If you were to brainstorm a list of names for organizations guaranteed to rattle the cages of America’s security apparatus, it would be tough to top The Muslim Brotherhood.
Conjuring images of robes and beards and the latest designer explosives, this is the kind of moniker that assures a spot on at least a few watch lists.
It is a particularly unsettling name. Brotherhood suggests Teamster thugs and Muslim is not exactly America’s most comforting noun. Stitch them together and you have what sounds like our latest fear du jour incarnate.
But Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is no recently cobbled together band of fanatics. The organization has been around since Herbert Hoover was in the White House.
It is arguably the poster child for Islamic movements in the Middle East, including Hamas, and finds itself engaged in something of a rebranding, a repositioning, a puzzling transformation that may or may not enhance its role in whatever shards of the political process Egypt’s dictators have scattered about.
The Muslim Brotherhood is an officially outlawed organization in Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt. But its new leader, Dr. Mohamed Badi may be trying to alter that.
The group claims that its main goal is to change society, not the government.
“With regards to our stance toward the Egyptian regime, we emphasize that the Muslim Brotherhood were never opponents of the regime,” says Badi.
The newly elected leadership of the organization reflects Badi’s conservative policies. Voices of the Brotherhood’s leadership that have been raised against the Mubarak regime have suddenly been silenced.
Former leader Mahdi Akef was tilting in dangerous directions. A Pro-Iranian stance didn’t play well.
Even though it has been outlawed since General Gamal Nasser lost his patience with the group in 1954, and even though as many as 60,000 members may have been thrown in jail over the years, the Muslim Brotherhood fields a slate of candidates in Egyptian parliamentary elections.
In 2005, Hosni Mubarak figured that independent candidates lacked the clout and the unity to sustain a significant challenge. He didn’t count on the Brotherhood leveraging the laws to win 88 parliamentary seats, roughly 20% of the total.
This is a cagey group that has survived on its wits. Infiltrating unions has been one effective tactic. Others include setting up student organizations and charitable groups.
Amidst the ambiguities, we are left with only two certainties.
One is the Muslim Brotherhood’s support of the Palestinians, specifically the Palestinian Islamic Party which governs the Gaza Strip.
The other is a baffling shift from activism and opposition to middle ground. Some Egypt-watchers seem to think Dr. Badi will try to cozy up to President Mubarak. They also suggest that the Brotherhood’s new found conservatism creates an opportunity for a more vigorous opposition group to gain whatever might pass for political legitimacy.
Murky intentions are as commonplace in Cairo as corruption. Exactly what it is the Muslim Brotherhood hopes to achieve by this shift to the right is unclear.
There is nothing substantive to suggest Dr. Badi is a Mubarak plant, although it is intriguing to speculate on the possibility of an inside job, engineered by Egyptian spymaster Omar Suleiman.
But there is everything to suggest that because the Muslim Brotherhood has been so bedraggled for so long, this swerve to the right is possibly something more than a natural reaction to the perceived extremes of Mahdi Akef.
