If the life and times of Hassan El-Banna make for good TV, it is the real life political drama that will determine all our futures, writes Abdel-Moneim Said I am not about to comment on Al-Gamaa (The Group), the television series which is being aired on various channels. I missed the first few episodes because I was out of the country, and I am not a great fan of television series to begin with. Still, many of my friends, whose opinion I value, told me I should watch the series, not only because of its political substance but also because of how masterfully the screenwriter, Wahid Hamed, handled the subject. When a journalist of the stature of Salah Montasser says that the series is the best programme on offer this year, it becomes almost a duty to watch it. Unfortunately, that turned out to be easier said than done. No one I asked could give me a time and channel. The most I could learn was that it was available on all channels at various times. In order to catch it, then, I would have been forced to sit in front of the TV for hours on end surfing through channels. Though I have not yet had the fortune to be able to watch it I feel I should register an important observation. Egypt is the only country in the Arab region to experience such processes of historical revision, whether the medium is the book, film or stage. Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Anwar El-Sadat, Umm Kolthoum, Qassem Amin and Taha Hussein are only a few of the celebrities who have occasioned widely divergent readings and re-readings of their personalities, lives and the circumstances that shaped them. This is the type of activity countries that are sure of themselves engage in. They sift through the past, scrutinise and reflect upon significant historical events or phenomena, and present them, in all their positive and negative aspects, to the younger generations. Every time the process happens, the subject of such intense scrutiny becomes part of current reality. Al-Gamaa is no exception to this rule. It constitutes a recognition that the Muslim Brotherhood is part and parcel of modern Egyptian history. It also acknowledges that as a political movement and organisation it has its flaws and failings, just as it has had its share in advancing Egypt's national struggle. It acknowledges that the Muslim Brotherhood is part of the present, presenting itself as one of today's political alternative striving to influence political life not only in Egypt but throughout the Arab region. It is representative of the trend, found in virtually every Islamic country, both Sunni and Shia, to wield religion as the road away from backwardness and decline. As a socio-political movement, it covers the political spectrum, from left to right. It has its idealists and pragmatists on matters pertaining to the political system. As a political organisation, it is susceptible to attaining power by both peaceful and violent means, and is vulnerable to pressures asserted by domestic, regional and global realities. Regardless of how the series on Hassan El-Banna and his disciples unfolds, the actual Muslim Brotherhood, in thought and practice, has evolved in diverse ways. Whether as a trend or concrete organisation it has allied itself with blatant secularism in Turkey and Malaysia. It has swung to the far right, generating more and more radical groups inspired by the thinking of Sayed Qotb and his successors, who have found their niche in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. It has joined forces with military juntas, as was the case in Pakistan and is the case in Sudan. It has exploited the political climate to establish and extend its sphere, as can be seen in Jordan, Morocco, Algeria and Egypt. For the most part, the Muslim Brotherhood experience, as a trend, movement or organisation, has been unfortunate. It has enjoyed a relative success only in secular democratic countries, such as Malaysia and Turkey, where the system of government is founded upon the unqualified and unequivocal principle of full and equal citizenship. Elsewhere, its harvest has been grim. In its Shia form, in Iran, the trend has aggravated poverty and underdevelopment, even as Tehran screams its way towards building a nuclear bomb. The Hizbullah manifestation of the trend has imposed its veto on Lebanese democracy by force of arms. Pakistan and Afghanistan bear witness not only to campaigns to dismantle current governments but to the tendency of radical religious groups towards ever greater heights of fanaticism and extremism and the inexorable drive to undermine the prestige and authority of the state, exposing it to foreign intervention and occupation. Ideological movements and organisations with a fundamentalist bent are inevitably propelled towards a gradual escalation in dogmatism, zealotry and bigotry until moderation is eliminated, and sometimes its advocates. The dynamic has led Sudan to where it is, today, on the verge of partition. It is rife in Yemen, where the state is being steadily eroded. It played out dramatically in Palestine, in the form of a military coup against the legitimate PA, which is recognised by the Arab League and the world. It has delivered a mortal blow to the Palestinian cause, to the extent