When examined in plain detail, the Muslim Brotherhood is no different from the Mubarak regime in its fundamental economic and capitalist outlook, writes Ammar Ali Hassan The gap is broad between Islamic scripture and the daily practices of Muslims. The same applies to the ideas, conceptions, recommendations and instructions that the Muslim Brotherhood consigns to paper and speeches, and their actual behaviour which, variably, conforms with prevalent traditions, works to promote their own gains or interests and, by force of the conditions of life that exert such a strain on the nerves of the Muslim Brotherhood leadership, sometimes swerves down twists and alleyways that lead them far away from the unadulterated creed and noble virtue epitomised in the utopian vision of their movement's founder, Hassan Al-Banna. This form of schizophrenia is reflected in the Muslim Brotherhood's economic vision, formulated after it succeeded in placing one of its leaders in the presidency. It also manifests itself in the Muslim Brotherhood's inter-relationships and internal structures, which are riddled with class disparities which, in turn, have been aggravated by the mounting ruralisation of society in the past decades, altering to a considerable extent the demographic composition of a group that had for some time retained the "Medina-like" characteristics of its origins and initial path. The social and structural shifts in the Muslim Brotherhood were, to a considerable extent, also the product of certain narrow interpretations of scriptures or of an excessive reliance on the plea of "exigencies that sanction the proscribed," the result of which was that the "Muslim Brotherhood wealth", which was accumulated from the donations of the organisation's working members, gifts from the wealthy in the Gulf, and the profits from their business enterprises in various parts of the world, became concentrated in the hands of a few. These few turned this wealth to the purpose of buying loyalties and steering the Muslim Brotherhood on a course that gradually led it away from the path of Al-Banna and towards the path of Sayed Qutb, from which the older leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood disassociated themselves, maintaining that it did not represent the outlook of their group. Qutb did, indeed, call for providing for economic sufficiency in society, a cause that he advocated eloquently in his excellent work, Social Justice in Islam. However, this was in the second phase of his career, which he soon moved beyond, renouncing everything he wrote during that period. Although he went on to write The Battle between Islam and Capitalism, a closer inspection of this work reveals that his battle was not so much against rampant colonialist capitalism and in favour of a vision that championed the poor and dispossessed as it was to counter Western capitalism with another form of capitalism whose principles rested on Islamic scripture, to which endeavour he brought to bear tendentious interpretations of Quranic verses or selective citations from Prophetic hadith and biographies of early Muslim leaders. Although Al-Banna supported the principle of private property, his economic vision embraced three essential demands that Egypt still appears to need today: - An independent currency that relied on solid assets of national resources and their revenues, rather than on foreign banks. - Regulatory safeguards to protect the public from the tyranny of monopolies and to ensure that the people derive the greatest possible benefit from commercial firms. - A just and graduated tax structure based on assets rather than only on gains or profits. The taxation system would serve the purposes of helping the poor, fighting the hoarding of wealth and the prevention of the circulation of money, funding public economic and charitable projects, and bettering the lives of lower ranking civil servants by enabling increases in their salaries while reducing excessive salaries for senior officials. In those distant days, Al-Banna headed a group of lower ranking government functionaries and artisans who formed the initial kernel of the Muslim Brotherhood, so he was attentive to their fragile economic circumstances and eager to improve their lives. But over time, the Muslim Brotherhood began to attract members from the petit bourgeoisie and to introduce strict conditions for membership, one of which was that a prospective member had to have gainful employment. Then the organisation opened its doors to some serious capital accumulation through donations, gifts and investments, and it became an avenue for the creation of a class of businessmen and entrepreneurs to whom the Brotherhood offered opportunities to put their money into circulation in secrecy and safe from the eyes and hands of ruling regimes that were pursuing their members. A recent in-depth study conducted by researchers in the Nile Centre for Economic and Strategic Studies under the supervision of the eminent economic expert Abdel-Khalek Farouk came to some profound conclusions on the nature of "Muslim Brotherhood capitalism". For