The Muslim Brothers in Mubarak’s Last Decade
Samer Shehata and Joshua Stacher
The 2005 parliamentary elections catapulted the Muslim Brothers of Egypt into their most visible—and most scrutinized—position ever. At Cairo dinner parties, members of the secular elite speculated that the Brothers’ electoral gains would embolden the organization to impose an intolerant interpretation of Islam upon Egypt, repressing women and the country’s Coptic Christian minority. A sense of security returned to the table when, nearly unanimously, the dinner companions agreed that since the Muslim Brothers were only eighty-eight out of 454 members of a body still dominated by the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), they could not pass legislation. The conclusion for many of these elites: tacit support for a regime for which they otherwise had little affection.
The state was also unnerved by the Brothers’ success at the polls. The Islamist organization, founded in 1928, was officially banned. Yet affiliates of the Brothers had run as independents in local and parliamentary elections since 1984, with increasing success, despite various state stratagems to depress their vote. In 2005, voter intimidation and ballot stuffing failed to stop the Brothers’ affiliates from winning a historic eighty-eight seats, and it was not long before security forces resumed arbitrary arrests, partly in an attempt to keep the new deputies in line. Yet, even as the crackdown proceeded, the Brothers’ parliamentary bloc drew notice for its work across ideological lines to serve constituents and increase its collective knowledge of local, national, and international affairs. The delegation did not pursue an agenda of banning books and legislating the length of skirts, but one of political reform. The Brothers’ work in Parliament revealed the group to be the closest thing to a real political party in Egyptian politics under Mubarak.
BROTHER PARLIAMENTARIANS BAND TOGETHER
The mood was not festive at the Intercontinental Hotel in Heliopolis four days after the 2005 elections’ final round, when Mahdi ‘Akif, then the Brotherhood’s general guide, introduced the new bloc to the press corps. In many ways, the large contingent was a fresh organizational challenge for the Brothers. Many of the new MPs were complete strangers to each other until they met under the parliamentary rotunda. Complicating matters, the Brother MPs made a point of living in their districts—in twenty-one of Egypt’s then twenty-six provinces—in order to work their jobs, provide social services, and maintain their constituents’ trust.
The Brothers’ small office in Cairo’s al-Manyal neighborhood no longer afforded enough space for all the deputies to meet, given the fivefold increase in their numbers. So the MPs stayed in the four-star Ma‘adi Hotel when Parliament was in session. “When Parliament meets, we forget our houses,” said ‘Ali Fath al-Bab, the only one of the deputies to be elected three times. “We take our suitcases—even those who live in Cairo—and stay in the hotel.”1 The MPs roomed and ate together, and discussed the following day’s agenda in the hotel’s conference halls. They also chatted informally and attended plenary lectures by speakers from outside the organization.
Yet the Ma‘adi Hotel also performed a more basic function: giving the MPs a place to stay so they could attend parliamentary sessions regularly. Fath al-Bab noted the difference from the 1995–2000 term, his first, when he was the only Brother MP. Nominally, half of all MPs, or 228, had to be present to constitute a quorum. If the number fell below 228, however, the session was still considered lawful, as a simple majority of those present was sufficient to pass legislation. Recalling his first term, Fath al-Bab explained, “By the end of the night, there might be thirty NDP MPs left and they would still be passing legislation.” But the Brothers’ regular attendance changed that: “The NDP now has to have 100 people in Parliament at all times to maintain their majority.” As Husayn Muhammad Ibrahim, vice chairman of the bloc and a twice-elected MP, noted, “Our presence has had another effect. The NDP MPs are forced to be more critical toward the government and better prepared. It has changed how they act, but not how they vote.” The quasi-official daily al-Ahram concurred that the “Islamic trend” played a “noticeable and distinguished role that cannot be denied” in legislative sessions.2 The parliamentary sessions of 2005–10 were the most serious of any in Mubarak’s tenure.
While the Brother MPs could not pass or block legislation by themselves, the delegation’s attitude of taking Parliament seriously spoke to a wider goal. Brother MPs worked under the guiding principle that Parliament would be the engine of political reform in Egypt. As Ibrahim stated, “We want people to see Parliament as a place where steps can happen. Before, the MPs were asleep.” Hazim Farouq Mansour, a deputy from Cairo’s Shubra neighborhood, agreed: “We want to reform the country from top to bottom by working within the existing institutions—be they Parliament, laws, civil society, or the constitution.” Egypt’s parliament had a reputation for being a rubber stamp for the regime. That remained the case until Mubarak fell. Yet from 2005 to 2010, the Brothers’ MPs showed that flawed political institutions could be transformed into an arena of political contestation and struggle.
