The Fourth Ordeal: A History Of The Muslim Brotherhood In Egypt, 1968–2018 [62, 1st Edition] 1108830641, 9781108830645, 1108822452, 9781108822459, 1108902642, 9781108902649

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THE FOURTH ORDEAL

The Fourth Ordeal tells the history of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt from the late 1960s until 2018. Based on over 140 first-hand interviews with leaders, rank-and-file members and dissidents, as well as a wide range of original written sources, the story traces the Brotherhood’s reemergence and rise following the collapse of Nasser’s Arab nationalism, all the way to its short-lived experiment with power and the subsequent period of imprisonment, persecution and exile. Unique in terms of its source base, this book provides readers with unprecedented insight into the Brotherhood’s internal politics during fifty years of its history. victor j. willi completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford and his Master at the University of Zurich. He is currently employed by the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, focusing on the geopolitics and economics of the current Middle East.

Cambridge Middle East Studies Editorial Board Charles Tripp (general editor) Julia Clancy-Smith F. Gregory Gause Yezid Sayigh Avi Shlaim Judith E. Tucker

Cambridge Middle East Studies has been established to publish books on the nineteenth- to twenty-first-century Middle East and North Africa. The series offers new and original interpretations of aspects of Middle Eastern societies and their histories. To achieve disciplinary diversity, books are solicited from authors writing in a wide range of fields including history, sociology, anthropology, political science, and political economy. The emphasis is on producing books affording an original approach along theoretical and empirical lines. The series is intended for students and academics, but the more accessible and wide-ranging studies will also appeal to the interested general reader. A list of books in the series can be found after the index.

THE FOURTH ORDEAL A History of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, 1968–2018

VICTOR J. WILLI

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108830645 DOI: 10.1017/9781108902649 © Victor J. Willi 2021 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2021 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Willi, Victor J. (Victor Jonathan Amadeus), 1978– author. Title: The fourth ordeal : a history of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, 1968–2018 / Victor J Willi, Universiteit Leiden. Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, 2021. | Series: Cambridge Middle East studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020029173 (print) | LCCN 2020029174 (ebook) | ISBN 9781108830645 (hardback) | ISBN 9781108822459 (paperback) | ISBN 9781108902649 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Jamʿīyat al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn (Egypt) – History – 20th century. | Jamʿīyat al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn (Egypt) – History – 21st century. | Islam and politics – Egypt. | Islamic fundamentalism – Egypt. Classification: LCC BP10.J383 W55 2021 (print) | LCC BP10.J383 (ebook) | DDC 322.4/ 2096209045–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029173 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029174 ISBN 978-1-108-83064-5 Hardback ISBN 978-1-108-82245-9 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For

Zeina

CONTENTS

List of Plates, Figures and Tables Acknowledgements Note on Transliterations and References Note on Sources Chronology of Events Dramatis Personae List of Abbreviations

1

2

3

page x xii xiv xv xvii xxxi xxxviii

Prologue

1

Introduction

7

The Society of the Muslim Brothers

17

Precursors Ideology Organization

18 24 34

The Second Founding (1968–1981)

50

The Life of ‘Omar al-Tilmisani The Student Protests of 1968 The Islamic Revival Sadat’s Policies Towards the Brotherhood The Birth of the Jama‘a Islamiyya The Merger The Da‘wa Magazine and Social Justice Camp David and the Israel Conundrum The Spectre of Islamic Fundamentalism The Assassination of the Pharaoh

52 57 60 63 67 74 80 85 88 94

The Rise of the Vanguard (1981–1991)

100

Mubarak’s Early Years The Legacy of Sayyid Qutb Rebuilding the Organization in Egypt The International Organization Expansion into Syndicates and Parliament

102 104 110 112 121

vii

viii

contents

4

5

6

7

Mustafa Mashhur and the Enemies of the Open Society The Interregnum of Hamid Abu Nasr Towards the First Gulf War

124 130 135

Brotherhood Incorporated (1991–2001)

141

Khairat al-Shatir and the Salsabil Affair The Empowerment Plan Regime Repression The Shura Council Elections of 1995 The Brotherhood’s Neoliberal Turn Transformation of the Social Base Start of the Military Trials The Birth of the Wasat Party Brotherhood Online At the Dawn of the Millennium

143 147 149 154 157 163 166 170 174 177

Struggle for Leadership (2001–2011)

179

The Question of Political Violence The Brotherhood in Western Imagination Emergence of a Protest Movement The Democratic Paradox The Kefaya Moment The Cairo Spring Rapprochement with the United States Consolidation of the Protest Movement The Vanguardist Palace Revolt On the Eve of the Revolution

181 188 191 196 200 204 209 214 218 225

Revolution, Rise and Fall (2011–2013)

230

The Origins of the Uprising The Brotherhood and the Revolution Nascent Relations with the Army The Founding of the Freedom and Justice Party The Turkish Model Maspiro, Mohammed Mahmud and the Blue Bra Girl Enter Mohammed Morsi The Qatar–Al Jazeera Connection Towards an Islamist Constitution From the November Decree to the Ittihadiyya Clashes The Counter-Revolution Strikes Back Endgame

232 236 242 251 256 259 269 276 283 287 291 300

The Beginning of the Fourth Ordeal (2013–2018)

305

Towards the Clearing of Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya Sent Behind the Sun Rise of the Second Rank The Brotherhood in Exile

306 312 317 323

contents

ix

The Crisis Deepens Antagonisms over Yemen The Revolutionary Option The Third Founding Through the Lens of Geopolitics Ninety Years of Giving

330 342 353 361 370 384

Conclusion

388

Epilogue

395

Glossary

398

Bibliography Index

402 435

PLATES, FIGURES AND TABLES

PLATES Plate section 1 1 Protest sites in Cairo (June–July 2013) 2 Brotherhood logo 3 Ethnographic organization sketches 4 Al-Da‘wa magazine covers

Plate section 2 5 Guidance office members (January 2010) 6 Street corner at Tahrir Square 7 Revolutionary street art 8 Representations of Mohammed Morsi 9 Al-Hurriyya wa-l-‘Adala cover pages 10 Anti-Brotherhood memorabilia 11 Pro-Brotherhood memorabilia 12 Tahrir Square and Ittihadiyya demonstrations 13 Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya demonstrations 14 Brotherhood headquarters Plate section 1 can be found between pages 58 and 59. Plate section 2 can be found between pages 282 and 283. FIGURES 1 The ten pillars of the oath 2 The Islamic project 3 Indoctrination process 4 The family 5 The organization 6 Sectors per governorate (2009)

page 25 32 36 39 42 44

x

list of plates, figures and tables 7 Sectors per governorate (2015) 8 Sectors per governorate (2016) TABLES 1 Membership figures 2 Leadership overview

xi 338 365

page 46 320

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Throughout the eight years it took to research and write this book, I was privileged to meet, work with, and get the support of numerous individuals and institutions who provided me with the logistical, financial and intellectual networks and structures to keep pursuing a project that at times seemed daunting, if not impossible, to complete. First and foremost, I am indebted to many current and former members of the Muslim Brotherhood, who enabled me to gain insight into the inner workings of this notoriously secretive organization. While many of my key interlocutors cannot be named for security reasons, I would like to express my gratitude to ‘Ammar Fayed, Abdelrahman Ayyash, Mohammed ‘Affan, Ahmed Ban, Hani Mahmud, Osama al-Sayyad, Shady Ibrahim and Mohammed Sudan. From the many friends and colleagues who have been involved in the information gathering and data collection for this book, I am especially indebted to Sara Ramadan, a charming and smart Egyptian journalist who became an indispensable partner in my endeavour. I would further like to thank the staff of my language school in Cairo, which provided me with a home during a tumultuous eighteen months of fieldwork, from April 2012 to September 2013. Particular thanks belong to the school’s two headmasters, as well as to my Arabic teachers, with whom I spent countless hours learning Arabic, discussing politics and learning about Egyptian culture and society. Unfortunately, the name of the school and those of the individuals in question cannot be mentioned here. In terms of academic support, my gratitude goes to my two doctoral supervisors, James McDougall and Walter Armbrust. James is a brilliant pedagogue and I am indebted to him for the many hours I spent in his office in Trinity College, where he indulged me with his knowledge about Middle East history while familiarizing me with key concepts, theories and bodies of literature used in the social sciences. My second supervisor, Walter, one of the world’s foremost anthropologists on Egypt, became invaluable during my time of fieldwork in Cairo. The time I spent in his Cairo home or in Café Riche in Downtown Cairo, where he enlightened me with his ethnographic knowledge of Egyptian culture and society, not only enriched the content of this book, but also figured among my most formidable memories of my early fieldwork in xii

acknowledgements

xiii

Egypt. I further would like to thank Eugene Rogan from the Middle East Centre in Oxford, Charles Tripp from the School of Oriental and African Studies, the late Roger Owen from Harvard University (may he rest in peace), Lisa Anderson, the former President of the American University in Cairo, and Michael Freeden from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. All of them have encouraged and supported me in this project at various stages and I am grateful for their support. Numerous other people have been involved in seeing this project come to fruition – either as readers of chapters, sparring partners in discussions, or simply as friends, colleagues, supporters or mentors. After eight years it is difficult to remember all of them, but some of the key individuals that come to mind (and which are listed here in alphabetical order) are Sara Abdel Halim, Lucia Ardovini, Maryam Aslany, Samah Atout, François Barras, Lara Birkes, Wolfgang Amadeus Brülhart, Mae Anna Chokr, Barnaby Crowcroft, Mirek Dušek, Müge Ertilav, Malik Faraoun, Rabab Fayad and her father Mohammed, Yoni Furas, Dennis Guggenheim and his parents Silvia and Raymond, Adel Hamaizia, Jalal Imran, Marwa Kassem and her father Mohammed, Darius Karácsony, Neil Ketchley, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Oliver McTernan, Sayem Mehmoud, Anoushe Modarresi, Adrian Monck, Inas Noureddine, Ivan Panović, Aaron Rock-Singer, Emanuel Schäublin, Kim Sitzler, Sarah Smierciak and José Vericat. I owe particular gratitude to Andrew Hammond, whose detailed comments and input on the manuscript contributed to the improvement of the final version. In terms of grant-making institutions, I thank the Swiss National Science Foundation as well as the Pachachi Scholarship from the University of Oxford. I am further grateful for the support of the staff and the facilities of the Middle East Centre at the University of Oxford, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, the American University in Cairo, and the Embassy of Switzerland in Cairo, whose formidable people at various stages provided me with their institutional and logistical support to travel, conduct research or write. I thank my siblings Eléonore, Pascal and Michel, as well as my dear parents Ruth and Ulrich, who have always supported me and encouraged me to follow my passion. My deepest gratitude goes to Mai for her loyalty and friendship during the past six years, as well as for having read the manuscript several times and for having created the online archive www.thefourthordeal.com. Her belief in me and this project gave me the spiritual resources to plough through some of the most difficult phases, while her intelligence and knowledge of Egyptian society and culture was a source of inspiration to me throughout the process of writing this book. And finally, to my daughter Zeina, who recently joined us here on Planet Earth: may you grow into becoming a loving, humorous, compassionate and generous human being.

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATIONS AND REFERENCES

This book uses a simplified version of the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) transliteration system. For the sake of readability, I decided to dispense with most of the paraphernalia that are usually employed in academic scholarship, and instead rely on a number of simple rules of thumb. As such, the definite article before names and places has been dropped, except where the full name is used or where grammatical construction requires it (e.g. ‘Hassan al-Banna’, but ‘Banna’ instead of ‘al-Banna’). Expressions or names of Arabic origin appearing in the main text are spelled without diacritics. Familiar expressions of Arabic origin that are found in the 2005 edition of the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (e.g. Quran, Sharia, mujahideen, etc.) are spelled in non-italicized form. Less familiar or technical expressions of Arabic origin that cannot be found in the said dictionary are spelled in italics in the text, and they are also listed in the glossary section in the end. Names of well-known individuals and organizations are written in their most commonly used English form (e.g. ‘Gamal Abdel Nasser’ instead of ‘Jamal ‘Abd al-Nasir’; ‘al-Qaida’ instead of ‘al-Qa‘ida’). Names of less well-known individuals and organizations are spelled using the marks for ‘ayn (‘) and hamza (’), except in cases where there exists a widely used preferred spelling in English (e.g. ‘‘Issam al-‘Arian’, but ‘Khaled Said’ instead of ‘Khalid Sa‘id’). Names of institutions, places, and social and political movements and parties are similarly spelled using the marks for ‘ayn and hamza (e.g. ‘Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya’, ‘Jama‘a Islamiyya’, etc.). The titles of books, articles and other written or audio-visual sources of Arabic origin, when mentioned in the main text, are provided in translated form, followed by the transliteration in simplified Arabic in brackets. When quoted in the bibliography and the footnotes, however, the titles of Arabic works are given in their fully transliterated form, while the names of authors and publishing houses are given in their simplified form. Translated direct speech such as cited oral sources are spelled in a more colloquial form in English (e.g. ‘don’t’ instead of ‘do not’).

xiv

NOTE ON SOURCES

The story presented here is based on more than 140 recorded oral history interviews with current and former Brotherhood members across all organizational levels, consisting of one to several hours each. Interviews were conducted between May 2012 and January 2019 in Cairo, Alexandria, Doha, Istanbul, Ankara, London, Manchester, Liverpool, Berlin, Munich, Geneva and other places. Most of them were transcribed as well as translated from Arabic into English. Some sources were anonymized due to potential security risks. These sources are marked with an asterisk in the footnotes and in the Bibliography. Interviewees can be grouped into four categories, according to criteria of similarity in hierarchical positions within the Brotherhood, socio-economic status and level of education. The first category consists of Brotherhood leaders who are either members of the Guidance Office or have occupied high-level positions in the Freedom and Justice Party or one of Morsi’s two cabinets. These individuals had typically university degrees and came from the professional classes. The second group consists of middle-ranking cadres responsible for leading either a region, branch or family, as well as other rank-and-file members. Individuals in this latter group did not always have any formal organizational function, but supported the Brotherhood with menial and logistical tasks. They were typically of urban lower middle-class backgrounds and only in some cases had a university education. The third group consists of individuals who had left the Brotherhood shortly before or after the uprising of 25 January 2011, either on a voluntary basis or because they had been forced out. Many of these dissidents were university educated or belonged to the class of students and young professionals. The fourth group consisted of all those who, while not part of the Muslim Brotherhood, had either been eyewitnesses of specific events described in this book, or claimed otherwise privileged knowledge of the Brotherhood’s internal workings. This group includes individuals from across Egypt’s political and ideological spectrum, including Sufis, Salafis, Azharites, secular or religious revolutionary activists, leftist, Nasserists, socialists, communists, as well as xv

xvi

note on sources

politicians, businesspeople, NGO workers, journalists, researchers, authors, police officers, secret service agents, taxi drivers, and a wide range of everyday Egyptians. All primary sources are listed under ‘Primary Oral Sources’ in the Bibliography section. This material was complemented by hundreds of written sources that were published by the Brotherhood either on an institutional basis or individually by one of its members or dissidents. This material included memoirs, prisonwritings, pamphlets, magazines, scholarly or historical works, as well as legal documents governing the Brotherhood’s national and international organization, such as its official Statutes and By-laws. Another source of written information came from the Brotherhood’s various online domains, including Ikhwanwiki.com, Ikhwanonline.com, Ikhwanonline.info, Ikhwan.site, Ikhwanweb.com, as well as various social media accounts that were either associated with these websites or with individual members. Finally, hundreds of leaflets and other memorabilia collected during rallies and protest marches, including a library of graffiti and street art, as well as a broad range of audio-visual material taken during the various sit-ins, became part of the source base. Some of this material figures in the plate section of this book while the majority can be accessed at www.thefourthordeal.com. For the sake of readability, authors of secondary sources are not usually cited within the main text, but are referred to in the footnotes and the bibliography. This is not to denigrate the important and substantive contributions many scholars and journalists have made, but is intended as a means to avoid diverting readers’ attention to this or that author or this or that academic argument, rather than the story of the Muslim Brotherhood itself. However, I would like to list some the most important scholars and authors on whose works I have drawn in writing this book. From the scholarly community, these individuals include (in alphabetical order) Khalil al-Anani, Abdulla al-Arian, Nathan Brown, Courtney Freer, Patrick Haenni, Shadi Hamid, Raymond Hinnebusch, Hazem Kandil, Gudrun Krämer, Brynjar Lia, Richard P. Mitchell, Carry Rosefsky-Wickham, Robert Springborg, Mariz Tadros, Hussam Tammam and Barbara Zollner. In addition, I have drawn on the accounts of a number of outstanding journalists whose reporting has vitally contributed to the writing of this story, including Sarah Carr from Mada Masr, Mohamed Fahmy from Al Jazeera, Patrick Kingsley from The Guardian, David D. Kirkpatrick from the New York Times, Bel Trew from The Times and the freelance journalists and researchers Abderrahman Ayyash, Tamer Badawi, Yasser Fathi, Osama al-Sayyad and Ahmed al-Talawi.

CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS

1967 June

February November February

August September October

May

September

January July

October

Israel defeats the Egyptian Armed Forces during the Six Day War. 1968 Students protests and labour strikes take place in Helwan. Student protests erupt in Mansoura and Alexandria. 1969 Hasan al-Hudaybi completes the manuscript of Preachers Not Judges. 1970 End of the War of Attrition between Israel and Egypt. Gamal Abdel Nasser passes away. Anwar al-Sadat is sworn in as the 3rd President of the Arab Republic of Egypt. 1971 Sadat announces the ‘correction of the revolution’ and grants a general amnesty to the imprisoned members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt adopts the Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt of 1971. 1972 Tens of thousands of students demonstrate at the Cairo Polytechnic University. Sadat expulses 20,000 Soviet military advisors from Egypt. 1973 Egypt and Syria launch a surprise attack on the Israeli forces in the Sinai Desert and the Golan Heights; Arab governments launch the ‘oil weapon’ against Western countries.

xvii

xviii November

April

May September*

March

July December

January November

September October January-February March November

chronology of events ‘Omar al-Tilmisani becomes the Brotherhood’s 3rd General Guide; religious student activists establish the Jama‘a Islamiyya at Cairo University. 1974 Sadat declares the opening (infitah) of the Egyptian economy to foreign investments; the ‘Technical Military Group’ attempts to take over an army depot in Cairo. ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh takes the pledge of allegiance to the General Guide. The Brotherhood’s Emirati chapter, the ‘Reform and Social Counselling Association’, is established in Dubai. 1975 The Saudi King Faysal bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud is assassinated and succeeded by his brother Khalid bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud. 1976 The Brotherhood launches the first issue of its al-Da‘wa monthly magazine. The Jama‘a Islamiyya wins a landslide victory in the General Egyptian Students’ Union elections; Abu alFutuh becomes president of the Student Union of Cairo University. 1977 Tens of thousands protest in Cairo during the ‘Bread Riots’. Sadat speaks in front of the People’s Assembly, announcing his intention to visit Jerusalem for the sake of peace with Israel. 1978 Sadat and the Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign the Camp David Peace Accords. Sadat establishes the National Democratic Party (NDP). 1979 Shah Reza Pahlavi leaves Iran; Ayatollah Khomeini returns from exile in Paris. Sadat and Begin sign the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. A group of insurgents seizes the Grand Mosque of Mecca in Saudi Arabia; Iranian students take over the American Embassy in Tehran.

chronology of events December April

June

May September

October November

June July

August*

October

February May

xix

The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan. 1980 Violent clashes occur between Copts and the Jama‘at Islamiyya in Asyut; a minority around Karam Zuhdi breaks away from the Jama‘a Islamiyya, keeping its name, while the majority joins the Muslim Brotherhood. A faction of the Jama‘a Islamiyya merges with a Cairobased group led by ‘Abd al-Salam Faraj to form a new group called the Islamic Jihad. 1981 Gulf states sign the charter of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Sadat cracks down on the opposition and arrests over 1,500 Brotherhood members; the publication of alDa‘wa magazine is suspended. Anwar al-Sadat is assassinated by a member of the Islamic Jihad group. Hosni Mubarak is sworn in as the 4th President of the Arab Republic of Egypt. 1982 The Saudi King Faysal bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud dies and is succeeded by his brother, Fahd bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud. During a Shura Council meeting, the ‘Egypt Office’ is established; the Brotherhood adopts the General Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood as its new statues, as well as the International Regulation of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood’s International Organization is formally inaugurated in Munich. 1983 Iranian militants in Lebanon mount two suicide operations against the headquarters of the American Marines and the French Paratroopers in Beirut. 1984 The Brotherhood becomes a junior partner in an alliance with the Wafd Party. Elections for the People’s Assembly are held and Brotherhood candidates win eight seats; ‘Issam al‘Arian becomes the youngest member of parliament.

xx

March* May

March April

May June

October

August

October

November

May

August September October November

chronology of events 1985 Khairat al-Shatir and Hasan Malek establish Salsabil. 1986 ‘Omar al-Tilmisani passes away; Hamid Abu Nasr becomes the Brotherhood’s 4th General Guide. 1987 The Brotherhood allies itself with the Labour Party and the Liberal Party. Elections for the People’s Assembly are held; the Brotherhood wins 36 seats and becomes the largest opposition block in parliament. The Egyptian government enters into negotiations with the IMF. The regime launches a crackdown against the Brotherhood, arresting over 3,000 members and supporters. Brotherhood members win 61 seats on the executive board of the Engineers’ Syndicate at Cairo University. 1988 Osama bin Laden establishes al-Qaida in Peshawar; the Iran-Iraq war ends after Iran accepts a UN-brokered ceasefire. Abu al-‘Ala’ Madi is elected Assistant Secretary General of the Engineers’ Syndicate; Abu al-Futuh is elected Secretary General of the Doctors’ Union. 1989 The fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany inaugurates the end of the Cold War. 1990 The People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen and the Yemen Arab Republic merge to form the Republic of Yemen. The Iraqi Armed Forces invade Kuwait. The Brotherhood’s Yemeni chapter, the ‘Yemeni Congregation for Reform’, is established in Sanaa. The United States initiates ‘Operation Desert Shield’, deploying 200,000 troops in the Persian Gulf. The Brotherhood adopts the General By-laws of the Society of the Muslim Brothers.

chronology of events

January November

January

February October

November

January-April

April May*

January June

August November

xxi

1991 The United States launches ‘Operation Desert Storm’ in Iraq. The government of Egypt and the IMF conclude the ‘Economic Reform and Structural Adjustment Programme’. 1992 In Algeria, the military cancels the parliamentary election of December 1991, which the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) had won with 48 percent of the vote. Salsabil’s offices are raided; over 1,250 Brotherhood members are arrested; an Islamist insurgency begins in Cairo. An earthquake hits Cairo and causes widespread humanitarian and economic damage; Brotherhood candidates win 18 seats on the executive board of the Lawyers’ Syndicate. At the Cairo Book Fair, Mohammed al-Ghazali argues for Islamic governance to be reconciled with the modern nation-state. 1993 The regime restricts syndication legislation and amends the Egyptian University Act; over 15,000 activists affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood are arrested. 1994 The Brotherhood adopts revised International By-laws. Emirati authorities dissolve the board of directors of the Reform and Social Counselling Association. 1995 The Brotherhood holds a Shura Council assembly in Cairo. An attempt is made on the life of Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa; Khairat al-Shatir becomes a member of the Guidance Office. The first military trial since 1965 is held at Hikestep military prison in Cairo. Elections for the People’s Assembly are held; the Brotherhood gains 1 seat, which is subsequently cancelled.

xxii

January

November

November

June*

May

September

January September

October March October

March

April

chronology of events 1996 Hamid Abu Nasr passes away; Mustafa Mashhur becomes the Brotherhood’s 5th General Guide; Abu al‘Ala’ Madi establishes the Wasat Party, leading to his ousting from the Brotherhood. Qatar establishes the satellite television network Al Jazeera in Doha. 1997 Members of the Jama‘a Islamiyya kill 58 tourists and four Egyptian guides in Luxor. 1998 The Brotherhood starts experimenting with building an online presence. 1999 Qatar brokers a peace agreement between Eritrea and Sudan in one of its first foreign mediation attempts. 2000 In Palestine, the al-Aqsa Intifada breaks out after the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visits the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. 2001 George W. Bush becomes the 43rd President of the United States. Al-Qaida terrorists fly passenger planes into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC, killing nearly 3,000 people. Student Union elections are held in Egypt. 2002 The Israeli Defense Forces invade the West Bank; thousands of students protest in Egypt. Mustafa Mashhur passes away; Ma’mun al-Hudaybi becomes the Brotherhood’s 6th General Guide. 2003 A US-led coalition of thirty-six countries launch ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’; thousands of activists protest in Cairo, Alexandria and other cities. The Brotherhood launches its main Arabic-speaking online portal Ikhwanonline.com.

chronology of events

January

March July September

April

May

August

NovemberDecember

January March

December

March

September

xxiii

2004 Ma’mun al-Hudaybi passes away; Mahdi ‘Akif becomes the Brotherhood’s 8th General Guide, after a brief interlude when the position is held by Mohammed Hilal. Mahdi ‘Akif introduces the Brotherhood’s ‘Reform Initiative’. A new Egyptian government is formed, headed by Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif. A group of intellectuals and public figures form the ‘Egyptian Movement for Change’, known as Kefaya. 2005 Over 50,000 Egyptians, including tens of thousands of Brotherhood members, protest in mass rallies across Egypt. Abu al-Futuh declares that the Brotherhood accepts the principles of a secular state ‘with religious terms of reference’. The Brotherhood launches its main Arabic-speaking website Ikhwanweb.com; the Saudi King Fahd bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud dies and is succeeded by his brother ‘Abdullah bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud. Elections for the People’s Assembly are held in three rounds; the Brotherhood gains 88 seats of parliament, or 20 per cent of the total. 2006 Hamas wins more than half of the seats of the Palestinian legislature. Thousands of Egyptians, including members of the Brotherhood, demonstrate against the nationalization of the judiciary. Hundreds of Brotherhood-affiliated students demonstrate at al-Azhar University. 2007 In a national referendum, four articles of the Egyptian constitution are amended, allowing for a hereditary succession of the president. Over 20,000 workers of the Egypt Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahallat al-Kubra protest in Cairo.

xxiv November

April

May

January

May May-July

December

January February June November

17 December 14 January 25 January 28 January 1 February

chronology of events The Brotherhood presents a new party platform, which is decisively more conservative and anti-liberal than Mahdi ‘Akif’s ‘Reform Initiative’ of 2004. 2008 Thousands of workers protest in Cairo; representatives for the municipal councils are elected; over 800 Brotherhood candidates are arrested. The Brotherhood holds Shura Council elections and partial Guidance Office elections. 2009 The Israeli Air Force bombs the Gaza Strip; tens of thousands protest in Egypt, including thousands of Brotherhood members; Barack Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States. The Brotherhood amends the 1990 General By-laws of the Society of the Muslim Brothers. The regime launches a wave of repression against the Brotherhood, arresting several members of the Guidance Office. The Brotherhood holds Guidance Office elections; Mohammed Habib resigns from his position. 2010 Mahdi ‘Akif resigns from his position; Mohammed Badi‘ becomes the Brotherhood’s 9th General Guide. Mohammed al-Baradei arrives at Cairo International Airport. Khaled Said is murdered by two police officers in Alexandria. Elections for the People’s Assembly are held and boycotted by all major parties except the Brotherhood, whose share is reduced to zero; over 1,200 Brotherhood members are arrested. Beginning of the uprising in Tunisia. 2011 Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali departs Tunisia to Saudi Arabia. Beginning of the Egyptian uprising. Millions of people across Egypt protest in the iconic ‘Friday of Anger’. The Brotherhood enters into negotiations with the SCAF.

chronology of events 11 February 13 February 14 February 17 February 19 March

23 March 30 March 16 April 30 April

May

29 July

9 October 19–24 November

November 2011– January 2012

23 January January–February 24 March 1 April

xxv

Under American pressure, Hosni Mubarak resigns from his position as president. The SCAF suspends the constitution of 1971, dissolves parliament and appoints a caretaker government. Beginning of the uprising in Bahrain. Beginning of the uprising in Libya. In a popular referendum, 77 percent of the people vote in favour of amending the 1971 Constitution is (with a turnout of 41 per cent). The SCAF-appointed cabinet approves a law criminalizing labour strikes. The SCAF issues a new constitutional declaration to amend the 1971 Constitution. The Supreme Administrative Court dissolves the NDP. Establishment of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP); the FJP publishes the first issue of its newspaper alHurriyya wa-l-‘Adala. The Shura Council suspends Abu al-Futuh’s membership in the Guidance Office; Brotherhood youth members announce the formation of the ‘Egyptian Current Party’. During the ‘Friday of the Sharia’ tens of thousands of Brotherhood members demonstrate in their first public rally since the 2011 uprising. 28 Coptic Christians protesting near Maspiro are killed by the military police. 33 protesters are killed and over 3,000 are wounded by the military police and the State Security Forces during the Mohammed Mahmud Street clashes. Elections for the People’s Assembly are held. The FJP wins 47.3 per cent of seats while the Salafi Nur Party wins 24.3 per cent. 2012 The new People’s Assembly holds its first session. Elections for the Consultative Council take place in two stages. A 100-member Constitutional Assembly is elected by the People’s Assembly. The FJP declares Khairat al-Shatir as its presidential candidate; after Shatir’s disqualification, Mohammed Morsi becomes the presidential candidate.

xxvi 23–24 May

14 June

16–17 June

24 June 30 June 8–9 July

12 August

October

14–20 November 22 November

29–30 November 5 December 9 December

22 December

chronology of events After the first round of the presidential elections, Morsi wins 24.8 per cent of the vote, followed by Ahmed Shafiq with 23.6 per cent. The SCC dissolves the People’s Assembly as unconstitutional and declares the Constitutional Assembly illegal; legislative powers pass to the SCAF. The second round of the presidential elections takes place; the SCAF announces a constitutional addendum to the March 2011 constitutional declaration. Morsi wins the presidential election with 51.73 per cent of the vote. Morsi is sworn in as the 5th President of the Arab Republic of Egypt. By presidential decree, Morsi orders the dissolved parliament to reconvene, thus defying the SCC’s 14 June ruling; the SCC overturns Morsi’s decree. Morsi issues a new decree abrogating the SCAF’s 17 June constitutional addendum; Mohammed al-Tantawi and Sami Anan are sent into retirement; ‘Abd al-Fatah alSisi becomes Minister of Defence and Commander-inChief of the Armed Forces. Opposition figures launch the Egyptian Constitutional Front to reject the constitution that is being drafted by the Constitutional Assembly; Morsi sacks the Prosecutor General ‘Abd al-Meguid Mahmud. 39 secular and liberal members withdraw from the Constitutional Assembly. Morsi issues a constitutional declaration shielding all presidential decisions from judicial oversight and preventing the Constitutional Assembly from dissolution. The Constitutional Assembly adopts the Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt of 2012. Violent confrontations take place in front of the Ittihadiyya Presidential Palace, resulting in ten deaths. Morsi issues a new constitutional declaration superseding the 22 November decree, but the immunity of the Constitutional Assembly is preserved. A new constitution is approved with 63.8 per cent in a national referendum (with a turnout of 32.9 per cent).

chronology of events

January

25–26 January 23 February May

15 June

28 June

30 June

3 July 8 July 24–26 July

14 August

27 August 5 September 23 September 24 November 24 December

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2013 10 new ministers are sworn in during a government reshuffle; Hussein al-Qazzaz presents the ‘Nahda Project’ to the president. 74 Ultras Ahlawy soccer fans are killed during a stampede in Port Said. Morsi calls for parliamentary elections on 22 April 2013. Grassroots activists launch the Tamarrud campaign; Morsi nominates a new cabinet to finalize the IMF negotiations. The Brotherhood holds a 20,000-strong rally in the Cairo International Stadium in support of the Syrian revolution. The Brotherhood mobilizes large numbers of rank-andfile members to mass rallies at Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya and Cairo University. Millions of Egyptians demonstrate at Tahrir Square and in front of the Ittihadiyya Presidential Palace in Cairo, as well as in a dozen other cities across the country. The government of Mohammed Morsi is ousted in a military coup. 51 Morsi supporters are killed by the security forces in front of the Republican Guards Club. Sisi asks Egyptians to grant him a ‘mandate to confront possible violence and terrorism’; the army clamps down on Morsi’s supporters gathering at the Munassa memorial, killing over 70. Between 600 and 1,000 Morsi supporters and Brotherhood members are killed by the security forces and the army in Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya and Nahda Square. The Brotherhood’s International Organization convenes an emergency meeting in Istanbul. The Minister of Interior, Mohammed Ibrahim, is almost killed in an attack in Nasr City. A Cairo court orders the confiscation of the Brotherhood’s money, assets and real estate. The parliament in Egypt passes Law No. 107 on the right to peaceful public meetings, processions and protests. A suicide attack on the police headquarters in Mansura kills a dozen people; the government of Egypt declares the Brotherhood a terrorist organization.

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February

7 March March–April

23 April 8 June August

November

19 January 23 January

24 January

February 22 March

22 April

15 May 27 May 29 June

chronology of events 2014 A 10-member ‘High Administrative Committee’, led by Mohammed Kamal, is announced in Cairo to act as the Brotherhood’s new executive body in Egypt. An Emirati court declares the Reform and Social Counselling Association a terrorist organization. A criminal court in Minya issues death sentences for 528 and 720 Brotherhood members; Saudi Arabia declares the Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Brigadier General Ahmed Zaki is killed in 6th of October City. ‘Abd al-Fatah al-Sisi is sworn in as the 6th President of the Arab Republic of Egypt. A criminal court in Cairo issues 494 death sentences; three former Brotherhood members announce the formation of the ‘Popular Resistance Movement’. Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis pledges allegiance to ISIL and assumes the name Wilayat Sina’. 2015 The Brotherhood announces the establishment of the ‘Crisis Management Committee’ in Istanbul. The Saudi King ‘Abdullah bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud dies and is succeeded by his half-brother Salman bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud. The High Administrative Committee announces ‘Mohammed Muntassir’ to act as the Brotherhood’s new official spokesperson. A group called ‘Revolutionary Punishment’ launches a series of attacks against Egyptian businesses. An international coalition led by Saudi Arabia launches an aerial bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen. Ahmed ‘Abd al-Rahman announces that the Brotherhood is about to hold elections across all levels of the organization; the Crisis Management Committee is renamed to ‘Crisis Management Office for Egyptians Abroad’. Morsi is sentenced to death by a criminal Court in Cairo. 150 scholars issue a fatwa, known as the ‘Egypt Call’. Egypt’s public prosecutor Hisham Barakat is assassinated in Heliopolis.

chronology of events 1 July August

12 December

17 December

January March May

August 3 October 20 December

20 January 22 March

5 June 21 June September

January

xxix

10 Brotherhood members are killed during a police raid in 6th of October City. Emergency meetings are held in Istanbul and Cairo to find a compromise between the Guidance Office and the High Administrative Committee; a new High Administrative Committee is announced. Mahmud Hussein declares the first High Administrative Committee illegitimate; Tal‘at Fahmy is nominated as the Brotherhood’s official spokesperson. Sir John Jenkins publishes a report entitled ‘Muslim Brotherhood Review: Main Findings’. 2016 The ‘Revolutionary Punishment’ adopts the name ‘Movement of Egypt’s Forearms’. Yusuf al-Qaradawi invites Brotherhood leaders to Doha for reconciliation talks. Mohammed Kamal publishes a roadmap for new Shura Council elections to be held; the leaders of the High Administrative Committee relinquish their memberships. The ‘Revolutionary Brigade’ stages a series of attacks in Munufiyya. Mohammed Kamal is assassinated in Cairo. The Brotherhood in Egypt announces the establishment of the ‘General Office’. 2017 Donald J. Trump is inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States. Brotherhood youth activists publish ‘Vision 28’ and launch the Project of the General By-laws of the Muslim Brotherhood. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain impose an air, sea and land blockade on Qatar. King Salman replaces the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef with his son, Mohammed bin Salman Al Sa‘ud. Brotherhood members establish the ‘Founding Body of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Abroad’. 2018 Mohammed Badi‘ sends a letter from prison, urging Brotherhood leaders to compromise.

xxx 1 April

17 June

chronology of events The Brotherhood celebrates its 90th anniversary in Istanbul. 2019 Following a court hearing in Cairo, Mohammed Morsi collapses and subsequently dies of a heart attack. He is buried at an unknown location in Nasr City.