example, the study found that some Muslim Brotherhood members possess "small financial empires" the net worth of a single one of which is not less than LE500 million and some of which extend abroad and control fortunes that range well into the billions of dollars. The Muslim Brotherhood denies this, of course, and sometimes "leak" modest estimates of the fortunes of some of their businessmen in Egypt, such as Khairat Al-Shater and Hassan Malek. Most of the Muslim Brothers' capital power is not dedicated to developmental purposes. As top Muslim Brotherhood officials will tell you, citing a saying ascribed to a Prophetic hadith, "Nine-tenths of livelihood is in trade." Not that these leaders have taken into account the context in which this maxim was uttered, namely that in the ancient Arabian Peninsula, where the Arabs had few other sources of income but trade during the pilgrimage season, agriculture and industry being virtually non-existent. One would do well to ask these Muslim Brotherhood officials why they had not given closer consideration to some other passages of scripture, such as the Quranic verses that relate the story of the Prophet Joseph who rescued Egypt from famine by sewing wheat, instead of importing it from abroad as Egypt does today. In like manner, a large portion of Muslim Brotherhood financial activities is devoted to the distribution and provision of services, rather than land reform and agricultural development, building factories and strengthening the knowledge economy. Certainly, before the January Revolution the Muslim Brotherhood had some justification for this orientation, in view of the political/security circumstances that prevented them from displaying their financial capacities through major, concrete and visible economic ventures. However, so far there is little to indicate that they will change and draw from their enormous assets abroad in order to invest them into solid developmental projects at home. Another trait of some Muslim Brotherhood business magnates is their partnerships with their counterparts among affiliates to the Mubarak regime. For the most part these partnerships were arranged through a screen in the form of an intermediary partner abroad, generally from one of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. These days, Muslim Brotherhood business magnates have shifted into high gear in their drive to weld themselves into government. Two are in the current cabinet, several surround the president and are frequent visitors to the presidential palace, or secret advisors to the president, and some are ministerial advisors. It is all vividly reminiscent of the way the Mubarak regime worked. The Muslim Brotherhood's top business magnates are surrounded by a second class of small merchants whom those that hold the purse strings in the Muslim Brotherhood have helped to found small and midsize enterprises such as shops, restaurants and workshops. In so doing, the Muslim Brotherhood's economic upper crust was not being entirely altruistic. These smaller ventures helped them circulate their capital, which would otherwise gradually lose value or purchasing power under the prevailing inflationary conditions. At the same time, the benefits they spread across broader segments of Muslim Brotherhood members helped generate a self-sustaining community that could offset economic strains on its own and handle its own affairs internally, and that possessed the resources needed to serve the instruments and mechanisms that the Muslim Brotherhood used in its perpetual and relentless quest to assume control over society at large and the state. The Muslim Brotherhood's assets are a means to keep the individual tied to the group and to help the "Muslim Brotherhood family" to retain the power to keep fighting, especially in times of strain and hardship. Muslim Brotherhood assets created the funds to pay monthly allowances to families whose breadwinners were imprisoned or to cover the costs of education grants abroad or medical emergencies for its members. Donations gathered through permanent or seasonal fundraising drives also helped perform the social and charitable services that enabled the Muslim Brotherhood to broaden its grassroots support base, which it was then able to mobilise behind its candidates in the various elections they entered over the years. The phenomenon became even more visible after the revolution when the Muslim Brotherhood handed out food packages to the poor in exchange for their votes in parliamentary elections. Moreover, the Brotherhood took advantage of other Islamist charity networks, such as those of the Salafist Calling societies, prime among which was the Islamic Association for Workers in Kuttabs and the Sunna. This enabled the Muslim Brotherhood to further extend its reach into various sectors of society through the provision of services, especially given the government's gradually declining ability to provide such services. The Muslim Brotherhood benefited from this association's thousands of branches to evade the prying eyes of the security agencies while using them as alternative