IN THE KITCHEN
According to several Brother MPs, being a parliamentarian was not all it was cracked up to be. As Ibrahim griped, “Egyptian MPs are masakin (downtrodden). There is not enough time for our legislative duties, our role as government’s watchdog, and the demands for constituent services.” So that their MPs might fill their multiple roles, especially those of legislating and keeping the government accountable, the Brothers created an organ that was part research arm and part think tank.
This “parliamentary kitchen,” as the Brothers called it, was divided into specialized teams that gathered information about issues before the People’s Assembly. “In Parliament, you have access to a library and a central information office,” explained Ibrahim. “Neither is useful. A kitchen is a necessity, and all the blocs need one. Its job is to use civil society and consult experts to organize information we use in Parliament.” The parliamentary kitchen has been around since 2000, when seventeen Muslim Brothers were elected to the People’s Assembly. But as the size of the bloc increased, the kitchen was forced to expand the scope of its activities. The result was that Brother MPs were better prepared and informed about the issues than their counterparts in the ruling party.
The parliamentary kitchen had a second, and in many ways more important, function. Whether researching public health, judicial matters, or environmental problems, the kitchen reached out to society at large when gathering information. “We think that anyone who has knowledge is approachable,” Fath al-Bab stated. “We don’t just rely on Brother sources.” The kitchen was responsible for organizing the MPs’ seminar series, which featured non-Brothers speakers such as Dia’ Rashwan of the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, NDP Higher Policy Council member Hala Mustafa, and the chairman of Cairo University’s Political Science Department, Hasan Nafa‘. While this outreach benefited Brother MPs first and foremost, it also encouraged civil society activists, whom the regime and ruling party ignored at best and smothered at worst, simply by providing an attentive audience.
The organizational focus served up by the kitchen was sharpened by the bloc’s internal organization. Brother MPs served on two or three of the bloc’s nineteen committees, which covered a range of issues such as education, health, economics, and the environment. The range of the MPs’ professional expertise—the Brothers have historically drawn many of their members from the professions—gave the bloc in-house specialists to rely upon when Parliament took up technical issues. Brother MPs included, among others, doctors, dentists, engineers, lawyers, scientists, academics, and legal experts. According to Ibrahim, “As eighty-eight, we have specialists from all fields and we are better able to support one another and facilitate cooperation.”
The increased numerical strength of the Brothers in Parliament was felt unmistakably when the government published its annual Government Statement on budgetary and policy priorities in February 2006. Fath al-Bab described the process: “MPs only get five minutes each to respond to the Statement. This is a document that includes economic, agricultural, social, foreign, domestic, and youth affairs. So we decided to write and publish a response. Our response was 300 pages.” While the Statement passed with the NDP’s safe majority, for the first time a few NDP MPs voted against it, revealing the influence of the Brothers’ bloc.
Many governments, journalists, and academics view the Brothers with an unfounded amount of suspicion. The front page of the independent weekly al-Fajr on November 21, 2005—in the middle of the parliamentary elections—depicted the group’s general guide dressed in Nazi uniform. As the elections proceeded, observers repeated clichés implying the Brothers’ dubious commitment to democracy. Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations argued: “They’ve clearly embraced the procedures of democracy, but it’s unclear that they have internalized the principles of democracy.”3 ‘Adil Hammouda, editor-in-chief of al-Fajr, went much further, saying: “The next step after the Brothers reach Parliament is the cancellation of democracy.”4 While skepticism toward any political organization is healthy, commentary on the Brothers has frequently leapt to unsubstantiated conclusions that paint the group as a monolith bent on oppression and rule by force.
Hence, the argument about Brother MPs was that they take orders from the group’s Cairo headquarters, as mere servants beholden to the whims of the Guidance Office. The way the Brothers acted in Parliament belied this image. Second-term MP Akram al-Sha‘ar, from Port Said, contended, “Our priorities and strategies are from the same model as the group’s. But the Brothers sent us as MPs, not toys . . . We do not do everything they tell us, and we do not tell them everything we do.”
