A military style parade by Al-Azhar students shocked both politicians and the public, reports Gamal Essam El-Din Four days after the 10 December release of two of the Muslim Brotherhood's top- ranking members -- Essam El-Erian and Mohamed Mursi -- after seven months in detention and the group was once again the subject of a security clampdown. In pre- dawn raids on 14 December, police arrested Khairat El-Shater, deputy to the Muslim Brotherhood's supreme guide, confiscating three personal computers, two mobile phones and LE60,000 in cash. El-Shater, 55, is a millionaire businessman, the owner of the computer technology company Salsabiel and a string of export and import businesses Security forces said Ahmed Ezzeddin, responsible for the Brotherhood's media operation, El-Shater's son-in-law and 17 other senior Brotherhood members were also arrested, as well as 121 students, following a protest at Al-Azhar University. Last Thursday's arrests came in reaction to a military style parade staged by more than 50 Brotherhood-affiliated students, from Al-Azhar's faculties of medicine and pharmacology, in front of the dean's offices on 10 December. The demonstration, in which students wore black uniforms and masks, received extensive coverage in the local press and on satellite TV channels. In the wake of the parade the People's Assembly held an all-day session on Sunday and determined to launch an investigation into whether the Brotherhood was forming armed militias on university campuses. An NDP statement denounced "the formation of a student militia" at Al-Azhar University as "a breach of moderate Islam and an act of terrorism". "What are these militias for? Are they a part of a Brotherhood plan aimed at reviving their military wing?" the statement asked, citing Mahdi Akef, the Brotherhood's supreme guide, as saying last summer he was ready to send a force of 10,000 young men to fight in Lebanon. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Moufid Shehab, read three statements prepared by Al-Azhar University, the Interior Ministry and the prosecutor- general. Ahmed El-Tayeb, president of Al-Azhar University, said the number and influence of Brotherhood-affiliated students had grown steadily in the last two years. "They now control the university mosques, using them as forums to attack Al-Azhar's moderate Islam and discredit its clerics." This year, he added, elements within the Brotherhood student movement had escalated their activities to incite riots inside the university campus, and matters reached a head when they refused to recognise the results of student elections. The university reacted by suspending seven students for a month. "In a stark challenge to the university's decision," said El-Tayeb, "MB students organised a protest in front of my office, chanting anti-Azhar slogans... They broke the gates of the students' hostel using metal sticks and organised a military parade while wearing black hoods like Hamas, Hizbullah and the Republican guard in Iran." The Interior Ministry statement accused the Brotherhood's leadership as being behind the military parade. "The outlawed group armed students with knives and truncheons and asked them to form committees of deterrence," said the statement. As a result, 140 MB members, including university lecturers and students, were detained. The prosecutor-general's statement was even tougher. It asserted the militias are part of the Brotherhood's attempts to revive "their old military wing" and lay the foundation of "a new Islamic Caliphate". The statement said Brotherhood pamphlets, hoods and masks, black uniforms, knives and chains and an amount of LE750,000 in Egyptian and foreign currency, including Israeli shekels, found in El-Shater's office and home, were confiscated. "The detainees face charges of belonging to an outlawed group and resorting to terrorist acts to spread the Brotherhood's extremist ideology," said the statement. NDP MP Sherif Omar, chairman of the Education Committee, said the military parade constituted a security threat, while his fellow MP Mohamed Abdel-Fattah Omar charged the Brotherhood with resorting to terrorist tactics in order to impose its hegemony over political life. "To achieve this objective the group spends a lot of money recruiting students and buying arms. While they claim they renounced violence a long time ago, they do their best to impose their views by violent means." The assembly turned down a request by the MB's parliamentary spokesman Saad El-Katatni to form a fact-finding committee to look into the incident, entrusting the investigation instead to the education and national defence committees. In response to the criticisms El-Katatni argued that Al-Azhar parade was "an athletic" -- rather than military -- one. "It was part of a student sit-in to protest the repressive measures imposed upon them by the security services... and symptomatic of the state of national tension that has followed in the wake of tragedies such as the sinking of the Red Sea ferry and the killing of several street children in recent days," he said. Liberal intellectuals and political analysts were even more strident than the NDP in their criticism of the parade. Amr Elchoubki, an analyst with Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS), said the military parade was a clear sign that the Brotherhood was attempting to revive its military wing. Established in the 1930s, the movement's military arm terrorised politicians, intellectuals and even judges. "There is no doubt," said Elchoubki, "that the Brotherhood has gained a lot of strength in recent years and may think the time is right to manipulate university students to further their extremist agenda." Diaa Rashwan, also from ACPSS, refutes charges that the Brotherhood is planning to revive its old military wing. The experience of the last 25 years, he argues, clearly shows that the Brotherhood depends on a strategy of gradual penetration of society rather than on military confrontation with the regime and security forces.
