O Brotherhood, Where Art Thou?

As with many events that have taken place throughout the Arab world over the last two and a half years, few could have predicted the dramatic demise of deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi’s regime even a few days before it happened. At the time of writing nobody knows whether the “intifada” called by the Muslim Brotherhood against the army will degenerate from a tense stand-off marred by occasional violence into an all-out confrontation. Equally uncertain is how stable the newly formed government headed by president Adly Mansour is and when new elections will be held. What is, on the other hand, crystal clear is that the events that have inflamed Egypt over the last few months will have a major impact on the future developments of Islamism well beyond the North African country.

“In the space of one night we are back 60 years,” declared AmrDarrag, a senior Brotherhood member and former minister for international cooperation in Morsi’s government. “All of our leaders are being arrested in the middle of the night. Their houses are being stormed. Their children are being scared.” While grossly exaggerated, Darrag’s time reference is not arbitrary, as it was 59 years ago that Nasser outlawed the Brotherhood and initiated a brutal crackdown on its members.

This lowest point in the Brotherhood’s history triggered an ideological splinter that is still relevant today within the Islamist movement well beyond Egypt. Factions inspired by Sayyid Qutb argued that only jihad could bring about the group’s goals. The Brotherhood’s leadership, on the other hand, was aware that a violent confrontation would have inevitably seen them on the losing end and sought to find a modus vivendi with the regime, operating within the social and political gaps it left. The group went on to increasingly embrace democratic processes, revising the traditional Islamist view regarding democracy’s incompatibility with Islam.

The Brotherhood’s abandonment of violence for participation in the system had long been criticized by those who feared it was purely tactical. But fellow Islamists from more hardline factions had always been equally critical, accusing the Brotherhood of engaging in un-Islamic and futile activities. And it is the latter group that is now engaging in an “I-told-you-so” dance.

In the aftermath of Morsi’s overthrow, for example, Taliban spokesman Muhammad Yusuf stated: “It has become clear that so-called elections, the demands of the people, and justice, freedom, security and peace are merely hollow chants and slogans used by the West and the secularists to trick the people.” A leader of a Syrian jihadist group similarly stated that “the mask of democracy has fallen in the struggle between right and wrong: as the mujahedeen leaders say, we chose ammunition boxes over ballot boxes.”

In the war for hearts and minds within the Islamist movement Morsi’s overthrow was an important battle won by those who advocate bullets over ballots. Some Islamist forces might opt for jihad over dawa (preaching) as a consequence. But the Egyptian Brotherhood and its spinoffs throughout the world are unlikely to reembrace violence as a way to achieve power. An all-out confrontation is likely to be chosen only if the Brothers assess the balance of power to be in their favor. One thing the Brotherhood will certainly do is pragmatically assess its own mistakes. And in the one year of Morsi’s presidency there have been plenty. The Brotherhood performed atrociously in power. It was incapable of stopping the country’s plunge into economic despair, displaying a halting incompetence in matters ranging from negotiations with the IMF to the management of the supplies of key goods. And under its watch the security situation throughout the country significantly deteriorated, making both petty and violent crime a new reality.

No government would have been able to fix Egypt’s massive economic and security issues. But aside from showing particular incompetence, Morsi displayed a degree of arrogance and stubbornness that made him a uniquely divisive figure. Universally described as devoid of charm and charisma, before becoming president Morsi had been in charge of inflexibly enforcing disciplinary rules within the Brotherhood for years. Post-Mubarak Egypt needed a Mandela-like figure, a visionary who could unify a divided country and guide it through uncharted waters. Instead it got a mediocre party apparatchik who was not above some of Mubarak’s old tricks, from nepotism to pitting one segment of Egyptian society against another for personal gain. He was high-handed, dismissive of minorities and the opposition, and flirted with authoritarianism. As Michael Wahid Hanna said, Morsi “chose factional gain, zero-sumpolitics, and populist demagoguery. In a system without functioning checks and balances, those choices generated increasing levels of polarization, destroying trust and crippling the state.”

Yet one does not have to be a diehard Morsi fan to acknowledge that from the very beginning his government had to face insurmountable challenges while dealing with active interferences from within Egypt and outside. Inside the country the massive bureaucratic apparatuses and elites linked to the old regime pulled all the tricks out of their sleeves to undermine him and preserve their interests. Courts invalidated many seemingly legitimate acts, including the parliamentary elections won by the Brotherhood, and ministries’ personnel were often unresponsive to orders coming from the government. And the fact that the frequent electricity and gas shortages that plagued Egypt over the last months suddenly ended in the hours after Morsi’s removal has been seen by many as a sign that various forces conspired to sabotage him. A similar dynamic seemed to be at play internationally as well. Most Arab countries rushed to publicly announce their satisfaction with Morsi’s ouster and Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait immediately promised $12 billion in cash, loans and fuel – a package that would have been oxygen to the resource-starved Morsi government.