Subhi Salih, a freshman Alexandrian MP, said the primary point of contact between the Brothers’ headquarters and the MPs was the parliamentary department, headed by former MP and Guidance Office member Muhammad Mursi.5 While it is reasonable to think that the Guidance Office oversaw Mursi, there is no evidence that MPs took orders and acted accordingly. As Salih told it, “We are all in agreement over our principles and strategy but there are rules that govern our disagreements. In Parliament, we disagree and vote differently among ourselves all the time.” Salih’s example was that Brother MPs voted differently on consumer protection legislation during a session in May 2006. While the Brothers’ bloc stuck together on major issues, opposing the extension of the emergency law, judicial authority law, and press legislation, Brother MPs did not necessarily march in lockstep. Nor was the bloc dependent on one powerful personality. On May 18, security services beat and arrested Muhammad Mursi, who was protesting in solidarity with Mahmoud Makki and Hisham al-Bastawisi, two pro-reform judges who were dragged in front of a disciplinary hearing after they criticized election fraud. The bloc insisted that its activities were unaffected. Said deputy Muhammad al-Fadl, “The Brothers are an organization and an institution. There is no effect. If Muhammad goes to jail, then someone takes his place.”
HANDLING CRISES
When the first Egyptian cases of H5N1 virus, also known as bird flu, were reported in mid-February 2006, rumors fueling collective hysteria spread throughout the country. One rumor claimed that the nation’s drinking water was contaminated because dead and infected chickens had been thrown into the Nile. As the government could not convince the public otherwise, the $2.9 billion Egyptian poultry industry, which employs upwards of 2.5 million Egyptians, faced devastation. Al-Ahram Weekly reported that the poultry industry had lost $217 million and that 1 million people had lost their jobs. “Poultry exports have collapsed,” the paper reported, “and 35 percent of poultry farms have closed down as the industry faces losses of up to £E 10 million [$1.7 million] a day.”6
Health experts, the media, and the opposition roundly criticized the Egyptian government for underestimating the threat of avian flu, being insufficiently prepared, and mishandling the crisis. By May, six people had died and thirteen others were infected with the virus. The Brother MPs, meanwhile, applied immediate pressure on the government to devote greater attention to avian flu in order to lessen the impact on the nation’s economy. Drawing on the group’s organizational resources, the Islamist parliamentarians spearheaded a nationwide campaign to inform Egyptians about bird flu, calming nerves and dispelling rumors about the disease. Days after the first Egyptian bird flu case was announced, dozens of Brother MPs stood outside Parliament eating grilled chicken while photographers snapped pictures.
On February 26, more than 500 angry poultry farmers and traders demonstrated in front of the state Radio and Television Building to protest their losses, as well as newspaper reports of government plans to import frozen chickens and continue culling local birds. Poultry farmers also demonstrated in front of Parliament. When Brother MPs learned of the protest, a number of them left the morning’s session to meet with the farmers. The MPs listened to their concerns and arranged for them to present their complaints to the People’s Assembly. Afterward, according to MP Hamdi Hasan, a group of his peers invited the poultry farmers to the Assembly’s garden, where they lunched on chicken while discussing the crisis.
In addition to eating chicken and eggs and drinking tap water in front of the cameras to allay public fears, the MPs visited poultry-producing areas and met with representatives from the poultry industry in Daqhaliyya, Damietta, Sharqiyya, Gharbiyya, Cairo, Minya, Port Said, and other governorates. Brother parliamentarians held press conferences and public meetings about the disease. The Brothers’ campaign, which drew on the services of public health experts, microbiologists, doctors, veterinarians, and other specialists, presented medically supported facts about bird flu in addition to explaining how to cook chicken properly so as to avoid the disease. The group also distributed tens of thousands of pamphlets about bird flu throughout the country; their outreach to the public was clearly superior to that of the government.
A second instance of crisis mobilization concerned the Emergency Law, under which Egyptians had lived since 1981. The law granted the executive and security forces wide-ranging powers to limit freedom of assembly, dissent, and political activity. Emergency rule also permitted the detention of individuals without trial and the arbitrary closure of newspapers. Although the law was set to expire at the end of May 2006, several weeks before this date Mubarak hinted at the possibility of extending the law for an additional two years. Nine months earlier, during the country’s first multi-candidate presidential election, the president had promised voters that, if re-elected, he would replace the despised law with anti-terrorism legislation.