* Month could not be established with absolute accuracy.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

The Society of the Muslim Brothers General Guides (1928–2018) Hasan al-Banna, 1928–49 Hasan al-Hudaybi, 1951–73 ‘Omar al-Tilmisani, 1973–86 Hamid Abu Nasr, 1986–96 Mustafa Mashhur, 1996–2002 Ma’mun al-Hudaybi, 2002–4 Mohammed Hilal, 2004 Mohammed Mahdi ‘Akif, 2004–10 Mohammed Badi‘, since 2010

Leaders of the ‘First Cohort’ (1928–54) ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Banna, Shura Council member since 1934 Ahmed Sukkari, Deputy to the General Guide, 1939–47 ‘Salih ‘Ashmawi, Head of the Special Apparatus, 1942/3–1947; Deputy to the General Guide, 1947–9* Abd al-Rahman al-Sanadi, Head of the Special Apparatus, 1947–54 Salah Shadi, Major General of the Egyptian Police*; Co-founder and member of the Special Apparatus* Ahmed al-Malt, Deputy to the General Guide*; Head of the Medical Mission of the Special Apparatus, 1948–9 Ahmed Hasanin, Member of Special Apparatus, 1941–9 Manna‘ al-Qattan, Member of Special Apparatus, 1946–54 ‘Abbas al-Sisi, Member of Guidance Office* Sheikh al-Bahi al-Khuli, Member of the Guidance Office* Sa‘id Ramadan, Private Secretary of Hasan al-Banna, 1946–9 Kamal al-Din al-Sananiri, Member of Special Apparatus* xxxi

xxxii

dramatis personae

Leaders since the ‘Second Founding’ (1982–2009) Mahmud ‘Izzat, Member of the Guidance Office since 1981; Secretary General, 2001–11 Mohammed Habib, Member of the Guidance Office, 1985–2010 ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh, Member of the Guidance Office, 1987–2011 Gum‘a Amin, Member of the Guidance Office, 1995–2015; Deputy to the General Guide, 2009–15 Rashid al-Bayumi, Member of the Guidance Office since 1995; Deputy to the General Guide since 2009 Khairat al-Shatir, Member of the Guidance Office since 1995; Deputy to the General Guide since 2009 Mahmud Hussein, Member of the Guidance Office since 1995; Secretary General since 2013 Mahmud Ghozlan, Member of the Guidance Office since 1995; Secretary General, 2009–11 Osama Nasr al-Din, Member of the Guidance Office since 2008 Sa‘d al-Hosseini, Member of the Guidance Office since 2008 Sa‘d al-Katatni, Member of the Guidance Office since 2008; Secretary General of the Freedom and Justice Party, 2012–13 Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Morsi, Member of the Guidance Office since 2008 Muhi Hamid, Member of the Guidance Office since 2008 ‘Issam al-‘Arian, Member of the Guidance Office, 2009–20 Mohammed Morsi al-‘Ayyat, Member of the Guidance Office, 2009–19 ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Barr, Member of the Guidance Office since 2009 Mahmud Abu Zayd, Member of the Guidance Office since 2009 Mustafa al-Ghonaymi, Member of the Guidance Office since 2009 Mohammed ‘Ali Bishr, Member of the Guidance Office since 2009; Minister of State for Local Development, 2012–13

Middle-rank Leaders (1982–2013) Ayman ‘Abd al-Ghany, Deputy Head of the Student Section, 2009–13 Hussein Ibrahim, Secretary General of the Freedom and Justice Party, 2012–13 Khalid Dawud, Student leader at the University of Alexandria* Mokhtar Nuh, President of the Lawyers’ Syndicate* Ibrahim al-Za‘farani, Student leader at the University of Alexandria* Hamid Dafarawi, Student leader at the University of Alexandria* Gamal Heshmat, Student leader at Cairo University*

dramatis personae

xxxiii

Members of the ‘Brotherhood Youth’ (2002–13) Islam Lotfy, Student Committee at Cairo University* Mohammed al-Qassas, Student Committee at Cairo University* Ahmed ‘Abd al-Gawwad, Student Committee at Cairo University* Hani Mahmud, Member of the Student Committee at Cairo University* Mohammed ‘Affan, Member of the Student Committee at Cairo University*

Members of the Guidance Office (2011–18) ‘Abd al-‘Azim Abu Sayf al-Sharqawi, Member of the Guidance Office, 2011–17 (deceased) Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim, Member of the Guidance Office since 2011 Hussam Abu Bakr, Member of the Guidance Office since 2011 Mohammed Kamal, Member of the Guidance Office, 2011–16; Head of the High Administrative Committee, 2014–16 Mohammed Taha Wahdan, Member of the Guidance Office since 2012 ‘Issam al-Haddad, Member of the Guidance Office since 2012 Mohammed Sa‘d ‘Aliwa, Member of the Guidance Office since 2013 Ibrahim Munir, Member of the Guidance Office since 2015; Secretary General of the International Organization since 2010

Members of the ‘Second Rank’ (2013–18) Ahmed ‘Abd al-Rahman, Head of Northern Sa‘id Sector, 2000–5; Chairman and Executive Official of the Administrative Office Turkey since 2017 ‘Ali Batikh, Chairman of the Founding Body of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Abroad since 2017 ‘Abd al-Fattah Mohammed Ibrahim al-Sisi, Head of Sharqiyya Sector*

Brotherhood-affiliated Scholars and Intellectuals al-Sayyid Sabiq, Member of the Shura Council*; member of Special Apparatus* Mohammed al-Ghazali, Chairman of the International Institute of Islamic Thought* Mustafa Amin, Founder of Akhbar al-Yawm, 1944 Mohammed Mitwally al-Sha‘rawi, Minister of Awqaf, 1976–8 Yusuf al-Qaradawi, President of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, 2004–18 *

Dates could not be established with accuracy.

xxxiv

dramatis personae

Egypt Nuqrashi Pasha, Prime Minister, 1946–8 Gamal Abdel Nasser, President, 1954–70 Mohammed Anwar al-Sadat, President, 1970–81 Nabawy Isma‘il, Minister of Interior, 1977–82 ‘Abd al-Halim Abu Ghazala, Minister of Defence, 1981–9 Hosni Mubarak, President, 1981–2011 Habib al-‘Adly, Minister of Interior, 1997–2011 ‘Omar Sulayman, Director of the General Intelligence Directorate, 1993–2011; Vice President, January–February 2011 Ahmed Nazif, Prime Minister, 2004–11 Sami Anan, Army Chief of Staff, 2005–12 ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, Director of Military Intelligence, 2010–12; Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, 2012–14; President since June 2014 Ahmed Shafiq, Prime Minister, 2011 Kamal Ganzouri, Prime Minister, 2011–12 Mohammed Hussein al-Tantawi, Chairman of the SCAF, 2011–12 Mohammed Morsi al-‘Ayyat, President, 2012–13 Hisham Qandil, Prime Minister, 2012–13 Ahmed Mekky, Minister of Justice, 2012–13 ‘Issam al-Haddad, Advisor for Foreign Policy, 2012–13 ‘Amr Darrag, Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, May– July 2013 Mohammed Ibrahim, Minister of Interior, 2013–15 Magdi ‘Abd al-Ghaffar, Minister of Interior since 2015

United States of America James Earl Carter, President, 1977–81 Ronald Reagan, President, 1981–9 George H. W. Bush, President, 1989–93 William J. Clinton, President, 1993–2001 George W. Bush, President, 2001–9 Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State, 2005–9 Robert Gates, Secretary of Defence, 2006–11 Barack H. Obama, President, 2009–17 Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, 2009–13 Susan Rice, Ambassador to the United Nations, 2009–13 John Kerry, Secretary of State, 2013–17 Donald J. Trump, President, 2017–21

dramatis personae

xxxv

Jared Kushner, Senior Advisor to the President, 2017–21 Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State, 2017–18 James N. Mattis, Secretary of Defence, 2017–18

Saudi Arabia ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud aka. Ibn Sa‘ud, King, 1932–53 Sa‘ud bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud, King, 1953–64 Faysal bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud, King, 1964–75 Khalid bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud, King, 1975–82 Fahd bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud, King, 1982–2005 ‘Abdullah bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud, King 2005–15 Nayef bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud, Crown Prince, 2011–12, Minister of Interior, 1975–2012 Salman bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud, Crown Prince since 2017 Mohammed bin Salman Al Sa‘ud, Deputy Crown Prince, 2015–17; Crown Prince since 2017 Sa‘ud bin Faisal bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud, Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1975–2015 Muhammad ibn Ibrahim Al Sheikh, Grand Mufti, 1953–69 Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz, Grand Mufti, 1993–9 Abdul Aziz ibn Abdullah Al Shaykh, Grand Mufti since 1999

United Arab Emirates Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, President, 1971–2004 Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President since 2004 Rashid bin Sa‘id Al Maktum, Ruler of Dubai, 1958–90, Prime Minister, 1979–90 Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince since 2004 Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktum, Ruler of Dubai, Prime Minister and Vice President since 2006 ‘Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation since 2006 Yousef al-Otaiba, Ambassador to the United States since 2008

Iran Ruholla Khomeini, Supreme Leader, 1979–89 ‘Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader since 1989 Mahmud Ahmadinejad, President, 2005–13 Hasan Rouhani, President since 2013

xxxvi

dramatis personae

Mohammad Javad Zarif, Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2013 Qasem Soleimani, Commander of the IRGC Quds Forces, 1998–20

Turkey Necmettin Erbakan, Prime Minster, 1996–7 Abdullah Gül, President, 2007–14 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minster, 2003–2014, President since 2014 Ahmet Davutoğlu, Minister of Foreign Affairs, 2009–14 Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Minister of Foreign Affairs, August 2014–August 2015 and since November 2015

Qatar Ahmed bin ‘Ali Al Thani, Emir, 1960–72 Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir, 1972–95 Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Emir, 1995–2013 Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir since 2013 Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1992–2013; Prime Minister, 2007–13 Khalid bin Mohammed al-‘Atiyya, Minister of Foreign Affairs, 2013–16

Yemen ‘Ali ‘Abdullah Saleh, President, 1978/1990–2012 ‘Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, Vice President, 1994–2012, President since 2012 Mohammed Basindawa, Prime Minister, 2011–14 Khalid Baha, Prime Minister, 2014–16 ‘Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, Vice President since 2016

Great Britain Tony Blair, Prime Minster, 1997–2007 David Cameron, Prime Minster, 2010–16

European Union Catherine Ashton, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, 2009–14 Bernardino León, Special Representative for the Southern Mediterranean Region, 2011–14

dramatis personae

xxxvii

Russia Vladimir Putin, President, 2000–8 and since 2012

China Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party since 2012

ABBREVIATIONS

AKP ASU FCO FIS FJP GCC GDP G-8 IDF IMF IRGC ISIL MEPI MP NDP NGO NSA OPEC PA PKK PLO PYD QIZ RCC SAC SCAF SCC SNC SSIS WAMY YRC

Justice and Development Party Arab Socialist Union Foreign and Commonwealth Office Front Islamique du Salut (Islamic Salvation Front) Freedom and Justice Party Gulf Cooperation Council Gross Domestic Product Group of Eight Israeli Defense Forces International Monetary Fund Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (also known as ISIS) Middle East Partnership Initiative Member of Parliament National Democratic Party Non-Governmental Organization National Security Agency Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Palestinian Authority Kurdistan Workers Party Palestinian Liberation Organization Democratic Union Party Qualified Industrial Zone Revolutionary Command Council Supreme Administrative Court Supreme Council of the Armed Forces Supreme Constitutional Court Syrian National Council State Security Investigations Service World Assembly of Muslim Youth Youth Revolution Coalition

xxxviii

u Prologue

O you, who have believed: Obey God and obey the Messenger, and those in authority among you. The Quran, sura al-Nisa’ (the Women), verse 59 Our Lord, indeed, We obeyed our masters and our dignitaries, And they led us astray from the [right] path. Our Lord, give them double the punishment, And curse them with a great curse.1 The Quran, sura al-Ahzab (the Parties), verses 67–68

On 3 July 2013 the Egyptian Armed Forces ousted Dr Mohammed Morsi from power. The sixty-two-year-old chemical engineer had risen from humble provincial origins to win the presidency of the Arab world’s mightiest nation only one year before. But within twelve short and turbulent months, the opposition against him had escalated in dramatic ways. On 1 July, as Morsi’s supporters and opponents gathered across Cairo in a number of spectacular sit-ins, demonstrations, protest marches and rallies, the Minister of Defence and the Commander of the Armed Forces, ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, issued an ultimatum, ordering Morsi to leave office within forty-eight hours. When the latter refused, the army seized power in a well-orchestrated maneuver. The build-up to these momentous events had been initiated ten days before, after the ‘National Alliance for the Support of Legitimacy’ – a Brotherhood-led coalition combining various Islamist groups and movements – had called on its supporters to converge in front of the Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya mosque in Nasr City and Cairo University in northern Giza.2 The Brotherhood’s decision to mobilize its rank-and-file members was itself a reaction to the expected mobilization 1

2

These verses were depicted as a graffito on a wall at Mohammed Mahmoud Street in late 2012. See ‘Other Graffiti.’ The Fourth Ordeal Online Archive, 18 October 2012. www .thefourthordeal.com/home/graffiti-and-street-art/other-graffiti/ (accessed 29 August 2018). Throughout this book, the term ‘Islamist’ is mainly used as an adjective (e.g. ‘Islamist groups’ or ‘Islamist movements’), while the term ‘Islamism’ is used when referring to the ideology of political Islam. When referring to the adherents of political Islam, we will use the term ‘Islamist activists’ or ‘supporters of political Islam’.

1

2

prologue

of Morsi’s opponents, who for weeks had prepared to gather on 30 June at Tahrir Square. The anti-Morsi camp was galvanized by a grassroots campaign called ‘Tamarrud’, which since early May had attempted to collect a greater amount of signatures than the number of votes Morsi had won during the June 2012 presidential elections. On 26 June, in a frantic effort to counter the effect of Tamarrud, thousands of buses, microbuses, cars and trucks began shuttling the Brotherhood’s rank and file to the emerging protest sites. Within days, the two spacious intersections in Nasr City and northern Giza were transformed into sprawling sites of political Islamic activism, as over one-hundred-thousand Morsi supporters came together to declare: ‘legitimacy is a red line’.3 Morsi’s supporters were determined to fight until the bitter end, and they had simple and clear arguments in defence of their cause. As the first ‘freely elected civilian president of Egypt’, Morsi was the bearer of constitutional legitimacy. An elderly farmer from Beni Sweif who participated in the protest – a tall and sturdy man wearing a brown galabiyya and a white turban – explained: ‘We have elected a president and we contracted with him for the duration of four years. At the end of his term we can make him accountable – but not after the first year!’4 As soon as the farmer had made his point, the man next to him launched into a forceful tirade against the fulul – those despicable ‘remnants’ of the old regime who had ‘failed to win any of the elections and now conspired with the liars against legitimacy and against Egyptians’.5 Elsewhere in the crowd at Rab‘a, a group of women gathered in a circle to express their frustration. They were led by an impressive lady in her thirties, who chanted revolutionary slogans, which the others repeated in chorus while clapping in tune with their hands: Ishhad, ishhad, ya Allah: shar‘ak qawi illi ikhtarna! – Witness, O God, witness this: Your strong law we chose for us! Yalla, bi-tis’al: ihna min? Ihna al-sha‘b min khamsa wa ‘ashrin! – Come on, ask us: Who are we? We’re the youth of twenty-fifth January! Thawra, thawra hatta al-nasr, thawra fi kull shawari‘ Masr! – Revolution, revolution until victory, revolution in all of Egypt’s streets! Ya hurriyya, ya insaniyya, Masr hatifdal Islamiyya! – O freedom, O humanity, Egypt will stay Islamic!6 3

4 5

6

‘Arriving at Rabaa.’ The Fourth Ordeal Online Archive, 28 June 2013. www.thefourthordeal.co m/home/protest-scenes/rabaa-al-adawiyya/arriving-at-rabaa/ (accessed 29 August 2018). ‘Omar. Interview with author. Cairo, 30 June 2013. The term ƒulul became popular during the 2011 uprising referring to the corrupt ‘remnants’ of Mubarak’s regime, an active participle of falla, ‘run away’ or ‘flee’, hence al-ƒulul as in ‘the defeated’ or ‘the scattered’. ‘Women at Rabaa.’ The Fourth Ordeal Online Archive, 27 June 2013. www.thefourthordeal.co m/home/protest-scenes/rabaa-al-adawiyya/women-at-rabaa/ (accessed 30 August 2018). For an excellent personal account on female protesters in the context of the 17 October 2019 revolution in Lebanon, see Chokr, Mae Anna. ‘I Discovered Feminism in a Revolution.’ AlRaida Journal 44, no. 1 (August 2020), pp. 7–14.

prologue

3

Such were the voices of ordinary men and women who had gathered in order to defend ‘democracy’ – an idea that was perhaps vague to many, but which combined concepts such as freedom, fairness and dignity, and which was to yield a just and uncorrupted political order inspired by a set of conservative, Sharia-based values, principles, rules and behaviours. On 29 June in the afternoon, Morsi’s supporters gathered in extended makeshift tent villages, sharing food, praying together and passionately discussing the future of Egypt. Every now and then, as news spread that a celebrity-preacher was about to visit the sit-in, dozens of rank-and-file members jumped up in a frenzied brouhaha in order to greet the new arrival. Scores of street vendors were drawn to the protest sites as well, selling Brotherhood hats, Egyptian flags, Palestine scarves, prayer beads, miniQurans and key-chains engraved with the Brotherhood’s logo. After evening prayers, detachments of youths equipped with wooden sticks and yellow helmets set up checkpoints to protect the encampments from unwelcome intruders. Somewhere, a ragtag squadron jogged around the perimeter in a disorderly fashion, with some swinging their wooden sticks through the air like light sabres while chanting Full-Metal-Jacket-style running cadences: Al-Dustur huwa al-Qur’an, Hasan al-Banna qalha zaman! – Our constitution is the Quran, Hasan al-Banna said so all along!7

As night fell, the sense of anticipation at the opposition’s impending protests in Tahrir Square and at the Ittihadiyya Presidential Palace could be tangibly felt. One participant defiantly exclaimed: ‘We will stay until the problem is solved! We won’t do anything against peaceful protests; but storming the presidential palace or trying to discriminate against the president – this is a red line for us!’8 From a stage set up in front of the Rab‘a mosque, the wellknown Brotherhood figure Mohammed al-Beltagi riled up the crowds with fierce slogans: ‘You are here today to defend God’s religion! Today, we have come for the sake of martyrdom, for the sake of defending Islam, by defending Dr Mohammed Morsi against the illegitimate coup!’9 Moments later, another famous agitator called Safwat Hijazi bellowed: ‘It is a war against Islam! And if it is a Crusader war, then we have one thousand Salah al-Din fighters [to oppose the Crusaders]’. The crowds emphatically responded:

7

8 9

‘Defending Rabaa.’ The Fourth Ordeal Online Archive, June 2013. www.thefourthordeal.co m/home/protest-scenes/rabaa-al-adawiyya/defending-rabaa/ (accessed 30 August 2018). Group interview with author. Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya, Cairo, 28 June 2013. al-Beltagi, Mohammed. ‘Al-Duktūr Muhammad al-Beltajī: Khitāb al-Beltajī min Manassa ˙ the Stage of Rab‘a ˙al˙ Rābi‘a al-‘Adawiyya (Dr. Mohammed ˙al-Beltagi: Speech from ‘Adawiyya).’ YouTube, 30 June 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s1VDqUmlhg (accessed 31 December 2016).

4

prologue Bi-ruh, bi-damm, nifdak ya Islam! – With our souls, with our blood, we sacrifice ourselves to you, O Islam.10

Then came the much anticipated Talateen Sitta – the thirtieth day of the sixth month. By early afternoon, Tahrir Square had accumulated several hundred-thousand people.11 Watching from atop a tall building at the Square’s eastern perimeter, a puzzled eyewitness to these momentous events could see a mesmerizing and colourful ocean of people moving in a rhythmic flow below. The massive gathering was underlined with countless voices, chants, whistles and firework explosions, while thousands of vuvuzelas filled the air with a monotonous undertone. In a relentless staccato, the crowds chanted: Yasqut, yasqut, hukm al-Murshid! Yasqut, yasqut, hukm al-Murshid! – Down, down with the rule of the Murshid! Down, down with the rule of the Murshid! Irhal! Irhal! Irhal! Irhal! Irhal! – Leave! Leave! Leave! Leave! Leave! Al-thawra mustamirra, al-thawra mustamirra! – The revolution continues, the revolution continues!12

Suddenly, at around 4.30 p.m., the ra-ta-ta-ta of army helicopters appearing on the sky above Tahrir Square elevated the day’s suspense to its peak. As the silhouettes of the seven Apaches hovered against the sunset atop Cairo’s skyline, they were greeted by the crowds in the Square with ecstatic joy: Al-gaysh, wa-l-sha‘b, eed wahda! Al-gaysh, wa-l-sha‘b, eed wahda! – The People and the army are one hand! The People and the army are one hand!

In the early-morning hours of the next day, the atmosphere at Rab‘a had grown extraordinarily tense. Morsi’s supporters had heard of the massive 10 11

12

Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 29 June 2013. The question of the size of these protests has been a fiercely debated issue among sympathizers and opponents of Morsi, with each side either downplaying or grossly overstating the number of protesters. Neil Ketchley compared national turnouts in the 30 June demonstrations using event data, and found significant disparities in reporting of the overall size of the demonstrations. For instance, speaking to CNN on 3 July 2013, Major General Sameh Sayf al-Yazal claimed that 33 million Egyptians had protested on 30 June: Ketchley, Neil. Egypt in a Time of Revolution: Contentious Politics and the Arab Spring. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, chapter 5. For the overstated accounts, see: ‘Millions flood Egypt’s Streets to demand Mursi quit.’ Reuters, 30 June 2013. www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-protests-idUSBRE95Q0NO20130630 (accessed 31 December 2016); Kirkpatrick, David D., Kareem Fahim and Ben Hubbard. ‘By the Millions, Egyptians Seek Morsi’s Ouster.’ New York Times, 30 June 2013. www .nytimes.com/2013/07/01/world/middleeast/egypt.html (accessed 31 December 2016). ‘Crowds at Tahrir Square.’ The Fourth Ordeal Online Archive, 30 June 2013. www .thefourthordeal.com/home/protest-scenes/tahrir-square/crowds-at-tahrir-square (accessed 30 August 2018).

prologue

5

popular outpouring during the previous day, and while many talked of a ‘Photoshop revolution’, there was a clear sense of incertitude at what was to come next.13 In the late afternoon, news broke that Sisi had ordered the president to resign within forty-eight hours. If the army failed to intervene, Sisi warned, Egypt would be at risk of sliding into civil war.14 Morsi had appointed the enigmatic general only ten months before in what was widely regarded at the time as an assertion of presidential prerogatives over the powerful Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. But by now, the tables had turned. Yet, this did not in any way affect the determination of Morsi’s supporters. As if emboldened by the ultimatum, they chanted: Iqtil wahid, iqtil miyya, mish hansibha li-l-haramiyya! – Kill one, kill one hundred, we will not leave [Egypt] to the thieves! Qul ma‘aya, yalla qul, mish hansibha li-l-fulul! – Say with me, come on say: we’re not going to leave [Egypt] to the old regime!15

It was a strange spectacle, especially in light of the events that would unfold during the coming weeks, months and years. But here they were – those foot soldiers of the Muslim Brotherhood. Nothing could shake their conviction in the righteousness of their cause, for it was for them, they believed, to carry the Egyptian revolution forward and establish God’s law on earth.16 After all, was it not this that God Almighty had revealed to His Prophet Mohammed? Was it not written in the Quran: And prepare against them whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war, by which you may terrify the enemy of God and your enemy and others besides them whom you do not know [but] whom God knows. Whatever you spend in the cause of God will be fully repaid to you. You will not be wronged.

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‘Hiwār ma’ ‘Isām al-‘Aryān (Interview with ‘Issam al-‘Arian).’ MBC, 2 July 2013. www ˙ ˙ .youtube.com/watch?v=U-1BD0ia700 (accessed 11 August 2015). ‘Egypt protests: Army issues 48-hour Ultimatum.’ The Guardian, 1 July 2013. www .theguardian.com/world/middle-east-live/2013/jul/01/egypt-stanoff-millions-protest#block -51d1e142e4b042dd8f04a137 (accessed 30 August 2018). ‘Rabaa at Night.’ The Fourth Ordeal Online Archive, 30 June 2013. www.thefourthordeal.com /home/protest-scenes/rabaa-al-adawiyya/rabaa-at-night/ (accessed 30 August 2018). Throughout the course of this book, the period between 25 January and 11 February 2011 is sometimes referred to as a ‘revolution’ and sometimes as an ‘uprising’. While the course of subsequent events has proven not to have resulted in a fundamental societal, economic and political transformation, as the term ‘revolution’ would suggest, I refer to them as a ‘revolution’ whenever the vantage points of those who were involved in these events is being narrated. In all analytical sections, where we are able to judge these events with the added wisdom of hindsight, the more accurate notion ‘uprising’ is preferred.

6

prologue

On the night of 2 July, Morsi appeared in front of the cameras. Many among Egypt’s secular and liberal classes who were watching the speech were somewhere between indignant, angered and amused to see a paternalistic president lecturing his ‘children’ about democracy and the rule of law. After a bizarre forty-minute rant, Morsi bluntly defied the military’s ultimatum.17 It was to be the last time that Morsi would be seen in public. For as soon as the deadline expired the following day, the army took over the reins of power in a slick military manoeuvre.18 Over the coming days and weeks Mohammed Morsi, along with many of his advisors and high-ranking leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Freedom and Justice Party, were arrested or went into exile or the underground. The final act of Egypt’s short-lived democratic experiment occurred six weeks later. After a tense month of Ramadan, during which Morsi’s supporters continued to occupy the intersection at Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya, the regime on 14 August brutally cracked down on the Brotherhood’s sit-in, killing hundreds of members and sympathizers, including women and children, in what would become one of the bloodiest acts of violence in recent Egyptian history. The following month, a court ordered the dissolution of the Brotherhood and the confiscation of all its assets. In December 2013, after a deadly suicide attack on the police headquarters in Mansura, the new Egyptian government declared the Brotherhood a terrorist organization. As the curtain fell over this historical drama, the Muslim Brotherhood was pushed back underground, where it had been for the greater part of its history.

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Egypt’s famed political humour was immortalized in this ‘carnival’ video by DJ Ahmed Nu’man: ‘Mahrajān al-Shar‘iyya Dī Jay Muhammad Mursī (Legitimacy Carnival with DJ ˙ Mohammed Morsi).’ YouTube, 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQppPxQ_tc8 (accessed 11 August 2015). ‘Army Deployment.’ The Fourth Ordeal Online Archive, 3 July 2013. www.thefourthordeal.co m/home/protest-scenes/cairo-university/army-deployment/ (accessed 30 August 2018).

u Introduction

In so far as what men believe to be real is real, my concern was not the validity of these beliefs, but only the fact of their existence. Richard P. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (1969)

This book tells the story of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt between 1968 and 2018. It is a tale of the rise and fall of a socio-religious movement and a political organization, which for a short period had reached the pinnacle of power, only to be pushed out again after one year. For the Brotherhood’s own members, the victory of Mohammed Morsi in June 2012 represented a watershed moment that few would have imagined possible in their lifetimes. After eighty-five years of struggle, the Society to which they had devoted their lives had finally reached the top. Once they held the keys to power, the implementation of the ‘Islamic project’ – that utopian dream of a profound moral, cultural and social reform, which was to be based on Islamic ethics and Sharia law, and which would inevitably culminate in the establishment of an Islamic caliphate – became a rallying call for Islamic political activists around the world. But already on 3 July 2013, Morsi was overthrown and, in the following years, tens of thousands of Brotherhood members were imprisoned, fled into exile or went underground. One of the prisoners was the president himself who, after having spent nearly six years locked away in solitary confinement, unspectacularly passed away following a court hearing on 17 June 2019. The ‘fourth ordeal’, as one Brotherhood member referred to the period after 2013, was the most vicious crackdown the group had experienced so far.1 Yet, it was not the first time that the Society had been tested in such a way. Since 1928, when the Brotherhood had been established by that charismatic young imam and schoolteacher called Hasan al-Banna, its members had witnessed three episodes of repression. The first of these ‘ordeals’ lasted about three years.2 After discovering the existence of an armed secret cell within the Brotherhood, the Egyptian government dissolved the Society on 1 2

Tariq*. Interview with author. Cairo, 15 September 2013. See for instance al-Tilmisani, Omar. Dhikrayāt Lā Mudhakkarāt (Memories, Not Memoires). Cairo: Dar al-Tawzi‘ wa-l-Nashr al-Islamiyya, 2012.

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introduction

8 December 1948. A member of this paramilitary cell, known as the ‘Special Apparatus’, subsequently killed the Egyptian Prime Minster Nuqrashi Pasha. According to an MI6 report, the Palace had given its approval for the secret police to assassinate Hasan al-Banna – a plan that was executed on 12 February 1949.3 Two years later, after a court trial had absolved the Brotherhood’s senior leaders of responsibility for the assassination of the prime minister, the Brotherhood reconstituted itself in 1951 and then went on to support the Free Officers in overthrowing the monarchy in July 1952.4 The Brotherhood’s ‘second ordeal’ lasted longer and was more arduous. It began after a failed assassination attempt on the life of Gamal Abdel Nasser in October 1954 in the Alexandrian neighbourhood of al-Manshiyya. The secular-minded generals who formed the ranks of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), which had replaced the monarchy two years before, had been annoyed for some time with the Brotherhood’s obstinate lobbying for introducing Sharia-based legislation. The ‘Manshiyya incident’ thus presented a welcomed opportunity to blame the Brotherhood’s leaders for the failed assassination plot. During the autumn and winter of 1954, the military regime raided Brotherhood field offices and local branches across the country and imprisoned over 4,000 members. Seven top leaders were handed death sentences. Six of the sentences were carried out in December 1954, while that of the Brotherhood’s General Guide, Hasan al-Hudaybi, was commuted to lifelong imprisonment.5 Thousands of members emigrated, mainly to the Gulf, but also to other countries in the Middle East as well as to Europe, Asia and the United States, where they spread the Brotherhood’s message and contributed to the movement’s growth on a regional and global scale. In the mid 1960s, a group of Brotherhood cadres in Egypt devised a plan to replace the secular military regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser with an Islamic government.6 They had been inspired to this course of action by a short and powerful text titled Signposts on the Road (Ma‘alim fi-l-Tariq), which had 3

4

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6

Quoted in Curtis, Mark. Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam. London: Serpent’s Tail, 2012, p. 57. Mitchell, Richard P. The Society of the Muslim Brothers. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969, pp. 68 ff. Nasser’s membership in the Brotherhood is acknowledged by several sources. Tilmisani, referring to Salah Shadi’s biography, writes that Nasser’s contacts with the Brotherhood dated back to September 1942, when he came back from Sudan and contacted ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sanadi, through whom he pledged allegiance to the Murshid. See Shadi, Salah. Safahāt min al-Tārīkh (Pages from History). ˙ Memories, ˙ Kuwait: Sharikat al-Shu‘aʻ, 1981; al-Tilmisani, p. 178. For a voice-over of the speech, see ‘Jamāl ‘Abd al-Nāsir: Hādith al-Manshiyya (Gamal ˙ 1954. www.youtube.com Abdel Nasser: the Manshiyya Incident).’ YouTube, 26 ˙October /watch?v=zU1tC0L27s8 (accessed 20 September 2015). See the chapter Martyrdom in Calvert, John. Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism. London: Hurst & Company, 2010, pp. 229–71.

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started to make the rounds in Islamist circles after its publication in 1964. The author of this text was Sayyid Qutb, a former clerk in the Ministry of Education and a self-taught scholar of Islamic law, who had risen to fame as one of the Brotherhood’s most profound and enduring intellectuals. Over some 150 pages, Qutb advised his fellow Brothers that a spiritually enlightened ‘vanguard’ should assume the task of implementing the Islamic project. But in the summer of 1965, the authorities uncovered the plot and proceeded to crack down on the ‘Organization ’65’ (al-tanzim khamsa wa sittin), as the clandestine cell was referred to by the local press. The conspirators, as well as thousands of Brotherhood members, were rounded up and imprisoned, including Hasan al-Hudaybi. On 29 August 1966, following a military mock trial, Sayyid Qutb was hanged together with two other plotters. After this ‘third ordeal’, few expected the Brotherhood to resurface again – let alone to ever play any significant role in Egyptian politics.7 Yet, this is exactly what happened. ***

Much has been said and written about the Muslim Brotherhood since its ‘second founding’ in the early 1970s. Scores of scholars have studied this movement in its various aspects and by means of different frameworks and approaches. A popular analytical framework that was frequently used by political scientists was social movement theory, which attempted to explain the Brotherhood’s ability to mobilize its supporters.8 Other social scientists used democratization theory to understand the Brotherhood’s presumed role as a ‘democratizing’ force in the authoritarian system of Egypt.9 Some scholars 7 8

9

Tariq*. Interview with author. Cairo, 15 September 2013. Social movement theory originated with Doug McAdam, John McCarthy and Mayer Zald. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 3–6. Quintan Wiktorowicz applied social movement theory to Islamist groups in Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. So did Carrie Rosefsky Wickham in The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist Movement. Princeton: Princeton University, 2013. Abdullah alArian applied the theory to the period of the Brotherhood’s re-emergence in the 1970s in Answering the Call: Popular Islamic Activism in Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. On the aspect of mobilization, see for instance Munson, Ziad. ‘Islamic Mobilisation: Social Movement Theory and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’ in The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Autumn, 2001), pp. 487–510; Carrie Rosefsky Wickham in Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism, and Political Change in Egypt. New York; Chichester: Columbia University Press, 2002. On democratization, see Awadi, Hisham. The Muslim Brothers in Pursuit of Legitimacy: Power and Political Islam in Egypt Under Mubarak. London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2003; Tadros, Mariz. The Muslim Brotherhood in Contemporary Egypt: Democracy Redefined or Confined? London: Routledge, 2012; and Pargeter, Alison. The Muslim Brotherhood: From Opposition to Power. London: Saqi, 2013.

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have focused on ideology,10 while others have looked at specific aspects such as identity politics11 or literary production.12 Intellectual historians have documented the lives of key Brotherhood figures, including the first two General Guides Hasan al-Banna and Hasan al-Hudaybi, as well as Sayyid Qutb.13 Among the few existing accounts of political history, scholars had mainly focused on the period from 1928 to 195414 – with the exception of a handful of studies that examined the Brotherhood’s history during the 1970s.15 Beyond the academic literature, the Brothers themselves have written prolifically about their movement,16 as have scores of journalists, analysts and experts.17 Among this vast production of knowledge, opinions have been sharply divided between those who sympathize with, and those who fear the Brotherhood. Within the former camp, some portrayed the Brotherhood as 10

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On ideology, see Carré, Olivier. Les Frères musulmans: Egypte et Syrie, 1928–1982. Paris: Gallimard, 1983; Zollner, Barbara. The Muslim Brotherhood: Hasan al-Hudaybi and Ideology. London: Routledge, 2009; Khatab, Sayed. The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb: the Theory of Jahiliyyah. London: Routledge, 2006; Toth, James. Sayyid Qutb: the Life and Legacy of a Radical Islamic Intellectual. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013; Kandil, Hazem. Inside the Brotherhood. Cambridge: Polity, 2015. al-Anani, Khalil. Inside the Muslim Brotherhood: Religion, Identity, and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Rock-Singer, Aaron. Practicing Islam in Egypt: Print Media and Islamic Revival. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Krämer, Gudrun. Hasan al-Banna. Oxford: Oneworld, 2010; Calvert, John. Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism. London: Hurst & Company, 2010; Gerges, Fawaz. Making the Arab World: Nasser, Qutb, and the Clash that Shaped the Middle East. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. Mitchell. The Society; Harris, Christina Phelps. Nationalism and Revolution in Egypt: the Role of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Hague: Mouton & Company, 1964; Lia, Brynjar. The Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt: the Rise of an Islamic Mass Movement, 1928–1942. Reading, MA: Ithaca Press, 1998. Gilles Kepel looks at the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood from the 1970s until the assassination of Anwar Sadat, comparing what he called the ‘neo-Brotherhood’ with its original leadership: Kepel, Gilles. Le Prophète et le pharaon: aux sources des mouvements islamistes, Paris: Edition du Seuil, 1993. Among the best-known studies in Arabic are Mahmud, ‘Abd al-Halim. Al-Ikhwān alMuslimūn, Ahdāth Sanaʻat al-Tārīkh: Ruʼya min al-Dākhil (The Muslim Brotherhood, the Events that ˙Made˙ History: View From Inside). Alexandria: Dar al-Daʻwa, 2004; Tammam, Husam. Tahawwulāt al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn: Tafakkuk al-Aydulūjiyā wa ˙ Transformations of the Muslim Brotherhood: Ideological Splits Nihāyat al-Tanzīm (The ˙ and the End of the Organization). Cairo: Maktaba Madbouli, 2006; and Sultan, Jasim. Azmat al-Tanzīmāt al-Islāmiyya: al-Ikhwān namūdhajan (The Crisis of Islamist Organizations: ˙the Example of the Brotherhood). Beirut: Al-Shabaka al-ʻArabiyya lil-Abhath w-al-Nashr, 2015. Other titles are listed in the bibliography. A frequently quoted analyst is Shadi Hamid, who has written a number of books and articles on the Muslim Brotherhood, the latest one being Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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a moderate civil society organization and a force for democratic change within an authoritarian system.18 Within the latter camp, many based their account on the metaphor of ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’ or the dictum ‘one man, one vote, one time’. They typically painted an image of a malignant cult whose members only pretended to believe in freedom and democracy, while in reality being ‘fundamentally irrational by any external logic’.19 During the two decades since the 11 September 2001 attacks, these contradictory viewpoints had polarized the opinions of government officials, security professionals and policy-makers. However, many of the debates around ‘political Islam’ and ‘Islamism’ have remained abstract and contained, as they were, within the echo chambers of the self-referential Washington-based think-tank scene, focused primarily on a few buzzwords such as ‘jihad’, the ‘Sharia’ and the ‘caliphate’. Within the sprawling terror-literature industry of the post-9/11 world, debates around the Brotherhood have become sucked up by a growing army of fearmongering Islamophobia entrepreneurs and identitarians.20 From there, the discourse increasingly contaminated public opinion. During the eight years I spent researching this topic, I was sometimes struck by the fact of how almost anyone had some kind of opinion about the Muslim Brotherhood. It was as if the organization, with its actual statutes, members and activities, had taken on a life of its own within the collective imagination of the human mind. This book seeks to disentangle the confusing web of narratives and counternarratives surrounding the phenomenon ‘the Muslim Brotherhood’. It will do so by telling the Brotherhood’s history as narrated and remembered by those who were both its subjects and its protagonists: its own members and supporters. The story told here is concerned primarily with people and politics, and only secondarily with ideas and ideologies. My aim is to understand how the members of the Brotherhood had themselves made sense of their lives as part of this movement, and how this in turn had shaped the Brotherhood’s behaviour as a political actor. Most scholarship to date has explained the Brotherhood by reference to the social, political or ideational contexts in which it operated. Here, the causal arrow is turned around: the personal life

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Sullivan, Dennis. Islam in Contemporary Egypt: Civil Society vs the State. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1999; Leiken, Robert and Steven Brooke. ‘The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood.’ Foreign Affairs Vol. 86, No. 2 (March 2007). Such runs the argument of Traeger, Eric. ‘The Unbreakable Muslim Brotherhood: Grim Prospects for a Liberal Egypt.’ Foreign Affairs Vol. 90, No. 3 (September 2011). Some of the titles in this period include: Benjamin, Daniel. The Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam’s War against America. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003; Scheuer, Michael and Bruce Hoffman. Through Our Enemy’s Eyes. Washington, DC: Potomac Books Inc., 2007; Hoffman, Bruce. Inside Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

