Harsh prison sentences against leading Muslim Brotherhood figures seemed to underline the limits of government tolerance towards political-Islamic groups. Khaled Dawoud looks for political significance Muslim Brotherhood leaders described last week's Supreme Military Court sentences against 16 leading members of the outlawed group as "harsh". However, the group's leaders also insisted that such heavy-handed government policies would not deter them from fighting peacefully for their goal -- implementing Islamic Shari'a laws in Egypt. Of the 22 defendants charged with belonging to an outlawed group and seeking to incite the public against government policies, five were sentenced to five years in jail. Eleven got three years and six were acquitted. Mahmoud Ghozlan, a university professor, considered the group's "third man", was amongst the top defendants in the trial, which lasted nearly eight months. All in all, there were nine university professors amongst those convicted. Under Emergency Law, in effect in Egypt since 1981, sentences issued by military court cannot be appealed and are only subject to ratification by the president in his capacity as general commander of the armed forces. Several observers noted that the sentences -- the first to be issued by a military court against members of the Brotherhood in nearly four years -- come at a time when the government seems to be willing to compromise when it comes to more militant Islamists, namely Al-Gamaa Al- Islamiya or the Islamic Group. Jailed leaders of Al-Gamaa who took part in the plot to assassinate late President Anwar El-Sadat have recently been allowed to publish books renouncing their earlier ideology, which called for violence in order to overthrow the state. Last month, the weekly magazine, Al-Mussawer, also ran extensive interviews with the same leaders, allowing them to air these new views. Police, meanwhile, continued what appears to be a relentless campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood, a campaign which intensified after the 11 September attacks in the United States, with scores of the groups' members arrested and held in custody, pending investigation. Hala Mustafa, an expert on Islamic political groups at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, says she saw nothing new in last week's sentences. "The confrontation between the government and the Brotherhood is decades old, and has been on-going since the success of the 1952 Revolution," Mustafa said, explaining that the Brotherhood felt it played a role in the revolution's success, "and wanted their share in power. But (late President Gamal) Abdel-Nasser dissolved the group, and the policy since then has been to not recognise them as a political entity. That is the root of the problem." Mustafa said that President Hosni Mubarak's tolerance of the Brotherhood was part of a more open-minded policy -- in place since Mubarak took power in 1981 -- towards all of Egypt's opposition groups. It also helped to "contain the more militant members of the Islamist groups, such as Al-Gamaa and Jihad". When an wide-scale armed confrontation broke out between the government and Al- Gamaa in 1992, however, "the government realised that its strategy in dealing with the Brotherhood had not been working, and had not helped to stop the violence," Mustafa said. She noted, though, that "even when government tolerance was at its peak, there was no indication that the regime would accept the Brotherhood as a political party." Even if the Brotherhood tries to reach its goals via peaceful means, Mustafa cannot see much room for compromise between the government and the outlawed group. "The regime cannot allow the Brotherhood to legally exist because its goals are totally contradictory to those of the present regime. The Brotherhood aims to establish a strict Islamic state, and that means -- even if achieved by peaceful means -- a coup against both the state and the society." Mustafa listed the Brotherhood's attitudes towards the country's Coptic Christian minority -- a refusal to allow them to serve in the army and a demand that they pay an annual tax, or jizia -- as an example of the "coup" the group intends to pursue. She also noted the Brotherhood's stands on Muslim women having to wear the veil, as well as the group's calls for curbs on freedom of expression, as further examples of why the state was likely to consider the Brotherhood a danger to the country's stability and security. The government's reliance on security measures, Mustafa admits, will not solve the problem. She told Al-Ahram Weekly that "other political groups, such as leftists and liberals, should be allowed to air their views openly in order to balance the Brotherhood's influence. We need more political openness so people have alternatives other than the government or the Muslim Brotherhood". Mamoun El-Hodeibi, deputy to Mustafa Mashhour, the group's leader (known as the Supreme Guide), denied that the Brotherhood was planning on staging a "coup". He said that the Brotherhood was seeking its "constitutional rights" just like any other political group. Asked whether he had an explanation for the "harsh" sentences issued by the military court last week, Hodeibi said, "I wish there was somebody in the government that we could talk to, who could explain to us what is happening." His own speculations centered on the fact that since most of those arrested were university professors, "the regime did not want to see these men being promoted to top positions inside their universities because of their association with the Brotherhood." Hodeibi described as "ironic" the claim that the Brotherhood was being punished for taking part in June byelections in Alexandria. "We had the right to compete," he told Al-Ahram Weekly , "and I cannot understand why this should anger the government." In the 2000 parliamentary elections, Brotherhood candidates won 17 seats, equal to the total number of seats won by the three major leftist and liberal parties. Their chances of winning two more seats in Alexandria in June were extremely high, but anti-riot police surrounded polling stations and prevented Brotherhood supporters from casting their ballots. The result was an easy victory for the two ruling National Democratic Party candidates. "The government was not happy with the Brotherhood's display of force in Alexandria," said Abul-Ela Madi, a former member of the Brotherhood who was acquitted in a 1996 military trial. "The fact that the group rallied its supporters in Alexandria and clashed with the police led to more arrests," he said. Hodeibi did not deny that the recent arrests of nearly 300 Brotherhood members across the country would influence the group's performance. He said, however, that the Brotherhood was "confident that God will always help us with new members who reinforce the group". Asked whether there were compromises the group could offer, he said, "what do we have to compromise on? The only thing that would seem to satisfy the government" would be the group's complete disappearance." Diaa Rashwan, who is also an expert on Islamist groups at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, links the escalation in the government's clamp down on the Brotherhood -- in part -- to the 11 September attacks in New York and Washington. "The government knows that, combined with the dismal economic climate, there is a relative state of dissatisfaction amongst the general public regarding the situation in Palestine and Afghanistan. The Brotherhood held several demonstrations to protest all these things, and this definitely did not please the government." Rashwan thinks the repeated arrests of its members will certainly weaken the group. "Those arrested recently represent the Brotherhood's middle generation -- the ones likely to lead the group in the future," he told the Weekly. Rashwan did not exclude the possibility that one of the driving forces behind the recent arrests and military court sentences "is to prevent these future leaders from running for parliament or any public posts in subsequent elections". According to Egyptian law, those convicted of crimes against state security cannot run for parliament. In Rashwan's view, however, the main problem is that the government "lacks any political approach in dealing with the Brotherhood, or other Islamist groups. The government's main concern is security, and that is the only perspective that governs its relations with the Brotherhood". Meanwhile, 15 suspected Brotherhood members were arrested on Monday in Alexandria. They face the same charges of joining an illegal organisation and "seeking to revive the group's activity."
