The Muslim Brotherhood (29 page)

What was notable about all these revolutions was that they weren’t driven by any overriding ideology. Rather, the Arab Spring represented the coming together of people from all walks of life, united by their shared desire to bring down the corrupt and authoritarian regimes that had dominated more or less since independence. However, somewhat ironically the main winners of these momentous events were the Islamist movements. After decades of suppression, the Arab Spring propelled what had been semi-clandestine or clandestine Islamist opposition movements directly into the political mainstream and in some cases into power.

When Egypt first became gripped by revolutionary fervour on 25 January 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood appeared as taken aback as
the Mubarak regime by the sudden show of ‘people power’. Despite the Brotherhood’s being the largest and most established opposition movement in the country, it was the secular youth who, intoxicated by events in Tunisia, seized the moment and risked life and limb to try to bring revolution to Egypt. Indeed, the Brotherhood had been outmanoeuvred, overtaken by the so-called ‘Facebook generation’, who understood the enormity of what was unfolding in the region. As Egyptian youth flooded into Tahrir Square to demand change, the Brotherhood was left looking like an organisation that was not only behind the times but that had become as much a part of the furniture as the regime itself.

Not that the Brotherhood had been completely immune to the events that were shaking the region. The movement sought almost immediately to capitalise on the fall of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia. Just a few days after Ben Ali fled in disgrace, the then Guidance Office member Mohamed Morsi issued a statement laying out five urgent demands to the Mubarak regime.
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These demands included that the People’s Assembly be dissolved and that free and fair elections be held; that the constitution be amended; that presidential elections take place; and that a new government of national unity be formed.
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Morsi also warned that if the Mubarak regime did not respond positively to the demands of the Egyptian people, it could find itself sharing a fate similar to that of President Ben Ali. However, the Ikhwan, who had clearly failed to understand that this was not a time for making statements but a time for action, stopped short of actually demanding that Mubarak step aside. For the ever-judicious Brotherhood, such a step was a risk too far.

Participating in the Day of Rage, as 25 January had been dubbed, was deemed equally risky for the Brotherhood. Whilst some young Ikhwan members took part in the demonstrations as individuals, the movement did not list itself among the organisers of the protests and refused to give them its official backing. The fact that the country’s most
potent opposition force chose to shy away seemed like a contradiction in terms. However, there were good reasons for the Brotherhood’s reluctance to get involved. Still uncertain at this stage as to whether the protestors would have the stomach to stick it out for long enough to actually bring down the regime, the Brotherhood did not want to risk taking any action that might see it lose the gains it had made over the past decades. It feared that the regime would retaliate hard and that it would be the main loser, scapegoated for the whole episode. The years of suppression seemed to have made self-preservation the Brotherhood’s overriding preoccupation.

Moreover, the Brotherhood had never been a revolutionary movement. It had always maintained that it was not seeking to overturn established order but rather that it preferred to concern itself with reforming society to prepare it for the eventual establishment of the Islamic state. Joining the ‘Day of Rage’ was somehow too bold a revolutionary gesture for the Brotherhood.

However, as the protests gathered momentum and as it became apparent that the people were not going to back down, the Brotherhood came to the realisation that it could stand back no longer. If the people were going to overturn the Mubarak regime, the Brotherhood could not afford not to be part of the change. The movement knew it had to play catch up if it was to have any chance of playing a role in the country’s future. As such its commitment to gradual reform was abandoned and the Brotherhood endorsed the protests scheduled for Friday 28 January and joined the demonstrations in an official capacity.