that no one knows anymore whether the Palestinians want one independent state or two. The Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots have a long record of failure and have left a trail of destruction of state and society. In the Egyptian case, the Muslim Brotherhood has sometimes appeared to be inspired by the national cause; indeed, it once was part of the front for national independence and resurrection. More often than not, it was in a state of inner turmoil, leading to purges of its more moderate elements and their replacement by extremist groups. It is no coincidence that it was the former Muslim Brotherhood supreme guide who said that the Egyptian state could "go to hell" and that he had no problem with the idea of Egypt being ruled by a "virtuous man" from Malaysia. Nor is it a coincidence that the current supreme guide opposes the right of women or Christians to become president. He does not see the presidency as an office whose functions and duties are delineated by a constitution in a civic state; he sees it is a religiously ordained "caliphate" in a theocratic state. Once, on a television programme, I asked a Muslim Brotherhood leader how the Muslim Brothers commemorate Egypt's independence. His answer was that Egypt was not yet independent. A few more questions led to the conclusion that "genuine" Muslim Brothers do not believe in the nation state to begin with. They care little about the history of national independence, beginning with the 1919 Revolution. In fact, that revolution's slogan, "Faith belongs to God, the nation belongs to all," is anthem. As for the 1952 Revolution, when Egypt won its independence, it symbolises only the hardship the Muslim Brotherhood encountered afterwards. To the "genuine" Muslim Brother, "independence" is something that lays down the road for the umma (the Muslim nation) and will be realised when the Muslim Brotherhood comes to power. In Egypt, the rightward leaning Islamist group uses a variety of weapons. The first and most familiar is religion, which has the power to penetrate hearts and minds, and which the Gamaa interprets and processes in a way that perpetuates and deepens the sources of backwardness and decline in society. The second is to purge moderates from within its ranks and fight against whatever enlightenment they might bring from their openness to the rest of the world and their insights into the Turkish and Malaysian experiences. The experience of one wing of the Muslim Brotherhood as they attempted to form an ordinary political party, independent of the control and influence of the Muslim Brotherhood's hierarchy, is telling in this regard. It was the moderates who formulated the proposed party's platform. It was the rightwing zealots who voided it of all civil and democratic substance and turned it into a theocratic manifesto. Soon a new supreme guide was chosen. His statements tell us exactly where he stands on the scale between moderation and extremism. The third weapon is to tap the anger of other opposition forces incapable of mustering a mass following, which do not have the financial and human resources to influence political events and throw themselves into the arms of the Muslim Brotherhood as if they had never heard a single statement or read a single treatise issued by the movement's leaders. I am amazed at the silence on the part of political parties and forces that call themselves liberal and secular and which are ostensibly fighting for democracy over recent declarations by the supreme guide. More astonishing yet is how Mohamed El-Baradei's petition campaign, after failing to obtain the amount of signatures it sought, turned to the Muslim Brotherhood to fill up the numbers. Such was the campaigners' desperation to save face they not only overlooked the principles they advocate but skirted the pressing question of whether the signatories would ultimately support El-Baradei or use him to garner support for the Brotherhood. El-Baradei, and the groups that have gathered around him from the right and the left, seem intent on following the path similar groups in Iran pursued when they allied themselves with Khomeini only to end up in prison, in exile or dead. The Egyptian regime's slowness in instituting political reform, and even in putting into effect the measures called for by the NDP during numerous party conventions, supplies the Brotherhood with its fourth weapon. It gives it an opportunity to spread an atmosphere of distrust and lure into its embrace political forces that are prepared to sign a pact with the devil. They know the Muslim Brotherhood is working to create a state for which a model exists, whose leading exponents advocate discrimination, persecute all who stray from their religious dogma, crush civil and individual liberties, kill tourism, fabricate wars and crises and cast their countries back to the middle ages. Al-Gamaa will run to its final episode and win either acclaim or censure. It is the real-life political soap opera that will continue to play out, a serial in which the Muslim Brotherhood will keep trying to lure the political centre into its embrace as Egypt passes through a delicate phase of transition at a time when what is most needed is wisdom and foresight.