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introduction

stories and subjective experiences of current and former members are used as basic building blocks for the construction of a larger political history. This choice for subjectivity as a basic epistemological framework is based on three premises. First, the members of the Brotherhood are human beings, and as such are able to make sense themselves of the social and political world they inhabit. Second, members’ subjective experiences shaped the Brotherhood’s internal political life in fundamental ways. And third, the combination of these factors influenced the way the organization behaved in the political space. None of the above is meant to imply that the fate of the Brotherhood was not significantly influenced by external circumstances, and it is true that successive Egyptian regimes at various instances had tried to suppress the movement. But the members of the Brotherhood have never simply been passive figures subjected to ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’, as they have sometimes tended to present themselves. Rather, they were active players in the social and political context to which they belonged. This was particularly true during the twelve months between late June 2012 and early July 2013, when one of their own sons occupied the highest office of the land. During that period, the choices its leaders made (or failed to make) shaped the Brotherhood’s fortunes in consequential ways. By understanding these choices through the lens of the subjective experience of its members, this book suggests an alternative way of how we can make sense of that great saga that is the history of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Telling this history from the subjective standpoint of the Brotherhood’s members was only possible because of three factors: the choice of research methods; the environment in which these methods were put into play; and the ability to access the members of the Brotherhood. While the choice for Oral History as a research method was deliberative, its effectiveness in yielding original data was greatly magnified by the purely coincidental occurrence of the Egyptian uprising of 2011, which profoundly transformed the nature of my research environment. The events that unfolded in Egypt between January 2011 and July 2013, in turn, facilitated my ability to access the members of the Brotherhood. Thanks to the simultaneity between these historical events and my own research trajectory, it so happened that I was at the right place at the right time, and with the right kind of research topic. Without wanting to prioritize my own story over that of the Brotherhood, it is important to understand the inter-relatedness of these developments before delving into the Brotherhood’s history. On 13 January 2011, I submitted a research proposal to the University of Oxford, where I suggested conducting an Oral History of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. I was nudged towards that idea by two conversations I had the year before. The first one was with the eminent economic historian, the late Roger Owen, whom I had the privilege to spend several hours with in his office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the summer of 2010. It was he who

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advised me, over a few glasses of whisky, to focus on Egypt where – as he ominously mused – ‘something is bubbling underground’.21 The other conversation was with Yoav Suesskind, a technology entrepreneur whom I had befriended at a conference in Washington, DC shortly after my talk with Roger Owen. During a subsequent Skype conversation, Yoav insisted repeatedly that I should look into the Muslim Brotherhood as a potential doctoral topic.22 When I researched the journalistic and academic literature I found that, indeed, the Brotherhood was treated superficially in much of Western scholarship. Most studies, such as the one by Gilles Kepel,23 analysed religious texts written by Brotherhood members and from there drew simplistic inferences on the Brotherhood’s political behaviour. Only a few studies were based on empirical data, but this data was mostly generated from conversations with senior leaders, whose biased and politicized narratives yielded little deeper insight. Given the fuss that was constantly made by the media about ‘the Islamists’, it seemed strange that so little should be known about the world’s ‘most influential Islamist movement’, as the Brotherhood was sometimes referred to.24 My idea was to go to Egypt and meet with the members of the Brotherhood myself, so that they could themselves explain to me what the Brotherhood was all about, why they had become members of this old-boysclub, and what exactly they hoped to achieve. In the absence of any written archives, Oral History seemed to be the obvious methodological choice to get to this kind of information.25 Looking back, I doubt that the distinguished members of Oxford’s History Faculty would have ever seriously considered my proposal had it not been for the unexpected wave of uprisings that started in Tunisia in late 2010 and reached Egypt on 25 January 2011, sweeping the regime of Hosni Mubarak out of power eighteen days later. Suddenly, the topic I had proposed two weeks before was all over the news, with scores of experts predicting that the 21 22 23 24

25

Owen, Roger. Conversation with author. Boston, 20 July 2010. Suesskind, Yoav. Skype conversation with author. Geneva-Tel Aviv, 15 November 2010. Kepel. Le Prophète et le pharaon. See for example Hamid, Shadi, William McCants and Rashid Dar. ‘Islamism after the Arab Spring: between the Islamic State and the Nation-State.’ Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, January 2017. www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ islamism-after-the-arab-spring_english_web_final.pdf (accessed on 20 August 2018). Valuable resources on these research methods can be found in Thompson, Paul. The Voice of the Past: Oral History. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000; Ritchie, Donald A. Doing Oral History: a Practical Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003; ‘Principles for Oral History and Best Practices.’ Oral History Association, September 2009. www.oralhistory.org/about/principles-and-practices/oral-historyevaluation-guidelines-revised-in-2000/ (accessed 20 August 2018); Perks, Robert and Alistair Thomson. The Oral History Reader. London: Routledge, 1998; Emerson, Robert. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

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Brotherhood was going to win a majority of seats if any free parliamentary elections were to take place. What had previously been a naive, albeit perhaps historically interesting, idea was now not only feasible, but also politically relevant. My proposal was promptly accepted and the following October I found myself in the Upper Reading Room of the Bodleian Library in Oxford to prepare for my fieldwork. Nine months later, I boarded a plane to Cairo – just weeks before Mohammed Morsi became Egypt’s first freely elected president. The following eighteen months of fieldwork in Egypt were surely among the most exciting times I had experienced in my life so far. My daily routine started with four hours of Arabic in the morning, followed by errands through Cairo’s urban jungle where I, equipped with a notebook, a camera and a recording device, tried to get in contact with Brotherhood members. What before 25 January 2011 had been a closed research environment was now rather like the Wild West, as Egyptians from all social classes discussed politics at every street corner. Since literally everyone had something to say about the Brotherhood, almost every conversation turned into another piece of insight in this vast and confusing research puzzle. Most importantly, the Brotherhood’s own members, previously notorious for their reluctance to speak with outsiders, talked openly and proudly about the Society they were part of. Every now and then I found myself on the floor of a mosque in Cairo or Alexandria, surrounded by curious rankand-file members, one of whom drew elaborate organizational charts in my notebook while others eagerly explained to me the Brotherhood’s internal workings. On other days, I would engage in a conversation with an oldbooks salesman, who proudly displayed his collection of magazines and pamphlets published by current and past leaders of the Brotherhood. At other times still, I would sit in the office of a disillusioned dissident, to whom this visit by a ‘Swiss researcher from Oxford (bahith swissri min Uksfurd)’ presented a welcomed opportunity to vent about the despicable leaders in the Guidance Office. And sometimes, I was received by one of the venerated senior leaders themselves, who would narrate his life story with solemn gravitas before insisting (when asked, for instance, if the rumours of internal conflicts were true) that everything was fine, that no disagreements existed whatsoever, and that anyone who claimed otherwise had probably smoked too much hashish.26 The most memorable period of my fieldwork was the time between 21 June until my departure on 8 July 2013. During these three weeks I had the rare opportunity to witness the Brotherhood at their most formidable expression, as more than one-hundred-thousand members and supporters were mobilized in a spectacular tour de force at Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya and Nahda

26

ʻAkif, Mohammed Mahdi. Interview with author. Cairo, 19 May 2013.

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Square in order to defend the legitimacy of their president, Dr Mohammed Morsi. In early September 2013, I returned to Cairo for a final research visit and was promptly arrested twice: once by the police for asking suspicious questions, when I led a filming crew from the Swiss television channel SRF for a documentary about the Brotherhood.27 And again a few days later by the military police for having taken a picture of anti-military graffiti sprayed on the wall of the Presidential Palace at Ittihadiyya. These episodes indicated the extent to which the research environment had changed since I had first started my fieldwork. Like the casino-turned-restaurant known from US gangster movies during the times of prohibition, all bookshops where I had previously bought Brotherhood-related literature had completely changed their inventory. Most of my sources had gone mute and many members who previously had openly admitted their affiliation with the Brotherhood now denied that they had anything to do with this movement. Since I had first drafted my research proposal in December 2010, the Brotherhood had turned from Egypt’s largest opposition movement into the governing party before being declared a terrorist organization in December 2013. With the members of the Brotherhood imprisoned, exiled or pushed into the underground, I returned to Oxford to write up my thesis. I defended in December 2015 and, after a one-year break, started gathering new material in order to write a final chapter on the Brotherhood’s post-coup developments. Over the following two years, I conducted another combined six months of shorter field trips, mainly to Istanbul, London and Doha, where many exiled Brotherhood members live today, as well as to Manchester, Liverpool, Geneva, Ankara, Munich and Berlin. Thanks to the network of contacts and sources I had developed during my time in Egypt, I was able to gather the information I needed to write the final chapter. This brings me to the third factor that enabled me to write the Brotherhood’s history from the standpoint of subjectivity: the individuals who helped me in getting access to, and becoming knowledgeable about, the Muslim Brotherhood. The most important person in this respect was Sara Ramadan, a very capable journalist whom I had befriended in September 2012 at an event at the Swiss Ambassador’s residence in Cairo. Sara, who worked for the stateowned daily newspaper al-Ahram, facilitated my access to a number of senior Brotherhood leaders, as well as to a group of dissidents in Alexandria and Cairo, whose narratives became a central part of this story. The second key person was Ahmed Ban, a researcher on political Islam who had been a Brotherhood member for twenty-two years before leaving the group in 27

‘Die Muslimbruderschaft: Victor Willi auf den Spuren der Muslimbrüder.’ SRF Documentary, 20 November 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryp5AlOBsD0 (accessed 20 August 2018).

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2011. Due to his long-lasting involvement in one of the Brotherhood’s political committees, Ahmed had detailed knowledge on internal organizational and procedural matters, which he explained to me during several extended working session in his office in Downtown Cairo. Another key individual was Tariq (the name is an alias), a rank-and-file member in charge of one the Brotherhood ‘families’ in Cairo’s Darb al-Ahmar district. As different as Tariq and I were in origin, upbringing and worldview, I came to earn his trust and he introduced me to numerous friends, invited me to various cultural and sporting events organized by the Brotherhood, and regularly informed me about when and where the next political rally was going to take place. Six other individuals were instrumental in enabling me to write this book: Mohammed Sudan, a middle-ranking Brotherhood member in his mid fifties, whose acquaintance I had made in late 2012 in Alexandria, where he served as the Brotherhood’s media spokesperson. We met again in London in late 2016 and he subsequently introduced me to numerous friends in Qatar and Turkey. Two other key individuals were Abdelrahman Ayyash and Mohammed ‘Affan, the former a human rights activist whom I had befriended in late 2015 at a conference in Berlin, and the latter a doctoral student at the University of Exeter. Both played important roles in the Brotherhood’s youth wing before leaving the movement after 2011. ‘Ammar Fayed, an Istanbul-based researcher, a youth member and one of the best-informed people on the Brotherhood’s current state of affairs, was of outstanding importance as well. And finally, Osama al-Sayyad and Shadi Ibrahim, the former a well-connected investigative journalist and the latter a researcher, who had left the movement after July 2013. Both were instrumental in helping me understand the Brotherhood’s organizational and ideological developments after 2013. It would have been impossible to write this book had it not been for the help and support of these individuals. They, and many others, deserve a share of the credit – if any credit is due. For any shortcomings, I alone am responsible.

1 The Society of the Muslim Brothers

It is almost axiomatic . . . that the mind of the subordinate in any organization will yield richer deposits of fact than the mind of the principal. This is not merely because the subordinate is usually less on his guard, and less severely conventional in his outlook. The essential superiority lies in the circumstance that the working foreman, managing clerk or minor official is in continuous and intimate contact with the day-by-day activities of the organization. Beatrice Webb, My Apprenticeship (1926)

In January 1939, the Muslim Brotherhood held its fifth biannual congress in Cairo. Since its foundation in March 1928, the group had witnessed a period of unprecedented geographical expansion and organizational growth in terms of membership and activities, and by now had established itself as ‘one of the most important political contestants on the Egyptian scene’.1 With its basic organizational form completed, Hasan al-Banna took the Brotherhood’s tenth anniversary as an opportunity to take stock of past successes and outline a vision for the future. During his keynote address, which he delivered to an assembled crowd of tens of thousands of followers, Banna provided a blueprint of how the Society was to be understood. The Muslim Brotherhood, he explained, was in a first instance ‘a Salafi call’ that ‘takes back Islam to its pure fountainhead, the Quran and the Sunna’. It was secondly ‘a Sunni way of thought for all things, especially faith and worship, following the tradition of the Prophet’. Third, it was ‘a Sufi truth’ that provided for an ‘understanding [of] the basic virtue, purity and cleanliness of the heart and the self, the permanence and regularity of action, [as well as] spirit and forgiving’. Fourth, it was ‘a political organization’ that demanded ‘the government should be reformed, the foreign policy [should be] amended, and the nationhood [should be] defended’. In a fifth instance, it was ‘an athletic group’, a ‘training institute for body and soul’ that ‘cares for health, well-being and a strong body, which is necessary for the performance of the religious duties’. Sixth, the Brotherhood was ‘an institution 1

Mitchell. The Society, p. 8.

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of culture and knowledge’, as well as, seventh, ‘an economic company’, following the command that Islam should ‘direct the earning of money by lawful means’. And finally, it was ‘a social idea’ in the sense that the Brotherhood would ‘attend to the ills of society, find a cure and keep the nation healthy’.2 Implicit in this definition, which is astonishing in its ambition and breadth, was the idea of a truly comprehensive movement encompassing all areas of human activity – both in the material world as well as in the spiritual domain. This principle was enshrined in the notion of ‘comprehensiveness’, or alshumuliyya, at the root of was the idea of Islam as a total, all-embracing intellectual, spiritual, moral and religious system. Islam was applicable to all times and places, and had the purpose of regulating every aspect of human conduct, ‘adjudicating on every one of its concerns, and prescribing for it a solid and rigorous order’.3 Before diving into the main narrative of the Brotherhood’s history, this chapter briefly sketches out the movement’s early intellectual and political history, starting with its ideological precursors in the late nineteenth century to its founding in 1928 and up until 1966, when Sayyid Qutb was executed. It outlines the general historical context and some of the major concerns having led to the Brotherhood’s foundation, before providing a detailed overview of the group’s central ideological and organizational characteristics. The chapter is based on a wide range of Oral History interviews that were conducted with Brotherhood rank-and-file members in 2012 and 2013 in Cairo and Alexandria, a detailed analysis of the Brotherhood’s organizational and legal documents, as well as a reading of the available literature about the Muslim reformers. The intention here is not to tell the Brotherhood’s early history in detail – this task has been accomplished comprehensively and conclusively by Richard P. Mitchell in The Society of the Muslim Brothers.4 Rather, the chapter should be read as setting the stage for the Brotherhood’s history from its ‘second founding’ to its ‘fourth ordeal’. ***

Precursors While Banna was the first to articulate the idea of Islam as a ‘complete and comprehensive’ religion with such clarity, he stood within the intellectual 2

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al-Banna, Hasan. ‘Risālat al-Mu’tamar al-Khāmis (Letter of the Fifth Conference)’ in Majmūʻat Rasāʼil al-Īmām al-shahīd Hasan al-Bannā (Collection of Letters of the Martyred Imam Hasan al-Banna). Beirut:˙ al-Sahih, 2012, pp. 258–9. Banna, ‘Letter of ˙the Fifth Conference’ in Collection of Letters, p. 260. Also, see Lia, Brynjar. The Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt: the Rise of an Islamic Mass Movement, 1928–1942. Reading, MA: Ithaca Press, 1998.

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tradition of Islamic modernism – a reform movement that had been inaugurated in the nineteenth century and which attempted to reconcile the Islamic faith with the values of modernity. Banna’s intellectual outlook was shaped by this reform movement, particularly by a number of individuals from whose thought he carved out the basic shapes and forms that would make up the organizational and ideological tapestry of the Muslim Brotherhood.5 The Muslim reform movement was rooted in Egypt’s historical experience of the British occupation of 1882. Muslim intellectuals in those days grappled with the question of how the Islamic Empire, which until a few centuries ago had ruled the world from Andalusia to China, could have been eclipsed by Europe in such a dramatic fashion. Had the Quran not promised to Muslims that, if they lived according to Islam’s teachings and moral precepts, they would find success in this life and the next? Why, then, had Islam become so backward in every aspect of culture and civilization?6 Three men provided answers to these questions. The first was Jamal alDin al-Afghani, a mysterious character of uncertain origin who had lived from 1838 to 1897 and, in the apt words of Albert Hourani, had ‘passed like a meteor from one country to another’. It is unclear whether Afghani was born in Afghanistan, as his name implied, or in Iran, as his detractors claimed, attempting to stigmatize him as a Shia Muslim. Be that as it may, the impetuous Afghani had managed to endear himself with different Muslim rulers, including the Khedive in Cairo, and as such had a profound influence on intellectual debates in Egypt. His ideas – an eclectic blend of Arab nationalism, revolutionary pan-Islamism and European radicalism – aroused the spirit of national consciousness that had taken root among political and religious elites.7 Afghani was the first to expose the abysmal state of disunity, ignorance and decadence that had engulfed the entire Muslim world, and he warned of the susceptibility this created for European aggression. As the main culprits of this deplorable 5

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The following brief exposition of the Muslim reformer movement and its main proponents is based on the accounts of Hourani, Albert. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983; Kerr, Malcolm H. Islamic Reform: the Political and Legal Theories of Muhammad ‘Abduh and Rashid Rida. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966; Badawi, Muhammad Zaki. The Reformers of Egypt: a Critique of Al-Afghani, ‘Abduh, and Ridha. Slough: Open Press, 1976; Keddie, Nikki R. ‘Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn Al-Afghānī’s First Twenty-Seven Years: the Darkest Period.’ Middle East Journal 20, no. 4 (1966), pp. 517–33; Kedourie, Elie. Afghani and ‘Abduh: an Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam. London: FCass, 1966; and Haddad, Yvonne. ‘Muhammad ‘Abduh: Pioneer of Islamic Reform’ in Rahnama, ‘Ali (ed.). Pioneers of Islamic Revival, London: Zed, 1994. Hourani. Arabic Thought, pp. 103 ff., 130 ff. and 222 ff. On the question of Afghani’s origins, see Keddie, Nikki R. ‘Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn alAfghānī’s First Twenty-Seven Years: the Darkest Period.’ Middle East Journal 20, no. 4 (1966), pp. 517–33.

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state of affairs, he identified the scholars that formed the ranks of the religious establishment of al-Azhar, who slavishly followed an outdated scholastic tradition that bared little relevance to the everyday problems of Muslims. Accordingly, he encouraged his students to abandon the ivory tower of scholastic studies and instead engage with worldly subjects in order to express their opinions on these.8 Afghani suggested that Muslims should ‘return’ to the example of the early Muslim community, as embodied in the lives of the Prophet and his companions. He encouraged them to discover the true principles of the Muslim creed. And while he advocated for orthodoxy in belief and practice, he understood the idea of ‘returning’ to the early Muslim community in a metaphorical rather than in a literal way. By no means did it imply that Muslims should repudiate the fruits of European ingenuity having been brought forward by the Age of Enlightenment. To the contrary – Afghani was an admirer of Western science and technology, as well as of modern modalities of governance such as parliamentarianism and constitutionalism. He believed that Europe was an inspiration that could serve Muslims to confront the capricious ills of modernity. However, in order to inaugurate a cultural renaissance, Muslims needed to mobilize their own spiritual resources and philosophical values. They would find these resources within Islam, for Islam was in perfect harmony with the principles of scientific reason. In fact, the Islamic religion was neither irrational nor intolerant, as its Orientalist detractors claimed, but in fact the only way to save a world that was deficient of spiritual values. It was out of these considerations that Afghani advised the rulers of his age that, if the glory of the Islamic Empire was to be restored, Muslims had to free themselves from the shackles of an anachronistic tradition, dispense with petty sectarian disputes among the Islamic legal schools, and unite through a bond of solidarity and brotherhood. Afghani’s political impetus for postsectarian and pan-Islamic unity, understood as a spiritual agreement of hearts among those who accepted each other as believers, would later become an integral part of the Brotherhood’s ideological architecture. In 1881, Afghani travelled to France where he met with Mohammed ‘Abduh, a promising young Azharite scholar who was born in 1849. ‘Abduh had been among the most devoted students in the reading circles that Afghani had led in the early 1870s while in Cairo. Although the two men differed in temperament and character, they shared similar religious and intellectual inclinations: both had been trained by Sufi scholars and advocated a spiritual revival of Islam as a means to promote a unified Muslim community that could 8

Safran, Nadav. Egypt in Search of Political Community: an Analysis of the Intellectual and Political Evolution of Egypt, 1804–1952. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961, p. 45.

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resist European infiltration.9 Both were endowed with a critical, inquisitive spirit that harnessed a deep scepticism towards scholastic Islam and its literalist dogmatisms, as it was preached within al-Azhar’s religious circles. And both men advocated for Muslims to use ‘independent reasoning’ rather than ‘blind imitation’ in order to pursue the knowledge that was necessary to face the challenges of the modern world. In 1884, the two men founded a secret society that pledged to work for the unity and reform of Islam. Under its auspices, they launched the periodical ‘al-‘Urwa al-Wuthqa’ (The Firmest Bond), which was to become the most influential Islamic magazine of its age, and on whose pages they systematically exposed Islam’s inner weaknesses. ‘Abduh returned to Egypt in 1888 to embark on a career of public service – first as a judge and after 1899 as the Grand Mufti of Egypt. From this influential position, he developed Afghani’s ideas into a coherent argument for modernizing the educational curriculum of Egyptian schools. Like his mentor, ‘Abduh was convinced that the reason for the weakness of the Islamic world was to be found in the fact the Muslims had lost track of their religion He understood Islam as a straightforward doctrinal structure consisting of a set of axioms about the ultimate meaning of life and proper human conduct. Like Afghani, ‘Abduh was an admirer of European science, technology and literature. He was fluent in French and had read Rousseau, Renan, Spencer and Tolstoy. Perhaps even more than his tutor, the Francophile rationalist Mohammed ‘Abduh opposed the excesses of those Sunni clerics who stuck to hyper-textual interpretations of the Quran. In order to address the problems of modernity, Muslims needed to study history’s sociological principles with a critical mind. Rather than relying on a set of convoluted academic legalisms and principles, they needed to use independent judgement, or ijtihad, to understand Islam as it had been revealed. They could do so without abandoning Islam, which he thought of as ‘the true sociology, the science of happiness in this world as well as the next’, and which contained within itself all products of human reasoning.10 As Mufti overseeing Egypt’s entire system of education and religious law, and until his death in 1905, ‘Abduh used his position to adopt European rationalistic and scientific methods in school curricula, including that of the newly created teacher-training institution Dar al‘Ulum, from where Hasan al-Banna would graduate in 1927.11 ‘Abduh’s most devoted disciple, and the third figure to decisively shape Banna’s intellectual universe, was Mohammed Rashid Rida. A Syrian scholar born in Tripoli in 1865, Rida became acquainted with the thought of Afghani and ‘Abduh when he devoured the full stock of al-‘Urwa al-Wuthqa magazines 9

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On this point, see Kudsi-Zadeh, Albert. ‘Afghani and Freemasonry in Egypt.’ Journal of the American Oriental Society 92, no. 1 (1972), pp. 25–35. Hourani. Arabic Thought, p. 149. Mitchell. The Society, p. 3.

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he found among his father’s papers. He subsequently became the ‘mouthpiece of [‘Abduh’s] ideas, the guardian of his good name, and his biographer’.12 Like his mentor, Rida was convinced that the progress of the Muslim community had been hampered by the layered scholasticism of the ‘ulama’ and that Islam needed to be reformed if Islamic civilization was to achieve its former glory once again. Like Afghani and ‘Abduh, Rida believed that the social message of Islam and the lessons of human history were two aspects of the same reality, and that it was impossible for Islam to contradict the laws of creation or of nature, ‘for everything is from God’.13 But Rida differed from his precursors in important ways. Unlike Afghani and ‘Abduh, he had travelled to Europe only once. He did not speak French and had remained ignorant of the writings and ideas of the European Enlightenment. Although he believed that Islam needed to adopt European sciences and technology in order to face the challenges of the modern world, he thought that this was necessary only as far as Islamic civilization needed to be restored to its former strength.14 For a considerable number of years, he busied himself with editing the oeuvre of the medieval theologian and Hanbalite scholar Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya for the journal ‘al-Manar’ (the Lighthouse), of which he was the publisher. He also became an admirer of the eighteenth-century preacher Mohammed ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, who had founded the ultraconservative Wahhabi reform movement that would come to shape the culture and society of modern Saudi Arabia after Ibn Al Sa‘ud’s conquest of the Hejaz in the 1920s. And while Rida was impressed with the unity and loyalty inherent in nationalist movements, he was convinced that Muslims could find the inspiration towards a similar kind of political dynamism within Islam itself.15 Accordingly, the idea of making a positive effort would be at the root of Rida’s thought. The same idea would come to shape the conceptual apparatus of the Muslim Brotherhood and, more generally, of political Islam as a whole. Perhaps the most important contribution Rida made to the intellectual outlook of Hasan al-Banna, and therefore the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, was contained in his treatise The Caliphate and the Supreme Imamate (al-Khilafa wa-l-Imamat al-Uzma), which he published in 1922 and 1923. Rida was strongly influenced by the fall of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War. As Mustafa Kemal Atatürk sought to establish a secular state, Turkey’s Grand National Assembly in November 1922 dismantled the Ottoman Caliphate, provoking an impassioned 12 13 14 15

Hourani. Arabic Thought, p. 226. Manar, IV, p. 216. Ibid., p. 236. Hourani. Arabic Thought, pp. 228 ff. In this book, the historical Caliphate is written with a capital ‘C’, while references to the utopian caliphate aspired to by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups are written with a minuscule ‘c’.

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debate between modernists and traditionalists.16 As one of the main spokespeople of this debate, Rida adapted medieval constitutional doctrines about the historical caliphate to the contemporary context. He sought to demonstrate that the caliphate was a divinely ordained institution whose existence was based on positive religious law. He made a distinction between the ideal caliphate, which he believed to have existed only during the time of the early Muslim community, and the actual caliphate that had existed during most of Islamic history. Like Afghani and ‘Abduh, Rida idealized the days of the early Muslim community as untarnished by sectarianism and ethnic prejudices; as a time where social, economic and political affairs had been governed by the principles of the Quran and the Sunna. Similar to his precursors, he blamed the ‘fossilized jurisconsults’ of the Islamic clergy for having distorted the true nature of the caliphate, as it had been originally conceived. Yet, Rida also recognized the difficulties hindering the establishment of a caliphate in present times. Since it was impossible to revive the traditional caliphate in its original form, Rida articulated the idea of an ‘Islamic state’ as the caliphate’s closest alternative. Conceived as a spiritual office and a symbol of unity for all Muslims, this state would conclusively settle the canonical disputes of the different legal schools while assuring the adherence of its subjects to Islamic rules. The head of state would be the ruler of all Muslims, including the various denominations of Shiites and the different legal schools of Sunni Islam, recognizing ‘doctrinal pluralism as a legitimate manifestation of free individual judgment’.17 As the guardian and propagator of a ‘true Islam’, Rida’s state would constitute a ‘complete and comprehensive’ system featuring an easily intelligible set of doctrines and practices, the knowledge of which was contained in the Quran and the Sunna. Furthermore, Rida’s Islamic state was to have two characteristics of the modern nation-state: first, through the Islamic principle of shura, or consultation between the ruler and the ruled, the state would guarantee a form of popular sovereignty.18 Second, the state would not rigidly and exclusively apply the stipulations of the Sharia, but accommodate man-made laws as well. A vital community of scholars would use the faculties of critical reasoning and independent judgement in order to design solutions to the problems of the modern world – a means by which the state would feature a legal dynamism that stipulated the ‘parallel existence of the religious and a political state’.19 Rida’s notion of an Islamic caliphate were subsequently 16

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Enayat, Hamid. Modern Islamic Political Thought: the Response of the Shi‘i and Sunni Muslims to the Twentieth Century. London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2005, pp. 52 ff. Ibid., p. 81. See on this the study by March, Andrew F. The Caliphate of Man: Popular Sovereignty in Modern Islamic Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Rosenthal, E. ‘Some Reflections on the Separation of Religion and Politics in Modern Islam.’ Islamic Studies 3, no. 3 (1964), pp. 249–84.

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adopted by Hasan al-Banna, as he assembled the concepts and conceptions that would become the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Ideology Hasan al-Banna’s genius was that he understood to draw on the ideas of the Muslim reformers in order to articulate a vision of a resurgent and activist Islamic community that could unite the peoples of various Muslim countries within a single political entity. Whereas Afghani, ‘Abduh and Rida had been intellectuals who formulated their ideas in pamphlets, articles and books, to be read by the literati and religious elites of their times, Banna was a man from the street – an activist and an organizer who knew how to translate the thoughts of the Muslim reformers into a concrete and actionable political programme. This ensuing ideology formed the intellectual backbone of the Muslim Brotherhood, as described by one rank-and-file member: We believe in our ideology with a faith that, when we discuss it with people, leads them to believe that it will impel us to shatter mountains, to offer up our persons and our wealth, bear misfortunes, and struggle against adversities until we triumph through it, or it through us.20

The raison d’être of this ideology, as well as its elementary function, was to unite the fractured Muslim umma so that it would be strong enough to resist the encroachment of the Islamic world through British imperialism and Western secular values, thereby restoring Islam to its rightful place. It was, therefore, logical for this ideology to accommodate the different legal–religious schools of Islam. It is in this sense that the notion of Islam as a ‘complete and comprehensive system’ became the Brotherhood’s central credo. In the words of Hasan al-Banna, the Society of the Muslim Brothers ‘does not tolerate divided loyalty, since its very nature is that of total unity, and whoever is prepared to accept it will live through it as it lives through him’.21 Comprehensiveness was not only a political imperative, but also a spiritual value emerging from the very essence of Islam itself. According to Banna, Islam was a holistic and comprehensive way of life pertaining to the entire existence of men and to every element of the human psyche, both in as far as man’s relationship to other men was concerned, as well as in terms of man’s relationship to God. The Brotherhood was the carrier of this message and, as one rank-and-file member explained, was 20 21

Muhi al-Din. Interview with author. Giza, 9 June 2013. al-Banna, Hasan. ‘Our Mission’ in Wendell, Charles, Five Tracts of Hasan al-Bannāʼ ˙ asan al-Bannāʼ. (1906–1949): A Selection from the Majmūʿat Rasāʼil al-Imām al-Shahīd H ˙ Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978, p. 44.

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a complete group, both in religious and political terms. Islam itself is not [a religion] that is practiced solely in a mosque. We are here in a mosque . . . Do we only practice Islam in the mosque and not outside of it? I know that Christianity is practiced in the church only, but Islam is different. It controls everything in life. In the Quran, God Almighty says through the lips of the prophet Abraham: ‘Say: Indeed, my prayers, my rites of sacrifice, my living and my dying are for God, Lord of the worlds’.22

Comprehensiveness was thus the cardinal design principle that stood at the centre of a cluster of secondary concepts that together form the conceptual map of the Brotherhood’s ideology.23 Banna had enumerated these concepts in his Letter on Teaching, written in 1935. Together, these ‘ten pillars of the oath’ formed the core ideological axioms and the value-system that informed the thinking and worldview of the members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Figure 1 The Brotherhood’s ‘ten pillars of the oath’.

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Muhi al-Din. Interview with author. Giza, 9 June 2013, referring to the Quran 6:162 (alAn‘am). I am indebted to Michael Freeden for having helped me to sharpen my understanding of these concepts over a coffee at the University Club in Oxford. See Freeden, Michael. Interview with author. Oxford, 7 November 2016, as well as Freeden, Michael. Ideologies and Political Theory: a Conceptual Approach. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, and Freeden, Michael. The Political Theory of Political Thinking: the Anatomy of a Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

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The first pillar was concerned with the ontological ‘understanding’ of Islam, defined as a comprehensive way of life that is able to influence every domain of the human existence, including ‘politics, society, economics, arts and culture, science and technology, sports and Islamic values’ such as ‘openness, love, compassion, tolerance, discipline, excellence, creativity [and] ingenuity’. The first pillar was subdivided into ‘twenty concise principles’. According to the British Muslim intellectual Anas al-Tikriti, these principles were ‘a holistic and comprehensive way to address the role of the self in terms of an individual, the individual’s role within his close social circles such as one’s family and larger community, as well as the individual as part of society in general’.24 The first principle qualified Islam as ‘a country and a homeland or a government and a nation’; ‘conduct and power or mercy and justice’; ‘a culture and a law or knowledge’ or ‘material and wealth or gain and prosperity’; ‘struggle and a call or an army and a cause’; and ‘true belief and correct worship’. The remaining nineteen principles covered various aspects of belief and ritual practice, legal matters related to religious authority, regulations of the behaviour of believers, questions of faith and morality, as well as a rejection of the practice of takfir. One principle explicitly stated that ‘everyone’s opinion except that of the unfailing Prophet . . . is liable to changes and modification’. Doctrinal divisions among the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence ‘should not be allowed to cause division, contention or hatred within the ranks of the Muslims’. All interpretations of Islamic law were considered valid, as each of them provided the Muslim believer with ‘enough knowledge to find the Islamic solutions to the contemporary problems of his society’.25 The second pillar, ‘sincerity’, stipulated that a true ‘Muslim Brother should dedicate his sayings, work and effort for the sake of God, in order to become a soldier in the idea of the faith’. It was important that these efforts should be made in a completely selfless manner and ‘without seeking recognition or anticipating any gain, honour, title or advancement in this world’. Only then, individuals could ‘become soldiers of the ideology and the belief, rather than soldiers for worldly purposes and interests’. This principle was substantiated by verse 162 of the Quranic sura al-An‘am (the Cattle): ‘Say: truly, my prayers, my sacrifices, my life and my death are all for God, the Lord of the worlds’.26 The principle of ‘action’ constituted the third pillar of the oath. While the Brotherhood accorded a greater significance to sincere intentions than to outward action, a Brother was solicited to attain improvement both in the spiritual as well as in the material domain, including the purification of one’s heart and the performance of righteous deeds. Like his intellectual precursors, 24 25 26

al-Tikriti, Anas. Interview with author. London, 27 February 2019. al-Banna. ‘Letter on Teaching’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 207–48. Quran 2:162 (al-Baqara).

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Banna deplored the fatalistic attitude of his fellow Muslims, which he identified as the root cause for the weakness and backwardness of the Islamic world, preventing them from taking charge of their destiny. In Banna’s mind, Islamic history fluctuated between an ‘anaesthetic phase’ defined by a ritualistic and static approach, as it was propagated by the clerical establishment of his time, and a ‘lively phase’ that was guided by an activist ideology and which aimed to fundamentally transform society and state.27 He summoned his fellow Muslims to become active participants in the social and political worlds they inhabited, and underlined this solicitation through the famous verse 11 of the Quranic sura al-Ra‘d (the Thunder), which stated: ‘Indeed, God will never change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves’.28 The pillar of action was also where Banna introduced the Brotherhood’s political programme, which will be elaborated upon in more detail below.29 Related to the principle of action was the fourth pillar of the oath – ‘effort’ or ‘jihad’ in Arabic. Here, Hasan al-Banna introduced a concept with a long and fraught history, a complex set of meanings, and deep roots within Islamic intellectual tradition. Classical Muslim thought had linked jihad to the kind of warfare that had been waged by the early Muslim community during the seventh century CE.30 In the second part of the twentieth century, Muslim thinkers would refer to the miracles of Islam’s early victories in order to conceptualize jihad as a modern form of warfare. But this modern conception of jihad remained a minority view among Muslim theorists, while the large majority of Islamic scholars conceptualized the term in the sense of ‘an obligation [conferred] from God upon every Muslim’ to struggle against the sort of egotism and self-centredness that hindered spiritual development and marred human relationships.31 Brotherhood members generally understood the concept in terms of its emotional and psychological nature – as a tool to ‘enhance one’s achievements on the personal and the intellectual level’. Believers were encouraged to ‘go further in the expression of their faith, for instance by fasting on Mondays and Thursdays and by performing night prayers. These behaviours would enhance their ‘personal achievement on the spiritual and personal level’.32 Nevertheless, the term remained ambivalent. As Banna wrote in his Letter on Jihad, written in the late 1940s in the context of the accentuating British and Zionist campaigns in Palestine, there existed different 27

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29 30 31 32

Note the similarity with Ali Shari‘ati’s formulations of a revolutionary ‘red Shiism’ of martyrdom and an institutionalized, clergy-dominated ‘black Shiism’ of mourning. Lia, Brynjar. The Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt: the Rise of an Islamic Mass Movement, 1928–1942. Reading, MA: Ithaca Press, 1998, p. 83; Quran 13:11 (al-Ra‘d). Muhi al-Din. Interview with author. Giza, 9 June 2013. Cook, David. Understanding Jihad. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, p. 25. al-Banna. ‘Letter on Teaching’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 207–48. Private Workshop. London, 7 November 2016.

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stages of struggle: the weakest was ‘the heart’s abhorrence of evil’ and the strongest was the ‘striving (or fighting) in the way of God’.33 The fifth pillar, ‘sacrifice’, was an implicit part of the principle of jihad. It demanded the Muslim Brother to be ready to ‘give one’s self, wealth, time, energy and everything else for the cause of Islam’. By embedding the idea of sacrifice within the psychological apparatus of Brotherhood members, Banna expanded their mental boundaries and equipped them with the psychological tools that were necessary to anticipate and accept the inevitability of impending struggles and hardships. This expectation of adversity and suffering was also embodied in the two words ‘and prepare’ (wa ‘idu), which were emblazoned on the Brotherhood’s logo. The ultimate sacrifice, and the final criterion to distinguish ‘true’ from ‘false’ Muslims, was the sacrifice of one’s own life. There was to be ‘no jihad without sacrifice, nor will there be sacrifice without generous reward from God’.34 ‘Obedience’, as the sixth pillar of the oath, was another key principle within the Brotherhood’s organizational design. In a short pamphlet titled Jihad is Our Way, the Brotherhood’s fifth General Guide Mustafa Mashhur wrote: ‘The individual learns that his pledge and his oath to the [Brotherhood] leadership is in fact a pledge and oath to God.’ The realization of the Brotherhood’s reform objectives thereby was correlated to members’ level of obedience. ‘The Muslim Brotherhood’, Banna stated, does not consider its goals realized or its works accomplished unless individual members listen and obey their leaders. This obeying to the [leaders’] order is obedience to God. The failure of executing orders, or even just hesitation in their execution, exposes the work to danger and is considered a reneging of the bay‘a.35

Since the Brotherhood claimed to have a monopoly over the meaning of ‘true Islam’, any kind of criticism of the leaders’ decisions would, ipso facto, be regarded as religiously sinful. Strict obedience to the leadership became the key criterion to evaluate the degree of an individual’s religiosity, which determined his prospect for advancing within the Brotherhood’s organizational hierarchy. Banna defined three phases of obedience: the first consisted in the ‘familiarization’ with Islam’s general concepts and the Brotherhood’s methods. The second phase consisted in an individual’s spiritual, mental and physical ‘development’: by ‘selecting and consolidating those righteous members who can bear the burden of jihad’ and execute the commands of the leadership ‘without hesitation, turning back, doubt or discomfort’, the Brotherhood ensured that only those who were ‘fully prepared to carry the 33 34 35

al-Banna, Hasan. ‘Risālat al-Jihād (Letter on Jihad)’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 421–40. al-Banna. ‘Letter on Teaching’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 207–48. Mashhur, Mustafa. Al-Jihād huwa al-Sabīl (Jihad is the Way). Cairo: Dar al-Tawziʻ wal-Nashr al-Islamiyya, 1986, p. 78.

