CAIRO - The sight has been seen several times in the past week. Followers of the Muslim Brotherhood, staging street protests against the military's overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, have been repeatedly hit by tomatoes and eggs from angry residents in several areas. The act is a fresh sign of the Brotherhood's dwindling popularity. Since Morsi's ousting after huge protests against his rule earlier this month, followers of the Brotherhood, from which the ousted leader hails, have been taking to the streets to push for his reinstatement. Thousands of the group's backers have been camping out around a major mosque in Rabaa el-Adawiya in north-eastern Cairo since June 28, much to the inhabitants' chagrin. Leading Brothers have vowed not to stop the protests until Morsi is restored to power. On several occasions, these protests devolved into blocking major roads and deadly clashes with Morsi's opponents and security forces. Last week, Morsi's supporters incensed street vendors in the central Cairo area of Ramsis after the former reportedly disrupted their business with a large rally. At least two people were killed in the mayhem. As things are standing, the senior Brotherhood leaders appear uncompromising and unable to admit the fact that they are the author of their present plight—the worst in the 85-year-old group's history. The Brotherhood's reaction to Morsi's ouster has been understandably furious. But it has recently assumed deadly dimensions. More than a hundred people have been killed in violence since Morsi's overthrow. The army and police are, meanwhile, the target of terrorist attacks in Sinai, believed to be a hotbed of Islamist insurgents, no small thanks to Morsi's appeasement policy. Even though, leading officials in the Brotherhood continue their sermons about jihad (holy war) to reinstate Morsi and misportray the popular uprising against their misrule as a war against Islam. This is a catastrophic mishandling of a crisis, which threatens to complicate the Brotherhood's dilemma and rob them of chances for re-integration into the post-Morsi era. Many followers of the group have significantly turned out in recent rallies wearing T-shirts with an inscription reading: "A martyr project" – meaning the wearer is ready die for Morsi's reinstatement. A fatal mistake of the Brotherhood, when it was in power, was its unscrupulous manipulation of religion. The group's propagandists made it synonymous with Islam, which is the religion of the vast majority of Egyptians. Accordingly, any critic of the group's behaviour and policy was accused of attacking Islam. The Brotherhood continues to harp on this manipulative rationale, which does not impress many Egyptians.The large numbers of Egyptians who took to the streets for three consecutive days starting on June 30, to demand Morsi's resignation, unmasked a fact: a sharp drop in the Brotherhood's popularity. This plunge was not the result of scathing criticism made by private media against Morsi and the Brotherhood. The Islamist group spent more time on tightening its authority rather on addressing the people's daily problems. Brotherhood officials used to react arrogantly to their critics. The Brotherhood's sectarianism has deepened the country's confessional divide. The latest manifestation of this chasm emerged last month when four Shiite Muslims were lynched in a village south of Cairo by a mob who condemned them as infidels. The Brothers have a catalogue of blunders and failings. They owe Egyptians an apology for their mismanagement of the country's problems and fuelling Egyptians' political and religious polarisation. Soul-searching is a must if the embattled group is to salvage its popularity, which is further eroded by its leaders' fanning of violence. The longer the Brotherhood fails to identify and rectify its mistakes, the slimmer prospects become for the group's political survival.
