Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: From Underground Movement to Political Power

Founding and Early Development Under Hasan al-Banna

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 when Great Britain still controlled Egypt. World War I had effectively ended the Muslim caliphate, and it was this entity that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood sought to restore. Even though the organization broadly recognizes that this goal will not be quickly achieved, estimates suggest that several decades of effort will be needed to accomplish the objective.

Hasan al-Banna, a teacher from a middle-class, educated family, had participated in demonstrations against British colonial rule since his youth. Al-Banna was respected as both a preacher and an unorthodox thinker—attributes that led disgruntled workers from the Suez Canal zone to seek him out. Encouraged by their approach, al-Banna began a "pan-Islamic revival and solidarity movement" henceforth referred to as the Muslim Brotherhood.

According to Yasser El-Shimy, an Egypt and Middle East Analyst for the International Crisis Group based in Cairo and former diplomat of the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood "has worked assiduously to build the kind of conservative religious society and eventually build a kind of religious conservative state that would serve as a nucleus for the reestablishment of the caliphate." In the beginning, the Muslim Brotherhood emphasized education and organization, but also agitation, as the group targeted remaining British influence in Egypt and the emerging Zionism in Palestine, which was a British mandate.

Repression and Underground Resistance (1950s–1970s)

Interest in the Muslim Brotherhood rose rapidly, prompting a move to Cairo where the organization became increasingly attractive to middle-class members and sympathizers. Egypt was destabilized by high rates of unemployment and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Although al-Banna protested the establishment of a military wing of the organization, he did not prevail. As a result, the Secret Apparatus emerged and conducted attacks on police stations belonging to both the British and the Egyptians. When the Secret Apparatus killed a judge, official sanctions included an order to disband the organization, and authorities conducted a violent crackdown on members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The situation continued to escalate: a member of the Muslim Brotherhood assassinated the Egyptian Prime Minister, Mahmud al-Nuqrashi. In 1949, al-Banna was murdered by gunmen in what was believed to be retaliation by the government. Anti-British sentiment and nationalism continued to escalate, and 1952 brought a violent skirmish between British soldiers and Egyptian police, with arsonists nearly burning Cairo to the ground. In July of that year, a coup by the Free Officers Movement—a clique of army officers—brought down the British puppet, King Farouk. The new government was headed by Gamal Abdel Nasser, whom the Brotherhood supported at the beginning of the revolution, but soon mistrusted as Nasser gave no indication he was interested in sharing power. In 1954, a failed attempt to assassinate Nasser led to waves of arrests and torture of prisoners, with the Muslim Brotherhood blamed for the attempted assassination.

Over the years, attempts were made to repress the Muslim Brotherhood, with both Mubarak and Nasser cracking down on the organization. During the 1960s, the Muslim Brotherhood was fully in opposition to the new Egyptian state and experienced profound persecution by a government that routinely detained, arrested, and brutally tortured members. In 1965, a particularly devastating round of brutal suppression was intended to wipe out the Muslim Brotherhood once and for all. A plot was prefabricated and used as a pretext to arrest roughly 18,000 people and imprison hundreds of them.

Regional Expansion and Ideological Radicalization

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was forced to go underground to survive this period of extreme repression. By establishing social support networks and continuing their social and religious activities—such as charity—the functioning of the Brotherhood remained viable. Indeed, a tacit arrangement of semi-tolerance existed between Mubarak's regime and the Muslim Brotherhood since the Egyptian state was unable to maintain certain social services and the Muslim Brotherhood stepped in to support the people.

Anwar Sadat ascended to power in 1970 following the death of Nasser. Sadat viewed the Muslim Brotherhood as useful competition to the residual left-wing Nasserists and issued an amnesty to the Brotherhood in 1975. Even as the Muslim Brotherhood moderated its public rhetoric, it stood firm on many of the conservative elements of its platform. Notably, the Brotherhood would not consider as viable presidential candidates any women or Coptic Christians. Sadat was too modern and conciliatory for the times and the place, as the 1978 Camp David Accords peace treaty wrought a huge backlash against him and ultimately brought about his death when he was assassinated in 1981. Hosni Mubarak, Sadat's vice president, took power after the assassination and subsequently ruled Egypt for 30 years.

The influence of the Muslim Brotherhood spread throughout the Muslim world, and as different regions adopted its tenets, they also put their own spin on the organization, developing several affiliated political parties. In Sudan, the Muslim Brotherhood had a presence dating back to about 1949 and generated an outgrowth that became the National Islamic Front, which grew to dominate Sudanese politics by 1989. In Palestine, Hamas founded a political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1987; the two organizations in Egypt and Palestine share linkages that continue into the present. After an uprising in Syria in the early 1980s, the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood was brought down until the Syrian Civil War. The chaos emanating from the civil war in Syria provided cover and incentive for a resurgence of power in the country, centered predominantly on opposing Bashar al-Assad's government.