Muslim Brother parliamentarians mobilized to forestall any attempt at renewal of the politically stifling legislation. Beginning in mid-April, Brother MPs initiated a “network of parliamentarians” opposed to the Emergency Law and encouraged fellow legislators to join it. On April 19, the front page of the independent daily al-Masry al-Youm reported on the newly formed network’s first meeting in the People’s Assembly. The group, “Representatives Against the Emergency Law,” totaled 113 members and consisted of all eighty-eight Muslim Brother MPs and three ruling-party deputies, as well as other independent and opposition party parliamentarians. In addition to signing a petition against the renewal of the law, the group declared its intention to work with all trends in Egyptian society opposed to emergency rule. The network specifically mentioned the street protest movement Kifaya, as well as university professors.
Brother MPs vowed to publicize the names of parliamentarians who voted in favor of renewing the unpopular legislation. They also encouraged citizens to convey their views about the Emergency Law to their elected representatives—a practice that had been unheard of in Egypt, where the primary function of an MP was thought to be helping constituents find jobs or secure services, rather than representing their opinions. Despite the network’s efforts, it could not prevent extension of the law.
Egyptians had no idea on April 29 that the next morning Mubarak’s government would ask the People’s Assembly to extend emergency rule for an additional two years. But Brother MPs learned from reporters that high-ranking NDP parliamentarians and government officials were secretly preparing this maneuver. “It was a surprise,” recalled MP Muhammad Saad al-Kitatni. “The agenda that came for that day was different, and had to do with farming and the Ministry of Agriculture.”
On April 30, nearly 100 parliamentarians—not just Brother MPs—walked into the Assembly and donned black sashes that read “No to Emergency.” The prime minister and the interior minister, who rarely attended parliamentary sessions, were present in the chamber. The first order of business was the government’s request to renew the Emergency Law. Only seven opposition MPs were allowed to speak against the proposal—three of whom were from the Brothers. Twenty NDP parliamentarians, by contrast, spoke on behalf of renewing the legislation. Each speaker was allotted just three minutes. Confronted with the extension’s inevitability, the Brothers’ bloc relied on parliamentary procedure to ensure a degree of transparency. The bloc presented a petition signed by twenty MPs requesting that the vote be taken individually, as opposed to the usual “yea” or “nay” collective vote. This measure required the speaker to go through the entire list of MPs and register individual votes publicly. While the vote was taking place, Brother MP Akram al-Sha‘ar spotted an NDP MP trying to record a “yea” vote for an absent colleague (who was in Syria at the time), as well as the incorrect recording of another parliamentarian’s vote on the measure.7 The final tally was 257 in favor and ninety-one opposed to renewing the Emergency Law.
ADVENTURES WITH THE JUDICIARY
Working with independents and other opposition party MPs, the Brothers’ parliamentary bloc also led a charge against the detested minister of justice, Mahmoud Abu al-Layl. Abu al-Layl served as the head of the Parliamentary Election Commission, considered responsible for much of the fraud that marred the 2005 legislative elections despite the supervision of Egypt’s well-respected judges. As minister of justice, he oversaw the referral of senior judges Mahmoud Makki and Hisham al-Bastawisi to an internal disciplinary hearing after they publicly criticized vote rigging and other irregularities.8 Al-Bastawisi and Makki became national heroes and came to personify the judiciary’s struggle for independence and reform.
To mark the hearing’s final two sessions—on May 11 and 18—the Brothers’ rank and file, along with Kifaya supporters and others, protested in support of the two judges. Already for two weeks, semi-spontaneous protests had erupted around Cairo as Muslim Brothers and others gathered in solidarity with al-Bastawisi and Makki. Downtown Cairo was transformed into a military zone, with thousands of security personnel deployed around the High Court, the Judges’ Club, the Press Syndicate, and other buildings. The area was described as “under occupation” by the country’s independent and opposition press. Over 700 protesters were arrested between April 24 and May 18. The Brothers bore the brunt, as over 85 percent of the arrests came from their ranks, including such leading figures in the movement as Essam al-Arian and Muhammad Mursi.9
The group’s MPs also got into the action, actively supporting Makki and al-Bastawisi, as well as the principle of judicial independence, on the streets and in Parliament, throughout the spring and early summer of 2006. When the disciplinary hearing concluded on May 18, over twenty Brother parliamentarians stood outside the High Court in solidarity with the judges. Under the Cairo midday sun, the MPs stood wearing black sashes across their chests that read “The People’s Representatives with Egypt’s Judges.” Nearly four hours later, the disciplinary board found Makki innocent and slapped al-Bastawisi with a reprimand. Afterward, the Brother parliamentarians walked several hundred meters, past thousands of security forces, to the Judges’ Club, where they received a round of applause from the Club’s membership. In early June, the Brothers’ bloc presented the Judges’ Club version of a new judicial authority law in Parliament (although of course the ruling party’s version passed later that month).
