Monday's court ruling banning all activities by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and confiscating the group's assets is likely to further complicate an already heated political situation. Moderate MB leader Mohamed Ali Besh, who together with Amr Darrag recently met with Mohamed Hassanein Heikal in an attempt to initiate dialogue and open communication channels with the state, says the group intends to contest the ruling. The court judgement was delivered amid growing signs of a split in the MB's ranks. Once noted for its discipline, the MB is in disarray, with many of its leaders either under arrest or on the run. Responses to the public apologies offered by two key leaders — Hamza Zawbaa and Salah Sultan — for mistakes committed during the group's year in power have dramatised the divisions. Sultan's apology — he was arrested on Sunday night at Cairo airport on his way to Sudan — was immediately rebuffed by the MB's Secretary-General Mahmoud Hussein who insisted it in no way reflected the MB's position which is that “all revolutionary and patriotic forces must focus on uniting efforts to end the bloody military coup.” Sultan's apology was quickly removed from the Freedom and Justice Party's (FJP) webpage. Sultan subsequently claimed he was behind its removal. On his own Facebook page, beneath the heading “An apology with a call to action”, he wrote: “I apologised courageously for our political mistakes and I wrote frankly about the monstrous crimes of the coup wagers. I called for an open dialogue that will not compromise the restoration of the cornerstones of legitimacy. I asked for my article to be removed from the FJP webpage as it was written in a personal capacity.” What was it that Sultan, who is also a member of the National Coalition for Legitimacy, wrote in his initial apology that so upset the MB secretary-general? He listed four “political mistakes” that the Muslim Brotherhood committed before and after 25 January 2011 and during the period the group held power. “We apologise for our political misjudgements on many matters, the most important was that we accepted — as did many others — dialogue with Omar Suleiman and the military council that governed Egypt during the interim period in the hope of promoting gradual reform and change. We realise now that the revolutionary course of sustaining popular mobilisation in the squares was the most effective means of attaining the aims of the 25 January Revolution.” He also argued it was wrong for the MB to have refused to share power while the fulul (remnants of the old regime) were still active, and in the face of “objections and rejection by many partners in the revolution and independent citizens”. “The Muslim Brotherhood should have been more open and allowed the Egyptian people to participate with us in bearing the burdens of the obstacles and conspiracies.” Sultan also apologised for the group's failure to foster “dialogue over an effective revolutionary remedy to the forces of conspiracy that worked persistently to thwart the democratic course, the revolutionary gains and the results of the ballot box”. Among these forces he lists “media campaigns designed to demonise the revolution and fracture its unity”. The MB, he said, was also culpable for failing to include women and the younger generation. During their period of rule the group failed to reach out to “two great sectors — youth and women — which were and remain the first and strongest fuel of the January Revolution”. As a result “many dedicated members were driven to search for other outlets and horizons to realise their hopes, taking part in actions that had detrimental consequences for Egypt which they had not foreseen.” He concluded his apology with an appeal for dialogue: “We open our hearts as we do our doors to all national forces — youth and women in particular — to enter into dialogue with us in order to draw the contours of a new phase that will build on the gains and fulfil the aims of our great 25 January Revolution and restore legitimacy with all its pillars.” Sultan is not the first Muslim Brotherhood official to make such an appeal. He was preceded by Zawbaa who called for the MB to admit its errors as part of a process in which the authorities would also acknowledge theirs. Zawbaa stressed that it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood from the political scene by banning it. In the realm of ideas and ideologies the forces of argument, reason and popular appeal are ultimately more powerful than the use of force and tyranny, he said. Zawbaa called for a reconciliation conference including representatives of the full gamut of political opinion at which all movements and groups would declare their commitment to transparency in accordance with the constitution and the law, and for the army to state clearly that it had no intention to compete in any manner in the political arena and would return to its barracks immediately upon the election of a new president and parliament. No other political force has commented on the Sultan apology or the Zawbaa initiative. A breakaway member of the MB has criticised Hussein for rejecting the Sultan apology. Haitham Abu Khalil, on his official Facebook page, said that Hussein should “keep his mouth shut”. He continued: “We oppose compromising the blood of the martyrs and appeasing a criminal. But apologising for mistakes is not something that can be scheduled. It is the beginning of doing what is right.” Addressing the MB secretary-general, Abu Khalil wrote: “So now you show up, Dr Mahmoud Hussein. Why didn't you make an appearance on the podium at Rabaa Al-Adaweya since you have such great revolutionary fervour? Why did you let those whom you claim are not associated with the group take centre stage? In merely attempting to offer an apology Salah Sultan is a hundred times better than those who philosophise to us from Riyadh. Shame on them!” Analysts say the divergent positions taken by MB leaders signify one of two possibilities. The first is that internal disputes have begun to shatter the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood and the National Coalition for Legitimacy, which includes other Islamist groups and parties. They argue that the Sultan apology, and its immediate rejection by another MB leader, is a sign that discord has reached the level of an ideological rift within the group once famed for its iron grip over rank and file members. Such an assessment is based on the notion that the Muslim Brotherhood is ideologically divisible into two camps, the “Qutbists” (hardliners who subscribe to the ideas of Sayed Qutb) and the “reformists”. Sultan and Zawbaa are said to be of the latter camp while Hussein is of the former. The other possibility is that the Muslim Brotherhood is assigning its members different roles as it floats balloons intended to test the responses of the government, other political forces and the public. Muslim Brotherhood university students appear to have been allocated the job of sustaining pressure through an escalating series of marches and demonstrations. Sunday, the second day of the academic year, saw several of such marches as well as the coordinated heckling of former chief mufti Ali Gomaa at Cairo University. Gomaa supported the army's interim roadmap and issued a number of fatwas addressing the dispersal of the sit-ins at Rabaa and Nahda Square. The strategy of escalation adopted by a majority of MB members since 30 June is expected to reach a climax in the wale of Monday's ruling which effectively dashed any hope of dialogue, let alone reconciliation. “We have nothing to lose,” one MB youth leader told Al-Ahram Weekly. Organising more protests to end the military coup is the only option they now have, he said. But is that true? Some dissident Muslim Brotherhood youth are forming coalitions and groups that espouse an outlook that can be clearly differentiated from the MB. The founders of these groups are trying to convince government authorities that they are capable of drawing a quarter of a million Brotherhood youth away from the organisation. Whether a “role” or in earnest, will these new groups become an acceptable alternative to the MB? We may discover the answer sooner rather than later.