channels for recruitment and mobilisation. The money that the Brotherhood uses for the foregoing activities is a relative drop in the ocean of what it actually possesses. Most of its assets are held abroad and are estimated to amount to many billions of dollars. What this means is that the lion's share of the Muslim Brotherhood's economic energies are involved in "trade and commerce" in accordance with the latest capitalist principles and instruments produced in the West. This has most likely contributed to fixing a certain economic outlook that the Muslim Brotherhood leadership is unlikely to shed after having come to power. This outlook is to strengthen "private property" while keeping the approach to helping the poor in the realm of "alms", rather than espousing, in a practical way, the principle that the poor have an authentic and basic right to a portion of public monies, and to what Al-Banna referred to as sufficiency. The Muslim Brotherhood may have tried to remedy the psychological fallout from its internal class discrepancies, but it did so without looking beyond this to possible solutions for society as a whole, which as we know is far larger and more populous than that circle that comprises the Muslim Brotherhood membership. Within the latter scope, the Muslim Brotherhood tries to segregate "the people" who reside in popular or poorer quarters from those of its members who live in wealthier neighbourhoods. The purpose is to avoid creating class resentments among its members, which could trigger internal social clashes that could ultimately threaten the organisation's stability and cohesion, or possibly open the eyes of the more sensitive Muslim Brotherhood members to the gap between word and deed within their venerable organisation. In the more arduous days of the past, the Muslim Brothers in the upper echelons were regarded as the more prepared to sacrifice themselves because the higher their ranking the more vulnerable they were to the regime's attempts to obstruct their organisation's inroads into politics and society. Therefore, the material advantages of those senior ranking members were regarded as a form of compensation for the price they had to pay in terms of the loss of personal freedom and family life. However, that situation would change after the revolution and once the Muslim Brotherhood attained power, because now the privileges of rank no longer entail the former risks or burdens. Therefore, as time passes, there will be increasing scrambling over position and office, especially among senior leadership, a process that has already begun behind the scenes. The class disparities are refuted in theory by the Muslim Brotherhood which perpetually claims that class differences mean nothing in the relationships between its members, because these are based on mutual respect, affection and brotherhood, and which will cite the necessary Quranic verses and Prophetic hadith or the instructions and advice in the legacy of Al-Banna to substantiate this. However, reality tells a story that jars considerably with the warm and convivial portrait depicted by such fine words. In fact, there are prominent Muslim Brotherhood figures that are angered by the financial power in the hands of some of their brothers, that resent the discrimination and that complain of the way in which the wealthy members stick together, purchase loyalties and vent their wrath on those who cross them. Class disparities are additionally evident in the relationships between Muslim Brotherhood women, among whom one finds clear distinctions between the wives of Muslim Brotherhood members with ranks and wealth, and the wives of others lower down the hierarchical ladder. Such grievances will most likely increase during the next few years as the rivalries between Muslim Brotherhood leaders over position and influence in the state intensify. Also, internal tensions will probably mount further as the capitalist standards for the management of wealth and the assessment of success lock horns with the principle of "sufficiency" and the golden rule that holds that "wealth is the property of God". In short, it is very unlikely that Muslim Brotherhood's experience in economic management will depart from Western neoliberal capitalism in any significant way apart from an element of window-dressing to impart an Islamic gloss. There will be much talk of the right to private ownership and considerable lip service will be paid to the poor, but the poor will continue to be viewed as recipients of alms rather than citizens with legitimate rights, and little practical attention will be paid to the need to ensure systematic economic justice in keeping with the prophet's injunctions that "[the existence of] poverty is almost equivalent to heresy" and that "none of us should be sated if he knows that his neighbour is hungry." The Muslim Brotherhood will follow the same economic path as the Mubarak regime. They will promote an economic elite that monopolises wealth, encourage a consumerist and recreation economy, and borrow from international donor institutions. The writer is a political analyst.