The bloc’s mobilization against Abu al-Layl was not confined to showing solidarity with his targets among the judges. In late April, 102 members of Parliament, led by the Brothers’ bloc, called for a vote of no confidence in the justice minister because he was “abusing his position,” trying to subsume the judiciary under the executive. Long-time Assembly speaker and NDP parliamentarian Fathi Surour disallowed the vote, claiming that proper parliamentary procedure had not been followed. Surour argued that the parliamentarians relied on a law pertaining to a sitting minister’s criminal misconduct—under which category “political matters,” like Abu al-Layl’s interventions against the judges, do not fit. He also stated that the law which the MPs attempted to use in bringing their vote of no confidence required that members of the court trying the minister hail from both the “southern” and the “northern” regions of the country.10 When this law was passed in 1958, Egypt and Syria were nominally conjoined in the United Arab Republic—an arrangement that ended in 1961.
Such legalistic machinations did not deter the Brothers’ attempts to inject seriousness into the legislature. The bloc constantly lodged informational requests and interpellations, proposing legislation, responding to the state budget, and criticizing government. One researcher estimated that during the parliamentary session from December 2005 to July 2006, 80 percent of all parliamentary activity came from Brother parliamentarians.11 Like any opposition party, the Muslim Brothers’ parliamentary bloc used the People’s Assembly in Egypt as a stage for criticizing the powers that be and as a vehicle for promoting their ideas. But they demonstrated that they took Parliament seriously as an institution. In fact, Brother MPs took the institution more seriously than any other political force in the country—including the ruling party. In a sense, the Brothers became victims of their own success, for starting in 2006, the Mubarak regime moved swiftly to put them back in their box.
BLACKENING THE BROTHERS
The crackdown intensified after a student demonstration at Cairo’s al-Azhar University on December 10, 2006. Dressed in black, their faces covered with matching hoods whose headbands read samidun, or “steadfast,” several dozen young Muslim Brothers marched from the student center to the university’s main gate. Six of the masked youths, according to video and eyewitnesses, lined up in the middle of a square formed by the others and performed martial arts exercises reminiscent of demonstrations by Hamas and Hizballah.
Around 2,000 students were present for the show, which lasted approximately twenty-five minutes. Riot police immediately unloaded from trucks outside the university gate, massing only a few feet away from the unarmed demonstrators, but there were no clashes. No one was injured or arrested, and the protesters returned to the student center without incident. Classes were not canceled. Nevertheless, Egyptian state television and Arab satellite stations treated the demonstration as major news, repeatedly broadcasting footage of what they had labeled “the al-Azhar militias.” Independent newspapers such as al-Masry al-Youm asked what the incident implied about the Muslim Brothers, while the government-controlled press, running close-up photos that exaggerated the demonstration’s size, launched a campaign alleging that the Brothers were a violent organization with a paramilitary wing. Ruz al-Yusuf, a pro-government daily that frequently targeted the regime’s critics, featured close-ups of the black-clad karate performers on the front page, under the ominous headline “The Brothers’ Army.”
Four days after the al-Azhar demonstration, 124 students as well as seventeen senior Brothers—including Khayrat al-Shatir, the second deputy guide and the organization’s third-highest-ranking official—were arrested in predawn raids. Police confiscated three personal computers, two mobile phones, and £E 60,000 in cash (slightly over $10,000) from al-Shatir, a wealthy businessman. Al-Shatir’s son-in-law, who worked in the organization’s media division, was also arrested. In the ensuing days and weeks, police rounded up several hundred Muslim Brothers from around the country. It was a fortuitous turn of events for the regime, coming just before Mubarak’s proposal of sweeping amendments to the Egyptian constitution. The Brothers’ reputation with the public was soiled at the precise moment when the regime was introducing new legal measures to rein in its most powerful domestic opponent.
The stage for sharper confrontation was set in early November 2006, when student union elections in the national universities were raising Cairo’s political temperature. Campuses became increasingly tense as various university administrations, in concert with State Security, sought to control the elections while students—including members of the Muslim Brothers, socialists, and independents—resisted the interference. The troubles began at Cairo University, where the university administration and State Security combed through the lists of nominees and arbitrarily disqualified students affiliated with the Brothers. The pattern was repeated at Helwan, ‘Ayn Shams, and al-Azhar Universities. Well over 200 candidates were thus barred from running.
