To make sense of last month's military parade by members of the Muslim Brotherhood means placing the demonstration in a contemporary, not historical, context, writes Khalil El-Anani* The military-style demonstration last month by students belonging to the Muslim Botherhood (MB) at Al-Azhar University begged many questions. Dressed in military fatigues, complete with balaclavas, the students produced the kind of show one would expect to see in Palestine, Lebanon or Iraq. Is this the new face of the MB in the 21st century? Has the 40-year reconciliation between the MB and the Egyptian regime ended? Over the past 20 years the Mubarak regime has dealt with the MB with a mixture of tactics ranging between cooption and repression. Now that, for the first time since the mid-1990s the MB stands accused of forming military squads, many wonder if this policy is going to continue. The last time such a charge was made was in 1995 when security services rounded up 200 MB supporters in a "scout" camp in Al-Amiriya, near Alexandria, and accused them of undergoing military training. It is worth noting here that scout teams are among the main tools the MB uses to educate and indoctrinate new members. These teams became part of the organisational structure of the MB during the third MB convention in 1935. The scouts, however, bring back unpleasant memories. The teams formed the backbone of what came to be known as the secret arm or "special outfit" of the MB, blamed for several acts of violence in the 1940s. The special outfit comprised three sub-groups: the civilian outfit, the army outfit, and the police outfit, and is thought to have masterminded the assassination of Prime Minister Mahmoud El-Nuqrashi on 28 December 1948. The outfit's activities may well have offered a motive to the assassins of MB founder Hassan El-Banna on 12 February 1949. The sight of students demonstrating military skills on campus was alarming. No one can defend such displays of power in a society progressing, albeit slowly, towards democracy and civil values. But why did it happen? Some say it is because the MB is encouraging violence, as it did many years ago. This is an oversimplification. The Al-Azhar incident cannot be understood in isolation. We are in the middle of an economic crisis, with the middle and lower classes bearing more than their fair share of the suffering. We have a parasitical class that lives off the historic legacy of the Egyptian bureaucracy, making money without paying social dues. There is a political vacuum, with a political discourse that seems incompatible with modernity. In short, chaos prevails, with the public mood changing from one day to another, driven by any number of calamities. From train crashes to the plight of street children, the nation watches in despair. Young people are getting edgy. The current crisis between the MB and the government is symptomatic of the national malaise. Some people want to portray the MB as blameless, which it clearly is not. Others would have us see the MB solely in the light of its distant past, which does not make sense. To understand the relationship between the MB and the regime, the disruptive climate this country has seen over the past two years or so must be taken into account. It is easy to claim that the MB is "reviving" old tendencies and argue that the group has been "playing it safe" for the last 30 years and has now decided to put its foot down. Unfortunate comments made recently by the MB supreme guide have given credence to just such sorts of opinion. It is difficult, though, to believe that the MB is finally opting for confrontation. "Violent acts against the state are no longer useful," Essam El-Erian once said, reflecting the prevalent mood among MB leaders. The use of violence by the MB would be tantamount to political suicide. It makes no sense for the MB to risk the political and social gains it has made over 20 years. The MB controls 20 per cent of the Egyptian parliament. It makes no sense for the group to toss such tangible advantages aside for the sake of allowing some masked young men to flex their muscles. If the MB had a military wing the Egyptian police would know about it. And If it did a military wing, why didn't it use it in confrontations with the Egyptian police last year? The MB ordered some 23 demonstrations, sending over 140,000 people onto the streets in 15 governorates. There was no sign in any of the demonstrations of the "theatrics" seen at Al-Azhar University. Yet the Al-Azhar parade provided us with an insight into how younger members of the MB are thinking. For one thing, the new generation may not see eye to eye with older members when it comes to confrontation with the regime. The MB has disavowed the military parade, but that doesn't absolve it from blame. After all, these are the young men it inspires. These are the young men it educates and indoctrinates, or aspires to do so. Conventional wisdom has it that the MB is strictly hierarchical, with orders given by the top and carried out at the bottom, no questions asked. Is this true anymore? The young men who paraded are likely to have consulted with their superiors and yet they still went ahead and carried out their plans. Why did they do it? One possibility is that those young men are politically-distant from the rest of the MB, not fully aware of the policies of the group as a whole. Another is that they were unhappy with the way the MB is being pushed around by the regime. If this is true it might hold the possibility of some members of the new generation splitting with the MB to form their own violent groups. It wouldn't be the first time. Think what happened in the late 1960s. There is a third possibility: the students involved in the parade may have been spiritually, rather than organisationally, linked to the MB. During the Salsabil trial in 1992 it became clear that the MB ran a decentralised operation. If decentralisation is the current modus operandi of the MB one can expect more incidents of an Al-Azhar-type to happen in the future. The current debacle is one more symptom of our collective haplessness. As usual the government dealt with a delicate situation through the security forces rather than adopt a political approach. The opposition, which allied itself with the MB during the recent elections, failed to take a firm stand. Civil society organisations said nothing about the arrest of students on campus, something that has not happened in Egypt since the early 1970s. Intellectuals remain divided. The crisis between the MB and the regime is not over. The two sides are still adapting their tactics on a case-by-case basis. But there is always the danger that someone will try to change the rules of the game, and push either the government or the MB to make one last stand. * The writer is a political analyst with Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, and author of Significance of the Political Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Cairo, 2006.