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burden of a long and continuous struggle’ would be admitted to senior positions. The third phase consisted in the ‘implementation’ of the Brotherhood’s teachings. This task demanded ‘uncompromising jihad and persistent effort in pursuit of [the Brotherhood’s] objectives’. For those who had achieved this level of obedience, Banna foresaw ‘trials and tribulations which only the truthful people can endure’.36 The two intertwined concepts of ‘perseverance’ and ‘resoluteness’ formed the seventh and eighth pillars of the oath. Members were to remain unyielding in their struggle, ‘no matter how far the term extends and how long the years pass by’, until they succeeded in one of ‘two beautiful things: victory or martyrdom’. Both concepts insinuated a sense of adversity, encouraging members to remain steadfast in the wake of setbacks. Since ‘the road is long, the goal is far, and the obstacles are indeed numerous’, perseverance incentivized believers to be patient. Resoluteness, on the other hand, indicated a specific conception of authority and power, suggesting a sense of determination in the face of political pluralism. Banna had already anticipated the possibility that his detractors would contest the Brotherhood’s authority. To distinguish friends from enemies, he divided outsiders into seven categories: ‘the striving Muslim’, ‘the reluctant Muslim’, ‘the sinning Muslim’, ‘the non-Muslim living peacefully under Islamic law in a Muslim state’, ‘the neutral non-Muslim’, and ‘the non-Muslim who waged war’ against Muslim states. Each group had a separate status in Islamic law, and to each he assigned a recommendation on how it should be dealt with.37 The ninth pillar was that of ‘brotherhood’. Beyond the term’s obvious malecentric orientation, this concept expressed a yearning for fraternity and commonality in the wake of a fractured Egyptian polity. Banna drew a vision of a spiritual community that would be able to unite Egyptians in a broader religious–political framework, based on a contractual relationship between God and humanity, and guided by the eternal values and ethics of Islam: ‘We believe that Islam is an all-embracing concept, which regulates every aspect of life, adjudicating on every one of its concerns and prescribing for it a solid and rigorous order’, he wrote in his pamphlet Our Mission. The term, furthermore, implied a unity of meaning, whereby the Brotherhood would ‘not tolerate divided loyalty, since its very nature is that of total unity, and whoever is prepared to accept it will live through it as it lives through him’.38 The tenth and final pillar was that of ‘trust’. This concept was intricately related to that of obedience, in that it required members to have full confidence 36 37 38

al-Banna. ‘Letter on Teaching’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 207–48. Ibid. al-Banna, Hasan. ‘Our Mission’ in Wendell, Charles (ed.), Five Tracts of Hasan al-Bannāʼ (1906–1949): A Selection from the Majmūʿat Rasāʼil al-Imām al-Shahīd H˙asan al-Bannāʼ. ˙ Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978, p. 44.

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in the competence and sincerity of their leaders. Different from Western political thought with its fundamental distrust of political leaders, and where obedience is conditional on the positive outcomes of leaders’ decisions, the Brotherhood asked its members to trust the leaders’ positive intentions, implying a form of obedience that was unconditional on the outcomes of their decisions. Banna explained this as follows: since ‘there cannot be a movement without leadership . . . the strength of the Society, the perfection of its plans, the success in achieving its goals and overcoming difficulties and obstacles, are all dependant on the degree of trust between the members and their leadership’.39 Banna not only translated the ideas of the Muslim reformers into a political ideology, but he complemented this ideology with a method through which it could be actualized. Different from the scholars who had inspired him, he was a man of the people – a villager from Mahmudiyya in the Buhayra governorate who had become an educator, a teacher and an activist. Although he did not possess the intellectual erudition of an ‘Abduh or a Rida, his power was grounded in his charisma, his management and organization skills, and his oratory talent. He felt insulted by the political and economic dominance of the British and the French, and the arrogance by which they treated his fellow Egyptians, who were ‘not more than mere hirelings belonging to foreigners’, as one of his early companions had complained.40 Speaking in crammed coffee houses and small mosques in the Canal Zone city of Ismailiyya, where he taught Arabic after his graduation from Dar al-‘Ulum teachers college, Banna started to articulate a powerful critique of the cultural, social and moral malaise prevailing across the Muslim world, and of the threat that the creeping invasion of Western secularist and materialist values posed for Muslims’ moral sentiments. To him, the prescriptions of the Sharia, as they had been revealed by God to the Prophet Mohammed, were the only viable framework for social organization and individual moral life. No secular constitution conceived by men was necessary, for the Quran and the Prophetic Sunna contained all the necessary elements to guarantee social justice, economic well-being and political stability. The Brotherhood’s ultimate objective was ‘to bring back the nation of Islam and make Islam the ruler of the earth’, as one rank-and-file member explained.41 By January 1939, this objective was no longer simply a vague aspiration, but a concrete political objective, as Banna mentioned in the speech to his congregation: ‘the Brotherhood is a political group and its mission is a political one’.42 The same objective was also articulated in various subsequent 39 40 41 42

al-Banna. ‘Letter on Teaching’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 207–48. Mitchell. The Society, p. 8. Muhi al-Din. Interview with author. Giza, 9 June 2013. Banna, ‘Letter of the Fifth Conference’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 249–94.

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Statutes of the Brotherhood: ‘to establish God’s law on earth by realizing the spiritual goals of Islam as the true religion’.43 The instrument through which the Brothers were to attain this objective was through the practice of da‘wa, which had proven its success during the decade between 1928 and 1939. Through preaching and proselytizing, the Brothers reminded their fellow Muslims to behave in accordance with the teachings of the Quran and the Sunna, which meant that they would take a pro-active role in transforming society. This requirement for political activism, rather than a passive and submissive attitude, served as the key inspiration for many individuals to join the Society, as recounted in countless memoires and interviews. Over time, such active political engagement would lead to a transformation of society and create the spiritual conditions for Muslims to practice truly Islamic lifestyles. To this end, Banna’s Letter on Teaching outlined a ‘strategic, long-term plan’ about how this transformation was to come about.44 Adopting a bottom-up approach starting with the individual, the programme progressed over seven consecutive steps to end with the ‘global guidance’ of Islam. This seven-step blueprint essentially contained the Brotherhood’s political theory. The first step consisted in the ‘construction of the Egyptian person’ through ‘reforming the self, his body, his character, his thought, belief and worship’. One rank-and-file supporter explained the matter as follows: First of all, I worship God. I pray, I fast, I give zakat and I go on pilgrimage to witness that He is One and His creed is Islam. I call people towards Him. I call my colleagues to follow God’s teachings. This is the general idea: for Islam to return to how it used to be, to regulate our life and to act as [life’s] system.45

Once the individual’s morality was properly constituted, the next task was to establish a truly ‘Islamic home’. The transformed individual should ‘be wise in selecting his wife and inform her about her rights and duties’ and raise his children according to the principles of Islam. Following the rehabilitation of the individual and his family, the next step consisted in winning over public opinion ‘by spreading the call of righteousness’ and establishing an ‘Islamic society’. This society would then go on to establish a ‘Muslim state’, which would lead to the ‘liberation of the homeland from all foreign or un-Islamic control’. In a next step, this state would be governed by an ‘Islamic 43

44 45

See for example article 2, ‘Al-Nizām al-‘āmm li-l-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn [1982 M] (The ˙ Brotherhood [AD 1982])’ in Lawa’ih wa Qawānīn General Organization of the Muslim al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn: min Ta’asīs hatā al-Intishār (Statutes and By-laws˙ of the Muslim Brotherhood: From the Foundation˙ to the Expansion). Centre for Historic Studies, Wikipedia of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwanwiki), 2012, p. 261. Mohammed. Interview with author. Sixth of October City, 26 July 2012. Muhi al-Din. Interview with author. Giza, 9 June 2013.

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Figure 2 The ‘Islamic project’, referred to here as the Brotherhood’s seven-step blueprint for Islamic reform.

government’, staffed by ‘Muslims who perform the obligatory duties of Islam, who do not make public their disobedience, and who enforce the rules and teachings of Islam’. If such a government performed its political, religious and moral functions according to the teachings of Islam, it would be ‘incumbent upon the people to be obedient and loyal to it, to assist the government with their lives and their property’. The next stage consisted of rebuilding the international prominence of the Islamic umma: ‘by liberating [the Muslim community’s] lands, reviving its glorious past, bringing closer the cultures of its regions and rallying [them] under one word’, the citizens of various Muslim states would work together ‘until once again the long-awaited unity and the lost Caliphate is returned’.46 On a symbolic level, the Brotherhood’s caliphate stood in a continuum with Islamic history – as the final link in a long chain of consecutive empires that went back to the days of the first four rightly guided caliphs. Khairat al-Shatir, who later emerged as one of the most powerful figures within the Brotherhood, mentioned this in a speech he gave in April 2011: The last form of the Islamic Caliphate was the Ottoman government, but last century, we [Muslims] first lost our leadership of the world . . . and

46

al-Banna, Hasan. ‘Letter on Teaching’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 207–48.

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then the Caliphate itself collapsed. For the first time in history, we were outside the sphere of government or authority.47

In reality, the caliphate was more of a symbolic idea rather than a concrete political objective. The Egyptian nationalist Hasan al-Banna, whose worldview had been formed in the tumultuous climate of the 1920s and 30s, had early on recognized the nation-state to be a powerful and enduring social reality. While rank-and-file members referred to the caliphate as the Brotherhood’s ultimate objective, the term was in reality not much more than a catchphrase describing a modern institution comparable to the European Union or the United States. Such an ‘Islamic Union’ or a ‘United States of Islam’ would consist of independent nation-states operating ‘under one framework, like the European Commission’, and it would be regulated by ‘one constitution and one idea that rules all of them’.48 This caliphate was to respond to economic grievances by introducing improved regulatory frameworks, efficient currency exchange regimes and intra-regional economic and trade cooperation. The existence of ‘one ruler for all Islamic countries’ would respond to secular, rather than spiritual concerns, enabling Muslim countries to ‘become one nation without borders or visas’.49 Finally, the caliphate would ensure an influential role in global decision-making: ‘We, the Arab and Islamic states, have a lot of resources, which allow us to have global influence. When you find that Egypt, Iraq, Syria and all Muslim countries are one bulk – this is the caliphate! Then we have influence on global decision-making’.50 Another member affirmed: ‘Like the European Union, we want a single currency for all the Islamists [sic] so that we have the level of prosperity and growth to the point that we don’t even know where to go with all [our resources].51 Ultimately, the establishment of the caliphate would lead to the final stage of Banna’s seven-step blueprint: the ‘guidance of the world’ through the teachings of Islam: ‘We want to guide the world by spreading justice, equality and mercy’, one rank-and-file member insisted. ‘This is our guidance!’52 Islamic guidance was, therefore, different from the hegemonic policies pursued by the United States, which were all about ‘killing, destruction, rape and slavery’. The Americans were ‘the biggest people in the world’, but all they had done was to have caused ‘killing, destruction and ruining the entire world’, even having ‘exterminated one hundred and fifty million black slaves’. The Brotherhood, 47

48 49 50 51 52

al-Shatir, Khairat. ‘Mashrū‘ al-Nahda al-Islāmī (The Project of Islamic Renaissance).’ ˙ YouTube, 24 April 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnSshs2qzrM&feature=youtube_gdata _player (accessed 10 August 2017). Ashraf. Interview with author. Cairo, 10 May 2013. Group interview with author. Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya, Cairo, 30 June 2013. Sayyid*. Interview with author. Cairo, 10 May 2013. Group interview with author. Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya, Cairo, 30 June 2013. Sayyid*. Interview with author. Cairo, 10 May 2013.

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on the other hand, were to ‘guide humanity to the truth, lead mankind to good, and illuminate the entire world with the light of Islam’.53 This would imply victory to the weak African countries in order to make them independent. The goal is to liberate the Islamic countries that are occupied, like Palestine from the Jews, and Iraq and Afghanistan – all of the countries occupied by foreigners. The main goal is to liberate them . . . and purify our countries and societies so that our Islam has value.54

In a final analysis, the Brotherhood’s ‘global guidance’ can perhaps best be understood as an Islamic version of Francis Fukuyama’s utopian end-ofhistory scenario, which he had outlined in his book The End of History and the Last Man. Whereas for Fukuyama, the ‘end point of mankind’s ideological evolution’ was the ‘universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government’,55 the Brotherhood’s end point was the universalization of the Sharia as the final form of divine governance. With their own version of the end of history thus realized, Islam would inevitably shine as a light of knowledge, a light of guidance, a light of thought for others . . . God created humans and gave them messages and books to guide them, to organize the relationships amongst each other, and between them and God. The Quran is what we believe in, and we don’t change even a single letter in it. It provides guidance for humanity in the world and in the afterlife . . . informing each individual of his rights, privileges and duties.56

Organization The Muslim Brotherhood, in the mind of Hasan al-Banna, would be the incubator of this vast, transformative reform project. It was, therefore, only natural that the Brotherhood’s organizational design should reflect the bottom-up logic inherent in Banna’s seven-step blueprint. Islamic reform would begin within the framework of the ‘family’ (al-usra) as the smallest educational unit of the Muslim Brotherhood and the nucleus of all of its activities. Rank-and-file members referred to the ‘system of families’ with a considerable degree of pride, describing it as ‘the highest and most standardised system in the world’.57 Each family was headed by a captain and composed of five, seven and sometimes nine members. This distribution allowed for decision-making by 53

54 55

56 57

al-Banna, Hasan. ‘Ilā aiy Shay’ nad‘ū al-Nās? (To What Do We Invite Humanity?)’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 11–35. Ashraf. Interview with author. Cairo, 10 May 2013. Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992. Sayyid*. Interview with author. Cairo, 10 May 2013. Group interview with author. Hani al-Ithi Mosque, Cairo, 22 March 2013.

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a majority quorum, in accordance with the Islamic principle of ‘consultation’ or shura.58 Members within a family unit were from the same gender59 and typically had comparable levels of education and a similar membership rank. Some family units consisted of those ‘who are making the first step’ while others of those ‘who are in the family for longer than three years’.60 Families composed of children and teenagers were segmented into the following sub-groups: children between six and ten years of age (girls within this age bracket were called ‘flowers’ and boys were referred to as ‘young lions’); primary school students between ten and thirteen years of age; and secondary school students between thirteen and seventeen years of age.61 There also existed ‘special families’ composed of scholars, intellectuals and public figures, who generally had a higher socioeconomic status and advanced levels of education.62 The family accomplished several functions. For one, the weekly meetings were a symbolic re-enactment of the Brotherhood’s founding act of March 1928, when six Egyptian workers of the British camp labour force had visited Hasan al-Banna, urging him to show them ‘the path to the service of the homeland, the religion and the nation’.63 The meetings also had important socio-psychological functions. Similar to the Alcoholics Anonymous recovery programme created by Bill W. in 1935, the weekly family reunions anchored individuals within a community of like-minded people who were determined to work for their self-improvement. The sense of solidarity, mutual trust and responsibility that was created during these gatherings made members become intimately involved in each other’s lives, so that ‘everyone knows everything about his fellow Brother’.64 The Brotherhood’s intellectual and organizational design principle of comprehensiveness was thus replicated on the level of each individual member, according to the Sufi injunction that aimed at creating wholesome and integrated individuals who were ‘free . . . from the prison of multiplicity . . . for it is only in being whole that man can become holy’.65 Another key function of the family was to guarantee the correct moral ‘upbringing’, or al-tarbiyya, of individual members.66 During the weekly 58 59

60 61 62 63 64 65 66

Tariq*. Interview with author. Cairo, 15 September 2013. On the role of women in the Brotherhood, see Abdel-Latif, Omayma. ‘In the Shadow of the Brothers: the Women of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.’ Carnegie Middle East Center, 31 October 2008. http://carnegie-mec.org/2008/10/31/in-shadow-of-brotherswomen-of-egyptian-muslim-brotherhood/b072 (accessed 2 October 2015). Tariq*. Interview with author. Cairo, 30 January 2013. Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 22 September 2013. Darrag, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Istanbul, 20 March 2017. Mitchell. The Society, p. 8. Group interview with author. Hani al-Ithi Mosque, Cairo, 22 March 2013. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. Sufi Essays. New York: Schocken Books, 1977, p. 43. For the Brotherhood’s recruitment protocol, see also al-Anani. Inside the Muslim Brotherhood, pp. 67 ff.

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Figure 3 Schematic representation of the Brotherhood’s indoctrination process.

meetings, members would read, study and discuss religious texts concerned with Islamic jurisprudence, compilations of Quranic suras and Hadith verses, Prophetic biographies and Quran interpretations.67 The indoctrination of 67

The Brotherhood’s core pedagogical readings included the following texts: Sabiq, al-Sayyid. Fiqh al-Sunna (The Jurisprudence of the Tradition). Beirut: Dar el Fikr, 1996; a selection of Quranic suras and Hadith verses compiled by the thirteenth-century scholar al-Nawawi, Abu Zakaria Yahya Ibn Sharaf and Hafiz Salahuddin Yusuf. Riyād al-Sālihīn ˙ ˙ ˙& (The Meadows of the Righteous). Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Darussalam Publishers Distributors, 1998; the Prophetic biographies by the Egyptian cleric al-Ghazali, Mohammed. Fiqh al-Sīra (The Jurisprudence of the Biography [of the Prophet]). Damascus: Dar al-Qalam, 2006, and by the Syrian scholar al-Buti, Mohammed Sayyid Ramadan. Fiqh al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya ma‘ Mūjaz li-Tārīkh al-Khilāfa al-Rāshida (The Jurisprudence of the Biography [of the Prophet] with a Summary of the History of the Caliphate). Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1993; and the texts of the Brotherhood members

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members proceeded along a three-staged process: the ‘integration’ of new aspirants into the family; their ‘familiarization’ with the Brotherhood’s ideas and methods; and the assurance of mutual ‘cooperation’ among the members. Specific texts were studied at each stage in the indoctrination process.68 Each stage was also correlated to a specific membership level – a design principle that resembled the organizational make-up of the Sufi brotherhoods. It will be remembered that Hasan al-Banna had been taught by a Sufi sheikh from a young age, and that he had remained a devoted disciple of the mystical circle of the Husafiyya Brothers throughout his life. Similar to Sufi orders, the Brotherhood’s organizational model can be visualized as a number of concentric, hierarchically arranged circles, where individuals at the periphery have a lesser degree of knowledge and a lower membership status than those who are closer to the centre. The correlation between ideological indoctrination and organizational advancement incentivized those at lower or more peripheral levels to study patiently, diligently and persistently if they wanted to benefit from the nuggets of wisdom that would become accessible to them at one point in the future. At the same time, it forged a sense of exclusivity among the members within the inner circle, which was sometimes referred to as the ‘secret organization’. As one former mid-ranking member explained, those within the inner circle used others for completing unflattering tasks, such as ‘insulting other people’. However, the real decision-makers would ‘never admit [those at the periphery] in the secret organizations’, instead considering them as ‘amateurs’ who only thought themselves to be part of the inner organization while in reality being situated in the middle or outer circles.69 ‘Not everyone who thinks he is part of the Brotherhood is part of the organization’, one senior member explained: The Muslim Brotherhood is not only an organization; it is also an idea. Not everyone who is part of the Brotherhood is part of the organization.

68

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Mashhur, Mustafa Mashhur. Bayna al-Qiyāda wa-l-Jundiyya ‘alā al-Tarīq al-Da‘wa ˙ al-Tawzi‘ wa(Between Leadership and Soldierhood on the Way to The Call). Cairo: Dar l-Nashr al-Islamiyya, 1986; and Qutb, Sayyid. Fī Zilāl al-Qur’ān (In the Shade of the ˙ fieldnotes. Cairo, 5 and 8 August, Quran). Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 1999. Author’s 10 September 2012, as well as Fathi, Yasser. ‘Shabāb al-Ikhwān: al-Tanawwu‘ Hadī’ wa Mākīna Muwahhada (The Brotherhood’s Youth: a quiet Diversity and a unified ˙ ˙ Institute for Studies, 18 March 2018. https://goo.gl/26W1Zy (link Machine).’ Egyptian shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 17 April 2018). Beginners typically read ‘Ali Laban’s Min Mabādi’ al-Islām (About the Principles of Islam). Cairo: Dar al-Tawzi‘ wa-l-Nashr al-Islamiyya, 2003; those at the intermediate level read Husam Hamida’s Fī Rihāb al-Islām (In the Garden of Islam). Cairo: Dar alTawzi‘ wa-l-Nashr al-Islamiyya, ˙ 2004; while those at more advanced stages read Mohammed Abu Raya’s Fī Nūr al-Islām (In the Light of Islam). Cairo: Dar al-Tawzi‘ wa-l-Nashr al-Islamiyya, 2006. Nuh, Mokhtar. Interview with author. Cairo, 11 March 2013.

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the society of the muslim brothers The organization is merely a safe-keeper of the idea. But the idea is bigger than the organization, whose aim is simply to spread the idea.70

The final function of the family comprised recruiting new members and thereby assuring the Brotherhood’s organizational growth. During much of the period recounted in this book, the Brotherhood recruited its members through the process of ‘individual preaching’. The success of this method depended not so much on the specific content of the Brotherhood’s ideology, but more on the personal relationship between the recruiter and the recruit. Numerous rank-and-file members confirmed that it had been a sense of personal affection and ‘adoration’ for their recruiter that motivated them to join the Brotherhood.71 This individualized recruiting method, which Hasan al-Banna considered to depend on the existence of a flow of ‘spiritual energy’ between the ‘disciple and the Sheikh’, was equally inspired by Sufism.72 The ‘sentimental bonds’ that were created during the recruitment process were then further deepened within ‘the heart of the family’. They were the glue that held the organization together and largely explain the Brotherhood’s resilience and mobilization potential, as well as the ability of the leadership to assume ‘total emotional control over the hearts of individuals’.73 A potential new recruit was referred to as ‘fan’ (muhibb, literally a ‘lover’). In evaluating the potential of a fan, recruiters looked for certain character traits such as intelligence, courage, religious devotion, ethics and a general commitment to the idea of ‘working for Islam’. Fans participated in family meetings only sporadically and they were not considered ‘real members’, as they did not pay the membership fee that was asked from full members. When they did participate, they were generally unaware that they attended family gatherings of the Muslim Brotherhood. This vital piece of information was withheld from them, in line with the dictum: ‘not everything I know, I should say; not everything I should say, I should say now; and not everything I should say now, I should present as a solution’.74 If, after a period of six to twelve months, the recruiter became convinced of a fan’s religious commitment (if the recruit, for example, would perform night vigils and extra-curricular fasting, or devote a disproportional amount of time to Brotherhood-related activities), this individual would become a ‘supporter’ (mu’ayyid), which made him eligible to participate regularly in weekly family gatherings. One’s portfolio of activities at this stage would include menial logistical tasks, such as distributing cooking 70 71

72

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Shalash, Magdi. Interview with author. Istanbul, 20 March 2017. See for example Ashraf*. Interview with author. Cairo, 10 May 2013; Tariq*. Interview with author. Cairo, 30 January 2013; Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 16 December 2012. al-Banna, Hasan. Mudhakkarāt al-Daʻwa wa-l-Dāʻiyya (Memories of the Message and the Advocate). Cairo: Dar al-Zahra’ li-l-‘Ilam al-‘Arabi, 1990, p. 16. Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 20 December 2012. Ayyash, Abderrahman. Interview with author. Istanbul, 31 December 2016.

Figure 4 Membership structure and organizational progression within the Muslim Brotherhood in the family, designed after ethnographic sketches by rank-and-file members.

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oil, rice, bread and other basic commodities during election cycles, for example. Supporters were encouraged to memorize the Quran and specific sections of the Hadith literature. Yet, the individual’s affiliation with the Brotherhood was still unofficial at this stage. During these two pre-membership stages, recruits were closely monitored by a person from the Committee for Upbringing who would participate ‘like a spy’ within a family meeting.75 As will be seen, the Committee for Upbringing had several organizational functions: it was responsible for defining the Brotherhood’s educational curriculum as well as issuing recommendations for promotion.76 Such decisions were reached after regular ‘360-degree evaluations’ of current members, whereby individuals’ characters and personalities, levels of religious knowledge, and performance in terms of grassroots activism and voluntary work were evaluated. In cases where members’ levels of loyalty were in doubt, the Committee for Upbringing would undertake investigations and make recommendations of dismissal.77 After another six to twelve months, a supporter would become an ‘associate’ (muntassib) for a period of one to three years. Associates were members of the Muslim Brotherhood proper, which obliged them to pay 7 to 10 per cent of their monthly income to the treasury. They had the right to vote for members of the Branch Shura Council, the Brotherhood’s lowestranking administrative unit. After another one to two years, an associate member was eligible to become an ‘organizer’ (muntazim) for the duration of at least another two years. Organizers were subjected to rigorous spiritual training and were required to memorize copious amounts of religious literature, hold vigils and night prayers and perform daily dhikr rituals. They were eligible to work in one of the twelve working committees at the Branch level, however they were not permitted to act as captains of families. This privilege was reserved for the ‘active Brother’ (akh ‘amil), which was the final stage of membership. Active Brothers were eligible to acquire any position within the organization. Reaching this stage required that a regular member had to recruit at least one new member. The step of attaining full membership was formalized through a symbolic oath of allegiance (bay‘a), which the aspirant active Brother solemnly swore in front of the fellow Brothers in his family: I pledge allegiance to God Almighty to protect the principles of Islam, to struggle in His way, to adhere to the provisions and duties of the Brotherhood’s membership, and [to the principle] of listening and

75 76 77

Tariq*. Interview with author. Cairo, 6 March 2013. Private Workshop. London, 7 November 2016. Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 22 September 2013.

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obedience to the just leaders, in sorrow and in joy, as long as it does not involve disobedience [to God]. I pay allegiance to this, so help me God.78

Whereas the family was the Brotherhood’s smallest educational unit, the ‘branch’ (al-shu‘aba) was the smallest administrative unit. Its activities and internal organization were regulated in specialized By-laws.79 According to article 1 of these documents, the geographical scope of a branch was defined by the ‘Administrative Office’ (al-maktab al-idari), which designated the unit two levels above the branch. Every six months, upon invitation of the branch responsible and pending approval by the Administrative Office, the forty members constituting a branch would meet within the framework of the ‘Branch Shura Council’ (article 4). Each branch was headed by a ‘responsible’, who was elected by its members and whose task was to support the captains of the families in the areas of pedagogy, health, welfare and social activities. The Branch Shura Council was charged with managing members’ social activities in those districts that had been assigned to the branch. This unit was also responsible for ‘carry[ing] out the execution of the tasks of the da‘wa according to the plan of the Society in the geographical scope defined for it’ (article 2). The unit above the branch was the ‘region’ (al-muntaqa). Its activities and sphere of jurisdiction were similarly regulated through specialized By-laws, which stipulated that a region should be ‘formed from a group of branches that fall in its geographical domain and which are based on the suggestions of the Regional [Shura] Council and the decisions of the Administrative Office’ (article 1).80 The Administrative Office could broaden or narrow the geographical area of a region if this was required by demographic or political imperatives. Every six months at a minimum, forty elected active Brothers from the branches contained within a region assembled in the context of the ‘Regional Shura Council’ (article 5). They elected ‘two to six’ members to serve in the region’s executive body, called the ‘Regional Office’. Attached to each Regional Office were twelve functional committees, whose tasks was to implement the decisions taken by the corresponding sections attached to the Guidance Office. Besides providing administrative and logistical support, these committees were required to ‘call towards Islam, towards ethics and good cooperation [and to] educate the public about the Brotherhood and its idea of Islam . . . according to the plan of the Brotherhood in the geographical

78

79

80

Article 4, ‘The General Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood [AD 1982],’ in Statutes and By-laws, p. 263. ‘Lā‘iha al-Shu‘aba al-Ikhwāniyya (By-laws of the Brotherhood Branch)’. Unpublished ˙ document in the possession of the author. ‘Lā‘iha al-muntaqa al-Ikhwāniyya (By-laws of Brotherhood Region)’. Unpublished docu˙ ment˙ in the possession of the author.

Figure 5 Organization chart of the Muslim Brotherhood, designed after ethnographic sketches by rank-and-file members.

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domain that has been defined for it through the technical committees, and the people situated in its geographical domain’.81 The geographical unit above the region was that of the ‘governorate’ (almuhafaza), which corresponded to the official administrative governorates of the Egyptian state. Attached to each governorate were one or several Administrative Offices, whose heads yielded substantial organizational power. Although the By-laws regulating the activities of the Administrative Offices could not be localized by this author, indications about its activities, functioning and jurisdiction can be gauged from the General Rules of the Muslim Brotherhood, which were adopted in 2016 by a new and younger leadership in Egypt.82 According to this document, the Administrative Offices were in charge of implementing the recommendations, decisions and directives of the Guidance Office and the Governorate Shura Councils – the legislative bodies attached to each governorate. As with the Regional Offices attached to each Administrative Office there were twelve committees whose heads were members of their respective Administrative Offices. The highest administrative unit was the ‘sector’ (al-qita‘), each of which comprised several governorates. Each sector was headed by a ‘general responsible’, who was tasked with managing the sector’s educational and administrative tasks, as well as with implementing the decisions of the Guidance Office falling within that sector’s geographical scope. After the Brotherhood had reconstituted itself in 1982, Egypt’s twenty-seven governorates were distributed according to five geographical sectors, namely Greater Cairo, Eastern Delta, Western Delta, Middle Delta and Upper Egypt. The Upper Egypt Sector was later subdivided into the Northern Sa‘id Sector and the Southern Sa‘id Sector and an additional sector was added for the canal governorates and the Sinai Peninsula. Thus, the Brotherhood by 2009 was organized into seven sectors. A national Brotherhood franchise in another country was called ‘chapter’ (al-qutr), and it was organizationally situated at the same level as a sector. The head of a national chapter was usually known as ‘General Observer’ (almuraqib al-‘amm), except in the case of Hamas in Palestine, where the position was called ‘Head of the Political Bureau’. While in theory all chapters were subsumed under the jurisdiction of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, they were part of an umbrella entity known as the ‘International Organization’ (altanzim al-dawli) – a body that would become the subject of a considerable degree of confusion, but which in reality designated a loose coordination meeting that allowed the heads of various national chapters to meet occasionally to exchange ideas and talk about issues of concern to the global Islamic 81 82

Ashraf. Interview with author. Cairo, 10 May 2013. ‘Lā‘iha al-muntaqa al-Ikhwāniyya (By-laws of Brotherhood Region).’ Unpublished docu˙ ment˙ in the possession of the author.

Figure 6

The Brotherhood’s regional organization in 2009, showing governorates per sector, and with the number of Administrative Offices.

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movement.83 According to the General Statutes of 1982, the International Organization had its own executive and legislative bodies, including a Guidance Office, a Shura Council and a General Secretariat. Part of the annual membership fees generated by national Brotherhood chapters were to be sent to the General Secretariat of the International Organization. The bylaws of 1994 required the General Observers to ‘abide by the decisions of the general leadership represented by the General Guide, the Guidance Office and the Shura Council’ in Egypt. While for ‘important political decisions’ they needed the approval of the Guidance Office, they had, however, the liberty to regulate their chapters’ activities in their own countries, ‘consistent with domestic circumstances’ (article 51). However, power remained firmly vested in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. At the top echelon of the Brotherhood’s legislative authority was the ‘General Shura Council’ (al-majlis al-shura al-‘amm). Although the members of this body were theoretically supposed to be elected by the various Administrative Offices, in reality they were frequently nominated by the Guidance Office. Terms of office were limited to four lunar years and the decisions of the Shura Council were binding (article 36). In order to be eligible for the General Shura Council, members were required to have been active Brothers for at least five years and were obliged to have previously served in another leadership position (article 38). Shura Council members had the right to elect the General Guide as well as the members of the Guidance Office, and they were asked to ‘endorse the movement’s general plans and necessary means’ (article 39). According to the International By-laws of 1994, the Shura Council was composed of at least thirty members, who were required to be thirty years of age at least, and who were to be selected ‘from among the members of a country’s Shura councils’ (article 37). In addition, five ‘specialist members’ were appointed by the Guidance Office. After the introduction of a new electoral system in 2009, these numbers were significantly expanded: the number of seats in the General Shura Council was made proportional to the number of members per governorate, and the body was thus comprised of seventy-five elected members.84 In addition, three members were elected by the members of other national chapters, while another fifteen were nominated by the Guidance Office.85 Thus, during Morsi’s presidency, the total number of Shura Council members was ninety-three.

83 84

85

al-Tikriti, Anas. Interview with author. London, 27 February 2019. ‘al-Lāʼiha al-‘āmma li-Jamā‘a al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn ‘Āmm 1990 M wa-l-Mu‘ādala ‘Āmm 2009 M˙(The General By-laws of the Society of the Muslim Brothers of the Year AD 1990 and the Amendments of the Year AD 2009)’ in Statutes and By-laws, pp. 288–301. Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2018.

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Table 1 Membership figures

Sources: † ‘Population Estimates by Governorate.’ Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, 1 January 2015. www.msrintranet.capmas.gov.eg/ ‡ ‘Al-Natā’ij al-nihā’iyya li-l-Intikhābāt al-rā’isiyya bi-kull Muhāfazāt al-Jumhūriyya (Final ˙ ˙ Results of the Presidential Elections in all Governorate of the Republic).’ Ahwalna Wordpress Blog, 18 June 2012. * Calculated as per percentages of Shura Council seats to total membership. ✢ The total number of members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is estimated at 750,000. See Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 29 June and 5 August; Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 14 April 2014; Nuh, Mokhtar. Interview with author. Cairo, 11 March 2013; Mohammed Badi‘, ‘al-Duktūr Muhammad Badī‘ fī Birnāmaj Ittajāhat ‘alā al-Tilifizīūn al-Masrī (Dr. Mohammed Badi’ in the Egyptian Ittajahat Programme)’. Al˙ Wafd Media, 29 May 2011. ✤ The number of Active Brothers is estimated at 40 percent of the total. See Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 8 August and 10 September 2012; Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 15 August 2018; al-Sayyad, Osama. Interview with author. Istanbul, 7 October 2017.

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Executive power was vested in the ‘Guidance Office’ (al-maktab al-irshad), which as the ‘senior executive and administrative board’ was the Brotherhood’s de jure decision-making organ, as well as ‘the watchdog authorized to conduct the policy-oriented management plans and mechanisms that form the basis of the group’ (article 23). Its term of membership was limited to four years (article 27). The Guidance Office was composed of fifteen members, including the General Guide (article 24). Nine members were elected by the Shura Council ‘from the chairman’s country’ while five others were elected in such a way that ‘regional representation is considered’ (article 24). The Guidance Office was responsible for supervising the methods of da‘wa, its political direction, and the execution of the rules outlined in the Brotherhood’s General Statutes of 1982. It was further charged with educating the general public about the group’s ‘intellectual and political attitude with regards to worldly affairs’. Its members had the right to ‘form specialized committees, adopt internal regulations and hold officials accountable’.86 The decisions of the Guidance Office were coordinated through the Brotherhood’s General Headquarters, which after 2011 were relocated from an inconspicuous office complex in al-Manyal to the prestigious upscale neighbourhood of Moqattam located on a hilltop in Cairo’s eastern periphery. The building housed the office of the General Guide as well as the sessions of the General Shura Council. The headquarters were managed by the ‘Secretary General’ (al-‘amin al‘amm) who, according to the General Statutes of 1982, was supposed to reside ‘in the country of the General Guide’, but ‘may assume his duties from outside if necessary to do so’. The task of the Secretary General was to ‘implement the decisions of the Guidance Office and control its many aspects of activity’ (article 33). The holder of this position was further in charge of all legal and official functions, the supervision and direction of the Brotherhood’s administrative apparatus, the setting of the agenda of key meetings, and the filing and controlling of the Brotherhood’s official records, including those concerning membership (article 35). With total control over the Brotherhood’s financial, administrative and human resources, the Secretary General occupied a powerful position within the Brotherhood’s organizational hierarchy. The Brotherhood’s highest spiritual authority was represented by the ‘General Guide’ (al-murshid al-‘amm). The Arabic term murshid reflected the Sufi provenance upon which the title was based. According to article 13 of the International By-laws of 1994, the General Guide had to be at least forty years of age, was required to show at least fifteen years of creditable service and was supposed to have ‘decent manners, an administrative ability, and religious knowledge, particularly with respect to Islamic jurisprudence’. While all other top-level organs of the Brotherhood in Egypt had an international equivalent, 86

‘The General Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood [AD 1982]’ in Statutes and Bylaws, pp. 260–72.

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the General Guide was the only unified position His powers were further extended by the International By-laws of 1994, giving him control over the Brotherhood’s national franchises outside of Egypt.87 The tasks of the General Guide included supervising the Brotherhood in all administrative matters, as well as defining the overall strategic direction of the Brotherhood. The General Guide was the leader and ‘the main responsible’ person of the Brotherhood’s various units and provided spiritual and political advice to each unit’s officials while ‘holding them accountable for every fault, failure, corruption, deviation or disregard, and neglect of rules’ (article 12).88

87 88

Ibid. ‘al-Lāʼiha al-‘āmma li-Jamā‘a al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn ‘Āmm 1990 M wa-l-Mu‘ādala ‘Āmm ˙2009 M (The General By-laws of the Society of the Muslim Brothers of the Year AD 1990 and the Amendments of the Year AD 2009)’ in Statutes and By-laws, pp. 288–301.