At Cairo University, Brother students accused the administration of fraud and staged largely peaceful sit-ins within the university’s gates. Word spread to students at other national universities. A 2005 initiative sponsored by the Brothers called Free Student Unions (FSU) regained momentum as the students attempted to establish independent unions free from regime influence. Socialist students joined in solidarity, in an infrequent instance of cross-ideological political activity. Yet as the FSU mobilized, the election campaigns became increasingly violent.
When ‘Ayn Shams University held elections on October 29, the Brothers and FSU students standing outside polling stations to protest electoral manipulation met with a response usually reserved for national parliamentary elections. Thugs reported to be in the employ of State Security, as well as pro-government students, arrived at the polling stations with knives, clubs, bottles, and pipes to discourage others from congregating there. They also tore down signs supporting Brother candidates. Scores of young men faced off, and in the ensuing three days of bloody confrontation, three students were hospitalized. Images of the clashes made their way onto Egypt’s political blogs, as well as Brothers’ websites.
Two weeks later, the FSU organized alternative and unsanctioned elections at ‘Ayn Shams that, again, drew the ire of State Security and pro-government students. Two more days of clashes added fuel to the fire. Student union elections became more violent as they progressed from one university to the next. While Egyptian NGOs, socialist groups, and the Brothers published statements condemning the violence, elections had still not taken place at al-Azhar—the oldest and, arguably, the most important religious university in the Arab world.
Al-Azhar University’s troubled experience with student union elections is important for understanding the martial arts demonstration that took place on December 10. Al-Azhar students had not chosen their own representatives since 1992. As one Brother medical student, Yahya Ibrahim, put it, “We would go home for a holiday and return to an appointed student union.” In the winter of 2006, following the Brothers’ success in the 2005 parliamentary elections and the formation of the FSU, students were in a mood to defy the usual administration shenanigans.
Ahmad al-Tayyib, president of the university, added something new to the tactics employed to exclude the Brothers on other campuses. During the first week of December, he expelled six Brother medical students for their FSU activities. Students responded by trying to meet with al-Tayyib as well as organizing in solidarity with their dismissed classmates. At one point in the students’ mobilization, according to Ibrahim, the State Security representative at the university, Hisham ‘Abd al-Mun‘im, told them that if they did not desist, they would be treated “like ‘Ayn Shams.” The students understood his words as a physical threat.
The Brothers students met to discuss their options: How should they register their protest? Ibrahim says the option of a martial arts performance was chosen to show that they were not afraid of State Security’s thugs. At that point, the Brother student organizers claimed, students from the physical education department volunteered to demonstrate their karate skills. The Brother students contacted the media and requested that they cover the performance. It is unclear how much coordination took place between the al-Azhar students and the national Brothers. Though a member of the Guidance Office served as head of the group’s student affairs department, the Brothers’ senior leaders denied that they knew about the martial arts display, and the students confirm the leaders were not told.
Egyptian state media, however, went into overdrive. In addition to Ruz al-Yusuf’s dramatic banner headline, regular front-page stories about the Brothers appeared in the flagship daily al-Ahram. The stories reported on the arrests of Brothers from around the country and aired allegations of illegal Brothers financial networks, money laundering activities, and links to international terrorist financiers.12 Editorials cited the Brothers’ militant past as evidence for its inherently violent character.
Recurring stories about the “al-Azhar militia” and illegal financial networks cast a shadow upon the group’s image as a largely peaceful organization committed to working within the system. The tone of public discourse about the Brothers changed, with some beginning to wonder whether at least some of the state-run media’s allegations could be true. The martial arts demonstration, notwithstanding its disavowal by senior Brothers, was a surprising mistake by a group known for its internal discipline.
THE REGIME STRIKES BACK
But the regime did not wait for the media to blacken the Muslim Brothers’ image before rounding up the 124 al-Azhar students, including medical student Yahya Ibrahim, and seventeen other Brothers in the wee hours of December 14. According to Ibrahim, State Security and police stormed the dormitory shortly after 3 am, rousing the sleeping students on their list, blindfolding them, and binding their hands. The students heard the officer in charge communicating with his superior over a walkie-talkie, expressing confusion over the list of names. “Should I [just] bring them all?” he asked, to which the response was, “Yes, quickly.” Not all of the hooded demonstrators were arrested, Ibrahim says, because “State Security did not know who they were, because their faces were covered.” The students would spend seventy days in prison, without being formally charged, before being released on February 21, 2007. Yet their reintegration into the university did not proceed smoothly. Ahmad al-Tayyib expelled sixty of them, explaining at a meeting with the students that al-Azhar was a place for education—not for political activity.
