Whither the Muslim Brotherhood?
The ouster and recent death of former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi and the incarceration of many of its members has definitely been a setback to the Muslim Brotherhood but it still remains a global and effective organisation.
By Abdalla Ahmed
It is a historical fact that the West, including Great Britain and the United States have used Islamic extremism to control the Arab world. These extremist movements and organizations undermine the tide of nationalism, communism at the time. Therefore, Britain contributed significantly to help such an organization – the Muslim Brotherhood (Al Ikhwan al Muslimin) – to emerge, in order to blunt the tide of Egyptian nationalism. The British Suez company contributed generously to theologist Hassan al-Banna, who went on to become the founder of the Brotherhood in the 1920s.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a transnational Islamist organization, founded in Egypt in 1928, by the Islamic preacher Hassan al-Banna with the support of and in coordination with Britain. The ultimate aim of the organization is to establish the Islamic Caliphate in the Arab region, The Muslim Brotherhood received British and later American support, as it was perceived to be a useful tool to achieve the West’s strategic goals – basically to keep the region divided and undermine Arab nationalism. The organization sees violence as a means to achieve its goals. It has engendered other militant organizations including Hamas, Al Nusra Front, and others.
To understand the factors that led to the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood, the historical and religious dimensions of the region must be taken into account. After the First World War, the Arab region witnessed dramatic events, the drawing of borders and division of the region into small states – the modern states that emerged in the Middle East, – according to the Sykes-Picot agreements. All of these sowed the seeds for future conflicts which became inevitable due to competition and border disputes.
In addition, the inherited religious history also carried great sectarian divisions, primarily the Shia-Sunni divide which has plagued the region from the early years of Muslim history. In this environment the Muslim Brotherhood was established with British blessing and help. Their objective was to blunt the opposition to colonialism with extremism, which was adopted by the organization and became a great factor of instability.
Such extremist methods had previously been employed by the Ottoman Empire to fight its minorities, as seen in the extermination of communities like the Allawites, the genocide of the Armenians and so on, which fostered divisions in society. In all these cases the same extremist ideology had been adopted by the extremist clerics, who gave a religious cover for the atrocities committed.
However, it was in the 1950s and 60s that the Brotherhood’s role began to grow, as it strongly opposed the Nasserite nationalist tide. Subsequently, the group assassinated Egyptian President Anwar al Sadat on October 6, 1981, when he established peace with the state of Israel. At the same time the Brotherhood also carried out assassinations and terrorist bombings inside Syria, till it was crushed in a major offensive by the Syrian government in Hama in 1992. Recently, the Brotherhood’s ideology also formed the basis of terrorist groups fighting the Syrian state during the civil war.
The organization advocates a return to the Islamic caliphate, which will be governed by Islamic shari’a laws, hence the organization does not believe in states. However, they are pragmatic and in the short term aim to seize power in individual states.
The role of the West in the past six decades has been significant as the West in general and the United State in particular supported the project of “political Islam” – or Islamism, to fuel sectarian fanaticism in the Arab world in order to dominate and divide states into sectarian ones through secret alliances. The United States has been sponsoring and encouraging radical Islamist for decades, whether through secret agreements, or by manipulating and using them during the cold war against the erstwhile USSR and counter the spread of communism in Muslim contries in the 1980s, and against the aspirations of the nascent nationalist forces in the Middle East. Thus for instance, the ideology of religious extremism was implanted in Iran to carry out the CIA-planned coup in Iran in 1953, as also the subsequent support and strengthening of Islamist movements around the world. One of the most prominent forms of that support was the provision of billions of dollars to extremist groups like the Afghan mujahideen, Al Qaeda and later the Taliban in Afghanistan, by Saudi Arabia and Qatar for decades.
Alongside the US, the Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar, also supported the organization and its extremist ideologies in places like Afghanistan, Bosnia, Syria, and other regions. Yet, Saudi Arabia, while supporting the organization and its venomous ideology in other places, was fighting it on its own territory.
Radical Islam has been used by the West to achieve geopolitical goals, in a multi-layered game, “delusion game”. Fighting the organization in one place and supporting it elsewhere, entrusting some countries to support as with Turkey and Qatar.