Brotherhood-style Islamists worldwide have watched with apprehension the events that have taken place in Egypt. And after having listed the obligatory litany of excuses for and injustices suffered by Morsi, they have frantically sought to distance themselves from their Egyptian counterparts. The most concerned are the Tunisian Islamists of Ennahda, as their government has already suffered major hiccups. Rashid al- Ghannushi, Ennahda’s spiritual father, has attempted to differentiate his party’s approach from Morsi’s by saying that his creature has “followed a strategy based on consensus, especially between the Islamist and modernist movements, which has saved our country from divisions.”Yetwhile Ennahda’s government might have not faced the kind of opposition its counterpart in Cairo did, few Tunisians are enthusiastic about its performance.

Did a few months in government cause the Brotherhood’s brand of Islamism to lose what seemed to be its unstoppable appeal throughout the Arab world? It is unclear. But if in Egypt this dynamic showed itself in dramatic fashion, it is also visible wherever the Brothers have a shred of power. The precursor of this spiral took place in Gaza, where the Brothers seized powers years before they did in Cairo and Tunis. Since winning the 2006 Palestinian elections and de facto ruling the Gaza Strip alone, Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood, has faced many challenges similar to those faced by the Islamists in power after the Arab Spring. In a 2012 speech, Hamas leader KhaledMashal tellingly acknowledged the “difference between opposition and governance, between imagination and reality, and between being a critic and a practitioner.” Other Hamas leaders have similarly admitted their shortcomings in satisfying their populace’s daily needs. Islamists blame Hamas’s shortcomings on the peculiarities of the situation in Gaza, which are undeniably a major factor to consider, but there is no question that Gaza represents an example of the challenges Islamists have faced once in power.

In Morocco the Brothers’ first experience in power has been equally disappointing. The Justice and Development Party (PJD) won a plurality of seats in the October 2011 parliamentary elections and its secretary general, Abdelilah Benkirane, subsequently became prime minister. King Mohammed VI’s unprecedented decision to include an Islamist force in such a prominent role was partially determined by the fact that the PJD had strategically decided not to join the protests of the Arab Spring-influenced 20 February Movement.

The PJD has touted this response to the Arab Spring as a Moroccan “ThirdWay”: not revolution and the disruption that comes with it, as in other countries, and not limited top-down reform, but genuine partnership between the king and the opposition, leading to shared reforms. Yet the PJD has been bogged down in various squabbles and, at the time of writing, Benkirane’s government seems on the brink of collapse.

Islamists are also part of a coalition government in neighboring Algeria, albeit as junior partners. Algeria has been a puzzling exception to the trend that has seen Brotherhood forces succeed in post-Arab Spring elections, as its largest Islamist formation (the Green Coalition) obtained a meager 6.2% in the May 2012 elections. Three concurring factors might explain this anomaly. First, since the mid-1990s, various Islamist formations have been integrated into coalition governments, proving largely ineffective and therefore cooling voters’ enthusiasm for an Islamist alternative. Second, the Algerian Islamist scene is plagued by leadership squabbles that have deeply fragmented it. Finally, some have argued that the deep scars of the Algerian Civil War of the 1990s have rendered the Algerian public distrustful of Islamists.

Each country’s situation should be analyzed individually, as various Brotherhood offshoots – which, to be sure, operate in complete operational independence from one another – are surrounded by diverse political circumstances. But it seems apparent that the only Brotherhood branches that appear to be on the uptick are those that are not in power. Whether they are engaged in purely political opposition, as in Jordan and Iraq, or in a military confrontation, as in Syria, the Brothers seem to thrive only when they are in what has traditionally been the movement’s natural status quo: opposition.

Former CIA agent and Brotherhood critic Reuel Marc Gerecht has long argued that the best antidote to Islamism’s popularity is its rise to power. While the Brothers possess a core of loyalists who shares their worldview, many support them simply because they see them as competent and untainted. A short time in power, argues Gerecht, will show that the Brothers do not possess the political magic wand they claimto have and most in the ideologically uncommitted political center that voted for them for lack of better alternatives will get buyer’s remorse. It appears that, in the case of Egypt, Gerecht was correct.

The situation in each country should be assessed individually, yet, considering that Egypt is still the undisputed center of cultural and political gravity of the Arab world, Morsi’s downfall will surely have psychological repercussions beyond Cairo. Residents of the region might conclude that Islamism is not the silver bullet and that Islamists are no more honest or competent than others. And, if another lesson from Egypt will spread, they will no longer allow Islamists to monopolize the language of religion, buying into the Brothers’ claim that a vote for them is a vote for God.

Yet the death of Islamism, heralded many times over the last decades, is far from near. The movement, despite the setback, still attracts large a cross-section of the population, both in Egypt and throughout the region. As it always does, it will learn from its mistakes and readjust its course, pragmatically pursuing its unpragmatic goals. It would not be far-fetched to argue that it could even make a quick comeback in Egypt. Ending Morsi’s presidency, in fact, has not ended the country’s troubles. Whoever leads it will be faced with the same disastrous issues and unrealistic expectations from a population that has yet to develop a mature sense of democracy. Egypt has shown Islamism cannot fix these issues. But, despite the latest setback, it can still exploit the despair of those looking for anybody claiming to be able to do so.

For additional reading on this topic please see:
Egypt: Democracy in the Balance
Three Perspectives on Egypt: A Second, Corrective Revolution?
The West and the Muslim Brotherhood after the Arab Spring