of their lives in despair, living solely on their reminiscences of their former life with the Muslim Brotherhood, because that is all they ever knew. Other shunned ones take up the gauntlet and lash back, without compunction or reserve, by revealing all they know about the organisation. As much as the utilisation of the family may have succeeded in generating and enforcing group cohesion, it has not spared some Brotherhood members from the anguish of having to wrestle with the conflicts that arise between the demands of the group and the decrees of its authorities, and the demands of their own conscience and the decrees of their faith. For many a compulsory bond of this nature, almost as unbreakable a Catholic marriage, can generate a form of moral lassitude, with people less interested in advocating ideas or convictions that they truly believe in than in defending their personal and material welfare, and warding off the wrath of the organisation and the maledictions of the clan. Nevertheless, Muslim Brotherhood history is replete with wayward sons, once obedient souls who woke up one day to the flagrant discrepancy between word and deed in the greater Muslim Brotherhood family; who were exposed to new and different sources of knowledge and culture, or who underwent other such illuminating experiences. Adham Gamal, who was brutally assaulted by Muslim Brotherhood thugs during the protest demonstration that was staged in front of the Guidance Bureau headquarters in Muqattam on 17 March 2013, offers illustrative testimony in this regard: “Among those arrested with me were two young men — Maged and Ashraf — who told me they were both from Muslim Brotherhood families. They had left a place near the headquarters where they were having private lessons in order to join the demonstrators and hurl stones at their attackers. The father of the first refused to take custody of his son from the police in order to punish him. The mother of the second refused to give her son the food she had brought for him to the detention centre at the Muqattam police station when he persisted in criticising and mocking the Muslim Brotherhood and its actions.” Certainly, the Muslim Brotherhood's mode of social and administrative organisation has been crucial to the group's cohesion, survivability, relative impermeability by security agencies, and its political competitiveness. However, it also carries the seeds of the organisation's rupture and enfeeblement, because it rests on two contradictory notions: voluntary worship and moral and material coercion. There are Brotherhood members who worship the organisation and obey it blindly. There are others who harbour deep misgivings and bitter discontent, but cannot acknowledge those sentiments publicly for fear of the pressures and machinations that would be brought to bear by their bio-ideological family. Both cases speak of a psychological disorder, a morale deficit — a social lunacy. The phenomenon had rarely percolated to the surface before the January revolution, in those times when the Muslim Brothers were in the opposition or under police pursuit. But it can no longer be kept from the public eye now that they are in power and have demonstrated their miserable ineptness at running the country, locking horns with everyone due to their single-minded pursuit of their own interests and the advancement of their self-acclaimed sacred way.