2 The Second Founding (1968–1981)

We saw fighters who had sacrificed themselves for the da‘wa, who refused to bargain even if this meant prison, torture or certain death. I was joyful to meet them, spend time with them and listen to them; and we were eager to approach them and learn from them. ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh about ‘Omar al-Tilmisani (2010)

On 11 November 1973, ‘Omar al-Tilmisani became the third General Guide of the Society of the Muslim Brothers. As the oldest member of the Guidance Office, the sixty-nine-year-old lawyer followed his predecessor Hasan al-Hudaybi, who had led the Brotherhood through a period of persecution and suppression.1 When Tilmisani took over, the Brotherhood could barely be called an organization, let alone a social movement. Once a powerful contender on the Egyptian scene with a membership of approximately one million, the group had become a shadow of its former self since the two crackdowns by the Nasser regime in 1954 and 1965. Only some three hundred members had ‘kept the ideology intact’, while a small number of individuals had become radicalized during the ordeal they had experienced

1

According to the Brotherhood’s internal historiography, 1973 was the official date for Tilmisani’s nomination as General Guide, as per, for instance, Badr, Badr Mohammed. Interview with author. Cairo, 27 March 2013. However, as ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh and other sources confirm, an individual called Sheikh Marzuq had apparently served as secret Murshid from Hudaybi’s death in 1973 to Tilmisani’s official appointment in 1976. See Abu al-Futuh, ʻAbd al-Munʻim and Husam Tammam (eds.). ʻAbd al-Munʻim Abū alFutūh: Shāhid ʻalā Tārīkh al-Harakat al-Islāmiyya fī Misr, 1970–1984 (ʻAbd al-Munʻim ˙ Abu ˙al-Futuh: Witness to the ˙History of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, 1970–1984). Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2010, pp. 87–8; al-Haddad, Midhat. Interview with author. Istanbul, 8 January 2017; el-Ghobashy. ‘Metamorphosis.’ IJMES, p. 377. The American Embassy in Cairo, however, seems to have been unaware of Tilmisani’s leadership role until 1977, referring to him in a diplomatic cable as ‘Ombar [sic] al-Tilmisani, managing editor of alDa‘wa – monthly publication of the Muslim Brotherhood’. See NNN (Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs) to Secretary of State. ‘State of Muslim Brotherhood / the Ikhwan Today.’ Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, 4 November 1977. https:// wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1977CAIRO18347_c.html (accessed 20 June 2017).

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51

in Nasser’s prison cells.2 But in the early 1970s, the Brotherhood witnessed a period of renewed growth and organizational expansion. By the end of the decade, the Society had reconstituted itself as a mass-movement, touting hundreds and thousands of followers across all governorates of Egypt.3 Tilmisani played a pivotal role in this reconstitution. Building on the gradualist approach laid out by Hasan al-Hudaybi, he impressed a unique temperament on the Brotherhood that attempted to bring the Society back into the mould of the republican political party system of Egypt. Anchoring himself within the intellectual framework of the tract Preachers Not Judges (Du‘at la Qudat), which Hudaybi had completed in February 1969 while still in prison, Tilmisani refuted Sayyid Qutb’s revolutionary ideas that threatened to fragment the Islamic movement and push a generation of younger and ambitious members into the abyss of takfir. He rejected the use of violence as a matter of principle, and instead sought to steer the Brotherhood towards its original mission: the spiritual education and moral rectification of Muslims by calling them to the methods and principles of Islam as envisioned by Hasan al-Banna. At the same time, he encouraged his followers to actively engage in the political game and acquire power through legitimate means. By the end of the 1970s, Tilmisani had reconciled the Brotherhood with Egyptian society, thus setting the conditions for its rapidly growing influence during the 1980s.4 This chapter looks at the Brotherhood’s re-emergence during the 1970s to illustrate how an organization that had been dismantled for twenty years managed to re-constitute itself as an important actor on Egypt’s social and political scene. Starting with the life of the third General Guide, ‘Omar alTilmisani, the story traces the trajectory of senior leaders after their release from prison between 1971 and 1974. It introduces the religious student activists who came to control the student unions of Egyptian universities, and the debates that surrounded the gradual integration of the Jama‘a Islamiyya under the umbrella of the Brotherhood. The chapter ends with the crackdown of September 1981, the subsequent assassination of President Anwar al-Sadat, and the split of the Islamic movement in the context of the Camp David peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt. Based on personal memories of key leaders, Oral History interviews with organizational members, a reading of the Brotherhood’s al-Da‘wa magazines as well as of other relevant prison-writings, pamphlets and magazines, and a survey of the scholarly literature, the chapter will show how, over the course of the decade, different cultures and value2

3

4

This number was mentioned by Gum‘a ‘Amin. See al-Haddad, Abdullah. Interview with author. London, 11 July 2015. ʻAbd al-Jawad, Mohammed and Mashhur, Mustafa Mashhur. Hayat Mustafa Mashūr: ˙˙ kāma ‘ashatha Usrathu (The Life of Mustafa Mashhur: how his˙Family Experienced it). Cairo: Dar al-Tawzi‘ wa-l-Nashr al-Islamiyya, 2005, p. 84. Baker. Sadat and After, p. 246.

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systems constituted themselves under the framework of the Muslim Brotherhood, laying the basis for what would – over subsequent decades – lead to growing organizational disagreements within its ranks. ***

The Life of ‘Omar al-Tilmisani ‘Omar al-Tilmisani was born in November 1904 in Darb al-Ahmar, an ancient neighbourhood in the Fatimid quarter of Cairo.5 His ancestors came from Tlemcen, a courtly artistic–intellectual city specialized in textile manufacturing in northwestern Algeria.6 His grandfather had emigrated to Egypt in the 1870s as part of an exodus that saw numerous families from the merchant middle classes and literati elites leaving their homeland. Many tried to escape the juridical and cultural assimilation of Algerian institutions to the French imperial system.7 Having settled in Egypt, Tilmisani’s grandfather bought an estate in Nawa, a small village in the Qalyubiyya governorate, where Tilmisani’s father ‘Abd al-Fattah was born. When he was a young man, ‘Abd al-Fattah moved to Cairo with his two wives and his offspring and settled there until 1907. When ‘Omar was still an infant, the Tilmisanis moved back to Nawa, where the future General Guide grew up in the idleness of an Egyptian effendi household that was secluded from the bustling city life of Cairo.8 As he later mused in his autobiography, his early childhood years had instilled in him a ‘love for nature and the simplicity of rural life, [for] beauty in everything, beauty of essence and appearance, beauty of manners and morals and beauty of place and nature’. Later, his followers would remember his ‘dreamy and romantic personality’, as well as his sense of humour, his generosity and his humbleness.9 Tilmisani informs us that his grandfather had ‘followed Mohammed Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’, having ‘published books on Wahhabism from his own 5

6

7

8

9

The biographical data on Tilmisani’s early childhood are taken from his autobiography, as well as from a biography published by Badr Mohammed Badr, a close confidant of Tilmisani. See Tilmisani. Memories, not Memoires, 2012; Badr, Badr Mohammed. ‘Amr al-Tilmisānī. Cairo: Unknown publisher, 2008; Badr, Badr Mohammed. Interview with author. Cairo, 27 March 2013. Tlemcen was part of the Almohad Caliphate in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and as such had become influenced by the thought of the Andalusian intellectual elite that had been exiled by the Spanish Reconquista. MacDougall, James. A History of Algeria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, p. 103. An excellent account on the culture of the effendis is provided by Ryzova, Lucie. The Age of the Efendiyya: Passages to Modernity in National-Colonial Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Badr. al-Tilmisani, p. 25.

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pocket’.10 Growing up in a deeply religious household, Tilmisani had memorized the Quran as a child and familiarized himself with Islamic jurisprudence and the prophetic sayings known as the Hadith. His attitude towards women reflected his staunchly conservative education. He described his spouse (whose name he tellingly fails to mention in his autobiography) as ‘an ideal wife [who] cooked delicious food and helped the women who washed their clothes’. In another chapter he pondered: ‘Man is a man and a woman is a woman, and as such God created her. Humans cannot change God’s wisdom in his creation . . . . A woman who believes she is equal to a man is a woman who has lost her femininity’.11 When he was twenty years old, Tilmisani joined the prestigious Law Faculty of Fu’ad I. School – today known as Cairo University. Entering the turbulent political world characterizing the years of Egypt’s experimentation with liberal parliamentary democracy, he soon developed a keen curiosity for politics, which he combined with a deep resentment of British colonial rule.12 He was drawn into the activism of the secular Wafd Party and for a short period even supported the staunchly nationalist Isma‘il Sidqi Pasha, who served as prime minster between 1930 and 1933. His fascination with politics seems to have distracted him from his studies, for it was only after repeatedly failing his graduation exams that he finally received his law degree in 1931, aged twentyseven. Motivated by a desire to become a ‘clean-handed’ lawyer, he started 10

11

12

al-Tilmisani. Memories, pp. 27–8. This statement may be an attempt to claim religious legitimacy on the part of Tilmisani. It is unlikely that any scholar of that generation would have paid much attention to Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, let alone published books on Wahhabism, which at the time was still considered to be a minor heterodoxy in Western Algeria with its fairly rigorous orthodox Malikism. Wahhabism did not begin to make inroads into Sunni mainstream literary culture until Rashid Rida started its rehabilitation in the 1920s and 30s. Furthermore, there was little Arabic publishing of any kind in Algeria at the end of the nineteenth century. It is, however, possible that scholars and intellectuals from Tlemcen had picked up Wahhabism while preforming the hajj in Mecca. I thank James McDougall and Edward McAllister for these insights. Ibid., pp. 23 and 28. It is noteworthy that ‘Omar al-Tilmisani, writing in 1985, adopts a language similar to the one chosen by the editors of American women’s magazines during the mid 1950s, whose articles are sprinkled with concepts such as that of ‘lost femininity’. Riling against the danger of feminism, for instance, the women’s magazine Life wrote: ‘this . . . countertrend (i.e. feminism) may eventually demolish the dominant and disruptive trends and make marriage what it should be: a true partnership in which . . . men are men, women are women, and both are quietly, pleasantly, securely confident of which they are’. Quoted in Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965, p. 42. The conservatism of the third General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood is thus not that far from the views on women of those who were part of the American intellectual elite of the 1950s. Sayyid-Marsot, Afaf Lutfi. Egypt’s Liberal Experiment, 1922–1936. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.

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a job as a clerk in a law firm owned by a Coptic Christian before opening his own practice in Shibin al-Qanatir, close to his family’s estate. One Friday morning in the spring of 1933, as Tilmisani was about to feed some chickens in the garden of his villa, two strangers suddenly appeared in his yard. ‘What are you doing here?’ they asked. Tilmisani replied: ‘I am raising chickens!’ One of the men retorted that, rather than raising chickens, it would be more appropriate to ‘raise Muslims who have steered away from their religion and whose authority deteriorated in their own countries’. During the subsequent discussion, the two strangers informed the young Tilmisani of a ‘comprehensive Islamic committee’ that had been founded in Cairo a few years ago by a certain imam called Hasan al-Banna. The conversation must have stirred Tilmisani’s curiosity, for he accepted a proposition to meet the imam to whose message he immediately felt a sense of ‘inherent religious affinity’.13 Tilmisani and Banna met a few weeks later in Cairo. The encounter had a transformative impact on the life of the young lawyer. He was enchanted by the conversation, as well as by Banna’s charisma and force of belief. The young imam seemed to Tilmisani like God’s light sent to us in the most difficult, cold and gloomy period, so that polytheism and atheism are dispersed and religion is only for God. [Hassan al-Banna] planted hope in our hearts and helped us to be patient and endure everything [man] faces for the sake of the call.14

As he later admitted, Tilmisani had been ignorant of his ‘general responsibilities towards the homeland and the nation’. Like most Muslims, he had understood Islam in a ritualistic manner – not as an activist ideology that could be employed to transform and improve society. The conversations with Banna made him aware of the ‘mission and responsibility’ he and others had towards Egypt and Muslims in general Days after his first encounter, these considerations compelled Tilmisani to pledge allegiance to the young imam. Over the coming months, Tilmisani gained Banna’s trust and swiftly moved upwards in the ranks of the nascent and rapidly growing Society of the Muslim Brothers. In the late 1930s, he became a member of the Guidance Office and at one point was tabbed to become Banna’s deputy – an offer he respectfully declined for fear that he lacked the necessary leadership skills. Although two years senior to Banna, Tilmisani was keenly aware of the latter’s spiritual superiority. Banna to him was ‘all about calling to work and struggle for God’s sake . . . a simple person with deep faith in his mission and responsibilities’. In contrast, he thought of himself as someone whose ‘upbringing indicated welfare and whose idle concern with aesthetics and 13 14

al-Tilmisani. Memories, pp. 43–4. Ibid., pp. 50 ff.

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elegance [was unable to] endure the hardships of working for God’s sake’.15 Tilmisani’s effendi roots brought him into repeated conflict with those within the Brotherhood who were ‘committed to a course of sacrifice and struggle’. These individuals frequently complained about Tilmisani’s ‘keenness for elegant [and] well-dressed appearance [as well as] his smoking habits’.16 Foreshadowing the kinds of identity conflicts that would shape the Brotherhood’s subsequent history, they perceived him as an elitist aristocrat who was unable to bear the burden of hardship that was necessary to ‘strive in the way of God’.17 Many of Tilmisani’s critics had been part of the Brotherhood’s paramilitary battalions that had supported the Egyptian army in its resistance against the forces of Zionism and British imperialism during the late 1940s. Following the partition of Palestine by the United Nations Resolution 181 in November 1947, Egypt had become embroiled in a series of violent struggles that characterized the end of parliamentary life. In March 1948, two members of the Brotherhood’s secret unit, known as the ‘Special Apparatus’, had assassinated the well-respected judge Ahmed al-Khazindar and during the following summer launched several armed attacks against property owned by Egyptian Jews.18 When, a few weeks later, a briefcase with papers and documents was discovered in a jeep owned by a Brotherhood member, the existence of the Special Apparatus was made public for the first time, compelling the government of Nuqrashi Pasha to dissolve the Brotherhood on 8 December 1948. A member of the Special Apparatus assassinated the prime minster three weeks later – an act that was followed by the assassination of Hasan al-Banna on 12 February 1949. It is unclear to this day who carried out Banna’s assassination, but in all likelihood it was ordered by the Palace’s secret police in retribution for Nuqrashi Pasha’s death – perhaps even with the complicity, if not on the initiative, of the British Residence in Cairo.19 This episode of dissolution and assassination was remembered as the ‘first ordeal’ in the collective memory of the Muslim Brotherhood.20 During an ensuing trial in May 1951, the judges overseeing the case accepted the argument that the Brotherhood’s senior leadership could not be made responsible for the actions of a few individuals who had ‘lost their balance’. The Brotherhood was acquitted and allowed to return to legality under revised 15 16 17

18

19

20

Badr. al-Tilmisani, p. 40. Ibid., pp. 45–50. The Quranic sura al-Qasas (the Story), verse 78, is quoted in al-Banna. ‘Letter on Teaching’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 207–48. This fact was usually acknowledged among the Brothers as ‘mistakes’, for instance in ‘Akif, Mahdi. Interview with author. Cairo, 19 May 2013. Mitchell. The Society, pp. 71–2; Ramadan, Tariq. Interview. Quoted in Burgat, François. Face to Face with Political Islam. London: I.B. Tauris, 2003, p. 46. ‘Akif, Mahdi. Interview with author. Cairo, 19 May 2013.

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statutes. Following the coup against King Faruq on 23 July 1952, the Brotherhood collaborated with the Free Officers and, before long, started to perceive itself as junior partner in the new government. But as it soon became apparent, the Brothers’ vision of a state governed by Sharia law was diametrically opposed to the staunchly secular outlook of the Free Officers, causing the relations between the two parties to sour. On 26 October 1954, as Nasser gave a speech to a crowd at the al-Manshiyya Square in Alexandria, a Brotherhood member called Mahmud ‘Abd al-Latif fired eight shots at the president. Miraculously, Nasser was unharmed. It remains unclear whether the military intelligence had staged the assassination attempt, as the Brotherhood claimed, or whether the group had indeed planned and executed the attack, as per the official narrative.21 Whatever the truth of the matter, the nascent military regime seized the opportunity to systematically crack down on the Brotherhood and, over the next two months, more than four thousand members, including many senior leaders, were imprisoned, while many more escaped. A mock trial by a People’s Tribunal sentenced seven senior members to death by hanging. The verdict of the General Guide Hasan al-Hudaybi was later revoked and converted to a lifelong prison term, but the remaining six members were hanged in a military prison in Cairo on 9 December.22 The onslaught of 1954, and the subsequent period of imprisonment, persecution and exile, was remembered as the ‘second ordeal’ in the Brotherhood’s historiography.23 As for Tilmisani, he was handed a fifteen-year prison sentence, which he served at the Wahat prison camp in the Western desert.24 In his autobiography, he regretted that he had not been part of the Special Apparatus, which to him represented ‘the totality of manhood, loyalty and sacrifice for the sake of God’.25 And although he was humiliated in prison, he claimed to have suffered less than the members of the Special Apparatus: 21

22

23 24

25

The only document is an audio recording that could be interpreted to support either conclusion. See ‘Jamāl ‘Abd al-Nasir: Hādith al-Manshiyya (Gamal Abdel Nasser: the ˙ 26˙ October 1954. www.youtube.com/watch? Manshiyya Incident).’ YouTube, v=zU1tC0L27s8 (accessed 10 June 2017). See also Gordon, Joel. Nasser’s Blessed Movement: Egypt’s Free Officers and the July Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 183 ff. Those who were executed included Yusuf Tal‘at, head of the Special Apparatus; Hindawi Duweir, who was accused of having furnished the pistol that was used in the assassination attempt; Ibrahim al-Tayad, the head of the Special Apparatus’ Cairo branch; the judge ‘Abd al-Qadir ‘Awda; and Mohammed Farghaly, the leader of the Ismailiyya district. Tariq*. Interview with author. Cairo, 15 September 2013. The most prominent account of the conditions of Nasser’s prisons is provided by alGhazali, Zainab. Return of the Pharaoh: Memoir in Nasir’s Prison. Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 1994. Also see Cole, Juan. ‘Muslim Religious Extremism in Egypt: a Historiographical Critique of Narratives’ in Gershoni et al. Middle East Historiographies, pp. 262–87. al-Tilmisani. Memories, p. 261.

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I was the least tortured in the military prison. All that happened to me was that, when I was admitted to cell no. 24 in the big jail, a barber came to shave my hair. He slapped my neck and told me: ‘Sit down on the floor, you son of a bitch’. After shaving my head, [the wardens] brought thick ropes and rolled them around my body, from my thighs to my chest, making me stand up on a chair and tying these ropes to a hook hanging from the ceiling. They took the chair away, so that I was hung between the ceiling and the floor, and started beating me with whips and cursing me. I did not whimper or express pain.26

Although Tilmisani suffered from ‘bitter feelings of injustice’, he stressed repeatedly that the Wahat prison had provided him with a comparatively large amount of freedom. Prisoners could plant fruits and vegetables and raise rabbits and chickens. Tilmisani later claimed that he had relished this ordeal ‘as long as it was for the sake of God, bearing it and benefitting from this time in prison as a lover and seeker of knowledge’.27 In 1969, he was sentenced to two more years of detention and then was released in June 1971.

The Student Protests of 1968 When Tilmisani stepped out of the prison gates, he found a world quite different from the one he had known when he was still a free man two decades ago. Gone was the enthusiasm with which Egyptians had greeted the ‘revolution’ of 23 July 1952. After Egypt’s embarrassing defeat at the hands of the Israelis in 1967, a sense of widespread disillusionment with the regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser had risen among people of all societal strata, mixed with deep-seated feelings of shame and humiliation. A senior Brotherhood leader later remembered these days as follows: How could the Jews now be at the Suez Canal? Had not Nasser told us that Egypt was the strongest country in the world? He had released rockets in 1962 and said that we were the third strongest country – Russia, USA, and then Egypt . . . . Was he lying? Was he a hypocrite? We discovered that he was a big liar. He had deceived the Egyptian [people]!28

The aftermath of the 1967 defeat had created a political climate that allowed popular grievances against the regime to come to the forefront.29 This was especially so among young people who, frustrated by the authoritarianism and empty promises of the Nasserist state, started to display a renewed interest in politics. Their frustrations erupted for the first time in early February 1968, 26 27 28 29

Ibid., pp. 180–1. Ibid., p. 190. al-Haddad, Midhat. Interview with author. Istanbul, 8 January 2017. Szyliowicz, Joseph. Education and Modernisation in the Middle East. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973, p. 296.

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when students seized the opportunity of a strike by factory workers in the industrial Cairo suburb of Helwan to protest against the court martials of a number of officers who had been involved in the 1967 war.30 The leniency of the sentences issued against the likes of General Sidqi Mahmud, the head of the Egyptian Air Force and the man who was blamed for the humiliation of 1967, was something the students were not ready to accept.31 A sit-in in front of the gates of Cairo University escalated into a wider mass demonstration, which compelled the Nasser regime to cancel the previously issued sentences and reopen the trial. This constituted a symbolically significant victory, as it was the first occurrence of Egyptians openly voicing their anger against the regime after years of political suppression. Nine months later, protests erupted again in the Delta city of Mansura – this time over new legislation recently promulgated by the Ministry of Education. After a series of confrontations between police forces and rioting youths, three students and one famer were killed. The news of the disturbances quickly spread across the country and enflamed the spirits of the engineering students at the University of Alexandria. During violent clashes, dozens of policemen and students were wounded. When the head of the Engineering Faculty, ‘Atif al-Shatir, was arrested, the anger boiled over, as the masses chanted: La Illaha ill-Allahu, ‘aizin ‘Atif w’illy ma‘ahu – There is no god but God, we want ‘Atif and those who are with him.32

The next morning, the students were joined by their colleagues from the faculties of agriculture and architecture, and the protests quickly turned into large-scale demonstrations featuring some 6,000 individuals, including dozens of female students who demanded that their rights to freedom of expression should be respected. Overwhelmed by the level of anger among this newly politicized class of university students, the regime called in reinforcements from the countryside. During the next day, officers in khaki uniforms and wearing British army helmets tried to disperse the masses in a chaotic tit-fortat. On 23 November, two delegates from Mansura joined student rallies in Alexandria to recount in graphic detail the ‘massacre’ that had taken place in Mansura a few days ago.33 One of the two delegates, a young and charismatic engineering student called Khairat al-Shatir, shouted fierce slogans, energizing 30

31 32 33

Abdalla, Ahmed. The Student Movement and National Politics in Egypt: 1923–1973. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2008, p. 153. Barakat, ‘Izzedine. Interview with the author. Cairo, 11 January 2019. Ibid. The events in Alexandria were reconstructed by Abu Khalil in The Reformist Brotherhood, pp. 216–18. According to Kepel, Brotherhood members had infiltrated the Arab Socialist Union’s youth branch in Mansura and led the demonstrations against university reform, a conjecture that seems implausible, given the fact that the Brotherhood was largely

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the crowds that had gathered in the assembly hall of the University of Alexandria. New demonstrations took place the next day and on 25 November, as thousands took to the streets to demand the sacking of the Minister of Education, Sha‘rawi Gum‘a, the crowds chanted: Ya Sha‘rawi ya giban, fi Mansura wa fi Helwan – Oh Sha‘rawi you coward, [we demonstrate] in Mansura and in Helwan. Ya Sha‘rawi ya magnun, fen al-‘adl wa fen al-qanun? – Oh Sha‘rawi, you crazy man, where’s the justice, where’s the [rule of] law?34

The ensuing intervention of the riot police led to the death of sixteen students, the injury of another 167, and the destruction of public property on an unprecedented scale. For Khairat al-Shatir, the student protests of 1968 constituted an early and powerful experience of successful mobilization against the regime. However strong the feelings of outrage and frustration voiced during these protests were, they could not express the full extent of the traumatic shock young people had experienced after Egypt’s devastating loss of 1967. Nor could they chart a strategy of what the way forward might look like. Some sought to leverage the ‘setback’ as a way to advance a specific explanation for Egypt’s defeat. Mustafa Mashhur, who became the Brotherhood’s iron-fisted fifth General Guide in 1996, believed that Egypt’s loss was the result of a ‘pact with the devil’, which the military regime had forged with the forces of international communism.35 Mohammed al-Ghazali, a former Brotherhood member who had left the movement in the mid 1940s to pursue an independent path, attributed Israel’s victory to the fact that the Jewish state had succeeded in uniting politics and religion within the framework of a single political entity. In a famous book titled From Here Let’s Learn (Min Huna Naʻlam),36 he argued that Muslims should emulate the Zionists who, unlike them, had actually managed to create a religious state.37 These individuals were perceptive enough to understand the sense of shame and humiliation having taken root in the hearts of many young Egyptians, and

34 35 36

37

unknown and many of its leaders were still in prison at the time. See Kepel. Muslim Extremism, p. 132. Barakat, ‘Izzedine. Interview with the author. Cairo, 11 January 2019. ʻAbd al-Jawad. The Life of Mustafa Mashhur, p. 88. The book was written as a refutation of a previous book by Khalid Mohammed Khalid, which directly challenged the political and social ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. See Khalid, Mohammed Khalid. Min Hunā Nabdaʼ (From Here Let’s Begin). Cairo: Maktabat al-Anglu al-Misriya, 1950. See the discussion in Safran. Egypt in Search of Political Community, pp. 223 ff. al-Ghazali, Mohammed. Min Hunā Naʻlam (From Here Let’s Learn). Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-Haditha, 1965. The book was translated into English by Isma‘il al-Faruqi under the title Our Beginning in Wisdom. Washington: American Council of Learned Societies, 1953.

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the ability of such feelings to give rise to a deep desire to ‘return to God’.38 One young Egyptian teenager, the fifteen-year-old ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh, was among those who had learned of Egypt’s military defeat from the radio. Hailing from rural descent, his family had benefitted from Nasser’s Land Reform Laws of 1953, and like many of his generation he had a great veneration for Egypt’s mystical leader, whom he saw as a greater-than-life hero who could restore his beloved country to its rightful place in the world.39 All the more difficult was it when he ‘discovered that what we had [first] experienced as our victory’, as it was propagated by pro-regime propaganda during the early stages of the war, was in fact ‘nothing but lies and fabrications’.40 This sudden recognition entailed a loss of self-confidence, not so much because of the military defeat itself, but because of the feelings of pride he and others had invested in Nasser’s revolutionary project, which aimed to ‘change the face of Egypt in the region and even in the entire world’.41 As the shallowness of Nasser’s Arab socialism became apparent, students like Abu al-Futuh started to intuitively ‘embrace religion’ as a newly found marker of identity. This instinctive flight into the safe space of spirituality, and the ‘religious awakening’ that had been caused by the ‘death of the dream of the revolution’, found expression in a bustling life of pious activity and growing religious consciousness, which came to take pre-eminence in the Egyptian social scene during the coming years.42

The Islamic Revival As the Israeli troops were fortifying their positions along the Bar-Lev line on the eastern front of the Suez Canal, Egypt and Israel engaged in a mutual exchange of artillery fire and commando raids. By early 1969, the hostilities had escalated into an extensive aerial campaign that started to increasingly exhaust the treasuries of both countries. In March, Gamal Abdel Nasser declared that Egypt’s new strategic objective consisted of making ‘the Jews’ pay dearly for their occupation of the Sinai Peninsula. The Egyptian army increased the intensity of its harassment of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) with an intermittent barrage of artillery fire. Against the backdrop of this War of Attrition, a religious revival started to gradually take root within the campuses of universities in Egypt.43 Abu al-Futuh 38 39

40 41 42

43

Abu al-Futuh. Witness, pp. 22–4. Nasser’s Land Reform Laws of 1953 had allowed Abu al-Futuh’s impoverished father to marry his mother, who was of feudal background, giving his family five feddans of land. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 21. Ibid., p. 22. Ibid., pp. 22–3. This is also observed by Hinnebusch in Egyptian Politics under Sadat, p. 199. al-Qaradawi, Yusuf. Interview, quoted in ʻAbd al-Jawad. The Life of Mustafa Mashhur, p. 89. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 22.

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had enrolled at the Medical Faculty of Cairo University in October 1970, at a time when Egyptian university life was in a state of fundamental transition. After Nasser’s death on 28 September, university students were emboldened to openly express their frustrations with Arab socialism. However, ideological Nasserism was manifested in a complex system of institutions, loyalties and client–patron relationships, and continued to exert a strong grip on Egyptian university life. This was particularly true in the context of the student unions, whose administration and finances remained firmly within the grip of the Nasserists and their socialist collaborators, led by Hamdin Sabahi and ‘Adel Fathi respectively. The assertiveness of a newly rising generation of religious students brought these two groups into a growing conflict. Abu al-Futuh reminisces on the sense of shock he and his companions experienced by the way the socialists and Nasserists ‘criticized’ Islam on the pages of the so-called wall magazines that were published by the student unions.44 Sensing their religion to be ‘under attack’, this new generation was determined to ‘struggle for the victory of Islam’, arguing that Egypt’s social and political crisis was rooted in its moral laxity, deviation from proper Islamic ethics and unreligious behaviours such as smoking, drinking and attending mixed-gender parties. One day, after they had received word that such a ‘sinful’ musical party, where men and women would mingle freely, was about to take place, they staged a sitin and blocked the corridors of Cairo University leading to the hall where the concert was supposed to be held. I remember that the student unions organized a party in 1973, with dance and music. We thought about how to stop this party [from taking place]. We aimed to occupy the amphitheatre thirty minutes before the start and hold Quran readings. When [the partygoers] arrived, they were unable to enter.45

This kind of activism against such ‘morally deviant behaviour’ to them was ‘an expression of our jihadi conduct, which we pursued to change this evil . . . by force’.46 The religious students operated within an intellectual paradigm that yielded only simplistic conceptions of state, government and society. The various texts and pamphlets they read, as well as the unstructured and randomly assembled collage of ideas they derived thereof, gave rise to a ‘bizarre mix of Salafism and jihadism’47 that conceptualized the use of political violence as a legitimate 44

45 46 47

Ibid., p. 44. Abu al-Futuh claims in his biography that the wallpaper magazines were derogatory ‘against Islam’, but this was probably political rhetoric. It is more likely that the wallpaper magazines mocked the Islamist activists, who perceived this as ‘attacks on Islam’. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, pp. 53–4. Ibid. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, pp. 17, 40 and 67.

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political instrument. One text in particular aroused in them a ‘burning desire for revolution and rebellion’.48 This was Sayyid Qutb’s Signposts on the Road, which had been banned under Nasser, but which now started to rapidly make the rounds among the students. Hamid Dafarawi, a young engineering student at the University of Alexandria, who would later play an influential role in the Islamic student movement, relates how he had been acquainted with this text at the age of seventeen: The friend of my father had a large library, and he gave us once the book of Sayyid Qutb, Signposts on the Road, the manifesto of the Islamic movement in the seventies. When I read it, it started an ideological transformation. . . . We exchanged the books of Sayyid Qutb among ourselves and it became the most widely read book. All my friends read it in two days, and then passed it on to their friends, who also read it in two days. The book had a very high circulation rate; it was the only book that was read a hundred or hundred-and-fifty times per year.49

The text of Sayyid Qutb, and to a lesser degree the works of the Pakistani scholar Abu-l-A‘la Mawdudi, was the starting point of an intellectual exchange with the modernist discourse propagated by the Muslim Brotherhood. As Islamic lifestyles and behaviours spread across Egypt, the religious students at Cairo University undertook a number of concentrated efforts to provide their activities with a more coherent organizational framework. In the first stage, they attempted to organize themselves through the socalled committee for religious awareness, which was administratively situated under the university’s student unions. Once the Nasserists, who were in control of the unions, withdrew their financial support from this committee, the activists set up an independent association in order to continue their activities. A similar development took place at the University of Alexandria, where Khalid Dawud, Ibrahim al-Za‘farani, Hamid Dafarawi and Khairat al-Shatir established a religious association within the Engineering Faculty.50 These organizations aimed to meet students’ growing religious demands by providing them with spiritual advice and practical services, such as the provision of prayer space, the holding of Quran memorization lessons and the provision of free and gender-segregated microbus transportation.51 Their political engagement in the unions brought the religious students into growing contact with other university colleagues who did not share their ideological outlook, including those of the secular Left and the ‘atheist’ communists. In some instances, the two groups engaged in physical fist fights with 48 49 50 51

Quoted in Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 39. Dafarawi, Hamid. Interview with author. Alexandria, 28 March 2013. Dawud, Khalid. Interview with author. Alexandria, 29 March 2013. Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 35.

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their rivals, for example, ‘when one of [the communists] insulted Islam’.52 Abu al-Futuh later admitted that he and others had often behaved intolerantly towards those who criticized their ideas. During some of these ‘extreme debates’, those among the students who proposed Islam-based interpretations and solutions to Egypt’s current crisis frequently found themselves struggling for arguments.53 Whereas their communist rivals could draw on the rich intellectual heritage of Marxism to craft sophisticated arguments about state, society, class and labour exploitation, the student activists could only fall back on some vague injunctions of the Quran and the Sunna, whose pre-modern conceptual framework was unable to provide them with analytical and conceptual tools rigorous enough ‘to respond to the issues those cultured students referred to’. Their conceptualizations of notions such as state, government and society were broad and fuzzy, and based on the utopian idea of a ‘return to the Caliphate’. They argued that existing institutions and socio-cultural paradigms deviated from ‘the Islamic spirit’ and that they needed to be replaced with Islamic arrangements that were not polluted by secular ideologies and legislations. Drawing on the Quranic sura al-Nisa’ (the Women) verse 59, which enjoined Muslims to ‘obey those in authority among you’, it was not clear how new Islamic institutions were to come about. Short of viable arguments, Abu al-Futuh admitted: ‘we did not know much about the logic and philosophy of the state and had only very primitive ideas’.54 Another student leader based in Upper Egypt similarly confessed to having adhered to a ‘utopian and idealistic mindset, content to act on the basis of such slogans as “Islam is the solution”, without concerning ourselves with the details’.55 Despite their myopic vision, the conversations they had within the environment of university campuses equipped the religious students with a new intellectual framework, thereby gradually forging among them a debating culture that valued rational arguments and civic discussions over the ‘intellectual terrorism’ they had initially exerted against their rivals.56

Sadat’s Policies Towards the Brotherhood When Anwar al-Sadat became president of Egypt on 7 October 1970, he inherited an economy that suffered from growing external debt, slowing annual per capita income, stagnating GDP growth and rising unemployment.57 Coming into office with a determination to align Egypt’s political and economic systems 52 53 54 55 56 57

Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 40. al-Haddad, Abdullah. Interview with author. London, 11 July 2015. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 29. ‘Issam Sultan is quoted in Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 64. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 27. Amin, Galal A. Egypt’s Economic Predicament: a Study in the Interaction of External Pressure, Political Folly and Social Tension in Egypt, 1960–1990. Leiden: Brill, 1995, p. 7.

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with Western capitalism, his goal was to abandon the socialist policies of the early 1960s and open the country to new sources of foreign investment. However, Sadat also understood that an immediate break with the past was not possible at that moment, especially since his rivals controlled key institutions within the army and the state, such as the Arab Socialist Union (ASU) – the political party Nasser had founded in 1962. Sadat needed to momentarily maintain a degree of continuity with the statist principles of pan-Arab socialism. It was only on 15 May 1971 that Sadat started to openly articulate the need for a ‘correction of the revolution’, which implied a gradual purge of Nasserist and socialist elements within the Supreme Executive Committee of the ASU.58 He substantiated this idea four months later, on 16 September, during a speech broadcasted on Cairo Radio, where he famously called for the ‘state of personalities’ to be replaced by a ‘state of institutions’.59 Two factors compelled Sadat to pivot towards this position: the first one was the pressure coming from anti-communist elements among the Free Officers within his own government, who urged the president to reduce Egypt’s growing dependency on the Soviet Union that had resulted from the signature of a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation on 27 May 1971. The second factor was the sudden surge in popular street protests. Egyptians had not yet recovered from the hangover caused by the humiliating setback of 1967, and exerted growing pressure on the president to rectify this humiliation. The ‘year of decision’ for a war with Israel, which Sadat had announced to great fanfare in a speech in July, passed without action. Meanwhile, Israeli settlements sprouted up around the Rafah plain south of Gaza, and Menachem Begin even contemplated retiring in the Sinai. The early weeks of 1972 saw a dramatic escalation of street actions organized by student unions, with the Cairo Polytechnic University becoming a hotbed of dissident activities. On 22 January, Sadat’s rivals worked through the newly formed Higher National Committee of University Students to mobilize tens of thousands of activists. After the Central Security Forces stormed the campuses, a massive sit-in ensued the following day, where thousands of students occupied Tahrir Square in an unprecedented popular protest. The fact that these events took place under the spotlight of the international media constituted a public embarrassment for the president. Sadat came to understand that the opposition against him was more entrenched than he had previously assumed, and that he needed to broaden his constituency if indeed he wanted to consolidate his power base. Gradually, Sadat started to contemplate the idea of building up a mass following that he could control and effectively leverage against his rivals. 58 59

Hinnebusch. Egyptian Politics under Sadat, pp. 50–1. Cook, Steven A. The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 126.

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It was out of these considerations that the president began to adopt a more conciliatory tone towards the Islamic student movement.60 Having conceptualized the Islamist right as a potential counterweight to strengthen his political position against his Nasserist and socialist rivals,61 Sadat believed that ‘the field was ripe for the Islamic movement to grow and spread spontaneously and naturally’.62 Over the coming months, he undertook a variety of attempts to co-opt the nascent religious student movement into his orbit of influence. As a gesture of goodwill towards the religious activists at Egyptian universities, he amended article 2 of the 1971 Constitution to specify that ‘the principles of the Islamic Sharia are a main source of legislation’.63 He further nominated Kamal Abu al-Magd, who had strong ideological ties to the Brotherhood, to head the ASU’s influential Socialist Youth Organization, and ordered his confidant Mohammed ‘Uthman Isma‘il to establish an independent Islamic association to win the favour of the leaders and activists of the religious associations in Cairo and Alexandria.64 Sadat’s initial efforts to co-opt the nascent Islamic movement into the regime’s orbit were unsuccessful. Abu al-Futuh remembers how, since ‘our programme’s foundation and obligation’ implied ‘the removal of [Sadat’s] government and the establishment of God’s law’, the regime was not encouraged ‘to open clear and direct relations with us’.65 He was surprised to discover a new association called ‘Society of the Youth of Islam’ (Jama‘a Shabab al-Islam) at the Engineering College, which was apparently managed by a certain ‘Issam al-Sheikh and which, to his consternation, ‘even employed women in its ranks’. Convinced of the superiority of the religious commitment of himself and his colleagues, Abu al-Futuh and the leaders of the independent association in Cairo treated the members of the new group in a condescending way. Once ‘Uthman Isma‘il had understood that he would not be able to woo the grassroots student movement into the regime’s orbit, the Society of the Youth of Islam disappeared as rapidly as it had come forth.66 Another option available to Sadat in his attempt to contain the socialists and the Nasserists was to reach out to the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. 60 61

62 63

64 65 66

‘Ali. The Road to Ittihadiyya, p. 73. Jamiʻ, Mahmud. ʻAraftu al-Sādāt: Nasf Qarn min Khafayā al-Sādāt wa-l-Ikhwān (I knew ˙ Sadat: Half a Century of Secrecy of Sadat and the Brotherhood). Cairo, Alexandria: alMaktub al-Misri al-Hadith, 1998. The anecdote was also referred to by al-Banna, Gamal. Interview with˙ author. Cairo, 30 October 2012. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, pp. 53–4. ‘Dustūr Jumhūriyyat Misr al-‘Arabiyya li-Sana 1971 (The Constitution of the Arab ˙ 11 September 1971. www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/text.jsp? Republic of Egypt 1971).’ file_id=190040 (accessed 11 February 2017). Cook. The Struggle for Egypt, p. 123. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 52. Ibid., pp. 55–6.

