Future options for the Muslim Brotherhood will largely depend on how the prevailing regime assesses and tries to secure its own position, writes Ammar Ali Hassan Much of the intellectual and political dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt have varied between criticism cloaked as advice and hounding it out of the nation's political and social life. Underlying such approaches is the attitude that the Brotherhood can only be a vestige of traditionalism that will be swept away by modernism or is a fundamentalist backlash against the enlightenment project the arose in Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, inspired by the wisdom and foresight of reformists Al-Afghani and Mohamed Abdu and their disciples. When one takes a close look at the presidential directives accompanying the 34 constitutional articles that were amended at the beginning of 2007, one is immediately struck by the realisation that the amendments had but two objectives: to order power arrangements in the country and to push the Muslim Brotherhood away from the threshold of legal and political legitimacy and into the corner of "terrorism" and "organised crime". For example, Article 5, as amended, prohibits any group parading beneath religious slogans from entering elections. This will probably also apply to independents, thereby obstructing the Muslim Brotherhood's efforts to progress on the path of legitimate political activity. Supporting this assessment are leaks to the effect that government authorities have made a pact with opposition parties in order to forestall any alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood. Such alliances are not unprecedented. In 1984, the Brotherhood allied with the Wafd Party, and in the 1987 elections it allied with the Labour and Liberal parties. In the parliamentary elections of November 2005, Muslim Brotherhood candidates won enough seats to make them the most formidable opposition bloc in the country. The amendment of Article 5 is only one of a bundle of actions the Egyptian government has taken to clip the Muslim Brotherhood's wings and force its genie potential back into the bottle. Another was to continue to arrest prominent Muslim Brotherhood figures, a policy that has intensified into a systematic campaign the purpose of which is to deprive Brotherhood members of their leaders and all others capable of steering processes of mobilisation and recruitment. So determined has this clampdown been that some Muslim Brotherhood detainees were turned over to military courts for prosecution despite being civilians. A third action is to be found in the prevailing systematic media campaign to taint the Muslim Brotherhood's image and undermine its popularity. This campaign started with presidential statements warning that the Muslim Brotherhood poses a threat to society and proceeds through talk shows that increasingly seem dedicated to smearing the organisation and its members. There was even an attempt by a highly placed security official to attribute the crimes of a notorious Maadi butcher to the Muslim Brotherhood -- an extreme case, perhaps, but part of the constant harping on the theme that Muslim Brotherhood electoral success would jeopardise national security and propel Egypt into a dark and limitless abyss. The government is, fourthly, striving to undermine the Muslim Brotherhood's economic base by arresting businessmen who are either Brotherhood members or sympathetic with the Brotherhood and by closing down companies and organisations that support the group materially. The aim, of course, is to deprive the Brotherhood of access to that vital cornerstone of the regime's strength: economic resources which can be transformed into political resources when used to mobilise supporters, purchase votes, and pay for exorbitantly expensive electoral campaigns. Paradoxically, it is not laws, security clampdowns and media campaigns that will curb the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, but rather freedom -- freedom to form political parties and enabling them to work among the public openly and unrestrictedly, thereby encouraging people to return to political party life instead of turning to ideologies that twist religion and divine intent towards temporal ends. The arbitrary arrests, raids and sieges against the opposition hardly serve the cause of democratisation in Egypt. Rather, they promote the perpetuation of the status quo, which is founded upon an alarming fundamental flaw, which is that those who are in power cannot claim complete social legitimacy while those who have social legitimacy are legally illegitimate and excluded from power. The only solution to this dilemma is to establish a civil concept of legitimacy, lift restrictions on the formation of political parties and political party activities, and abolish emergency law. Then we will find that the Muslim Brotherhood will revert to its natural size and become part of a whole in which we have a plurality of competing fronts in our political life. The alternative -- that the regime persists in its determination to perpetuate itself in power in spite of its lack of popularity, and that it resorts to security heavy-handedness for the purpose -- will only work to militarise the Muslim Brotherhood. Thus, instead of the organisation that had begun to come to grips with the principles of democratic plurality we will be faced again with a closed secret society that, if pressure continues to mount on it, may be forced to resort again to violence. If that occurs, Egyptian society will lose two-fold. It will have lost in its ongoing struggle towards democracy and it will have lost a key link to the Arab community, in view of the fact that Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood was the origin and inspiration for Brotherhood organisations around the world and in Arab countries in particular. In general, the confused relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the prevailing regime is proof of misperceptions on both sides. The regime, perhaps, reads the post-11 September period and events following the toppling of Saddam Hussein as signs that it should close off all avenues to Islamists because they have come under the American crosshairs. This reading could not be more off the mark. The American campaign in this region was driven by their conviction that there was an inevitable connection between despotism and terrorism. On the basis of this premise, the US pushed for political reform in the Arab world and, moreover, expected Egypt, as the largest and most influential Arab country, to lead the way. But when US policymakers realised that the alternative to existing regimes was the rise of "Islamic fundamentalists" they eased the pressure and gave existing regimes a wink and thumbs up, which the Egyptian regime took full advantage of as it lashed out on