The Mubarak Era and Selective Tolerance

One individual from the 1950s and 1960s in Egypt is particularly notable: Sayyid Qutb studied in America and was shocked by the loose culture associated with jazz and feminist women. Imprisoned by Nasser in 1954, Qutb spent his time developing a radical and ruthless ideology bent on destroying any aspect of culture and society that he did not perceive as purely Islamic. Qutb was executed in 1966, but his writings were disseminated and inspired a young Muslim brother, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Muslim Brotherhood disavowed Qutb's writing, but that did not stop al-Zawahiri from leaving the Brotherhood and establishing Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Al-Zawahiri leads al-Qaeda and is one of the most prominent spokesmen. He has been featured in dozens of audiotapes and videos from 2003 to 2014—in September 2014, al-Zawahiri called for an Islamist resurgence in India. Zawahiri was indicted by America for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa and, for his activities with Islamic Jihad during the 1990s, was sentenced to death in absentia by Egypt. Making headline news again, in June 2013, Zawahiri called for the radical Islamic State (IS) to focus on Iraq and leave Syria; by February 2014, al-Qaeda had severed all ties with the Islamic State.

Mubarak ignored the illegality of the Muslim Brotherhood, seeing it as a counterweight to the violent Islamic groups that presented an immediate threat to his regime. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood grew throughout the 1980s until 1992, when Mubarak decided he must crack down on the increasingly powerful organization. In a move that became routine, more than 1,000 Muslim Brothers were arrested during the period between 1995 and 1996; they were accused of planning to overthrow the government. In just four short years, the Muslim Brotherhood was permitted to offer independent candidates for Parliament, and they won some seats despite government suppression. By 2008, the Muslim Brotherhood had won many seats in the election as independents, forming the largest opposition bloc. The threat was too much for Mubarak, who again cracked down on the Brothers by amending the constitution in 2010 to cripple independent parliamentary candidates; thousands of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members were arrested.

The loyal base of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood could be found in the rural areas south of Cairo. Since early 2011, the countryside was populated by people whose loyalties to the Muslim Brotherhood were demonstrated during the first electoral contest and again during five or so electoral contests that followed over a period of about two years. The Muslim Brotherhood members and sympathizers are predominantly rural, socially conservative, lower or lower-middle class Egyptians. Unlike their urban counterparts, they found a good match between their beliefs and values and the preferences and agendas of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Arab Spring and Electoral Victory

Unrest in the Middle East was increasingly focused on freedoms, as in the Arab Spring revolt in 2010. Social media made communication between free people and oppressed people possible whenever they could establish an internet connection. In 2011, following the tragic self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a harassed and humiliated fruit peddler in Tunisia, anti-government protests exploded in Tunisia and spread to Egypt. At first the Muslim Brotherhood kept out of the fray, but soon joined in the uprising and Mubarak was taken down.

Once Hosni Mubarak was ousted, candidates endorsed by the Muslim Brotherhood dominated the subsequent elections. Yasser El-Shimy asserts that Egyptian voters cast their votes for candidates who represented decades of opposition to the Mubarak regime, which in their perspective as citizens represented a corrupt state. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was organized, ready to wrest control from the state, and prepared to lead the government toward gradual reform. The votes cast for the Muslim Brotherhood were votes for considered reform rather than the liberal version of revolutionary change. With the Muslim Brotherhood functioning as a legal political entity as the Freedom and Justice Party, they won the elections of late 2011 and early 2012. Mohamed Morsi, the Freedom and Justice Party presidential candidate, won over the former prime minister.

Elite Support and the Morsi Presidency

And so it came to pass that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood became the government against which it had for so long protested and sabotaged. The legacy regime always leaves behind malcontents, and Morsi's ill-fated and uninspired attempt to deal with the meddling Mubarak-era justices and courts by declaring himself above the law simply backfired. The ill-advised Morsi realized he needed to reverse the decree, but clumsily pushed through a constitutional referendum to do so—a move that only deepened the growing polarization.

Unfortunately, the first democratically elected president of Egypt lacked the political acumen to see that he was undermining the public's trust and his own efforts to establish a true democracy. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is perceived as determined to hold the line and establish a monocultural religious state. Yet, the liberal coalition is likely to continue to strengthen and present as a competitor in future elections.