The movement was still reticent about putting itself at the forefront of the protests, preferring to send its members out to join the demonstrations but not taking any official leadership role. The movement was also more than willing to defer to Mohamed ElBaradei, the secular opposition figure who had become the unofficial figurehead of the protest movement. As Mohamed Morsi told the media at the time, ‘we are not pushing this movement, but we are moving with it.
We don’t wish to lead it but we want to be part of it.’
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This message was clearly sent down the Brotherhood’s chain of command and disseminated among its grassroots activists. As one young Brotherhood member in Tahrir Square parroted, ‘We do not want to take over. Just the opposite. We only want to be a part of this, not control it.’
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Whilst much of this reluctance to get involved was still related to the movement’s natural instinct for self-preservation, it was also because the Brotherhood didn’t want to provide the regime with further ammunition with which to discredit the unfolding revolution. The Brotherhood had already been wrongly accused by the regime of having been behind the first day of protests, and it wasn’t going to hand the authorities an own goal by putting itself in the foreground. As the Deputy to the Supreme Guide, Rashad al-Bayoumi, explained, ‘we are keeping a low profile as an organisation. We are not marching with our slogans. We don’t want this revolution to be portrayed as a revolution of the Muslim Brothers, as an Islamic revolution.’
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The Brotherhood was well aware that if it took a leading role in the uprising, the regime would be able to dismiss it as little more than a bid by ‘power crazy’ Islamists to seize power. The Mubarak regime had long flagged the Islamist bogeyman as the only alternative to itself and had repeatedly used this threat to try to frighten the West. Thus the Brotherhood sought to ensure that the regime could not portray the protests as a bid by the movement to overturn the state and to seize power.

The Ikhwan was also concerned about how some of its fellow protestors would perceive its decision to join the revolution. The Brotherhood was well aware that underneath the newfound spirit of national unity that had been engendered by the uprisings, there were still plenty of young activists in Tahrir Square who were anxious about the Brotherhood and its intentions. In the words of one liberal activist, ‘The Brothers … They want it to be Islamic like Iran and this. But we don’t want it to be like that. We are liberal.’
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As such the Ikhwan was
purposefully discreet during the uprisings and was careful not to brandish symbols that might unsettle other protestors. The slogans raised by the movement’s members were purposefully all about change, freedom and social justice rather than the long-held motto, ‘Islam is the solution’.
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Despite its low profile, the Brotherhood’s presence in the demonstrations of 28 January and those that went on into February gave the uprising a new momentum. This was partly because for all that it might not have wanted to lead the revolution, the Brotherhood ensured that it put itself right at the heart of it. It did so by quietly taking on the role of arch organiser. Drawing on their years of experience as a social and welfare provision network, Brotherhood members strung up plastic sheeting in Tahrir Square to serve as tents, brought food and hot tea for their fellow demonstrators, distributed blankets and set up an emergency first aid clinic inside the square.
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They also printed enormous banners depicting those young people who had been killed by Mubarak’s regime. Most importantly, they rigged up the first microphones in the square, giving them control over the messages that were being pumped out to the demonstrators.
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In conjunction with other opposition groups, Brotherhood members also took on the role of protector of the protestors, regulating entry and exit points to Tahrir Square, searching those who entered in order to prevent government thugs and intruders from infiltrating the demonstrations.
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Indeed, the Brotherhood was in its element. As one youth activist, Mohamed Abbas, proudly declared, ‘We are the best in Egypt to organise.’
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Yet all this was done largely behind the scenes.