The seventeen senior Brothers arrested on December 14, such as Deputy Guide Khayrat al-Shatir, were less fortunate still. They were eventually charged with money laundering, financing banned political activities, and trying to revive the Brothers’ paramilitary wing. A month after the arrests, on January 28, Egypt’s prosecutor-general froze al-Shatir’s assets, along with those of twenty-nine others. Businesses owned by Brothers, including several publishing houses and import/export firms, a pharmaceuticals manufacturer, and a construction company were closed, the merchandise confiscated. The frozen assets were valued at tens of millions of dollars.
The next day, a judge in a Cairo criminal court dismissed the charges against al-Shatir and his codefendants and ordered them freed without delay, but police simply rearrested al-Shatir and the sixteen others. Then, on February 6, President Mubarak intervened by ordering that al-Shatir and thirty-nine other Brothers be tried in front of a military tribunal. It was to be the first time that Egyptian civilians would face military tribunals since the regime employed them against the Brothers in 2001. Although a protest petition circulated among Egyptian politicos and intellectuals, in the following months there were more arrests. One group that seems to have been targeted was the “parliamentary kitchen.” According to one MP, Muhammad al-Baltagi,13 nineteen kitchen aides were arrested shortly after the events at al-Azhar. It seems very unlikely that these staffers had anything to do with the student affairs department, student union elections, or the al-Azhar demonstration. Another, more political logic was at work.
On December 26, 2006, Mubarak formally proposed thirty-four amendments to the constitution. Ostensibly, the changes aimed to modernize the constitution by limiting presidential powers, enhancing multiparty competition, and eliminating anachronistic references to socialism. In reality, the amendments, which were subsequently approved by Parliament and ratified on March 26, 2007 in a national referendum, further solidified the legal underpinnings of authoritarianism in Egypt.
Article 5 explicitly banned political activity based in any way upon religion. Months earlier, in mid-January, the Muslim Brothers had announced plans to establish a political party. Brother officials declared the party would be a civil political entity with a religious marja‘iyya (foundation). The revisions to Article 5 prohibited the possibility of such a party, and provided the regime with further legal tools for curtailing the Brothers’ activities. Article 76, relating to presidential nominations, was modified to ease the restrictions on nominating presidential candidates from legally recognized parties. This article, first amended in 2005, made Egypt’s first-ever “presidential election” possible. (Previously, the president had been chosen by yes/no referenda on a single candidate.) The 2007 modification did not, however, alter the requirements for nominating independent candidates. The restrictions on independents were so severe, in fact, that it was practically impossible for such candidates to stand in presidential elections. These restrictions were aimed, in large part, at preventing the Brothers from ever being able to nominate one of their own for president. The changes to Article 88 eliminated the system of judicial supervision of elections that began in 2000 (“one judge for every ballot box”), replacing it with an “electoral commission” composed of sitting and retired judges, partly chosen by the regime, and further stipulating that balloting occur on a single day. This amendment was widely seen as an attempt to remove Egypt’s independent judges, who had proven troublesome for the regime in the past, from the electoral process.
The amendments to Article 179 proved to be among the most controversial. Marketed as the “Egyptian PATRIOT Act,” this article embedded wide-ranging anti-terrorism measures in the constitution. The amendment empowered the president to refer cases to military and exceptional courts, and allowed the police to search homes and conduct surveillance—including wiretaps and other electronic intrusions—without warrants.
The amendments also enabled potential changes to Egypt’s electoral system. Before 1990, elections were held under a “party-list” or modified “slate” system that limited the opportunities for independent candidates. Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court ruled the system illegal in 1990. From that point forward, legislative elections were conducted under an “individual candidacy” system by which hopefuls were not required to belong to legally established political parties. The Brothers ran their members as independents, even though they campaigned openly as affiliates of the organization. Under the pretext of strengthening political parties and enhancing the role of women and minorities in political life, the 2007 constitutional amendments enabled the return to a “party-list” system with a limited number of seats reserved for independents. The real purpose of the change, however, was to reduce significantly the ability of the Brothers to compete in elections. The Mubarak regime went further than the usual electoral engineering—changing the constitution in order to mold the electoral law to its liking.