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Having himself been a member in his youth,67 the Brotherhood seemed a useful and politically expedient ally whose popularity could be easily leveraged in the struggle against his political rivals.68 Nasser had already initiated a rapprochement with the Brotherhood in August 1967, when four meetings had been held between Sadat and ‘Abbas al-Sisi, an esteemed senior leader of the ‘first cohort’. Three of these meetings had taken place at Nasser’s house while the fourth one had been held at Sadat’s estate outside of Cairo. The content of these meetings’ discussions is unknown, but it seems that the objective was to explore how the allegiance of the Brotherhood could be re-enlisted after the execution of Sayyid Qutb and the debacle of 1967.69 With the ground for such a rapprochement already being established, in the latter half of 1972 Sheikh al-Sayyid Sabiq told Tilmisani that ‘a minister in the Sadat government had informed him that Sadat was ready to meet with some of the Brotherhood leaders in order to remove the differences and work for the service of the country’.70 The regime’s outreach efforts did not limit themselves to Egypt. Among ‘those who escaped the hell of Nasser’s prisons’, Sadat also targeted those having emigrated ‘to the United States, Europe and the Arab states, where many earned their doctorate and [access to the] highest positions in Western institutions and universities’.71 He dispatched his private physician Mahmud Jami‘ to Mecca to meet with exiled Brotherhood figures, including with Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who was urged to cooperate with the government in return for a general amnesty. Several high-ranking Brotherhood leaders subsequently returned to Egypt. Prison conditions were relaxed, allowing Brotherhood leaders to receive medical treatment at the al-Manyal Hospital in Qasr al‘Aini. It was there where Abu al-Futuh met high-ranking Brotherhood personalities for the first time, including ‘Omar al-Tilmisani and Mustafa Amin. At one point, the latter handed him a redacted copy of Banna’s Letter on Teaching.72 For Abu al-Futuh and other student activists, the reading of this text stood at the beginning of a profound intellectual transformation. Banna’s epistle, with its powerful enumeration of the ‘ten pillars of the oath’ and the ‘twenty concise principles’, as well as its blueprint for Islamic reform, appealed to them precisely because of its simplicity, refreshing clarity and clear and 67

68 69

70 71 72

Several Brotherhood members confirmed Sadat’s membership. See for example Sudan, Mohammed. Interview with author. Alexandria, 16 October 2012. ‘Ali, The Road to Ittihadiyya, pp. 70–1. Jamiʻ. I knew Sadat. The anecdote was also mentioned by al-Banna, Gamal. Interview with author. Cairo, 30 October 2012. ‘Ali. The Road to Ittihadiyya, p. 79. ‘Abd al-Jawad. The Life of Mustafa Mashhur, p. 93. In the copy obtained by Abu al-Futuh, the sections concerning the organizational structure of the Brotherhood had been removed.

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actionable political programme. Most importantly, it included a political theory that allowed the student activists to rectify the critical intellectual disadvantage they had previously complained about in their discussions with the socialist, communist and leftist students.

The Birth of the Jama‘a Islamiyya In the early afternoon of Saturday, 6 October 1973, as the Jews of Israel celebrated their holy day of Yom Kippur, 200 Egyptian jets under the command of Air Force General Hosni Mubarak flew over the Suez Canal to target Israeli military installations in the Sinai. The Egyptian army had planned ‘Operation Badr’ in collusion with Syria and Saudi Arabia in order to trigger a two-front attack against Israel and extract political concessions from the intransigent government of Golda Meir. Minutes after the onset of the aerial campaign, Egyptian infantry commandos crossed the Suez Canal and stormed the ramparts of the Israeli fortifications at the Bar-Lev line. Further north, Syrian tank units pressed into the Golan Heights. But once the Israelis had mobilized their reserve units, the war fronts started to stabilize, allowing the warring parties to resupply their armies with new machinery and material.73 Days later the Israelis, equipped with freshly supplied US-made tanks and artillery, mounted a counteroffensive. On 16 October, Arab oil ministers gathered in Kuwait to impose a 17 per cent price hike on all crude oil export products, followed by a series of further production cuts and embargoes. By December 1973 the price of oil had quadrupled to $11.65 per barrel and gradually started to dislocate economic production in Western countries, causing growing panic in global energy markets.74 During the following years, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Iraq bought out the assets of Western oil companies so that by 1976, Western influence over Arab oil had effectively ended.75 The events of the October War of 1973 formed the backdrop against which the leaders of the religious student associations in Egypt initiated the process of establishing a countrywide organization as an independent and separate entity from the student unions. Abu al-Futuh recounts how one morning, as the student activists were writing Quranic suras and verses from the Hadith on the blackboard in one of the classrooms in Cairo University, he and another Brother named ‘Abd al-Rahim Hasan decided to sign their artwork with the name ‘Jama‘a Islamiyya’ instead of ‘Jama‘iyya Diniyya’, which was how they 73

74

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Shlaim, Avi. The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. New York: WWNorton, 2000, p. 321. Yergin, Daniel. The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. New York; London: Simon & Schuster, 1991, pp. 616 ff. Rogan, Eugene L. The Arabs: a History. London: Allen Lane, 2009, p. 373.

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had usually underwritten such verses.76 The students were inspired towards the choice of this nomenclature due to their growing acquaintance with the books of Mawlana Sayyid Abu’l-A‘la Mawdudi, who had founded the Jama‘at-i-Islami in 1941 in Lahore. Similar to Egypt, the Muslims of India at the time had faced a growing encroachment of Western secular values and materialist lifestyles. The founding of the Jama‘at-i Islami inspired the religious students at Egyptian university campuses. They were particularly delighted at the way in which this group blended modern conceptions of state and society with authentic Islamic symbols and practices, all the while contesting the supremacy of the political and religious elites through a radical reinterpretation of the Islamic religion. The name Jama‘a Islamiyya was quickly adopted across the community of religious activists and henceforward became the brand name for the activities of the religious student associations in Egypt. Besides these historical analogies, the students were also impressed by the organizational set-up of the Jama‘at-i Islami. Modelled along the lines of the Sufi orders, the Jama‘at-i Islami emphasized obedience, perseverance and endurance as its core values, as well as the importance of a strong relationship between the disciple and his sheikh.77 Accordingly, the newly minted Jama‘a Islamiyya called its leader al-amir and limited its tasks to religious issues, such as legislating in matters of personal status or acting as imam during prayers. Meanwhile, the administrative tasks remained under the jurisdiction of the presidents of the respective student unions. The Jama‘at-i Islami’s organizing principle of shura consultation appealed to the students, for it allowed for a quasi-democratic selection of the leader according to the Prophetic Hadith: ‘If three go on a trip, make one [of them] your leader.’ The Islamic principle of consultation thus allowed for the ‘natural emergence of a leadership’.78 As the Jama‘a Islamiyya’s membership broadened the portfolio of its activities, the student unions became integrated under the ‘branch for culture and society’ of the Jama‘a Islamiyya.79 Strengthened by this new organizational framework, its leaders now started to run for seats in the student union elections and in the fall of 1973 won by a landslide. The charismatic Abu al-Futuh became the president of the Student Union of Cairo University’s Medical College, which

76

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Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 47. Khalid Dawud claims that the inventor of the name Jama‘a Islamiyya was a student at the Engineering College of the University of Alexandria called Taj Haytham. See Dawud, Khalid. Interview with author. Alexandria, 29 March 2013. Nasr, Seyyed Vali Reza. The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: the Jamaʿat-i Islami of Pakistan. London: Tauris, 1994, p. 48. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 50, referring to a Hadith in Abu Dawud Sulayman ibn alAshʿath al-Sijistani in Sunan Abū Dawūd. New Delhi: al-Madina Publications, 1985. For an exegesis of this Hadith, see http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php? idfrom=2682&idto=2683&bk_no=47&ID=1146#docu (accessed 20 June 2017). Abu al-Futuh. Witness, pp. 48–9.

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became known as the epicentre of Islamic activity, attracting religious activists from across the country. This electoral victory enabled the religious activists to access the financial resources of the student unions, which they used to amplify the impact of their work; for instance by distributing veils to female students, providing academic and financial support for less privileged students, and handing out ‘scientific booklets’ to educate their colleagues about Islam. While the student activists of the Jama‘a Islamiyya were eager to shape Egypt’s political future, they suffered from the absence of a coherent ideological framework that would have allowed them to translate their activities into concrete political outcomes. University campuses in Egypt during these days had turned into a veritable hodgepodge of ideas where the student activists debated aimlessly the advantages and disadvantages of this or that legal concept or theological doctrine. Besides the writings of Mawdudi, they drew on a diverse spectrum of scholars and clerics, many of whom were ideologically aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, such as the Azharite Sheikhs Mohammed al-Ghazali, Mohammed ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Fadl and Yusuf al-Qaradawi, as well as a number of lesser-known Brotherhood writers such as ‘Aisi ‘Abduh, al-Bahi al-Khuli and ‘Abd al-Halim Mahmud. One of the most widely read authors was al-Sayyid Sabiq, who carried the unflattering epithet ‘blood mufti’, as he stood accused of having acted as the spiritual mastermind behind the assassination of Prime Minister Nuqrashi Pasha in December 1948.80 Sabiq was particularly popular among the student activists, for he had – upon instruction by Hasan al-Banna – authored the famous booklet Jurisprudence of the Tradition (Fiqh al-Sunna), which was a simple, straightforward text designed for lay Muslims to gain access to the scholarly intricacies of Islamic law.81 During these early days of intellectual meandering, it was not the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood that left the strongest intellectual imprint on the minds of the student activists, but the writings of those who identified with the so-called Salafi call. The Da‘wa Salafiyya, as the modern Salafi movement was known, described a broad spectrum of thoughts and ideas with diverse intellectual and geographical origins. Those who identified with the Da‘wa Salafiyya saw themselves as belonging to a chosen group of people, in reference to a Hadith predicting that the Muslim community would split into two, the majority consisting of heresy and deviance, and a minority known as ‘the victorious sect’ or ‘the saved group’. Salafis believed that Islam had been sullied by ‘reprehensible innovations’ and that Muslims needed to return to the golden age of a primeval, pristine and pure Islam that was governed by the Quran and the Sunna. Salafism appealed to many student activists precisely because of its inherent modernity, where rationalistic argumentative methods 80 81

Mitchell. The Society, p. 74. ‘Abd al-Malik, Mohammed. Interview with author. Manchester, 12 August 2017.

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and reason-based individual interpretations of the Islamic texts were prioritized over the century-old, layered scholasticism of the four established legal schools of Sunni Islam. The reliance of Salafism on textual, rather than traditional, forms of authority made it seem fresh, provocative and powerful, while its embrace of different interpretations of Islamic law allowed for a variety of answers to be given to the perennial question of how Muslims should live in the modern world.82 The modern Salafi movement traced its roots to several sources: the first one was the religious orthodoxy of the medieval scholar and social reformer Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya, who had lived at the border between modernday Turkey and Syria during the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth century. At a time when the Mongol invasion had wreaked havoc and disorder on the Muslim world, Ibn Taymiyya strived to purge Islam of its accumulated heresies, which he perceived as an existential threat to the integrity of the Muslim community.83 Following the widely held truism that temporal proximity to the first generation of early Muslims constituted the truest form of worship, Ibn Taymiyya urged his contemporaries to return to the authentic beliefs and practices of the first three generations of Muslims, known as ‘the pious elders’ or al-salaf al-salih.84 One of his most important contributions to Islamic theology was his positing of the monotheistic principle of tawhid, or the ontological ‘oneness of God’, as a core tenet of the Muslim creed.85 This doctrine implied that any practice attempting to associate God with anything other than God Himself was idolatrous, for God had the sole and exclusive right to be worshipped.86 Consequentially, Ibn Taymiyya rejected any form of metaphoric or symbolic interpretation of Islam and particularly repudiated the syncretic practices of the Shia Muslims. It was only proper to dissociate this form of polytheism from the true Islamic practices as lived by companions of 82

83

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A good overview is provided by Qadhi, Yasir. ‘On Salafi Islam.’ Muslim Matters, 22 April 2014. http://muslimmatters.org/2014/04/22/on-salafi-islam-dr-yasir-qadhi/ (accessed 20 July 2017). Gauvain, Richard. ‘Salafism in Modern Egypt: Panacea or Pest?’ Political Theology 11, no. 6 (2010), pp. 802–25. The Hadith usually cited to substantiate this claim is found in Bukhairi: ‘the best of my community are my generation, then those who come after them, and then those who follow them’. See Haykel, Bernard. ‘On the Nature of Salafi Thought and Action’ in Meijer, Roel. Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. The doctrine of tawhid was justified by the reference to the famous Quranic sura al-Ikhlas (the Unity): ‘Say: “He is God, [who is] One. God, the eternal refuge. He neither begets nor is He born. Nor is there to Him any equivalent”.’ As Ibn Taymiyya wrote in the fatwa al-kubra: ‘The way of the Salaf is to interpret literally the Quranic verses and Hadiths that relate to the Divine Attributes and without indicating modality and without attributing to Him anthropomorphic qualities’. Quoted in ibid., p. 38.

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the Prophet, making it obligatory to excommunicate ‘apostates’ as a precondition for waging jihad against them.87 The legal reasoning behind declaring fellow-Muslims to be apostates and therefore legitimizing a jihad against them, known as takfir, saw a revival within some quarters of the student community during the 1970s. The second important influence on the Da‘wa Salafiyya came from Mohammed ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, a preacher and religious reformer from the central Arabian Najd region who had founded an ultraconservative reform movement during the eighteenth century. Upholding the principles of the Hanbali legal school in matters of law, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab adopted a highly conservative approach to theological doctrine and ritual practice. Unlike Ibn Taymiyya, who had been a member of the Sufi Qadiriyya order, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab deplored Sufi ritualistic practices such as the veneration of saints, the visiting of shrines, celebrations of the Prophet’s birthday, and the seeking of intercession from the dead. Such practices were anathema to him and he, as well as the generations of Wahhabi clerics who succeeded him, regarded them as a threat to the purity and integrity of Islamic society. In 1744, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab concluded a political alliance with the dynastic ruler Muhammad ibn Sa‘ud and from there his ideas spread across wide parts of the Arab peninsula.88 A third influence came from the revival of Salafism during the Muslim reform movement in the late nineteenth century. In confronting the challenges of modernity and the superiority of Western military and cultural might over Islamic civilization, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Mohammed ‘Abduh sought to mobilize the spiritual resources and philosophical values inherent in Islam in order to enable a cultural renaissance of Muslim societies. In contrast to Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s Hanbali interpretation, the ‘return’ they had in mind was metaphorical rather than literal, implying a return to an ideal world where religion had lived side by side and in perfect harmony with the humanism and rationalism of modern man. With Rashid Rida, the inclusive and ‘enlightened’ Salafism of Afghani and Abduh gave way to Hanbali interpretations of Islamic law that steered away from ‘Abduh’s rationalist outlook and towards a more rigid and puritarian sectarianism. Like Ibn Taymiyya, Rida believed that Islam had been contaminated by ‘harmful innovations’ and that the creed needed to be purified from its inherent corruptions.89 While he directed a considerable 87

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For an in-depth study on Ibn Taymiyya, see Rapoport, Yossef and Shahab Ahmed. Ibn Taymiyya and His Times. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2015. On Islam in Saudi Arabia, see Lacroix, Stéphane. Awakening Islam: the Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2011; Dekmejian, R. Hrair. ‘The Rise of Political Islamism in Saudi Arabia.’ Middle East Journal 48, no. 4 (1994), pp. 627–43. See Algar, Hamid. Wahhabism: a Critical Essay. Oneonta: Islamic Publications International, 2015.

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amount of this criticism at the ‘fairy tales and illegitimate innovations’ of Shiism,90 his inclination towards the practices of the Saudi Wahhabi school also made him sceptical towards the esoteric practices of the Sufi mystics, whose emphasis on passivity and submission had the potential to corrupt the umma.91 It was this brand of Saudi-Wahhabi Salafism that appealed to most student activists in Egypt. Its conceptual clarity, its codes of behaviour and its emphasis on outward appearance provided simple and straightforward instructions on how to achieve tangible personal, cultural and societal objectives.92 The take-off of Salafi ideas, behaviours and lifestyles was not a purely intellectual phenomenon, however, but was influenced in significant ways by geopolitical and economic events. In the wake of the October War of 1973, the deployment of the ‘oil weapon’ by Arab governments had led to a structural shift in global energy markets. As the treasury of the Saudi Kingdom was flooded with petrodollars as a result of skyrocketing oil prices, Saudi leaders undertook a concentrated effort to provide Egyptian publishing markets with myriads of books, pamphlets, brochures and audiocassettes promoting the anachronistic and extremist ideas of Wahhabi Salafism. These materials were distributed for free and circulated widely among the community of university students, who read them eagerly in their search for a means that could provide a direction to their political activism. The Saudi Kingdom further financed a wide range of scholarships, provided subsidy payments to journalists, academics and Islamic scholars, and constructed hundreds of Islamic centres, universities, schools and mosques around the world. The influx of these ideas stood at the beginning of a transformation of Egypt’s historically Sufi-oriented penchant for mysticism towards a more rigidly scripturalist and literalist interpretation of Islam.93 Within the jumbled mishmash of opinions and ideas characterizing Egyptian university life during the early 1970s, xenophobic attitudes towards foreigners, vitriolic attacks against non-Wahhabi Muslims, and the condemnation of Shia Muslims as heretics became part of the mainstream religious–political discourse. Over the coming years, Wahhabi Salafism would come to reshape its image ‘from a sectarian, excluded, localized, parochial and marginal movement’ situated at the periphery of the Islamic world to ‘a precursor of the fundamentalist spirit’.94

90 91 92 93

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Hourani. Arabic Thought, p. 231. Ibid., p. 225. ‘Abd al-Malik, Mohammed. Interview with author. Manchester, 12 August 2017. For a study on Sufi realities in Egypt, see Hoffman, Valerie J. Sufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern Egypt. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. As quoted in Meijer. Global Salafism, p. 8. See also Redissi, Hamadi. ‘The Refutation of Wahhabism’ in al-Rasheed, Madawi. Kingdom without Borders: Saudi Political, Religious and Media Frontiers. London: Hurst & Company, 2008.

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Historically, the Salafi movement had been quietist and strictly focused on religious themes such as individual morality, creed, ritual, worship, piety and outwards appearance, rather than on questions related to politics, governance and the state. During the early 1970s, the combination of these different strands of Salafism amalgamated with the activist political philosophy of Sayyid Qutb to create the combustible mix that would soon come to capture the world’s attention. This new breed of Salafism was overly concerned with the notion of ‘loyalty’ to Islam and the ‘disavowal’ to any sort of practices or behaviours that were considered to be deviant.95 Its most extreme form, jihadi Salafism, was based on an interpretation of Islamic law that embraced radical and even violent political positions. These individuals emphasized the practice of excommunicating fellow Muslims, known as takfir, which they used against those among their rulers who did not succumb to a Sharia-based legal framework. They cultivated a xenophobic and exclusivist attitude towards foreigners and harnessed a virulent sectarianism towards non-Wahhabi Muslims, whom they considered as ‘idolaters’ – an attitude they considered to be an expression of the sincerity of their faith. In the hands of these practitioners, the famous doctrine of ‘commanding right and forbidding wrong’ was transformed from the quietist and minimalist principle used in the Saudi social and cultural context to an activist and maximalist position in the political field.96 One of the first groups in Egypt leaning towards jihadi Salafi ideology was Shukri Mustafa’s ‘Society of Muslims’ (Jama‘at al-Muslimin), which was derogatorily labelled ‘Society of Excommunication and Emigration’ (Jama‘at al-Takfir wa-l-Hijra) by Egyptian state media.97 Another, less-known and more short-lived group was the ‘Technical Military Group’ (Jama‘at alFanniyya al-‘Askariyya), named after a failed attempt by disgruntled army personnel to take over an army weapons depot in April 1974 in the Military College of Heliopolis. The foolhardy plot was hatched out by a Palestinian named Salih Sirriyya, a lecturer at the Arab University of Cairo who had attracted a small, but highly zealous circle of revolution-minded devotees. Mustafa Yusri and Usama Khalifa, two young army cadets of the Military College who were part of the Sirriyya group, were also involved in the activities of the Jama‘a Islamiyya. Although no direct connection could be established between the leadership of the Jama‘a Islamiyya and the ‘Sirriyya group’, the episode shows how closely the memberships of the respective organizations overlapped. Indeed, the line between those who were willing to carry out violent attacks and those who simply condoned such acts in principle, was 95

96

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Maher, Shiraz. Salafi-Jihadism: the History of an Idea. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. For the historical and intellectual background of this legal principle, see Cook, Michael. Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Kepel. Muslim Extremism, pp. 70 ff.

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a fine one. Abu al-Futuh and the leaders of the Jama‘a Islamiyya in Cairo were aware of the risks stemming from too close an association with jihadi and takfiri groups. In their eyes, Sirriya’s attempt to overthrow the Egyptian regime was naive to say the least. And while the leaders of the Jama‘a Islamiyya approved of violence against secular regimes in principle – as they stated repeatedly in their publication Voice of the Truth (Sawt al-Haqq) – they refused to effectively join radical groups, instead preferring to remain organizationally independent.98

The Merger Some of the most important meeting grounds between the representatives of a highly diverse Islamist movement were the annual summer camps, the first of which took place in 1973 in Cairo. It brought together the major ‘symbols’ of the Islamic student movement in Egypt, including Abu al-Futuh and ‘Issam al‘Arian from Cairo University, Ibrahim al-Za‘farani, Khalid Dawud and Hamid Dafarawi from the University of Alexandria, as well as Khairat al-Shatir from the University of Mansura. Many influential clerics were also invited. In addition to the General Guide ‘Omar al-Tilmisani and his deputy Mustafa Mashhur, this group included the Azharites Mohammed Mitwally alSha‘rawi, Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Mohammed al-Ghazali, as well as the Salafi preacher Nasir al-Din al-Albani.99 The latter was an autodidact born in 1914 in Albania who had founded the Dar al-Hadith Institute in Medina and whose anti-scholastic trend, overwhelmingly focused on Hadith scholarship, inaugurated the definitive stage in the development of modern Salafism.100 The summer camps became the locus for a number of fierce debates, as key representatives of a broad and diverse range of intellectual–religious movements came together to discuss the purpose and direction of the Islamic movement and the nature of Islam in general. Opinions clashed in early 1974 during a Saudi-sponsored ‘umra trip to Mecca, which was organized by the Jama‘a Islamiyya. During the previous years, the leaders of the Jama‘a Islamiyya had been consolidating the different chapters formed at various departments and colleges at Cairo University under a single council. They elected ‘Issam al-‘Arian as Cairo University’s first amir of the ‘council of leaders’, making him the religious head of the Jama‘a Islamiyya of the entire Cairo University. Along with this organizational consolidation came a growing awareness among the leaders of the Jama‘a Islamiyya about their role and place within the larger Islamic movement, particularly as far as their relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood was concerned. Although this issue had been 98 99 100

Abu al-Futuh. Witness, pp. 63–5. ʻAli. The Road to Ittihadiyya, p. 74. Lacroix. Awakening Islam, p. 87.

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debated as early as 1970, it acquired a growing urgency after the October War, as the last remaining figures of the Brotherhood were freed from prison. One issue in particular polarized the spirits of the student activists: the question of whether the Jama‘a Islamiyya should remain independent, or whether it should join an existing organization. Since the field of organized Islamic activism was limited to only a handful of da‘wa and charity-related associations, the only alternative was the Muslim Brotherhood. As was made evident from the discussions at the summer camps and the ‘umra trip of 1974, serious differences existed between the worldviews of the student organizers and the leadership of the Brotherhood, many of which initially revolved around issues such as gender relations and female sexuality. Standing under the spell of newly acquired Salafi ideas, youth activists demanded a scrupulous separation of sexes in classrooms, public places and hospitals, and advocated for a strict imposition of the niqab.101 The strong influence of Wahhabi doctrines deepened the cultural and doctrinal divide between the modernist version of Islam propagated by the Brotherhood, and the kind of backward-oriented Salafism that was popular among the leaders of the Jama‘a Islamiyya. While the students accused the leaders of not being ‘true Muslims’, the latter sought to convince their younger peers of the superiority of the Brotherhood’s religious methods and political theory, seeking to impress upon the neophytes the ‘correct’ version of Islam. They appealed to the imperative of unity among Muslims and argued that only the Brotherhood’s organizational architecture and ideological framework could guide the Islamic movement towards victory. The religious students frequently denounced, and sometimes even ridiculed, the Brotherhood’s senior leaders for their ‘un-Islamic’ lifestyle, such as their refusal to grow beards, or the fact that their wives only wore the hijab. The literalist interpretation of the Quran and the Sunna offered them clear-cut and straightforward benchmarks for what should be considered properly religious behaviour. They accused the leaders of the Brotherhood of deviating from the righteous path, along the popular Salafi doctrine of ‘commanding right and forbidding wrong’. They were reluctant to associate themselves with interpretations of Islam that were unsympathetic to these theological principles. Many initially doubted the religious commitment of the Brothers, as much as the suitability of their reform methods.102 The leaders of the Brotherhood, on the other hand, were impressed with the success of the Jama‘a Islamiyya, as they 101

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Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 71. On the impact of conservative ideologies of Wahhabi origin, see Dekmejian, R. Hrair. ‘The Anatomy of Islamic Revival: Legitimacy Crisis, Ethnic Conflict and the Search for Islamic Alternatives.’ Middle East Journal 34, no. 1 (Winter 1980); Dessouki, Ali E. Hillal. ‘The Islamic Resurgence: Sources, Dynamics, Implications’ in Dessouki, Ali E. Hillal (ed.) Islamic Resurgence in the Arab World. New York: Praeger, 1985, pp. 22–3. Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 40.

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had witnessed the spectacular spread of the student movement ‘from the womb of obscurity without [an] organization that could chart its way’.103 Indeed, the appearance of a nationwide religious movement to them seemed to corroborate Banna’s notion of a natural, bottom-up Islamization of society, as the founder had predicted in the Letter on Teaching. Gradually, the interactions of the student activists with the historical leadership transformed the formers’ outlook and convinced them that this generation of leaders were indeed the true ‘owners of the renaissance project’. While still resisting the Brotherhood’s unorthodox ideas intellectually, they were nevertheless moved by the tales of hardship and ordeals these individuals had endured during decades of prison and exile. They came to regard these men as ‘legends of resistance, steadfastness and patience in the face of injustice and ignorance’,104 and gradually developed a sense of veneration and affection towards them. Clearly, the Brotherhood’s senior leaders were not the band of thugs and criminals as Nasser’s propaganda apparatus had sought to portray them, but in fact held the most-noble intentions for Egypt. It was as if their suffering had endowed them with a superior religious legitimacy.105 Leading preachers such as Sheikh Mohammed al-Buhairi of the Jama‘at al-Sunna and Mohammed ‘Abd alMun‘im Abu al-Fadl, who became Abu al-Futuh’s spiritual mentor, defended the Brotherhood’s historical record and thereby provided further credence to their legacy.106 The inter-generational interactions between the two groups during the various summer camps and religious trips solidified the emotional bonds between the student activists and the senior leadership. In early 1974, the Brotherhood decided to formally reach out to the leaders of the Jama‘a Islamiyya. Relations between the two groups had so far been of an informal nature, occurring sporadically within the context of the summer camps and other religious trips and activities. The Brotherhood at the time formally still operated under the regulations of 1951 and was as such devoid of the organizational structures and administrative procedures that would allow for a systematic allocation of concrete tasks and responsibilities to new members.107 But as it became obvious that they commanded a burgeoning 103 104 105

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Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 73. Ibid., p. 79. Ibid., pp. 24–5. Abu al-Futuh stresses that despite his radically changed view of Nasser, he did not consider him as having committed apostasy. Rather, he understood the conflict between Nasser and the Brotherhood as politically motivated. This comment is interesting given the publication date of his book, where he seeks to distance himself from the ideas of Sayyid Qutb. Also see ‘Kamāl al-Helbwī: al-Khilāfa bayna al-Ikhwān wa ‘Abd al-Nāsir kān Sabāban fī Hazīma 67 (Kamal al-Helbawy: the ˙ Conflict between the Brotherhood and Jamal ‘Abd al-Nasir originated in the Catastrophe of 1967).’ Al-Watan, 6 February 2014. www.elwatannews.com/news/ details/114298 (accessed 12 August 2017). Abu al-Futuh. Witness, pp. 23–4. Baker. Sadat and After, p. 250.

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respect among the university students, the observant senior leaders saw an opportunity to consolidate their relationship with the Jama‘a Islamiyya in a more formal way. Kamal al-Din al-Sananiri, an influential figure from the ‘first cohort’ and a former member of the Special Apparatus, was dispatched to meet with ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh, who as the president of the student unions played a key role in crafting this relationship.108 The two men met in late February or early March 1974 in a small shoe shop in Qasr al-‘Aini Street.109 Sananiri was a notoriously cautious man who was eager not to reveal any formal contacts between the two organizations. Sitting next to Abu al-Futuh on a bench in the shoe shop the fifty-six-year-old Brotherhood leader, whose body had visibly aged due to the two decades he had spent in prison, described the gruesome experiences of solitary confinement, torture and humiliation he and others had endured. He recounted his memories of Sayyid Qutb, with whom he had shared a prison cell, before outlining the theological and political tenets of the Muslim Brotherhood, the validity of its method for Islamic reform, and Banna’s vision of an Islamic state that could unite the fractured Muslim community under the umbrella of a single political framework. Abu al-Futuh, fascinated and touched by Sananiri’s unrelenting commitment to the Islamic da‘wa, later remembered this meeting as ‘impressive and emotional to the highest degree’.110 Despite the emotional impact the encounter with Sananiri had on him, it was not until his meeting with ‘Omar al-Tilmisani a few weeks later that Abu al-Futuh’s last doubts about joining the Brotherhood were cast aside. The exchange between the venerated sheikh and the young student activist took place at the former’s house in Cairo and lasted until the early morning hours. Abu al-Futuh remembered: I have been in the presence of a man who had spent twenty years in jail and yet left jail still preoccupied with the cause of Islam and preaching for God . . . His words were magic to me! He was a role model in whom I found my own consciousness, one of those we read about in the biography of the Prophet, who were tortured for the sake of preaching God’s method.111

A similar sense of admiration was expressed by Mokhtar Nuh, another influential student leader and the brother-in-law of Field Marshall ‘Abd al-Halim Abu Ghazala, who would play an important role in the Brotherhood’s conquest of the Lawyers’ Syndicate during the 1980s: 108 109

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ʻAli. The Road to Ittihadiyya, p. 75. For more information on Kamal al-Sananiri, see Mansfield, Laura. In His Own Words: Translation and Analysis of the Writings of Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri. Old Tappan: TLG Publications, 2006, pp. 27 ff. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 75. Ibid., pp. 75 ff.

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the second founding (1968–1981) Through the training of ‘Omar al-Tilmisani, I learned to understand the meaning of loving others, working with others, opening up to others. This was Tilmisani’s curriculum, and this is what we all discovered . . . Tilmisani was like a fisherman of pearls.112

Following his meeting with the General Guide, Abu al-Futuh took the oath of allegiance, which was followed by a pledge of allegiance of the entire leadership of Cairo University’s Jama‘a Islamiyya a few weeks later. The Jama‘a Islamiyya chapter in Alexandria, which was headed by Khalid Dawud, reached a similar agreement with the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood. The group’s key representatives in Alexandria were ‘Abbas al-Sisi and his deputy Gum‘a Amin.113 Sisi was born in November 1918, had joined the Brotherhood in 1936 as part of the ‘first cohort’, and in 1954 was sentenced to a decade-long prison term due to his membership in the Special Apparatus. He was released in 1965 but was sentenced again shortly thereafter due to his involvement in the attempted reconstitution of the Brotherhood under the leadership of Sayyid Qutb.114 As a younger Brotherhood member later explained, Sisi was an adherent to the idea of ‘calling towards God with love’. He apparently was convinced that a Brother needed ‘to engage with passion and love’, so that he could ‘make [another Brother] feel that you are his friend, that you are his Brother [so that you can] present him Islam in the very right way’. While Gum‘a Amin, who was born in 1934 in Beni Sweif, was younger than Sisi, he also had spent many years in jail during the 1960s. Sharing a cell with Shukri Mustafa in Liman al-Torah prison, he had spoken out forcefully against the idea of takfir: Amin started to fight these ideas . . . The majority was radicalized already, but [Amin] understood the idea correctly and started to speak out against Shukri [Mustafa] and his prison mates. They didn’t like the idea that he was fighting them, not by ignoring them but through ideology, through understanding, through using the same background, the same verses of the Quran and the Hadith.115

It was even rumoured that Gum‘a Amin was opposed to violence to such a degree that Shukri’s prison mates had tried to kill him by mixing rat poison in his food.116 Be this as it may, Sisi and Amin, similar to Tilmisani and Sananiri

112 113 114

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Nuh, Mokhtar. Interview with author. Cairo, 11 March 2013. Dawud, Khalid. Interview with author. Alexandria, 29 March 2013. ‘Al-Dā‘iyyat al-Hajj ‘Abbas al-Sīsī (The Preacher Hajj ‘Abbas al-Sisi).’ Ikhwanwiki, date ˙ unknown. www.ikhwanwiki.com/index.php?title=%D8%B9%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B3_ %D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%B3%D9%8A (accessed 12 August 2017). al-Haddad, Abdullah. Interview with author. Cairo, 11 July 2015. Ibid.

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in Cairo, managed to convince the leadership of the Jama‘a Islamiyya in Alexandria to take the pledge of allegiance to the General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood. By 1975, the Brotherhood had effectively absorbed into its ranks the members of the Jama‘a Islamiyya in Egypt’s two major urban centres, Cairo and Alexandria. For the time being the merger between the two groups remained a tightly guarded secret – a fact that served the interest of both the Jama‘a Islamiyya and the Muslim Brotherhood. Although the student unions were effectively part of the umbrella framework provided by the Jama‘a Islamiyya, they were legally situated within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education and as such had access to the state’s administrative and financial resources. As the key representatives of the religious student movement, Abu al-Futuh and ‘Issam al‘Arian occupied prestigious positions within the state bureaucracy. Since a public disclosure of the merger might have boycotted their access to state funding, the student activists had little incentive to reveal this fact. Neither did the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood. ‘Omar al-Tilmisani understood that Sadat needed the Brotherhood’s cooperation if he wanted to contain the radical elements at the far right of the Islamic movement. At the same time, he was aware of the high level of respect he enjoyed among the student activists. As the General Guide later remembered, ‘when I spoke to the students . . . they accepted my arguments against violence, demonstrations, strikes and sabotage’.117 It was most likely because of this circumstance that Sadat’s Minister of Interior, Nabawy Isma‘il, called the General Guide regularly for advice on how the radical elements of the politically activist Islamic scene should be contained. Furthermore, Tilmisani knew that the Brotherhood’s alliance with Sadat was of a tactical nature, while in actuality the regime continued to view the Brotherhood as a strategic threat. Sadat would have certainly not been favourable to a deal between the Jama‘a Islamiyya and the Brotherhood – a fact that was evident in the president’s persistent refusal to allow the Brotherhood to become a legitimate political actor.118 These considerations led the leaders of both groups to keep the pledge of allegiance, which had been given by the student leaders in Cairo and Alexandria, a secret. It would not be until Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel in the late1970s, when the relationship between the regime and the Brotherhood had soured to a considerable degree, that the merger was publicly announced.119 Bolstered by their newly acquired organizational capacity, the leaders of Jama‘a Islamiyya entered the General Egyptian Students’ Union in 1975, and immediately gained control of several important administrative committees.120 117 118 119 120

Tilmisani is quoted in Baker. Sadat and After, p. 249. Kepel. Muslim Extremism, p. 107. ‘Ali. The Road to Ittihadiyya, p. 75. Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 36.

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These victories were facilitated by the recently adopted Decree 335, which stipulated the objective of the student unions to consist in ‘deepening religious values among students’.121 In 1976, the Jama‘a Islamiyya scored a landslide victory and Abu al-Futuh, by now undisputedly acknowledged as the most capable student representative, became president of the Student Union of Cairo University.122 In December 1976, when public ‘Eid prayers were held to celebrate the end of Ramadan, the student unions mobilized tens of thousands of supporters into public squares of Cairo and Alexandria.123 By now it was clear that the Jama‘a Islamiyya had grown into a nationwide movement with a membership of over 100,000 people, corresponding to more than one-fifth of the student body in Egypt.124 To a growing extent, its appeal started to spill over from the university campuses into mosques, religious schools and other key institutions of Egyptian society. Thus, by virtue of the merger between the Jama‘a Islamiyya and the Muslim Brotherhood, the latter group had managed, within only a few years, to once again command a broad-based following of members and supporters across Egypt.

