In a past article, I wrote that the Muslim Brotherhood organization is an institution that is not mostly affected by individuals; members of the group may leave whilst the organization's ideological frameworks, mechanisms and literature remain deep-rooted within the society, a fact that brought some thinkers and politicians to a vision that the group represents a major part of Egypt's social fabric and cannot be ignored either in politics or in sociology. I think it is high time to eliminate such a heinous and destructive vision that has eaten away our contemporary Arab thinking. It is unreasonable to deal with a faction that doesn't respect nationalism the backbone of Egypt's social dogma as part and parcel of our social fabric. The virus-holding patient would be inevitably quarantined in case the virus was contagious; this terrorist group passed on its contagious viruses through recruiting youths who believe in a nation-negating vision that confines nationalism to religion, a one that makes the Muslim Malaysian closer to the Muslim Egyptian than his/her Christian compatriot. This vision normally contradicts prophet Mohamed‘s teachings on nationalism manifested in his well-known saying upon being forced to leave Mecca, his homeland. "I swear you are the dearest land to my heart; I would never have left unless your people had forced me to do," the prophet said while fleeing Mecca in the dead of night.
In my view, the real danger does not reside in the Islamist militants who attack our army, judiciary, police and civilians as those can be defeated by being deprived of logistic and financial support. It rather resides in this vision that turns the nation into carnage unable to confront intellectual, cultural or military invasions as a nation without a national memory does not deserve life. All governments that have faced consecutive crises of the Brotherhood should have headed straight to the organization, dismantling its ideological bases through criminalizing them in the Penal Code, and isolating the organization for betraying the sacred concept of nationalism, rather than facing its outcomes of evil militias that took up arms and called for violence, taking advantage of periods of weakness to pounce upon the State. Now, in the light of a state of sweeping popular rejection of the Brotherhood as an outcome of the June 30 Revolution, it is time for the government, political parties and citizens to press toward getting the organization ultimately banned through a presidential decree listing the organization as a terrorist and national security-threatening one besides criminalizing the calls for its destructive ideas that help erode nations for the interest of some foggy ideas of globalization. Besides isolating the Brotherhood, a group of steps should be taken in fields of media and education to refute such ideas and eradicate their bad effects on society. Without these moves, we will be following the evil path the Brotherhood drew for us and our societies.