In his book 2006 book “Devil’s Game” American investigative journalist Robert Dreyfus mentions in detail those secret alliances between Washington and the Brotherhood. After the departure of the Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt, these forces were intent on changing Syria’s geopolitical position through implementing the New Middle East project. Since 2005, Washington has supported the Muslim Brotherhood as the new force taking charge of the Arab region, as witnessed in the continuous sidelining of the Mubarak regime, which had till then been supported both economically and militarily by the US. Since 2005, Washington has decided to make the Muslim Brotherhood the new rulers of the Arab region.
The organization believes in the return to the caliphate and hence in the negation of political borders of nation states, but the reality is somewhat different. The Brotherhood has always sought to seize power, and Turkey and Egypt are two striking examples of this. Thus, in both cases they have had to have good relations with the West and with Israel. According to Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Muslim Brotherhood and then President Barack Obama reached an agreement to maintain stability, including peace with Israel, in exchange for the US administration to leave them alone to govern as they deemed fit. That explain why the American envoys continued to flock to Cairo carrying checks, the flow of funds continues as promised. It is also instructive here to remember the warm messages of then Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi to Shimon Peres. It is also important to note that the Palestinian Hamas – a direct offshoot of the Brotherhood – fought the Syrian state in the recent crisis, while maintaining calm with Israel.
In a study, that Stephen Merley of the Hudson Institute did on the Muslim Brotherhood, he found that the Muslim Brotherhood had also managed to establish 19 Islamic organizations in Europe, under the cover of an umbrella organization called the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE), the European wing of the Brotherhood. Established in 1989, little is known about its funding sources.
The organisation’s secretary general, Ayman Ali, moved to Cairo in 2012 to become the special advisor to the ousted and now late Mohamed Morsi while its most prominent member from the oganisation’s Belgium branch – Bassam Hatahet – was chosen to be a National Council member. (Both were arrested and imprisoned after the overthrow of Morsi in 2013). Both US President Obama and former British Prime Minister David Cameron supported them with major commitments, while the European Council for Fatwa and Research, which is headed by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has suggesting killing one-third of the Syrian people to enable the regime change project.
However, the most dangerous organization used by the Muslim Brotherhood has been the Network of Democrats in the Arab World (Shbakat Aldiymuqratiiyn Alaraby), which has members from across the Arab world and which played a significant role in the Arab Spring. Funded by the US State Department much of its activities of this organization have been carried out in coordination with the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy in the United States. It functions under the guise of civil society but many of its members are known Brotherhood supporters who live outside the Arab world.
Currently, the Muslim Brotherhood is still active globally, supported by Turkey, as also by Qatar. That explains the organization’s widespread presence in conflict areas from Yemen to Pakistan. The Muslim Brotherhood is attempting to disguise itself with different names, as it is doing in the guise of Arab Democrats Organization; nevertheless, most militant and terrorist organizations including the ISIS, Al Nusra Front, and other terrorist organizations sharing the same extremist ideology have emerged from this organization.
Today, the Brotherhood is still a large and effective organization. The ouster and recent death of former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi and the incarceration of many of its members has definitely been a setback to the organisation. Nevertheless, it still remains a global organization whose funding is not transparent. Despite the current Qatari funding, it continues to receive Western support. Turkey under President Reccep Tayip Erdogan and his ruling AKP Party also actively supports the organization. Currently, the organization is active in Libya (Tripoli), southern Yemen and Somalia and most likely in Afghanistan and Pakistan, through other allied organisations. (The Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, for instance, has close links with the Brotherhood and shares the same ideology.)
Finally, the organization draws its strength from spreading extremist religious ideology in poor and marginalized areas, the defects of development and poverty pushing some youth towards these organizations through the judicious and lethal mix of material incentives and religious ideology
Obviously, the war against terrorism must not be limited to fighting terrorist organizations on the ground, but equally it has to be a war of ideas to counter the destructive global Muslim Brotherhood project, the organization that mastered the art of invisibility and infiltration into conflict areas, taking religion as its cover. In other words, a broad-based strategy involving education, media and political attitudes is needed to counter this destructive ideology that threatens the stability of the region and the world. Terrorist organizations can only be fought through long-term intellectual programs, sustainable development, and stability, because these organizations thrive on “holy” crises and wars.