the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brothers, meanwhile, have misunderstood what the country needs and shown that they have failed to grasp that times have changed and that much more than their outer skin must change with them. People who have nothing have nothing to offer, so the proverb says. Until now the Muslim Brotherhood has not issued a clear and strong initiative indicative of true readiness to embrace the civil state and has not, even, come up with a detailed political platform. Its ambiguity frightens people, arouses suspicion, and lends credibility to those who claim that the Brotherhood plans to inherit the Egyptian state with all its current despotism and calcification and turn this legacy to its own benefit and perpetuation in power. The future will not be born painlessly from the present as it stands today. Egyptians seem to be heading from one problem or dilemma to the next. Constitutional amendments were tailored to the ruling elite, emergency law was extended and pledges made by the president himself, in his electoral campaign, were reneged on. Simultaneously, terrorism reared its frightful head after years of calm, while corruption has wormed its way so deeply into the nation's marrow that Egypt has become known as one of the most crooked countries in the world. In addition, "sectarian sedition" threatens to rent Egypt's traditional homogeneity and tolerance. This gloomy situation lends itself to five possible scenarios, all rather grim, though some are grimmer than others. First, the ruling regime could reform itself as quickly as possible, halting further decay of state and society and creating a new and healthy political environment. Among the actions it would have to take towards this end are to provide for full political party freedoms so that political parties can work effectively among the people, heed the demands of judges who dispute the autonomy of the judiciary, guarantee freedom of expression and the right of access to information, combat corruption, and prepare for fair and free elections. Sadly, judging from recent events, it seems that the regime has grown too grey-haired and ossified to reform itself. Alternatively, the regime can go on as it is now, augmenting the conditions that will virtually land the state into the lap of the Muslim Brothers. Once in power, the Brotherhood would probably turn their despotic inheritance to their own advantage and either tend towards "gradual reform" or towards turning the clock back should hardliners win out over moderates and force their vision of an "Islamic state" and "Islamic behaviour" on the not inconsiderable base of enlightened Muslim Brothers who espouse the concept of a civil state. On the other hand, this scenario may pave the way to a true purging of corruption and offer Egyptians the chance to test the intentions and abilities of a movement that claims to have an alternative vision for development and for reviving Egypt's regional role. A third possibility is for the regime to forge an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood. Although the regime would grimace at having to swallow such a bitter pill, it would overcome its revulsion if it were the only medication available to keep it alive and stable. For their part, the Brotherhood have proven themselves over the years instinctively inclined to ally with anyone -- or any agency -- that will help promote their interests, however narrow or temporary. It is sufficient here to recall that the Brotherhood reached an understanding with Ismail Sidqi, the pre- revolutionary prime minister who was hostile to all nationalist political forces at the time. They also cooperated with Sadat at a time when the majority of public opinion turned against him. And as often as Mubarak snubbed their extended hand, they never despaired of extending it again when necessity called. The outcome of such an alliance would be quite dire. It would block avenues to democratic change for the near future, tighten the state's stranglehold on political life and freedoms, and inject new verve into corruption and despotism. A fourth scenario -- the "succession scheme" -- could proceed as planned. That there is, indeed, such a plan in progress is evident by the postponement of local elections in order to keep the Brotherhood from obtaining the quota they need to nominate a rival to Gamal Mubarak, by Gamal Mubarak's promotion to assistant secretary of the National Democratic Party so that he would be qualified to stand in accordance with amended constitutional Article 76, by all the grooming of and publicity surrounding the president's son, and by his engagement and recent marriage. Finally, there could be a sudden, unanticipated change that would have the effect of a stone thrown into a stagnant pond. That change may be the consequence of fate, or be triggered by a tumultuous popular uprising of the sort that has marked various epochs in Egypt's history, or by the intervention of some "power" in the interests of safeguarding Egypt's national security and meeting its people's needs and aspirations for change. Whatever precipitated it, this change would redraw the rules of the political game, open the way for a fresh outlook, and for the rise of new classes among the people. If nothing so earth-shattering occurs the chances are that scenario four will prevail and that Gamal Mubarak will be marketed as the long-awaited civilian alternative to leaders who rose from the military; the leader of an ambitious youth that will gradually oust faded and mummified elites and will not allow the country to be run with the mentality of a petty bureaucracy. The young president would be carried into power on the shoulders of an alliance that flourished and grew increasingly strong under his father's rule -- a network of political nepotism between security chiefs, wealthy businessmen, government executives and their supporters in the media and intelligentsia. Nevertheless, Gamal's arrival to power will not necessarily mean that the government can dispense with the Muslim Brothers. It is one thing to shoe the president's son into office, quite another to keep him there. In his first years of rule in particular, the Gamal regime would have to build a base of social support, and here the Muslim Brotherhood's popularity and grassroots connections can come in handy, even if only temporarily. Some Brotherhood members have suggested that what motivated the recent wave of arrests of Muslim Brotherhood leaders and their prosecution before military tribunals was that they refused to lend their support to the succession scenario. How true this is remains unclear. If the regime needs the Muslim Brothers, they will find the way open to forming a political party; if it feels sure of popularity and its ability to perpetuate itself without the Muslim Brotherhood, the organisation will remain banned and its members will continue to be hunted down and detained.