The Da‘wa Magazine and Social Justice In an effort to further build on this momentum, Tilmisani started to direct his efforts towards promoting the Brotherhood’s message to a wider audience. His main vehicle was the magazine al-Da‘wa, which became the Brotherhood’s flagship publication during the end of this decade. Al-Da‘wa’s operation was initiated in the summer of 1976 in a small library in the Cairene neighbourhood of al-Sayyida Zainab. Its publishing licence was originally owned by Salih ‘Ashmawi, a former deputy of Hasan al-Banna and the first head of the Special Apparatus, but it was later transferred to Tilmisani, who became both editor-in-chief and chairman of the editorial board, alongside other members such as ‘Ashmawi, Mustafa Mashhur and Mohammed ‘Abdallah.125 Tilmisani personally recruited the management and publishing team and organized weekly editorial and reviewing meetings to debate the content of the next publication. The ten people-strong workforce was made up mostly of students from Cairo University’s Faculty of Journalism. Within a few months, this team achieved a circulation rate of between 60,000 and 80,000 copies per month.126 121 122 123 124 125 126

Kepel. Muslim Extremism, p. 140. Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, pp. 36–8; Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 47. Ibid., p. 50. Hinnebusch. Egyptian Politics under Sadat, p. 205. Salih ‘Ashmawi is referred to in Mitchell. The Society, pp. 54–5 and 80–5. Gilles Kepel identifies 78,000 copies sold per month, referring to the statement of one of al-Da‘wa’s authors: Kepel, Muslim Extremism, p. 107. Hinnebusch mentions 80,000 to 150,000 copies per month, though the higher end of this spectrum seems implausible: Hinnebusch, Egyptian Politics Under Sadat, p. 205. A January 1977 accounting statement

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Tilmisani used his position as editor-in-chief to launch a widespread publicity campaign to rehabilitate the Brotherhood as a religious and educational reform movement committed to achieving its goals through peaceful means. In line with the Brotherhood’s staunchly conservative outlook, the pages of alDa‘wa advocated for a strict application of Sharia rulings in public life, as reflected in its various articles and opinion pieces.127 Al-Da‘wa provided the Brotherhood with a platform to strengthen its religious credentials among younger generations of Egyptians.128 At the same time, the letters and requests for fatwas that were sent to the editorial board by ordinary Egyptians allowed Tilmisani and his staff to gauge how the Brotherhood’s social and educational reform project was perceived among individuals at the grassroots level.129 The magazine also showed the Brotherhood’s continued tendency towards a fundamentally anti-Semitic, anti-Western and anti-communist outlook, as evidenced both visually on various front covers, and textually in its frequent rants against the so-called four horsemen of the apocalypse: Jews, crusaders, communism and secularism. Entire sections were devoted to the perpetuation of an Islamic version of the ‘clash of civilizations’-narrative, which drew on a widely prevailing fear of the expanding penetration of the Muslim world by Western values while emphasizing the absolute duty to defend Islam against such foreign ‘attacks’. The lead article of the July 1978 edition, for instance, titled ‘The Fall of American Society’, blamed American moral degeneracy on the high degrees of fornication, especially among homosexuals.130 Besides its moralist, culturalist and religious agendas, al-Da‘wa presented the Brotherhood with an opportunity to articulate a powerful critique of Egypt’s deteriorating socio-economic conditions. In terms of Egypt’s political economy, such criticism was grounded in the structural dislocations caused by the accelerating pace of globalization, whose impact increasingly affected the living standards of the middle class and the urban poor. In the famous ‘October paper’ of April 1974, Sadat had outlined a new economic strategy as the starting point for the dismantlement of the Nasserist corporative system. Egypt’s drifting away from the Non-Aligned Movement towards the American camp caused an opening of the Egyptian economy to international

127 128 129

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listed an initial circulation of 60,000 copies in July 1976 and a circulation of 78,000 by January 1977: al-Da‘wa, January 1977, p. 17, quoted in Rock-Singer, Aaron. ‘A Pious Public: Islamic Magazines and Revival in Egypt, 1976–1981.’ British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 42, no. 4 (October 2015), pp. 427–46. A discussion on al-Da‘wa can be found in Kepel. Muslim Extremism, pp. 107 ff. al-Arian. Answering the Call, pp. 177 ff. This argument is made by Rock-Singer, Aaron. Practicing Islam in Egypt: Print Media and Islamic Revival. Cambridge University Press, 2018, and Rock-Singer. ‘A Pious Public: Islamic Magazines and Revival in Egypt, 1976–1981.’ Rizq, Gabir. ‘al-Jins: Awwal mā yushaghghil bāl al-Sha‘b al-Amrīkī (Sex: the First Thing that Preoccupies the Mind of the American People).’ Al-Da‘wa, July 1978.

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investments, known as al-infitah, which led to the flooding of local markets with foreign cash. With international investors preferring low-risk assets over the uncertain performances of the Egyptian industry, trade as a percentage of GDP surged from 35 to 97 per cent between 1975 and 1979. However, this money failed to support Egypt’s productive capacities and instead was diverted into petroleum, banking and real estate. Construction during this period soared by 107 per cent, with the majority being invested in high-end apartment buildings, office towers, vacation cabins and luxury hotels.131 The famous journalist Mohammed Hasanin Heikal observed around that time that Cairo had remodelled itself towards ‘a city of middlemen and commission agents for Europeans and Americans, shuttling between luxury hotels and government ministries, and wheeling and dealing on an ever-increasing scale’.132 By 1976, the Egyptian economy was under severe pressure. Annual GDP growth had increased from 2.5 to 14.6 per cent in the two preceding years – a fact that provided Egypt’s leaders with a pretext to boast of their country’s miraculous economic performance. This growth, however, was merely a consequence of growing petroleum exports and revenues harvested from unproductive rents such as Suez Canal passages and remittance payments boosted by high oil prices. In reality, the underlying fundamentals of the Egyptian economy were characterized by a highly skewed income distribution, dilapidating infrastructure, growing levels of foreign debt and sprawling corruption in state administration and industrial sectors. The sharpening of class cleavages added a widespread sense of discontentment among Egypt’s middle class and urban poor.133 As government expenditure had spiralled out of control by the end of 1976, Sadat sought to curtail the vast system of subsidies he had inherited from Nasser. In early January 1977, he ordered the cancellation of subsidy payments on bread and other basic commodities, leading to sudden price spikes that severely cut into household budgets. On 18 January, Egyptians rioted in their tens of thousands in Cairo and Alexandria in what became known as the ‘Bread Riots’. The spontaneous outbreak of the uprising included students and workers who were frustrated with the rising cost of living, and who felt provoked by the symbols of conspicuous consumption brandished on the streets of Cairo by an emerging class of super-rich.134 The Bread Riots were proof of the widespread sense of disillusionment felt by Egyptians, from various social classes, who had been disappointed twice: first by the unfulfilled promises of Arab 131

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133 134

On informal settlements, see the study by Sims, David. Understanding Cairo: the Logic of a City Out of Control. Cairo; New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2010. Heikal, Mohamed Hassanein. Autumn of Fury: the Assassination of Sadat. London: A Deutsch, 1983, p. 185. Baker. Sadat and After, p. 122. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 60; Baker. Sadat and After, p. 118.

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socialism, and now by the hardship and declining standards of living brought about by Sadat’s economic opening. The pages of al-Da‘wa cleverly exploited this popular discontentment by turning it into a pointed critique of the status quo. One author, analysing the widening income gap between rich and poor, pointed out that economic inequality had worsened because of the creation of a new class of capitalists who reaped large profits through collaborating with Western business interests.135 But such analyses were an exception and most of al-Da‘wa‘s articles brandished the materialist and secular values permeating Egyptian society as the culprit for the country’s economic malaise. Many writers also reverted to the concept of ‘social justice’ – a modern terminology, but one that encapsulated an idea which had historically manifested itself in Islam’s religious obligation and practice of almsgiving, known as zakat.136 Such, at least, was the argument of Sayyid Qutb, who elevated this concept to a pivotal place within modern Islamic discourse. His influential book Social Justice in Islam (al-ʻAdala al-ijtimaʻiyya fi-l-Islam) was an attempt to apply authentic Islamic principles to the current political, social and moral context of the Muslim world.137 Locating the idea’s origins in the days of the early Islamic community, he argued that the Prophet himself had declared ‘war against the class of nobles and the wealthy, taking away their riches and distributing it among the poor’. Drawing on the kind of historicism typical of modern Islamist discourse, he wrote: ‘[God] knew that true social justice can come to a society only after all affairs have been submitted to the laws of God, and the society as a whole is willing to accept the just division of wealth prescribed by Him’.138 The social movement having been started by the Prophet was not simply about the redistribution of wealth, but aimed at ‘the establishment of moral standards, the purification of society, and self-evaluation’. Indeed, Qutb sought that the only way to establish a truly moral system was for such a system to be based on faith, 135

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Wadur, Mohammed ‘Abd al-‘Aziz. ‘Tatbīq al-Sharī‘a al-Islāmī hwa al-Sabīl al-Tahqīq al˙ Islamic Sharia is the Only Way to Achieve˙ Social ‘Adāla al-Ijtimā‘iyya (Implementing the Justice).’ Al-Da‘wa, June 1979. For an account of the role of charity in Islam, see Singer, Amy. Charity in Islamic Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. For an account on Islamic charity in Palestine, see the ethnographic study by Schäublin, Emanuel. Zakat in Nablus (Palestine): Change and Continuity in Islamic Almsgiving. University of Oxford, submitted in 2018. Also see Tripp, Charles. Islam and the Moral Economy: the Challenge of Capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. See the discussion by Shepard, William. ‘The Development of the Thought of Sayyid Qutb as Reflected in Earlier and Later Editions of “Social Justice in Islam”.’ Die Welt des Islams 32, no. 2 (1992), pp. 196–236. Qutb, Sayyid. Maʻālim fī-l-Tarīq (Signposts on the Road). Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, ˙ see Qutb, Sayyid and al-Mehri, A. B. (eds.). Signposts 2012, p. 11. For a translation, on the Road. Birmingham: Maktabah Booksellers and Publishers, 2006, p. 41.

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the second founding (1968–1981) which provides criteria, creates values, defines the authority from which these criteria and values are to be derived, and prescribes the reward of the one who accepts this authority and the punishment of those who deviate or oppose [it]. Without this kind of belief of the concept of a higher authority, all values remain unstable, and similarly morals based on them remain unstable – without accounting, without authority, without reward!139

If faith and morality were strong, however, history had already proven that society would be ‘freed from all oppression’: The Islamic system was established in which justice was God’s justice and in which weighing was by God’s balance. The banner of social justice was raised in the name of God, and the name of the banner was Islam. No other name was added to it and ‘there is no God except God’ was written on it . . . . Mankind was uplifted in its social order, in its morals, in all of its life, to a zenith of perfection which had never been attained before and which cannot be attained afterwards except through Islam.140

While Sadat accused his rivals on the left of having orchestrated the ‘uprising of thieves’ (as he dismissively called the Bread Riots), he understood only too well that these protests were the consequence of deeper structural causes. In an effort to calm the public outrage, Sadat invited the country’s key political representatives, intellectuals and journalists so that he could explain Egypt’s new economic direction to an increasingly sceptical general public. Abu alFutuh, who was the president of the Student Union of Cairo University, was among the exclusive group of invitees. When he arrived at the Presidential Palace, the young student activist found himself amid several important political figures and senior members of the presidential cabinet, including Vice President Hosni Mubarak and other high-ranking ministers. The meeting was aired live on television, presumably for Sadat to portray himself as a man of the people who took citizens’ bread-and-butter concerns seriously.141 Unaware of the protocol, the inexperienced Abu al-Futuh raised his hand several times while Sadat made his public address. As he later wrote in his autobiography, he was convinced that the Bread Riots were proof of ‘the vigour of the people, who possessed a high level of awareness and vitality that pushed them into the streets without any leadership’, and he was determined to bring his understanding of the situation to the attention of the president.142 After having been ignored several times, Abu al-Futuh suddenly stood up in the middle of the president’s speech and interrupted him ‘without authorization’. To the

139 140 141 142

Ibid. Ibid., p. 43. Ibid., pp. 60–1. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 59.

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surprise of a baffled audience, the twenty-four-year-old student activist proclaimed: We as the people find the state’s behaviour contradictory. I can give you a simple example: when you declared that [Egypt] would be a country of knowledge and faith, Sheikh al-Ghazali was deposed from the ‘Amr Ibn al‘As Mosque . . . . Why was he deposed? The believers went into the streets to . . . condemn this decision during a peaceful protest. But the protesters were attacked and al-Ghazali was dismissed by the Ministry of Endowments. When he came out from prison, he left Egypt, as he didn’t find any work. All the other loyal [religious] scholars left Egypt in a similar way. Now, there are no scholars anymore, except those who are hypocritical.

At this point, an irritated President Sadat interrupted Abu al-Futuh: Stop it right there, stop it right there! . . . I will never accept hypocrisy. . . . Nor will I allow you to come here and tell your opinions. This country will not allow religion to be exploited. . . . Learn how to be polite when addressing people. . . . Don’t impose yourself as a leader by exploiting religion!143

The intervention of the insubordinate student activist was an unprecedented event in Egyptian political culture. While Abu al-Futuh’s professional career as a physician suffered, the boldness by which he confronted Sadat in front of the entire presidential cabinet and staff earned him the adoration of religious activists across the country.144

Camp David and the Israel Conundrum Abu al-Futuh’s intervention against the president occurred at a time when the power of the religious student movement had become strengthened by the nationwide organization of the Muslim Brotherhood.145 In early 1977, various local Jama‘a Islamiyya branches united under the name ‘Jama‘a Islamiyya in Egypt’ and elected Helmi Gazzar, a student from the Medical College of Cairo University, as their first national leader. Despite this phenomenal success, the Brotherhood had not yet been able to make significant inroads into the vibrant Islamic scene at university campuses in Middle and Upper Egypt.146 In an 143

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‘Munazara bayna al-Sadāt wa Abu al-Futūh (Debate between ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu alFutuh ˙with President Mohammed Anwar˙ al-Sadat).’ YouTube, January 2018. www .youtube.com/watch?v=FokW6klhn1k&feature=youtu.be (accessed 12 August 2017). When Abu al-Futuh graduated from Cairo Medical College and applied to become a teaching assistant, his request was cancelled, presumably as a punishment for his provocative stance against the president. See Abu al-Futuh. Witness, pp. 58–9. ‘Ali. The Road to Ittihadiyya, p. 75. Interview with Abu al-‘Ala’ Madi, quoted in Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, pp. 40–1.

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effort to strengthen their organization’s capacity in the south, senior Brotherhood leaders began criss-crossing the country in order to meet with local organizers.147 In March 1977, Mustafa Mashhur, in his function as deputy guide and head of the University and Youth Section, visited Asyut and Minya.148 As in the urban centres in the north, the students in Middle and Upper Egypt first met the Brotherhood’s leaders with a great deal of scepticism. Similar to their peers in Cairo and Alexandria, the social and religious attitudes of the student activists in the south were staunchly conservative. They had enthusiastically embraced Wahhabi Salafi ideas and practices and were unconvinced of the Brotherhood’s religious commitment, instead ridiculing its leaders for the inappropriate shape of their beards and the fact that their wives were not wearing the niqab. These outreach efforts took place at a time when the Brotherhood’s relationship with the regime became increasingly complicated. On 9 November 1977, Sadat gave a speech to the People’s Assembly to announce that he was ready to travel ‘to the end of the world’ in order to make peace with Israel. Faced with mounting political unrest at home, the president speculated that a rapprochement with Israel would bring about an improvement in Egypt’s desolate economic predicament. His policy posed a distinct challenge to the Brotherhood, whose leaders had to balance the contradictory objectives of staying faithful to their ideological opposition against Israel, while at the same time avoiding a situation where a toopointed criticism of the state’s policies would arouse Sadat’s ire against them. Trying to avoid directly confronting the president, the pages of al-Da‘wa critiqued the Israeli–Egyptian rapprochement in generalist religious, rather than specific political, terms. The lead editorial of the June 1979 edition, titled ‘The Way to Save Jerusalem’, framed Palestine as a ‘universal Muslim problem’ rather than a political concern relevant to Egypt, and appealed to all Arab leaders to ‘rally in the face of the common danger’. It warned that the aim of ‘the crusaders, the Jews, and the communists’ was to ‘erase Islam from our world’ and ‘detach Muslims from their religion’, arguing that the Brotherhood was opposed to a peace treaty ‘not because we are in the opposition, but because of Islam’. A failure to understand the depth of this issue would be the ‘graveyard of Muslims’.149 Furthermore, al-Da‘wa’s articles attacked Israel and ‘the Jews’, rather than Egyptian policy: ‘Peace will never change the doctrine of the Jews, which is only a means for Israel to achieve its larger goal: the establishment of a Greater Israel. For this reason, there is a need to change our doctrine and we need to look at peace with a different perspective than the Jews.’150 147 148 149

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Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 49. ʻAbd al-Jawad. The Life of Mustafa Mashhur, p. 101. ‘Omar al-Tilmisani. ‘Al-Tarīq ilā Inqādh al-Quds (The Way to Save Jerusalem).’ Al˙ Da‘wa, June 1979. Rizq, Gabir. ‘Muftarayāt Mināchim Bīgin (The Lies of Menachem Begin).’ Al-Da‘wa, January 1979.

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These articles showed the extent to which Tilmisani was eager to prevent a situation that would give the regime a reason to crack down on the Brotherhood. He created a largely academic distinction between the principle of negotiations and their consequences. Rather than categorically refusing any negotiations, he supported them if they would lead to the ‘restitution [of Palestine] to its owner’ and thereby avoided any direct criticism of Sadat’s policies. At the same time, he took a clear stance against any normalization with Israel, warning of the danger that the entire region could ‘become Jewish’. He later wrote in his autobiography: ‘I did not politically oppose the treaty . . . . However, I religiously opposed it as Islam prohibits Muslims from resigning in front of a non-Muslim assault on a Muslim land.’151 The approval of the principle of negotiation and the simultaneous rejection of its results was, however, a paradoxical position. This act of intellectual acrobatics illustrated the Brotherhood’s attempt to stand with one foot within, and with the other one in opposition to, the political system, which shaped the movement’s position towards Israel going forward. Egypt’s gradual rapprochement with Israel provided the backdrop for more fanatical attitudes to flourish within the Islamic scene. This was particularly true in the south, where student life became embroiled in a boiling atmosphere that brought to the fore disagreements having long simmered beneath the surface. The key question was whether the use of violence should be considered a legitimate means to ‘defend Islam’.152 At the centre of these debates was a young engineering student called Abu al-‘Ala’ Madi, who was born in April 1958 in a lower middle-class rural family in Minya. Having matriculated himself in the Engineering Department of the University of Minya in October 1976, Islamic activism became for Madi a means to channel his religious and spiritual energy while simultaneously assuaging his political ambitions. Distinguishing himself through his resourcefulness, his organizing talents, and a charismatic and energetic personality, Madi entered the ranks of the Jama‘a Islamiyya in late 1976 and, within a year, became the president of the student union of his department.153 In early 1978, Madi attended a talk Tilmisani gave at the University of Minya. The speech of the venerated sheikh left a deep impression on the nineteen-year-old student, propelling him a few weeks later to travel to the Brotherhood’s headquarters in Suq al-Tawfiqiyya in Cairo in order to personally meet with Tilmisani. He remembers this meeting as follows: [Tilmisani] invited us, bought us lunch, and we sat and talked. This was the first time I sat with him. When we decided to enter the Brotherhood, part of the decision was [motivated by the fact] that Tilmisani was a loving 151 152 153

Ibid., p. 241. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 59. Madi, Abu al-‘Ala’. Interview with author. Cairo, 21 May 2013.

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the second founding (1968–1981) person, and partly [by the fact] that our colleagues in Cairo, like Abu alFutuh and ‘Issam al-‘Arian, [had already] decided to enter. We took their position, as we trusted them. I stayed with [Tilmisani], spent the night with him, attended meetings and camps with him and started to get closer to him.154

One of the most remarkable achievements of Tilmisani was that he was able to resolve the excruciating question of violence and commit the majority of the students of the Jama‘a Islamiyya in Upper Egypt to a peaceful path. He was convinced that true social and political reform could not come about except if the Islamic movement worked within the legal framework of the Egyptian state. He repeatedly emphasized the necessity for the Brotherhood to reconcile with society, so that the movement could establish itself as an accepted and legitimate player. The only way to achieve this goal was for the idea of violence to be eradicated from the minds of the rank-and-file members. Thanks to his tireless efforts, he was able to convince Madi and other leaders of the Jama‘a Islamiyya to renounce the fantasy of takfir. By distancing the Brotherhood from these radical ideas, Tilmisani thus laid the foundations for the Brotherhood to reintegrate itself into Egypt’s political life under a moderate, reformist and peaceful vision, and subsequently expand into nearly all aspects of society and state.155

The Spectre of Islamic Fundamentalism At the end of the 1980s, the Middle East became embroiled in a series of spectacular political events, which from the vantage point of certain policymakers and academics in the West seemed to destine the entire region towards an inevitable collapse. Against the predictions of so-called modernization theorists, who believed that the traditional and religious-based societies of the Arab Middle East would head towards an inevitably secular, liberal and democratic future,156 the United States and its Western allies suddenly found themselves confronted with the forces of a newly politicized version of Islam. The key event inaugurating this awareness was the Iranian revolution of 1979. After decades of subdued popular anger following the overthrow in 1953 of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in a CIA-financed operation, in January 1978 a series of riots, strikes, marches and demonstrations brought together a heterogeneous coalition of actors, including middle-class intellectuals, bazaar merchants, the urban poor, as well as university students from the Islamic right and the Western-educated Marxist–Leninist left, who formed 154 155 156

Ibid. Kepel. Muslim Extremism, p. 43; Baker. Sadat and After, p. 190. Lerner, Daniel. The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. New York; London: Free Press, 1958.

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a common front to resist the absolutist and tyrannical rule of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.157 A demonstration known as ‘Black Friday’ occurred in Tehran in September 1978 and brought about an escalation of social tensions towards the end of the year. With oil production at a near-standstill, global energy markets were subjected to erratic price spikes – a fact that greatly disconcerted policymakers in the United States for whom Iran was the most important strategic ally in the Middle East. By mid December, the sense of popular resentment started to affect officers across different ranks and army units, who publicly voiced their support for the revolution. Incapable of grasping the reality of a strong popular movement united against his dictatorial rule, Shah Reza Pahlavi left Iran on 16 January 1979. Two weeks later, to the rancorous applause of ecstatic crowds, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from his exile in Paris. On 4 November, a standoff between the United States and the new Iranian regime led to the takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran by a group of university students, who took sixty-six diplomatic staffers as hostages.158 The symbolism of these events could not have been more significant. For the first time in modern history, Islamic clerical might had brought the downfall of a powerful secular regime – and this despite the unwavering support this regime received from the world’s unrivalled superpower.159 Coming at the heels of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the ‘Islamic revolution’ of 1979 fundamentally altered US foreign-policy thinking on the Middle East.160 Another, and, from the perspective of US strategic planners, closely related event occurred on 20 November 1979, when a group of insurgents under the leadership of a certain Juhayman al-Utaybi seized the Grand Mosque of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Utaybi was a Saudi national, a disciple of the great Hadith scholar Nasir al-Din al-Albani and an ardent adherent of his Ahl al-Hadith 157

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Homa Katouzian categorizes the post-Mossadegh period into two parts, arguing that the Shah’s rule between 1953 and 1963 resembled more a dictatorship, while from 1963 to 1979 it became an absolutist ‘one man show’. This distinction is important in order to appreciate the public’s growing resentment as a consequence of the Shah’s absolutist rule: Katouzian, Homa. The Persians: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Iran. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, p. 31. The final number of hostages kept for the entire 444 days was 52, as the hostage takers had released the African Americans and the women among the embassy staff. Anoushe Moddaresi points out that the image of an Islamic power having brought down a powerful secular regime was true only on a symbolic level, while in reality the forces of the revolution were multifaceted. Thus, while the ‘Muslim Student Followers of the Line of the Imam’ (Daneshjuyan-e Mosalman-e Peyrov-e Khatt-e Emam) were a powerful constituency of the revolution, both numerically and in terms of their appeal to the masses, they alone did not cause the fall of the regime. They did manage, however, to sanction the revolution later on, framing it as a war between the religious clerics and Western agents. Keynoush, Banafsheh. Saudi Arabia and Iran: Friends or Foes? Houndmills; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

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movement. He had established the millenarian ‘Salafi Group that Commands Right and Forbids Wrong’ (Jama‘at al-Salafiyya al-Muhtasiba) in the 1960s as a reaction to the influence of the Wahhabi ‘ulama’, whose adherence to Hanbali jurisprudence he and his followers considered harmful innovations that were contrary to Islam. In twelve letters, which he published from 1978 onwards in the left-wing Kuwaiti newspaper al-Tali‘a (the Vanguard), Utaybi effectively declared takfir on the Saudi–Wahhabi state. Convinced that the situation was ripe to confront those who opposed the coming of the Mahdi and the inauguration of the end of the world, in the fall of 1978 he declared his companion Mohammed al-Qahtani to be the Mahdi. Utaybi’s venture quickly flopped, however. Shortly after the group had seized the Grand Mosque, Qahtani was killed while sixty-three of the insurgents were arrested and executed.161 While the events of the Iranian Revolution and the seizure of the Grand Mosque were causally unrelated, strategic planners in Washington, DC were quick to ‘connect the dots’, seeing them as inevitable and portent harbingers of a resurgence of religious forces in the Muslim world – forces that had the power to mobilize large crowds of faithful believers and thereby negatively affect US national interests in the Middle East. In particular, the Iranian Revolution challenged the historical narrative of the Shia as the underdogs vis-à-vis the Sunnis. Since Islam’s first constitutional crisis in CE 632, the followers of the fourth righteous caliph, ‘Ali Ibn Abi Talib, had desired to overthrow the existing order and return to a pristine and purified form of Islam.162 Disempowered, disenfranchised and downtrodden, the Shia had over the centuries constructed a narrative of themselves as the bearers of lament and submission. This sense of historical injustice, which took a cardinal position in the self-consciousness of many politically active Shia Muslims, now started to transform itself into a culture of insurrection, at the core of which stood the notion of martyrdom.163 The antiestablishment protest against tyranny and injustice, which was so elementary to the Iranian Revolution, transformed the passivist cultural heritage of the Shia community into a powerful political activism that represented, in the words of Ayatollah Khomeini, the very ‘principle of resistance and revolution’.164 In Beirut in October 1983, this rekindled spirit of resistance would culminate in one of the 161

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The history and ideology of the Jama‘at al-Salafiyya al-Muhtasiba is recounted in Lacroix. Awakening Islam, pp. 89 ff. Louër, Laurence. Sunnis and Shi’a: A Political History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020; Lewis, Bernard. ‘The Shi‘a in Islamic History’ in Kramer, Martin S. Shi‘ism, Resistance and Revolution. London: Mansell, 1987. In Shia belief, to achieve martyrdom meant either to die in a holy war, or to die by suffering personally through imprisonment, torture or execution for one’s belief or action. In the wake of the rise of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’, the concept of armed rebellion as inherent to Shia religious culture came into mode. Lewis, Bernard. ‘The Shi‘a in Islamic History.’ p. 161.

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first major suicide attacks against Western targets in the Middle East, as agents of Iran’s nascent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) mounted two successful military operations, killing 241 US Marines and 58 French Paratroopers.165 Less than four months later, US President Ronald Reagan ordered the withdrawal of American forces from Lebanon, thereby causing another major reversal of US Mideast policy.166 The Iranian Revolution had a lasting influence on the tenor of religious debates in the Sunni Muslim world. The largely peaceful transfer of power from the secular monarchy of the Shah to the Islamic Republic of Ayatollah Khomeini invalidated the widely held assumption that popular revolutions would inevitably lead to civil strife, as Sunni clerical elites had traditionally argued. For many centuries, this theory had provided religious scholars with a justification to acquiesce with the political powers of the day, allegedly in order to avoid a division of the Muslim umma – even if those powers were tyrannical in obvious ways.167 The model of Islamic republicanism, which had been articulated theoretically by Khomeini in his famous 1970 tract Velayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) and now became a practical reality, amalgamated the idea of popular sovereignty with the imperative for Islamic identity and values to serve as reference points within a nascent political culture.168 The newly found political activism of the Islamic Republic, furthermore, challenged the prevailing narrative that Islamic civilization was inferior to the West, thereby giving renewed impetus to religious political activists across the Sunni world who were eager to unify the Muslim umma within the framework of a single Islamic entity. The transformation of authentic religious beliefs into a modern political ideology, as it became embodied in the constitution of the Islamic Republic, entailed a proliferation of Islamic associations and centres from the United States and Europe to Asia and the Middle East. In Turkey, for instance, Necmettin Erbakan’s Millî Görüş movement experienced an unprecedented popularity boost.169 165

166

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‘Report of the DoD Commission on Beirut International Airport Terrorist Act, October 23, 1983.’ United States Department of Defense, 20 December 1983. www .ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AMH/XX/MidEast/Lebanon-1982-1984/DOD-Report (accessed 12 August 2017). Willi, Victor J. The Marine Barracks Bombing of October 23, 1983: the Conflict Between the United States and the Arab World – A Perceptional Approach. University of Zurich. Unpublished master’s thesis, 2006. www.academia.edu/12268753/ The_Marine_Barracks_Bombing_of_23_October_1983._A_Perceptional_Approach (accessed 12 August 2017). Gardet, L. ‘Fitna’ in Baerman, J. P. et al.(eds.). Encyclopédie de l’Islam (3rd ed.). Leiden: Brill, 2007. http://brillonline.nl/browse/encyclopedie-de-l-islam (accessed 12 August 2017). Khomeini, Ruhollah and Hamid Algar (trans.). Vilāyat-e Faqīh (Guardianship of the Jurist). Tehran: Institute for Compilation and Publication of Imam Khomeini’s Works, 1970. Atasoy, Yıldız. Turkey, Islamists and Democracy: Transition and Globalization in a Muslim State. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005; Ozgur, Iren. Islamic Schools in Modern Turkey: Faith,

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While the occurrence of the Iranian Revolution invigorated a sense of unity of minds between the religious political activists of Islam’s two major sects, the intellectual roots of this bonding went back to the Islamic modernist movement in the late nineteenth century, particularly the pan-Islamist ideas that had been elaborated by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. The spirit of unifying Sunni and Shia Islam subsequently became an intrinsic part of the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, as evidenced in Hasan al-Banna’s affirmation that ‘the honour and distinction of being a companion of the Messenger of God’ behoved equally to all four righteous caliphs – a statement that indicated his willingness to extend a hand to the Shia Muslims.170 In January 1947, these unification efforts had led to the establishment of the ‘Society for Rapprochement among Islamic Legal Schools’ (Jama‘at al-Taqrib Bayna al-Madhahib al-Islamiyya) by a consortium of Egyptian Sunni scholars from al-Azhar and Shia clergymen from Qom. The Society for Rapprochement was headed by Muhammad ‘Ali ‘Alluba, who was a close associate of Hasan al-Banna.171 Contacts with Shia scholars were sustained during the 1950s, as evidenced in the Brotherhood’s intellectual exchange with Sayyid Navvab Safavi, a charismatic young Persian cleric who had founded the ‘Fada’iyan-e Islam’ (Devotees of Islam), which aimed at establishing an Islamic government in Iran. Visiting Cairo in 1953 and 1954, Safavi engaged in long discussions with Sayyid Qutb, as the two intellectuals exchanged ideas on how the Muslim world could be emancipated from the yoke of imperialism in their shared effort to establish a new Islamic government. The biggest obstacle to achieving such an emancipation, they believed, was to be found in the coalition between secular dictators and the traditional clerical establishment dominating the Islamic world. This episode illustrated the central place of cross-sectarian, pan-Islamic ideals between the Muslim Brotherhood and proto-revolutionary Iranian groups. Shia–Sunni philosophical affinities were also commonplace in the idea of Islamic government, as articulated by Ayatollah Khomeini’s doctrine of the guardianship of the Islamic jurist, known as Velayat-e Faqih in Farsi, and respectively in Sayyid Qutb’s concept of hakimiyyat Allah. Both notions encapsulated the idea of a God as sole ruler with absolute authority over His human subjects, while both also defended the notion of obedience, which according to them belonged exclusively to a Creator commanding Muslims to be judged by religious standards said to be suitable for all times and all places. In 1966, Ayatollah ‘Ali Khamenei translated the works of Sayyid Qutb into Farsi and in the introduction praised the Sunni Islamic intellectual by

170 171

Politics, and Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. www.loc.gov/catdir/ enhancements/fy1210/2012006485-b.html (accessed 12 August 2017). al-Banna. ‘Letter on Teaching’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 207–48. Brunner, Rainer. Islamic Ecumenism in the 20th Century: the Azhar and Shiism between Rapprochement and Restraint. Leiden: Brill, 2004, pp. 124 ff.

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calling him a mujahid, or highly devoted, thinker. Iran subsequently became a destination for shiploads of Qutb’s book In the Shade of the Quran (Fi Zilal al-Qur’an), which was printed in Beirut during the 1960s. Safavi, for his part, emerged as a role model for revolutionary clergies in Iran, and apparently was the very person who introduced Ayatollah Khomeini to the Brotherhood’s ideas.172 Regardless of this close intellectual affinity, the years that followed the Iranian Revolution were characterized by a sense of weariness among the Brotherhood leadership. They were particularly concerned with the question of whether a Khomeini-type revolution was appropriate to the Egyptian context. While the model of Wilayat-e Faqih at first sight seemed to dovetail with Brotherhood doctrines about the Caliphate, it posed a theological–legal as well as a political challenge. In particular, the Iranian belief that in the absence of the last Imam a religious political deputy should be appointed, contradicted the Brotherhood’s advocacy for the traditional Sunni system of the caliphate as a means to unify the Muslim umma.173 Similarly, Khomeini’s methods advocated radical revolutionary change, whereas the Brotherhood preferred to focus on gradual reform. Finally, each country had distinct nationalistic claims. Iran’s self-perception as a great civilization extending back to Cyrus the Great forged an aspiration for regional leadership that was in contradiction to the Brotherhood’s Egyptian nationalism, which understood ‘duty to country’ as an ‘inescapable obligation’ of Islam.174 For these reasons, the leaders of the Brotherhood reacted cautiously towards the enthusiasm of religious student activists, who eagerly embraced the prospect of an ‘Islamic revolution’. Hamid Dafarawi, for instance, was convinced that [revolution] was indeed the method for change, which could only happen if the people would go to the streets and ask for their rights . . . I was convinced that without the descent of the people into the streets, there wouldn’t be any change.175

Thus, the Brotherhood only formally greeted the success of the Islamic Revolution, and dutifully called upon a number of Sunni Islamist movements to visit Khomeini in order to congratulate him on the revolution’s success.176 Some over-enthusiastic Brotherhood leaders even advised the Supreme Leader 172

173

174 175 176

Taheri, Amir. The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution. Bethesda: Adler & Adler, 1986, pp. 98 and 102. Gabara, ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Selim. ‘Al-Khūmīnī: bayna Āmāl al-Muslimīn wa Mu’āmarāt al-Salībiyya wa-l-Shyū‘iyya (Khomeini: Between the Hope of Muslims and the ˙ Conspiracies of the Crusaders and the Communists).’ Al-Da‘wa, March 1979. Harris. Nationalism and Revolution in Egypt, p. 144. Dafarawi, Hamid. Interview with author. Alexandria, 28 March 2013. ‘Iīrān wa al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn: Qissa al-Hubb al-mustahīl (Iran and the Muslim ˙ ˙ Sasa Post, 24 ˙ September 2017. www Brotherhood: the impossible Love ˙Story).’ .sasapost.com/iran-and-islamic-brotherhood-impossible-love-story/ (accessed 24 July 2018).

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that he should inaugurate the Islamic caliphate from Iran.177 Privately, however, Tilmisani urged his followers to refrain from the temptation of popular revolution, instead insisting that meaningful reform could only be achieved through peaceful political participation within the framework of the nationstate.

The Assassination of the Pharaoh On 26 March 1979, under the sponsorship of US President Jimmy Carter, the Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and the Egyptian President Anwar alSadat signed a peace treaty between the Arab Republic of Egypt and the State of Israel. For Begin, this was a momentous accomplishment. By neutralizing the Arab world’s largest army, he had managed to significantly reduce the Arab military threat to his country. For Sadat, signing a peace treaty with Israel seemed to be the best option to free Egypt from its economic predicament and further integrate his country into global consumer markets. Meanwhile, most Arab leaders saw this as an act of blatant betrayal. Once the treaty was signed, seventeen Arab states cut off diplomatic relations with Egypt and suspended the country from the Arab League. The peace treaty had a significant impact on Egypt’s political scene. It pushed the relationship between Sadat and the Brotherhood to its lowest point yet, as Tilmisani accused the president of having deliberately encouraged the rise of militant groups to divide the Islamic movement and weaken the Brotherhood’s leadership over it.178 It was at this point that the Brotherhood began to leak the news that it had merged with the Jama‘a Islamiyya. When Sadat realized that things had escaped his control, he reacted furiously. Abandoning of his previous strategy, he instructed his security apparatus to coerce Islamic activism across the board. The Charter of the Student Union was scrapped and replaced with a more restrictive version that placed union activities under the direct supervision of government-appointed university administrators.179 The détente between Israel and Egypt also split the ranks of the Jama‘a Islamiyya, particularly in Egypt’s southern governorates. At the University of Minya, a small but vocal faction on the far right gathered around the charismatic engineering student Karam Zuhdi. In mid 1979, he and a group of hardline activists, as well as the majority of the members of the Jama‘a Islamiyya in Asyut, decided to break away from the Jama‘a Islamiyya and pursue an 177

178 179

‘Al-Ta’thīr al-mutabādil bayna al-Thawra al-Iīrāniyya wa-l-Islām al-siyāsī al-Sunnī (The mutual Influence between the Iranian Revolution and Sunni political Islam).’ Ida’at, 18 February 2017. www.ida2at.com/mutual-influence-between-iran-revolution-andsunni-political-islam/ (accessed 24 July 2018). Baker. Sadat and After, p. 250. Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 36.

