The Muslim Brotherhood had pinned great hopes on the demonstrations held on 30 August that were dubbed the “Decisive Friday” marches. Nevertheless, the turnout was quite low, reflecting the poor public support and the weakness of the group's organisational powers following the arrest of most of its leaders in the aftermath of the break-up of the Rabaa Al-Adawiya and Nahda sit-ins in Cairo. The low turnout was also indicative of a trend among a segment of Muslim Brotherhood youth to search for a new forum for political involvement. It is in this framework that the contours of the organisation's future lie. Meanwhile, ousted president Mohamed Morsi and 14 Muslim Brotherhood leaders were referred to the Criminal Court on Monday on charges of inciting violence during Al-Ittihadiya palace clashes last December. The Muslim Brotherhood, its political wing the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), and the National Alliance to Support Legitimacy had called for a series of marches around the country beneath the Rabaa Al-Adawiya banner on 30 August. Although the marches were joined by some groups unaffiliated with the Islamist trend, such as the Unveiled Women Group, members of which appeared in some upscale neighbourhoods such as Al-Tagammu Al-Khamis suburb of Cairo, participation fell far below what one would normally have expected following the impassioned rallying cries of such senior Brotherhood figures as Mohamed Al-Beltagui and Essam Al-Erian. Such a feeble show of strength has occasioned conjectures as to the direction the Brotherhood will take in the future. Some analysts predict that it will tend towards further violence and terrorism, including targeted assassinations in the manner of the militant Islamist groups in the 1990s. Security and strategic affairs expert General Sameh Seif Al-Yazal said that marches such as the one held last Friday were part of a bid to improve the Brotherhood's negotiating hand. He added that the marches, which were led by third-rank Brotherhood leaders, had been ad hoc and haphazard and that were likely to dwindle both in turnout and frequency. Another camp of analysts believes that the Brotherhood will not come to the negotiating table and that it will not undertake a revision of its ideological creed, which has remained unchanged since the group was founded in 1928. The Brotherhood's leadership is incapable of learning from its mistakes, this body of opinion maintains, referring to the second-rank leadership that still remains outside of jail. This leadership will not negotiate, and it will not compromise in order to spare Egyptian blood, these commentators say. Instead, it will continue to try to obstruct the state, and, therefore, it will continue to lose territory in a society where people have become fed up with the constant demonstrations and marches that have been held in the country since the 25 January Revolution. Nevertheless, some Brotherhood leaders, such as Mohamed Beshr, former minister of local development, and Amr Darrag, former minister of planning, have said that the Brotherhood is ready to negotiate. They say that they want the authorities to stop the roundups of Brotherhood leaders, to release those who have not been involved in violence, and to allow the Brotherhood to assimilate into the political process. Apparently, indirect negotiations are in progress via mediators between these Brotherhood officials and the authorities. There have been several initiatives to broker an agreement between the Muslim Brotherhood and the authorities, one being announced lately by the Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, which nevertheless did not disclose the details. Another initiative was put on the table a week ago by Deputy Prime Minister Ziad Bahaaeddin, but this collapsed behind closed doors so it is impossible to determine which side was at fault, the Muslim Brotherhood or the government. In view of these negotiating failures, the Brotherhood hopes to recover its strength by means of marches and demonstrations that it says will still be “massive”. It has also renewed its call for a campaign of civil disobedience, a campaign that has so far failed to gain any public support of note and that appears unlikely to do so. Meanwhile, the government is trying to encourage the contingent of Muslim Brotherhood youth who have declared their opposition to violence and have voiced their disapproval of the poor performance of the group's leadership since 30 June. It believes that these young people could offer an acceptable alternative to the Muslim Brotherhood, and a coalition of Brotherhood youth who have split off from the organisation has announced that it has collected around 10,000 signatures, of which 7,000 were from Muslim Brothers, on a petition to form an alternative party to the Brotherhood's FJP. This new party, to be called the Youth for Egypt Party, would be committed to the principle of the separation between religion and politics in order to avoid the mistakes of the Islamist parties. The coalition has also stated that it regards the Armed Forces as being the protector of the revolution and the guarantor of the roadmap to democracy. According to Amr Ammara, the coalition's coordinator, the new party will be founded on eight basic principles. Foremost among these are inclusiveness and non-discrimination, the separation between religion and politics, and a commitment to the public interest. In addition, the party would serve as a vehicle to convey the pulse of the street to the government, to propose solutions to social problems to the relevant agencies, and to strive for reform in a general manner. Ammara said that he believed that the new party could help improve the severely damaged image of the Muslim Brotherhood, noting that it had received positive responses from both the government and Christian youth. Kamal Al-Halbawi, a former Brotherhood leader who broke away from the organisation some time ago, has turned down the offer to head the new party, explaining that he wanted to leave the opportunity open to young people and to confine himself to a purely advisory role. “The new party will add to political life and revive the Muslim Brotherhood,” Al-Halbawi said. The current Brotherhood leadership, which subscribes to Qutbist thought, had deviated from the thinking of the organisation's founding father Hassan Al-Banna, he added. “The mother organisation should stay out of politics and leave the field to the young so that the wounds can heal.” For its part, the Brotherhood now appears set to pursue negotiations in order to assimilate what it describes as a reformist leadership into the political domain. Official Brotherhood spokesman Hassan Abdel-Rahman said that the group had changed its position and that it was ready to come to the negotiating table to discuss the current crisis. Brotherhood negotiators would seek the release of all detainees who had been arbitrarily arrested, he said, together with the cessation of police pursuit of Brotherhood leaders who had not been involved in bloodshed or the instigation of violence, and the freedom to participate in politics and run in the parliamentary elections. He said that a Brotherhood Without Violence Movement had split off from the mother organisation and that this believed that moderate voices among the Brotherhood should not be excluded from politics, with the same thing applying to moderates from the former ruling National Democratic Party. “Not everyone who belonged to these groups took part in violence, murder or burning,” he said, adding that the Brotherhood Without Violence Movement had refused to take part in the sit-ins or acts of violence and had actively tried to persuade the group's young people not to take part in the forthcoming demonstrations in order to safeguard both the history and the future of the group. “It was the foolish and tenacious insistence on confrontation on the part of some of its leaders that led to [the Muslim Brotherhood's] collapse,” he said. Abdel-Rahman said that the rise of reformist-minded individuals to leadership positions in the Muslim Brotherhood would eventually help it to regain the trust and popularity it had once enjoyed. Such a leadership would need to espouse a centrist conception of Islam, to avoid violence, and to disassociate itself from the jihadist and takfiri groups that had joined the Brotherhood leadership after 30 June. Facing the challenge of a society that has begun to shun it as a terrorist group and simultaneously having to contend with what a Brotherhood leader has described as an attempt to sow internal division in the organisation by breakaway movements such as the Brotherhood Without Violence Movement, the Muslim Brotherhood as a whole is staring into an uncertain future. Much will be contingent on how the old leadership handles the negotiations, on the one hand, and the success of the new Youth for Egypt Party and the breakaway movement that announced its rejection of violence following the declaration of the new roadmap on 3 July, on the other. Meanwhile the demonstrations scheduled for 6 September will add another line to the Muslim Brotherhood's palm, enabling skilled fortune-tellers to determine whether it will head into the negotiations more wounded than it was before or with a stronger negotiating hand.
