Is the revolution changing Egypt's largest opposition group? Amira Howeidy seeks answers in the Muslim Brotherhood's first youth conference A one day conference in a four-star hotel in Cairo on Saturday became the most talked about political event of the week. Now that the regime that persecuted its cadres for decades has been ousted, young members of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) held their first ever conference on 26 March during which they openly discussed their vision of the group's political future. The MB's leadership was reported not only to have expressed its disapproval of the conference but to have pressured the youths to call off an event that allowed the public to see a side of the 82-year-old organisation that was hitherto invisible. The media interest was intense: just what were these young people going to say that had provoked such resistance from their leaders? Times have certainly changed. The Doqqi hotel at which the conference was held would never have dared to host an MB event pre 25 January, yet here it was promoting the conference in the lobby through flat-screen monitors. According to Mohamed El-Qassass, one of the conference's organisers, a worker in the hotel's garage asked him if the Brotherhood was about to take over power in Egypt since it was organising a conference. El-Qassass told the story as a joke while standing at the podium, but his tone and posture exuded an air of triumphant confidence. He told the audience that a new political parties law will be issued soon (it was issued on Monday) allowing for the formation of political parties simply by notifying the relevant authorities. "Everyone," claimed El-Qassass, "is waiting to see what the Brotherhood will offer in the political arena now." The MB leadership has yet to officially announce details of its first ever political party, revealing only the name, Freedom and Justice. The Brotherhood's youth conference took matters further by posing some existential questions related to the logic of establishing a political party and its envisioned relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood. Discussion and the papers presented at the conference were the outcome of two workshops set up four weeks ago with the leadership's approval. According to Mohamed Nour, one of the conference organisers, the participants decided to present the outcome of the workshops in public in order to create a "powerful state of dialogue", he told Al-Ahram Weekly. "We were in the tightest room of this society" -- the Brotherhood was "frozen" for decades under the previous regime -- "and now is the time for a daring and public dialogue," said Nour. The two papers presented at the conference -- both as Power Point presentations -- were vociferously opposed to the formation of an MB political party. In the first paper Mohamed Shams, who oversees MB political activity in Ain Shams University's Faculty of Engineering, said that the Brotherhood is "bigger" than a political party and should not engage in partisan competition. He argued that the Brotherhood should instead contribute to reform efforts on a national level. Any MB political party, Shams argued, would be constrained by its links to the Brotherhood and would lack the independence necessary to operate effectively in a pluralist arena. Instead, he said, Brotherhood members should be allowed to join the political parties of their choice. The Brotherhood's 100-member Shura Council is expected to make a decision on the establishment of a political party within 10 days at most. The MB's leadership has issued statements banning Brotherhood members from joining any other party and emphasising that the would-be Freedom and Justice is the organisation's only political party. At least one Brotherhood figure in Alexandria, Hamed El-Dafrawi, has said he will form an alternative political party. There are also unconfirmed reports that MB leader Abdel-Meneim Abul-Fotouh, the secretary-general of the Arab Doctors Union, might establish a party. Abul-Fotouh is generally viewed as a "reformer" and is popular among the group's younger members. He was invited to speak at the conference but the Brotherhood's leadership is reported to have objected to his attendance. Inside sources told the Weekly that the MB's Guidance Bureau exercised great pressure on the organisers to cancel the conference. When they refused to do so one senior member of the bureau resorted to a surprising tactic, accusing the conference of accepting "foreign funding" to cover its costs. The organisers deny the charge and insist the event was funded from their own pockets. Given the background of the "Brotherhood Youth Conference: An Inside Vision" it is perhaps unsurprising that participants needed so little convincing that any MB party should be independent from the organisation and its leadership's powerful grip. The conference's second paper by Mohamed Othman, a pharmacist, addressed the scenario of an MB party. Both must be separated, he insisted, because the performance of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is an organisation for daawa (preaching), is ultimately different from that of a political party. "The party's discourse must adopt that of the street as opposed to the daawa role of the MB which is supposed to lead the street, not the other way round," Othman said. His paper, also the subject of a workshop, laid out a clear vision of what any political party should look like. He proposed that a founding committee of 1,000 elected members choose the party's name, elect its president and write its platform independently from the MB. The Brotherhood's "logistical support" of the party shouldn't exceed 25 per cent of its budget in the first two years. Othman added that Brotherhood membership of the founding committee should not be more than 30 per cent of the total, supplemented by 30 per cent young members, 10 per cent Copts and 25 per cent women. "More importantly, there has to be a real dialogue about this party," said Shams. This is the most detailed vision of a Brotherhood party yet. The group released a platform in 2007 and shared it with 50 intellectuals for discussion but it stopped there. It was impossible for the MB and other opposition groups to form political parties under Hosni Mubarak's regime. Throughout the conference speakers struck an apologetic note, explaining that they were not defecting from the Brotherhood and that the event was not an act of defiance. While no one appears to have split from the MB the conference's 12- point communiqué -- which called for an "open" dialogue between the Brotherhood's members and echelons across the nation and demanded that the leadership review the youths' vision and reservations about the party -- set an entirely new tone. If not a rebellion the communiqué's demands -- sent "indirectly" to the MB's leadership -- indeed the entire conference, was in sync with the revolutionary mood sweeping Egypt. "This kind of exposure is a positive development," Diaa Rashwan, a senior expert in political Islam, told the Weekly. Now the Muslim Brotherhood will be under pressure to choose between "openness" or "conservatism". If it opts for the former, as events seem to be forcing it to do, the Brotherhood, says Rashwan, "is unlikely to evolve into a single party".
