Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood to Rejoin Protests

APRIL 6, 2011

By MATT BRADLEY

CAIRO—After two months of working closely with Egypt's new military rulers, the country's most powerful Islamist group said it will join demonstrations this Friday—a move that could reinvigorate a revolutionary movement damped since protesters ousted the country's president in February.

Muslim Brotherhood members have said the group will throw its official weight behind demonstrations against the country's provisional military leadership, which many youth protest leaders complain has been too slow to purge and prosecute lingering elements of the former regime.

Its participation in Friday's protests calls into question the perceived alliance between the military and Islamist politicians, whose support has formed an essential political ballast in the military's hasty transition to democratic rule.

If this Friday's protests succeed in pressuring the military to purge what is left of ex-President Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party, they could help the 83-year old Islamist group reclaim its revolutionary bona fides before parliamentary elections scheduled for September.

"I think they're afraid of losing momentum and [that the protesters may] think that they are strong without the Brotherhood," said Abdullah Helmy, a member of the Revolutionary Youth Union, one of the political groups formed in the wake of Egypt's revolution. "Whatever you protest for at this time, the most political gain is for parliamentary elections. They are preparing themselves on the ground for the real battle."

The group's return to Tahrir Square, the nerve center of recent protests, could also help mend an unprecedented internal division. Younger Brotherhood members, emboldened by their role in the demonstrations that ousted Mr. Mubarak, have openly criticized the group's top-down leadership structure and its reluctance to challenge the Egyptian military.

Some youth members have demanded more inclusion in the organization's decision-making process as well as the right to form and join political parties other than the Brotherhood's recently convened Freedom and Justice Party.

The group's leadership last month said no member may join a party other than Freedom and Justice. To many Brotherhood youth, that smacked of the same kind of autocratic decision-making that protesters had fought to overcome.

"The youth don't like the guidance bureau's decisions," said Ibrahim al Zaafarani, who was a prominent member of the Brotherhood before he resigned last week to form his own youth-oriented Islamist party. "They are still strongly committed, but they are definitely not satisfied."

The Muslim Brotherhood has been officially illegal since the 1950s. For most of its history, the organization's members have faced routine arrest and torture because of their defiance to successive autocratic Egyptian leaders.

But since the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces assumed power after Mr. Mubarak stepped down Feb. 11, the Brotherhood's cooperation with the new military rulers has sparked rumors of backroom collusion.

Since the Mubarak-appointed prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, was forced to resign in early March, the group has largely complied with the military's orders to cease public protests.

The Supreme Council chose a top Brotherhood legislators to participate in a controversial military-appointed committee to amend the country's constitution in secret and without outside assistance. The group then urged its massive popular base to accept the amendments—over the objections of pro-democracy activists and many protest leaders—in a referendum last month.

Egyptians voted overwhelmingly for the amendments, which were also seen as fast-tracking a parliamentary vote, a move that would give an edge established groups.

But the Brotherhood's cheerleading for the military and the amendments upset secular protesters who had just begun to accept the Brothers as among their own.

"We tell our friends in the Muslim Brotherhood, 'Where are you? You are not working with us, you are here to gain, not to work,' " said Mr. Helmy, who isn't connected with the Brotherhood. "I think that created pressure from the young Brothers to the leaders, and they called them again to go into the streets."

Young Brotherhood members, many of whom cut their teeth in Tahrir Square's violent demonstrations, found themselves caught between the largely secular protest youth and their allegiance to the Brotherhood, whose strict edicts seemed to belie the spirit of the revolution.

The disillusionment led to a rare public rift in the secretive organization. Brotherhood youth called a press conference two weeks ago to demand more democracy within the organization. Prominent members of the group, including Mr. Zafaarani and Abdel Moneim Abdul Fotouh, openly criticized the Brotherhood's draconian rules and demanded more political freedoms. Both men have said they will start their own political parties.

For their part, the organization's leadership has sought to play down the internal rift, insisting that only a slim minority of its membership is dissatisfied and that internal reforms are continuing.

"We have different opinions which are now louder after this freedom wave," said Mohsen Rady, who was a member of the Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc until he lost his seat in December elections. "The desire to participate [on Friday] was not the desire of the youth. It was not a response to a youth demand. This is a social, national responsibility, which we believe is crucial."

Source: The Wall Street Journal.
Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704587004576244922383434098.html.