By early February, the Brotherhood’s tone had changed again. Sensing that the protests were going to endure and that Mubarak couldn’t last, the Ikhwan decided to up the ante and began calling for an end to the Mubarak regime. Having woken up to what was unfolding around them, and clearly feeling more secure of their support base, the brothers finally started speaking the same language
as their fellow protestors, insisting that change could only be achieved if Mubarak’s ‘autocratic’ regime be deposed.
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Indeed, in characteristic fashion, the Brotherhood seized the moment and put itself to the fore. So much so that the Brotherhood even began talking in the name of the people. In one statement issued at the time, the movement asserted, ‘the people refuse that this regime decides their destiny … the people reject all the partial measures proposed by the head of the regime in his speech [given on 29 January] and do not accept anything less than the departure of the regime’.
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The Brotherhood’s sudden call for Mubarak’s downfall and its willingness to talk in the name of the people, some of whom had risked their lives while the Brotherhood remained on the sidelines, prompted some protestors to accuse the Brotherhood of muscling in and of trying to claim the revolution as its own. One protestor proclaimed, ‘The Muslim Brotherhood wants to steal the success of this revolution … They don’t represent us.’
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Such were the accusations that the Brotherhood was forced to issue a statement defending its actions and insisting that it had no private agenda and that it was not seeking to ‘ride the current as some people are claiming’.
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Yet, for all the criticisms its actions provoked, the Brotherhood knew that if it wanted to shape Egypt’s future, it had to make itself conspicuous. It was at this time that some of the movement’s members began openly raising copies of the Qur’an in Tahrir Square.
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Still profoundly aware of how it would be perceived both inside Egypt and abroad, the movement was careful to assert that it was not calling for change in order to take power itself. Even at this early stage, the Ikhwan began issuing statements that it was not seeking to take senior posts in the post-Mubarak phase. On 4 February 2011, Brotherhood spokesman Mohamed al-Beltagy told Al-Jazeera, ‘We have said clearly we have no ambitions to run for the presidency, or posts in a coalition government.’
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This was an assertion that the Brotherhood was to reiterate over and over again in the coming months.

The Brotherhood initially took an equally firm public stance on its attitude towards negotiating with the Mubarak regime. In the first days of February the movement was explicit that it would not even countenance engaging with the regime in any shape or form. Following newly appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman’s announcement on 31 January that he was seeking dialogue with all political parties, the Brotherhood made it clear that it would not comply. Issam al-Ariyan declared on 1 February, ‘Even after [Mubarak goes], we refuse to deal with Omar Suleiman.’
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Similarly, in a statement posted on its website on 4 February, Mohamed Morsi announced, ‘The Muslim Brotherhood categorically rejects any dialogue with the regime without any hesitation … The people have brought down the regime and we see no point in any dialogue with an illegitimate regime.’
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However, by 5 February the Brotherhood had done a complete U-turn, announcing that it intended to participate in a dialogue with the Vice President. By 6 February Brotherhood representatives Mohamed Morsi and Saad al-Katatni were sitting around the table with Omar Suleiman and a handful of other opposition groups, including the Wafd party, Tagammu and members of a committee chosen by youth activist groups to discuss the possibility of setting up of a committee to look into changes to the most controversial articles of Egypt’s constitution.

The Brotherhood tried to defend this sudden change of heart with some rather unconvincing excuses. Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie declared, ‘We decided to take part in a round of negotiations in order to test the officials’ seriousness about people’s demands and their interests to respond.’
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The Brotherhood also asserted that it had decided to engage in the negotiations to ensure that the people’s demands were met. Saad al-Katatni, meanwhile, declared, ‘We wanted the president to step down but for now we accept this arrangement … It’s safer that the president stays until he makes these amendments [to the constitution] to speed things up because of the constitutional power he holds.’
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However, the real reason for the Ikhwan’s willingness to participate in the dialogue appears to have been related more to the Brotherhood’s having concluded that if some kind of dialogue was going to go ahead, or some deal struck, it did not want to be left out. Indeed, for all the declared aspiration for a new Egypt, the Brotherhood, it seemed, would be happy to settle for a somewhat altered version of the old one, providing that it was given the space it wanted to operate. That the Brotherhood was willing to negotiate with the regime in this way was not that surprising, given its long history of forging alliances with the most unlikely of forces. From Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and former Syrian Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam to the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, the Brotherhood, as a worldwide movement, has never been averse to striking deals with the most authoritarian of characters and regimes when there has been an advantage to be had. Thus the Brotherhood saw no real contradiction in negotiating with the very regime it was trying to bring down. Indeed, the Brotherhood was seeking to keep one foot in Tahrir Square and the other with the regime.
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As one analyst has observed, ‘By virtue of their history, the Ikhwan were always with the regime, even when they confronted it and took part in a revolution against it.’
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One thing was clear: the interests of the movement and its survival took precedence over the struggle for freedom and democracy.