Summer may be drawing to a close but the open season against the Muslim Brotherhood continues, writes Amira Howeidy Despite the changes that have swept Egypt over the last half century one state policy remains unchanged. From Nasserite socialism and wars with Israel to today's free market-driven, Israeli- friendly times repression of the 78-year-old "outlawed" Muslim Brotherhood, the nation's largest opposition group, has been constant. No wonder, then, that Friday's security clampdown against the group, which included the arrest of 17 Brotherhood members, including two senior figures, raised few eyebrows. Nor was anyone surprised by the charges; they were accused of belonging to an "illegal organisation" and of being in "possession of papers that promote the revival of the group" before being remanded in custody for 15 days "pending investigations". Given the paucity of any information supplied by security officials observers will now begin the familiar task of determining exactly what message the latest round of arrests is intended to convey. This time two members of the Guidance Council -- the highest body in the Muslim Brotherhood -- were detained, 66-year-old Mahmoud Ezzat, and 80-year-old Lasheen Abu Shanab, a professor at Zagazig medical school and ex-MP. Abu Shanab suffers from partial paralysis. The current clampdown began when a meeting in the house of Muslim Brotherhood member Osama El-Husseini was raided by the police at 4:30pm on Friday. According to Brotherhood sources 400 central security conscripts surrounded the house for four and half hours. The raid also targeted Al-Abrar nursery, which is owned by El-Husseini and located in the same building. According El-Husseini's wife the police seized papers and computers from both the house and nursery, along with children's clothes, books and video tapes. El-Husseini's son Ammar, a medical student, was also arrested. The police then went on to raid houses belonging to other members of the group and confiscated four cars. Friday's clampdown is the latest in a series of MB arrests in 2006 which began in late February. By June 645 Brotherhood members had been detained. This followed a relative lull in the immediate aftermath of the 2005 November parliamentary elections in which the group won 88 parliamentary seats. The relatively relaxed environment that "allowed" the group to campaign and use its slogan "Islam is the Solution" is now widely seen as a product of short-lived US pressure on the Mubarak regime to "democratise". It is the presence of so many Muslim Brotherhood MPs in parliament -- they occupy a fifth of the seats in the People's Assembly -- that the group's leaders say is a thorn in the side of the regime that it is desperate to extract. "The regime is unwilling to tolerate 88 Brotherhood MPs in parliament," says Amr Elchoubaki, a Brotherhood expert at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. "With other opposition MPs this means there is an opposition bloc of 120. The authorities are now attempting to weaken the group with repeated clampdowns, targeting figures that mean a lot to the group, such as its spokesman Essam El-Erian and now Mahmoud Ezzat, who is a central figure in Muslim Brotherhood funding." El-Erian was arrested while walking in a Downtown street last May. On 14 August a Cairo court ordered his release after three months in administrative detention. The security apparatus, however, refused to abide by the ruling and extended his detention for a further 15 days. Ezzat has already served an estimated 40 years in detention. Such commitment to the group, despite the heavy personal costs he and thousands of other members have paid, has guaranteed the group's organisational survival. The Brotherhood's slogan -- "God is our purpose, the Prophet our leader, the Qur'an our constitution, Jihad our way and dying for God's cause our supreme objective" -- provides an insight into the jihadist beliefs that have kept the group going despite repeated blows since 1954. Yet according to Elchoubaki the authorities have never really adopted a zero-tolerance strategy towards the Brotherhood. "The aim has always been to weaken them, to force them to keep a low profile, which they always have when faced with harsh measures so as to ensure the organisation's survival." The past decade, though, has seen the group's influence flourish on campuses, among both students and university staff, in professional syndicates and more recently in parliament and "a police state like Egypt cannot tolerate a group with this level of institutionalisation," argues Elchoubaki. The recent arrests followed statements by the Brotherhood's supreme guide, Mohamed Mahdi Akef, who was reported last week to have said that if the Arab world's presidents had not been Muslims the group would have liquidated them for their shameful stance during Israel's war on Lebanon. During the second week of the war Akef had said the group could send volunteers to Lebanon qualified to help Hizbullah militarily, triggering intense debate over the exact nature of the group's activities. The Brotherhood's military wing, aka the secret apparatus, was created in the 1930s to fight against the British occupation of Egypt and later, in 1947 and 1948, against the Zionist occupation of Palestine. Although the group's military wing was disbanded in the 1950s Akef's statements sent the pro-government press into a frenzy of accusations, and are seen by many as precipitating the recent round of detentions. But that, says Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh, a member of the group's Guidance Bureau, is simply an attempt to justify "the injustices already inflicted upon those who have been arrested". "The state already took its revenge by launching a media campaign against the supreme guide and the Brotherhood," he told Al-Ahram Weekly. The systematic clampdown, he argues, is because of the way in which the group's MPs have been successfully performing in parliament. "They have been professional, and operate in a sophisticated manner though the majority had no parliamentary experience. This has annoyed the authorities, Elchoubaki goes even further, saying that, "Brotherhood MPs have exposed the National Democratic Party and the government by their interpellations, especially in the wake of the recent train tragedy and other issues that have aroused public interest". The group's MPs have steered away from the kind of sensitive religious and cultural issues that have triggered criticism from secularists and human rights groups in past parliamentary rounds. The majority of their interpellations have focussed on corruption, human rights and issues of freedom. Yet this bravura parliamentary performance alone, says Abul-Fotouh, cannot explain the escalating clampdown. "The authorities are clearly paving the way for the tawreeth (Gamal Mubarak's succession of his father)," he said. In a meeting held on Sunday, 99 independent and Brotherhood MPs issued a statement condemning the "government's serious violations against its opponents, especially the Muslim Brotherhood". "Will the arrests stop if we support Gamal Mubarak?" asked Brotherhood MP Sayed Askar.