When the thirty-four amendments were first proposed, some opposition parties withheld judgment, while others accepted some of the proposed changes in principle.14 But when the amendments, especially Articles 88 and 179, took their final form, all segments of the opposition (including the citizen protest group Kifaya) called for a boycott of the national referendum needed to approve them. The Muslim Brothers were among the first to criticize the proposed amendments. In interviews, Muhammad Habib,15 Deputy Guide at the time, characterized the proposed amendments as “a move backward with regard to freedoms.” Muhammad Saad al-Kitatni, chairman of the Brothers’ parliamentary bloc, declared: “The primary goal of the amendments is to intensify authoritarianism and to prepare for inheritance of power [by Husni Mubarak’s son Gamal] and the curtailment of the opposition in general.”
The constitutional referendum took place ten days earlier than originally scheduled. Egyptians overwhelmingly stayed home. The government reported 27.1 percent voter turnout, while the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights estimated the figure at less than 5 percent. Other civil society and rights groups put the figure even lower, with widespread reports of vote-rigging and deserted polling stations.
Events in the region also facilitated a broader crackdown on the Brothers. Hamas’s performance in the January 2006 Palestinian elections and the outcome of the summer 2006 war between Israel and Hizballah produced an international environment less hospitable to Islamist groups. American pressure on the Mubarak regime, which had greatly decreased as the results of Egypt’s 2005 parliamentary elections became apparent, ceased entirely after Hamas’s victory. Washington remained silent as the Mubarak regime arrested hundreds of Brothers and transferred dozens to military courts. Despite meetings that took place in April between al-Kitatni and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D–MD) at the Egyptian parliament and the US ambassador’s residence in Cairo, the Bush administration never softened the traditional US hard line against the Brothers.
Intensified repression notwithstanding, the Muslim Brothers did not exit Egyptian political life. The group had to adjust to a new reality, however. As Habib stated, “The repression is as strong as in the 1960s and the 1990s but now they [the regime] are much smarter and plan better. They know better where to hit us.” Among these smarter regime sanctions were the severe financial measures aimed at the organization’s ability to provide social services, which many believe to be the backbone of the Brothers’ popular support. Seizing the assets of major financiers such as Khayrat al-Shatir was intended to discourage others from funding the organization.
Ibrahim al-Hudaybi, a grandson and great-grandson of two general guides of the society, was quoted in the American press arguing that the late 2000s crackdown was “the worst attack on the Brothers since the 1950s.”16 Yet the overwhelming consensus within the leadership of the Muslim Brothers was that, at worst, comparing crackdowns is difficult and, at best, the repression was nothing like that of the 1960s, when Brothers were routinely subjected to torture and many were forced to flee the country. As parliamentary department head Muhammad Mursi concluded, “In the 1960s, they [the government] were trying to destroy [us] completely. Now, that is impossible. There are more roots than anyone can completely pull out from the streets.”
Authoritarianism increased during the last years of Mubarak’s rule. But even the repression of the regime’s security forces, and its legal machinations, could not expunge the Brothers from the country’s politics. The Society of Muslim Brothers remained the best-organized and most powerful opposition force in Egypt. They worked tirelessly against the regime’s monopoly of power. They railed against government corruption, campaigned against the Emergency Law, and exposed the regime’s fraudulent elections. Ultimately they proved more durable than Mubarak, but the organization (and its members) paid a high price for its activism.
According to now ex-Brother Habib, the repression changed the composition of the Guidance Office and made the organization more conservative in its outlook. Indeed, on the eve of the January 25 uprising, the Brothers refused to participate in the planned demonstration. Youth members joined the initial days of protest but the Brothers only fully committed once the scale of the uprising became apparent. And when the Brothers concluded that if the regime survived, they would pay the ultimate price, the organization became fully committed to the “revolution.” Indeed, the group’s participation was indispensable to helping the protesters finish off Mubarak’s rule.
Yet the group’s limited coordination with the protesters ended shortly thereafter. Indeed, the Brothers have played a complicated and sometimes contradictory role since the uprising. On the one hand, they have repeatedly supported the SCAF against the demands of liberal activists and youth protesters. On the other hand, the group has also smartly moved on from sustained protests and demonstrations and begun working to enter the political landscape as a formal actor. With the creation of the Freedom and Justice Party in July 2011, the Brothers are operating for the first time largely (although not entirely) above ground. In Egypt’s fundamentally new political context, we can expect significant transformation within the organization. Its role in Egyptian politics will also likely change. But the Muslim Brothers will remain one of the most important political trends in Egypt as the country moves forward with its transition.