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independent path.180 Inspired by Salafism and the ideas of Sayyid Qutb, they began to advocate an armed jihad against the Copts, whom they considered a major obstacle to the implementation of the Islamic project. The majority of the Jama‘a Islamiyya in Middle and Upper Egypt, however, remained committed to Tilmisani’s vision for gradual and peaceful reform. They gathered around Abu al-‘Ala Madi, who was arrested and subsequently imprisoned for three months after a raid by State Security on the Brotherhood’s offices in Minya. Troubled by the sudden turn towards radicalism, Madi was convinced of the futility of taking up arms against an allpowerful state.181 It seemed obvious to him that Tilmisani’s gradualist and peaceful strategy offered far better solutions in leading the Islamic project to its success than those proposed by the millenarian fringe groups at the far right of the spectrum. When he was released in June, he and Mohi al-Din Ahmad ‘Aissa were among the first leaders of the Jama‘a Islamiyya in Middle Egypt to officially join the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood. Following his example, thousands of activists in Minya and Asyut took the oath of allegiance to the Murshid.182 With the merger having been made public, the Brotherhood was walking a fine line. In early August, the members of the managing board of al-Da‘wa magazine – by now the de facto decision-making body of the Brotherhood – met for a strategy meeting. The topic of discussion was an invitation, extended to Tilmisani by the Ministry of Culture and Information, to attend the ‘Islamic Thought Assembly’ in Isma‘iliyya, a yearly forum that gathered Azhari and other Islamic clerics, scholars and imams. After some discussions, the board unanimously decided that Tilmisani should attend the meeting, together with Mustafa Mashhur and ‘Abd al-‘Azim al-Mo‘tani. When the Brotherhood delegation arrived at the Presidential Palace on the day of the meeting, they were asked to sit in the first row. Tilmisani was optimistic that this gesture represented the beginning of a new understanding with the regime. However, after Sadat had spoken for a few minutes, he unleashed a flood of accusations against the General Guide. The Brotherhood should not attempt to plot against the regime, the president warned, as he would not tolerate ‘those who try to tamper with the high interests of the state under the guise of religion’.183 He publicly scolded Tilmisani in front of the assembled dignitaries and even accused the Brotherhood of treason, sabotage and of fomenting sectarian riots, lambasting the General Guide for corrupting the young generation through the publication of lurid articles in al-Da‘wa. When 180 181 182

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Ibid. Madi, Abu al-‘Ala’. Interview with author. Cairo, 21 May 2013. al-Baz, Mohammed. ‘Abu al-Ela Madi: Ma’amoun al-Hudaybi is a Threat to the [Muslim] Brotherhood!’ Sawt al-Umma, 1 September 2003. al-Tilmisani, ‘Omar. Interview in al-Musawwar, 22 January 1982, quoted in Baker, Sadat and After. p. 243.

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the president lectured the Murshid that ‘religion must not be mingled with politics’, the latter uttered a sentence that would make him famous among his followers: ‘If anyone else had said what you said,’ Tilmisani responded, ‘I would complain to you. But since you, Mohammed Anwar al-Sadat, are the author of these accusations, I can only raise my complaint against you to God, who is the wisest of rulers.’ By taking the moral high ground, Tilmisani pointed out that the only viable solution to Egypt’s crisis would require that ‘God’s Law must be applied’ and reminded the president: ‘It is only when you [implement the Sharia] that the masses will be with you.’184 Shortly after this exchange another meeting took place at the president’s private residence on the outskirts of Cairo. Sadat at this point was under growing pressure. Well aware of the anger his rapprochement with Israel had caused among the general public, and of the fact that his economic policies had failed to deliver tangible gains in terms of living standards for ordinary Egyptians, he felt compelled to replace his regime’s ‘implicit cooperation’ with the Muslim Brotherhood with an ‘explicit understanding’.185 He suggested to Tilmisani that the Brotherhood could register as an association under the authority of the Ministry of Social Affairs. But Tilmisani, conscious of the power ambit the Brotherhood commanded among the grassroots, refused. Madi later explained how the Jama‘a Islamiyya at the end of the 1970s went far beyond the student body, as it was joined by engineers, peasants, teachers, workers and [members of] other professions. It started to have leaders and members from outside the student framework. A popular movement meant that it became diverse and was composed of all sectors of the population.186

Tilmisani based his rejection of Sadat’s offer on the rationale that the registration of the Brotherhood as an association would limit its scope of activities to the domain of charitable work, thereby blocking the possibility for the Society to become a legitimate political party.187 This decision illustrated the confidence the Brotherhood had gained by the end of the decade, as the movement had reestablished itself as a pivotal political player on Egypt’s domestic scene.188 As these discussions took place, the confrontation between the regime and the radical elements of the Jama‘a Islamiyya intensified. Within the context of a worsening security environment, Sadat was no longer able to uphold the fragile balance of power within the Islamist camp. He realized that he had lost control over even the moderate factions of Islamic activists, who themselves were unable or unwilling to contain the sense of outrage that started to 184 185 186 187 188

Baker. Sadat and After, p. 244. Ibid., p. 250. Madi, Abu al-‘Ala’. Interview with author. Alexandria, 21 May 2013. Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 31. Baker. Sadat and After, pp. 244 ff.

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germinate at the level of the grassroots as a result of the signature of the peace treaty with Israel. Militants garnered growing support among radicalizing elements of youth activists in Cairo and Alexandria, as well as on the conurbations of Minya and Asyut. Many of these activists were disillusioned with the leadership of the Brotherhood, whose politicking was perceived as an act of cooperation with the regime, if not outright treason. The leaders of the Jama‘a Islamiyya, meanwhile, seemed to be devoid of any clear strategy as well.189 Some members of the Cairo branch of the Jama‘a Islamiyya launched a campaign of sectarian retributions whose objective was to destroy the ‘infidel state’. Sectarian violence became widespread in April 1980 in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Asyut, when the faction of zealots around Karam Zuhdi mounted a series of violent attacks against Coptic Christians. The poisonous atmosphere spread to the Christian-dominated Zawiya alHamra neighbourhood in Cairo, where spoilers exploited the social tensions by attacking a number of stores that were owned by Copts. In June, Zuhdi’s faction merged with a new group based in Cairo, which was headed by ‘Abd al-Salam Faraj, an electrical engineer who galvanized a group of militant supporters to proclaim the birth of a group called Islamic Jihad (al-Jihad al-Islami). Inspired by the writings of Ibn Taymiyya and under the spell of the brewing jihadi Salafi trend, Faraj had previously authored a political pamphlet titled The Neglected Duty (al-Farida alGha’iba).190 There, he called on Muslims to wage an armed jihad against Sadat, whom he defined as an ‘apostate of Islam fed at the tables of imperialism and Zionism’.191 He stipulated that it was an ‘individual religious duty’ for Muslims to establish an Islamic state by force and that any argument to the effect of acquiring political power by peaceful means was null and void. He further criticized Muslim religious leaders who, because of their sycophantic relationship with the regime, had wilfully ignored the cardinal importance of jihad and, through their acceptance of a secular political–legal system had failed to follow the divine plan ordained for humanity.192 Political leaders such as Sadat, Faraj claimed, were to be seen as ‘the near enemy’ of the Muslims.193

189 190

191 192

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Kepel. Muslim Extremism, p. 205. Faraj, ‘Abd al-Salam. Al-Farīda al-Ghā’iba, translated by Johanes Jansen under the title The Neglected Duty: the Creed of Sadat’s Assassins and Islamic Resurgence in the Middle East. New York: Macmillan, 1986. Quoted in Kepel, Gilles. Jihad: the Trail of Political Islam. London: I.B. Tauris, 2006. Cook, David. Understanding Jihad. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, pp. 107–8. The intellectual evolution from the ‘near enemy’ to the ‘far enemy’ is well explained in Gerges, Fawaz A. The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

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Faced with a radicalizing Islamist base, Sadat abandoned his conciliatory rhetoric, thereby destroying the hope of Tilmisani and his disciples for the Brotherhood’s political project to bear fruit. During a radio address, he ominously warned the proponents of political Islam not to tamper with the ‘high interests of the state under the guise of religion’ and threatened to throw Sheikh Ahmed al-Mahallawi, a respected cleric from Alexandria, into prison ‘like a dog’ – an expression that shocked many who were listening to Sadat’s speech.194 In the morning of 2 September 1981, Sadat ordered the Central Security Forces to conduct a sweeping crackdown on his political opponents. Mohamed Hasanin Heikal was arrested, along with senior members of the Brotherhood, who were accused of plotting with radical Islamist activists in an attempt to form a ‘secret organization’.195 Al-Da‘wa magazine was closed down and over 1,500 activists were apprehended, including a young man called Mohammed al-Islambuli, who was the Jama‘at Islamiyya leader of the Department of Commerce at the University of Asyut.196 On 6 October 1981, Egypt commemorated the crossing of the Suez Canal with a grandiose military parade in Nasser City. Anwar al-Sadat, together with high-ranking dignitaries from military, state and religious institutions sat on a viewing stand vis-à-vis the pyramid-shaped memorial that had been built to honour the martyrs of Egypt’s 1973 war. Vice President Hosni Mubarak and the Minister of Defence, Field Marshal ‘Abd al-Halim Abu Ghazala, flanked the president to his right and left, gazing over a squadron of American M-60 tanks rolling across Nasr Street. As French Air Force Mirage jets roared over the viewing stand, one of the military trucks suddenly grinded to an abrupt stop. Seconds later, two soldiers ran out and tossed stun grenades at the viewing stand while two other soldiers on top of the truck cocked their AK47 Kalashnikovs to fire in the direction of Sadat. For a few critical moments, the presidential guard was frozen and only managed to respond after the scene had descended into panic and chaos. In the ensuing storm of cracking shots and hand-grenade explosions, ten people were killed and thirty-eight wounded. A flabbergasted Vice President Mubarak was whisked away by his bodyguards, while Sadat was flown by helicopter to a military hospital in Ma‘adi. Two hours later, he was declared dead. Global reactions to the assassination were swift and strong. Ronald Reagan, who had started his term as president the previous January, pronounced Sadat to be a hero: ‘He was a humanitarian unafraid to make peace . . . . His death today – an act of infamy, cowardly infamy – fills us with horror. America has 194 195

196

Darrag, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Istanbul, 20 March 2017. ‘Ali. The Road to Ittihadiyya, p. 81; also see Fisk, Robert. ‘Mohamed Hasseinein Heikel: the wise Man of the Middle East.’ The Independent, 10 April 2007, available at www .countercurrents.org/fisk100407.htm (accessed 10 February 2017). Kepel. Muslim Extremism, p. 205.

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lost a close friend, the world has lost a great statesman, and mankind has lost a champion of peace.’197 Israel’s political leadership responded with an equal sense of shock and sympathy. Menachem Begin announced that President Sadat had fallen victim to ‘a criminal assassination’ and expressed the hope for the peace process to continue. Indeed, the assassination of Sadat risked seriously impacting US security policy. After the loss of Iran, instability in Egypt had the potential to destabilize a region that already seemed in disarray, thereby further endangering the fragile peace Israel had managed to forge. In much of the Arab world, however, Sadat’s death was not considered a big loss. As world leaders from over eighty nations attended Sadat’s memorial service, barely any dignitaries from the Arab nations were present. By making peace with Israel, Sadat had sold out the Palestinian cause in favour of a unilateral agreement. Egypt had lost its legitimacy as the Arab world’s leader and the respect it had gained under the rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser. In Libya, people even celebrated Sadat’s death in the streets while Mu‘ammar al-Qadhafi called on Egyptians to ‘continue the revolution’. In Egypt, troops from the military and the security forces quickly took control of the streets, as the transfer of power was prepared in accordance with article 84 of the 1971 Constitution. The assassination of the president had a defining impact on the Islamic movement. The man who murdered Sadat was a young army lieutenant named Khalid al-Islambuli – a leading figure of the Jama‘a Islamiyya in Asyut and the brother of Mohammed al-Islambuli, who had been arrested during the 2 September raid.198 Investigators later discovered Faraj’s pamphlet The Neglected Duty in Khalid Islambuli’s possessions. By declaring the rulers of this age to be ‘apostates’,199 Faraj had stipulated that waging jihad against such rulers was a religious obligation incumbent on all Muslims. By legitimizing the killing of the apostates, he conceptualized violence against political rulers as a legitimate means to establish an Islamic state. While this discourse stood in stark contradiction to the gradualist and peaceful approach promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood, it would provide a first point of reference for those who later advocated for a more confrontational approach with the regime.

197

198 199

Proclamation 4872 ‘Death of Anwar Sadat’. 7 October 1981. Code of Federal Regulations: LSA, List of CFR Sections Affected. National Archives of the United States, 1982. Kepel. Muslim Extremism, pp. 191 and 205. In Arabic, fi riddat ‘an al-Islām. See Faraj, ‘Abd al-Salam, Al-Jihād: al-Farīda al-Ghā’iba (Jihad: the Neglected Duty). Amman: unknown upblisher, 1982, p. 6.

3 The Rise of the Vanguard (1981–1991)

Muslim society . . . cannot come into existence simply as a creed in the hearts of individual Muslims . . . unless they become an active, harmonious and cooperative group, distinct by itself, whose different elements, like the limbs of a human body, work together for its formation, its strengthening, its expansion, and for the defence against all those elements which attack its system. Sayyid Qutb, Signposts on the Road (1964)

During the 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood expanded its operations and membership base across Egypt and reconstituted itself once again as a powerful political organization and a major actor on the national scene. As the religious student activists started their professional careers as doctors, lawyers, engineers, academicians, journalists, veterinarians and pharmacists, they acquired growing numbers of seats in teachers’ clubs, unions and professional associations. The adoption of a new statutory framework in 1982 allowed the Brotherhood to expand its reach both on the national and – through the inauguration of the so-called International Organization in Munich in July 1982 – also on the international level. By 1984, the first deputies of the Brotherhood had entered the Egyptian parliament. Over the coming years, the political entrepreneurs and former student activists of the Jama‘a Islamiyya began to carry Hasan al-Banna’s salvation message forward to the wider public. Under the spiritual and strategic guidance of ‘Omar al-Tilmisani, they articulated a vision of the Brotherhood as an ‘open Society’, whose ranks were to be composed of ‘outsiders who are ready, brought up outside [of the organization], and who have an understanding from the outside’.1 The followers of Tilmisani conceptualized the Brotherhood as a meritocratic cadre organization, where internal progress was to be based on personal achievement, and where anybody with the necessary skills could contribute towards the social, cultural and spiritual elevation of Egypt. Inspired by the utopian vision of a vaguely defined ‘caliphate’, they yearned to turn the Brotherhood into an accepted actor of the 1

Nuh, Mokhtar. Interview with author. Cairo, 11 March 2013.

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Egyptian polity. A political party would, in their view, be the most appropriate means to fulfil their dream of the Islamic project. The drive of these aspiring career politicians was curbed by a group of senior figures in the Guidance Office, who started to assert their authority during the second half of the decade. Rather than engaging in the political game of the secular Egyptian state, these individuals focused on rebuilding the Brotherhood’s ranks into a strong and effective organization. Many had been involved in the activities of the historical Special Apparatus in the late 1940s, as well as in the attempt to reconstitute the Brotherhood in the mid 1960s under the spiritual guidance of Sayyid Qutb. Having been condemned to lengthy prison ordeals as a result of these activities, their vision of the Muslim Brotherhood was quite at odds with that of Tilmisani’s adherents. They were suspicious of anyone ‘who was not brought up within the Society from an early age’ and prioritized moral and educational upbringing over political engagement. They believed that anyone ‘from the outside’ risked having been exposed to ‘impure’ ideas and therefore threatened to dilute the Brotherhood’s ideological immaculacy.2 In an effort to preserve the spiritual pureness of the Society, these individuals constituted themselves within an informal ‘secret organization’, which over the years would assume a growing influence over organizational decision-making. Because of their affinity with Sayyid Qutb’s organizational vision, Egyptian newspaper columnists and journalists would refer to those forming this secretive inner circle as ‘the Qutbists’. This chapter traces the ascendency of the Brotherhood’s traditional leaders within the Society after its formal reconstitution in 1982, and the ways in which their vision conflicted with the aspirations of an upwardly mobile class of former student activists. Starting with Hosni Mubarak’s early presidency, the chapter shows how the recently graduated activists came to assume important positions within key institutions of the Egyptian state, and how the senior leaders sought to counter their influence by asserting control over the Brotherhood’s organizational joints – both at home through the ‘Egypt Office’ and internationally through the ‘International Organization’. The chapter ends with the Iraqi attack on Kuwait in August 1990 and the subsequent US-led intervention in the Persian Gulf. Based on memories of key Brotherhood leaders, Oral History interviews with organizational members and eyewitnesses, a reading of memoirs, prison writings, pamphlets and magazines published by the Brotherhood, and a survey of the scholarly literature, the chapter traces how, despite emerging internal organizational disagreements, the Brotherhood was able to expand its activities and membership numbers. *** 2

Ibid.

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Mubarak’s Early Years On 14 October 1981, eight days after the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat, Vice President Mohammad Hosni Mubarak became the new leader of Egypt. Born in 1928 in the village of Kafr al-Musilha in the Munufiyya governorate, Mubarak was a career officer and former pilot in the Egyptian Air Force. He became a very different kind of president from his eccentric predecessor. Socially awkward and reserved, and with an excessive concern for privacy, his stiff appearance and apathetic attitude gave the impression of a man ‘who didn’t know anything about nothing’, according to a senior figure affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.3 It was perhaps his withdrawn eyes and taciturn demeanour that prompted humorous Egyptian youths to liken him to the red, grinning cow on the French cheese brand la vache qui rit. For the greater part of his career, the man who would become one of the Arab world’s longestserving dictators lived a comfortable middle-class existence – a predictable life that was unlikely, in the words of Robert Springborg, to ‘produce a deep and complex personality fired by a sense of historical destiny’.4 Mubarak inherited an inauspicious economic situation. The programme of economic opening that had been initiated by Sadat in 1974 had polarized Egypt’s social cleavages. The new president understood that the Nasserist social contract, where large sections of the population were offered jobs and cheap public sector goods in exchange for political acquiescence, depended on the continued performance of the economy. While Sadat’s economic liberalization had opened the country to foreign investments, only two-thirds of the capital invested under Law 43 originated from productive assets. The bulk of the revenue stemmed from petroleum exports and transit dues charged on ships passing through the Suez Canal, constituting a total of $6.748 billion in the years between 1981 and 1988. Another source of revenue came from the estimated three million workers living in Libya and the Gulf states, who sent home a combined $2 billion of remittances in 1980.5 Investment companies supported this surge in private foreign currency transfers by accounting the dividends paid to investors as profit shares rather than interest payments. Corruption and economic mismanagement caused a vast misallocation of public resources and introduced sharp structural cleavages towards nontraded goods. Most of the capital was spent on lucrative investment contracts in the defence, import, housing, electricity and transport sectors, rather than on the development of Egypt’s agriculture and industry. To support the government’s spendthrift practices, Mubarak relied heavily on borrowing. Between 1977 and 1981, Egypt’s international civilian debt almost doubled, from $8.1 billion to $14.3 billion, and then grew further 3 4 5

Darrag, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Istanbul, 20 March 2017. Springborg. Mubarak’s Egypt, p. 27. Rogan, Eugene L. The Arabs: a History. London: Allen Lane, 2009, p. 393.

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while subsidy payments accounted for one-tenth of Egypt’s GDP and more than one-quarter of government expenditures.6 Since the provision of US civilian and military aid was conditional on peace with Israel, foreign policy under Mubarak trotted along lines similar to his predecessor’s. Shortly after Sadat’s assassination in October 1981, Mubarak telephoned Begin to assure the Israeli leader of his unwavering commitment to peace. During a solemn ceremony held in April 1982 in Sharm al-Sheikh, the IDF lowered the Star of David, as the last Israeli troops were about to depart from the Sinai and turn this vast, 20,000 square-kilometre swathe of territory, which they had held since 1967, over to the Egyptian army. Israel’s Defence Minister Ariel Sharon ominously pledged that this would be Israel’s final territorial concession to the Arabs. Internally, Mubarak faced the opposition of a heterogeneous group of rivals. Having been appointed to the vice presidency in 1975, his lack of political acumen had made it difficult for him to build the kind of clientele networks and personal loyalties on which he could depend in terms of political allegiance. He understood that if he wanted to avoid the infitah bourgeoisie having risen under Sadat to eclipse him, he needed to build mechanisms of patrimonial control and mutual obligations that could be exchanged for access to the state’s vast network of resources. During the first decade of his rule, Mubarak traded state capital and regulatory prerogatives to private sector interests. He substituted his rivals in the National Democratic Party (NDP), founded by Sadat in 1978, with a clique of second-rank Nasserists hailing from the merchant and construction classes, who through corruption, nepotism and theft had materialized into powerful economic elites. Over the years, these capitalists began to forge links with functionaries within the state bureaucracy, whom they could bribe to provide licences for their business ventures with foreign corporations. This dynamic led to a concentration of capital in the hands of about twenty-five family-owned conglomerates, who during the coming decades would come to dominate the Egyptian economy.7 This group of Mubarak loyalists and their clients formed the core of what, after the uprising of 25 January 2011, would be known as the ‘remnants’, or the fulul, of the old regime. Mubarak further realized that, if he wanted to guarantee social stability in the face of economic hardship, he had to introduce at least a semblance of democratic governance. Having been seated to Sadat’s right at the viewing stand in October 1981, the new president had inherited a deep-seated fear of the supporters of political Islam. Yet, he initially differentiated between the gradualist approach promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the radical 6

7

Owen, Roger. A History of Middle East Economies in the Twentieth Century. London: I.B. Tauris, 1998, pp. 135–6. Kandil, Hazem. ‘Why Did the Egyptian Middle Class March to Tahrir Square?’ Mediterranean Politics 17, no. 2 (2012), p. 207.

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methods that persisted on the far right fringe of the Islamist spectrum. While he adopted a conciliatory tone towards the Brotherhood by granting them a certain measure of political freedom, his tempered reforms did not sufficiently widen the base of participation for a political opposition to mount an effective challenge to the emerging class of state capitalists. Determined to assure that the NDP would at all times maintain a two-thirds’ majority of seats in the People’s Assembly, Mubarak did not regard the Brotherhood as standing on an even foot with other political groups.8 His formula was that of a ‘tentative pluralism’ that operated through deception, manipulation and control.9 Tilmisani’s hopes to establish a political party by converting the Brotherhood into a legal political actor thus remained unfulfilled. As the regime ruled through a succession of emergency laws, power remained firmly concentrated in the hands of the Armed Forces and the presidency. Mubarak’s disdain for the Islamists was underscored early on, when he invited the leaders of all major opposition groups who had been jailed by Sadat to a consultative meeting in the Presidential Palace – with the notable exception of ‘Omar al-Tilmisani.

The Legacy of Sayyid Qutb While Tilmisani’s advocacy for the establishment of a political party was enthusiastically embraced by the former Jama‘a Islamiyya activists, it stood at the beginning of a swelling conflict between two distinct schools of thought within the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood. The first one consisted of the student organizers around Tilmisani, who conceptualized the Brotherhood as a political organization whose purpose should be directed primarily towards political objectives, and who were eager to ‘strike a balance between the [diverging] forces’ in Egypt.10 The other faction united those among the senior leaders who aspired to a more exclusivist organizational design, modelled along the lines of the former Special Apparatus. Some of the key figures within this group included Mustafa Mashhur, Kamal al-Din al-Sananiri, Ahmed Hasanin and Ahmed al-Malt.11 During the 1980s, the backgrounds and trajectories of these men started to shape the history of the Brotherhood in consequential ways. In arguing their case, those who favoured more hard-line views frequently referred to the Brotherhood’s founder.12 They pointed to the fact that Hasan al-Banna had warned his followers to abstain from party 8 9 10 11 12

‘Ali. The Road to Ittihadiyya, p. 85. Springborg. Mubarak’s Egypt, p. 36. Nuh, Mokhtar. Interview with author. Cairo, 11 March 2013. Ibid. Ibid.

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politics, which he had identified as the principal reason for the lack of unity and stability of the Muslim community. A pluralist party system, Banna had argued, would inevitably split the umma into different warring factions with the consequence of weakening the Muslim body politic and making it vulnerable to outside aggression. In a similar vein, they argued, Sayyid Qutb had repudiated party politics as a matter of principle. When in 1963 his fellow Brothers from Syria, Iraq and Jordan asked for his guidance on how the national Brotherhood chapters in these countries should relate to local regimes, Qutb encouraged them to eschew politics and instead focus on the Society’s religious, cultural and moral objectives. The Islamic movement, Qutb thought, had to capture the hearts and minds of Muslim believers before attempting to take power.13 But as the followers of Tilmisani were quick to point out, even Banna had eventually succumbed to the logic of party politics, as evidenced in the Brotherhood’s collaboration with Mustafa al-Nahhas of the Wafd Party in 1942. While Banna had refuted the idea of a political party in theory, he ended up advocating oneparty rule over an ‘undue insistence on voting, rebellion against the party, war-mindedness, liking of differences and tug-of-war for power’.14 Today, the name of Sayyid Qutb is inextricably linked to the kind of jihadi political violence that had been propagated by those among his followers who were radicalized in Nasser’s prisons during the 1960s.15 Especially after the attacks of 11 September 2001, Sayyid Qutb’s name became almost exclusively associated with the notion of ‘Islamic terrorism’ – a fact that betrayed the powerful intellectual impact this complex and brilliant thinker had had on the Islamic movement and, one might add, the history of Arab political thought in general. Qutb’s intellectual contributions were dumbed down to such a degree that even reputable journalists likened him to Adolf Hitler for the simplistic reason that both men had a toothbrush moustache.16 His legacy was perhaps most closely associated with the notion of takfir, meaning the legal act of declaring fellow Muslims as apostates, thereby establishing the theoretical justifications for their killing. It is true that, although this notion itself was never explicitly mentioned by Qutb, it was nevertheless implicit in his argument. But the discussion around takfir was merely a by-product of the much 13 14 15

16

Calvert. Sayyid Qutb, p. 239. al-Banna. ‘Letter of the Fifth Conference’ in Collection of Letters, p. 288. Kepel associated Qutb’s thought with the ideology propagated by the followers of Shukri Mustafa, founder of the Society of Muslims, the radical fringe of Islamists who were influenced by the idea of takfir. See Kepel. Muslim Extremism, pp. 70–102. Berman, Paul. ‘The Philosopher of Islamic Terror.’ New York Times, 23 March 2003. www .nytimes.com/2003/03/23/magazine/the-philosopher-of-islamic-terror.html (accessed 23 August 2017). One of the foremost accounts of Qutb’s life and work is by Toth, James. Sayyid Qutb: The Life and Legacy of a Radical Islamic Intellectual. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

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larger and more sophisticated theory of jahiliyya. Qutb had elaborated this theory in his magnum opus In the Shade of the Quran, which was written in prison and then published in a serial form between 1961 and 1965, while also being published in a slimmer and more succinct version in the famous 1964 manifesto Signposts on the Road. Qutb’s intellectual impact on Tilmisani’s rivals, however, had less to do with takfir than with the vanguardist organizational model he proposed and the subsequent impact this model had on the organizational life of the Muslim Brotherhood. In its original meaning, the notion of jahiliyya had been traditionally used to describe the time of ‘ignorance’ in ancient Arabia, before God had revealed the Quran to His Prophet Mohammed and had liberated humanity from the shackles of the pre-Islamic dark age. Qutb drew on Mawdudi, who had expanded the meaning of the concept to fit the contemporary context. Both thinkers believed that modern and secular nation-states were governed by man-made laws and, therefore, characterized by ‘one man’s lordship over another’. Since contemporary Muslim societies were organized into a system of nation-states, they were ‘locked in a state of ignorance from the teachings of God’ – a fact that rendered them into a state of continuous ‘rebellion against God’s sovereignty on earth’ and perpetual ‘oppression and humiliation of mankind’. To Qutb, the very concept of the nation-state was ‘against the system of the universe’, as it brought the ‘involuntary aspect of human life into conflict with its voluntary aspect’.17 Islam to him was the only system possessing the fundamental ethics, values and way of life capable of giving peace to the human mind: ‘Only in the Islamic way of life do all men become free from the servitude of some men to others and devote themselves to the worship of God alone, deriving guidance from Him alone and bowing before Him alone.’18 Another important premise of Qutb’s theory of jahiliyya held that Islam was not simply an abstract construct, but a ‘practical religion that came to order the practical affairs of life’. It was ‘an error, and what an error, to think that Islam can evolve in the shape of an abstract theory limited to intellectual learning and cultural knowledge’. Rather, Islam was ‘a way of life working with actuality’. This ontological fact rendered Islam superior to the theories hitherto formulated by men, including capitalism, liberalism, socialism and liberal democracy. In contradistinction to these secular ideological systems, Islam ‘appears personified in human beings, in a living organization and in a practical movement’.19 Qutb undoubtedly derived this argument from the principle of ‘action’, which Hasan al-Banna had posited as the third pillar of the oath in his 1935 Letter on Teaching. In another letter titled Between Yesterday and Today, 17 18 19

Qutb. Signposts, p. 57. Ibid., p. 27. Ibid., p. 29.

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Banna had, furthermore, stressed that the principles and teachings of Islam should not remain idle ‘theories held by minds, or ideas relegated to books, or words to be bandied about’, but that Islam ‘instituted practical ways of applying [these ideas] in order to implement them, strengthen them, and draw profit from their effects and results’.20 Qutb drew on this argument to posit that Muslims needed to be autonomous and acquire political power within their own societies. Rather than wallowing in a permanent and desolate state of ignorance, they should subordinate every aspect of their lives under the sovereignty of God, who ‘wanted the community and the movement to be founded on belief’. Faith was to grow not only on the spiritual level, but also through the ‘dynamic progress of the community’, based on the agency of a dynamic movement and an active organization. Qutb also expanded Banna’s ideas towards the formation of a wider comparative societal analysis. Like Islamic society, jahili secular society existed both on a theoretical level, as well as in terms of a social reality. In this latter form, it took the shape of a concrete living movement with its own specific leadership, concepts, values, traditions, habits and feelings. In order to resist the oppression emanating from secular and materialist societies and bring about a true spiritual revival, the newly conceived system of Islam should ‘also come into the battlefield as an organized movement and a viable group . . . with a determination that its strategy, its social organization, and the relationship between its individuals should be firmer and more powerful than the existing jahili society’.21 To liberate mankind from the shackles of oppression and revive the ‘true Islamic way of life’, it was imperative to form an ‘organized and active group’ that was ‘independent and distinct from the active and organized jahili society’. This group would enable Islam to attain ‘global guidance’ as its rightful and divinely ordained destiny. In answering the question of how this was to be accomplished, Qutb superseded Banna by substituting his precursor’s gradualist approach with a decisively revolutionary undertone. While Qutb agreed that the religious education of individual Muslims was an indispensable necessity for the Islamic project to succeed, he doubted that it would materialize by means of preaching and education alone. An Islamic state could only be achieved by a fundamental transformation of the entire social and political order. This transformation needed to be initiated by a ‘vanguard, which sets out with this determination and then keeps walking on the path, marching through the vast ocean of ignorance that has encompassed the entire world’. The task of the vanguard was to hold together ‘an active, harmonious and cooperative group’, which ‘like the limbs of a human body work together for its formation’ and organize 20

21

al-Banna, Hasan. ‘Bayna al-Ams wa-l-Yawm (Between Yesterday and Today)’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 375–98. Translation by Wendell. Five Tracts, p. 16. Qutb. Signposts, p. 35.

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its various efforts ‘into one harmonious purpose’.22 In contrast to Shukri Mustafa, who had concluded that the only way of dealing with jahili society was to abandon it, and then gain the necessary force to later attack it, Qutb urged his followers to keep engaging with society while practising ‘mental and emotional withdrawal’ as a spiritual discipline. The vanguard, he advised, should ‘keep itself somewhat aloof from this all-encompassing jahiliyya [while it] should also keep some ties with it’.23 Although Qutb was the first to explicitly articulate the idea of the vanguard, the seeds of this theory had already been planted in some ways by Hasan alBanna. As Qutb had written in Signposts on the Road, the vanguard was ‘a waiting reality about to be materialized’. With this statement, he seems to have implicitly referred to Banna’s 1935 Letter on Teaching, which the founder had addressed to ‘those who strive in the Muslim Brotherhood’, meaning to those who believe in the nobility of their call and the sanctity of their ideology, [who] have made a firm resolve to live by it and die in its path [sic]. Only to these Brothers do I direct my words. They are not lessons to be memorized but instructions to be carried out.24

These striving Brothers distinguished themselves by the fortitude of their faith, their unwavering devotion to Islam and their unequivocal obedience to the leadership. They had passed through the first two phases of obedience (the familiarization with the Brotherhood’s methods, as well as their spiritual, mental and physical development) and were now fully prepared to implement the teachings, act in ‘full compliance with the commands of the leadership and prompt execution of these commands in hardship and in ease, whether pleasant or unpleasant’.25 By late 1942, these special cadres had been organized more systematically in terms of roles, functions, hierarchical structures, chains of command, portfolios and responsibilities, as well as symbols, oaths and equipment, and became now subsumed under the framework of the Special Apparatus.26 Having elaborated upon these ideas during his time in prison, Qutb drew on these ‘striving Brothers’ and former activists from the Special Apparatus when he educated and spiritually trained the new vanguardist cadres who would guide the incipient reorganization of the Brotherhood.27 In fact, Signposts on the Road was specifically written as a manual for this vanguard, so that they 22 23 24 25 26 27

Ibid., p. 58. Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 14 April 2014. al-Banna, Hasan. ‘Letter on Teaching’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 207–48. Ibid. Mitchell. The Society, pp. 28–32. Salah, ʻAbd al-Fattah Khalidi. Amrīkā min al-Dākhil bi-Minzār Sayyid Qutb (America ˙ from the Point of View of Sayyid Qutb). Cairo: Dar al-Wafaʼ, 1986, p. 392. ˙

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may ‘know the landmarks and the signposts on the road towards this goal, and that they may recognize the starting place, the nature, the responsibilities, and the ultimate purpose of this long journey’. This elitist cadre of faithful and highly committed Brothers distinguished themselves from others through their uncompromising obedience and the absolute certainty by which they pursued their mission. Through Signposts on the Road, Qutb effectively substituted the gradualist, seven-step blueprint of Banna’s reform project with a quasi-Leninist baseline. A key figure of the vanguard elite, who was from a younger generation and would start to play a prominent role after 1995, was Khairat al-Shatir – the engineering student from Mansura who had riled up the crowds during the student protests at the University of Alexandria in November 1968. During a lecture he delivered forty-three years later in the same university, he provided a simplified version of the Brotherhood’s vanguardist idea. The ‘restoration of Islam’, he explained, ‘the subjugation of people to God’s rule, its institution on earth and the Islamization of life’ was only possible if two primary prerequisites were fulfilled. One was the ‘strength of the psychological construction of the individual’. The other was that of ‘a strong organizational construction’: Islam disappeared from life, thus preachers of the Brotherhood undertook the work of restoring Islam in its all-encompassing conception to the lives of people. They believed that this would only come by way of [a] strong Society. The Society is thus an instrument and not a long-term goal. It is an instrument or means to Islamize life in its entirety, and institute religion.28

It was thus the combination of two ideas – that of Islam as a ‘living organization’, and that of a vanguard elite within this organization, whose task was to implement the Islamic project – that became the essential properties of the socalled Qutbists within the Muslim Brotherhood. According to this organizational (or tanzimi) vision, the Brotherhood was to be governed by effective decisionmaking procedures and clear lines of hierarchy, while rank-and-file members would execute their leaders’ orders ‘without hesitation, turning back, doubt or discomfort’.29 ‘When a decision is reached’, Shatir explained in his April 2011 lecture, ‘all levels [of the organization] must commit and obey . . . .The organizational construction needs structures, officials and relationships that bind them’.30 By working through patronage and kinship networks, the vanguard leaders were able to preserve an arrangement at the very core of which was a closed, exclusive a ‘secret unit in a secret organization’.31 The emphasis Qutb had placed on a strong organization as a sine qua non for Islamic reform created an attitude among his followers that was fixated on 28

29 30 31

al-Shatir. ‘The Project of Islamic Renaissance.’ YouTube, 24 April 2013. https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=JnSshs2qzrM&feature=youtube_gdata_player (accessed 10 August 2017). al-Banna. ‘Letter on Teaching’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 207–48. Ibid. Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 5 September 2012.

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creating, and later on preserving and defending, an organizational apparatus and a strictly monitored system of education, indoctrination and promotion, through which they would be able to control the rank and file. As Haytham Abu Khalil, a Brotherhood dissident who left the organization after 2011, explained, such an organization would inevitably produce ‘creatures that are of its like’. The vanguard leaders’ core concern consisted of preserving organizational unity and effectiveness through the enforcement of strict command and control structures, where a firmly indoctrinated membership base would execute the orders of their leaders with a Bolshevik-like discipline. Since the main organizational resources of the Brotherhood were human, controlling the hearts and minds of the rank and file was an absolute priority. Abu Khalil used a pastoral metaphor to illustrate this point: Here, you have a group of chicken that you feed only with corn, and there is another one that you only feed hay or tomatoes . . . . You will find that the first [group grows up to] become white chicken, [and the other one to become] red chicken. The country chicken are the ones that eat everything. They are the best chicken for the soup, as they eat different kinds of food. So, we [the dissidents] are country chicken, and not [chicken] from the farms. But the Brotherhood produces people that are of the farm variety . . . It’s the whole idea of the country chicken versus the farm chicken.32

Rebuilding the Organization in Egypt As the leaders of the Brotherhood set out to rebuild their organizational apparatus, they were focused on both the domestic and the international scenes. Ahmed al-Malt, a prominent Brother from the ‘first cohort’ and the founder of the Islamic Doctors’ Association, who enjoyed a high level of prestige among the younger generation, was put in charge of the rebuilding efforts at home. Born in December 1917 in the Sharqiyya governorate village of Qatawiyya, Malt had joined the Brotherhood as a teenager, inspired, as many were, by the charisma and forceful preaching of Hasan al-Banna. He later studied medicine at Cairo University and during the Palestine War of 1948 acted as the head of the medical delegation of the Special Apparatus.33 In organizing the Brotherhood’s ranks, Malt worked closely with Mohammed Habib, who would come to play a prominent role when he was appointed as the first deputy of the future General Guide Mohammed Mahdi ‘Akif. Born in March 1943 in the northern governorate of Damietta, Habib later moved with his family to Asyut in Upper Egypt, and in 1964 enrolled in 32 33

Abu Khalil, Haytham. Interview with author. Cairo, 17 December 2012. ‘D. Ah med al-Malt (Dr Ahmed al-Malt).’ Ikhwanwiki, date unknown. www ˙ ˙ .ikhwanwiki.com/index.php?title=%D8%A3%D8%AD%D9%85%D8%AF_%D8%A7% D9%84%D9%85%D9%84%D8%B7 (accessed 15 August 2017).

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the Faculty of Science of the University of Asyut. Following his graduation in the summer of 1968, Habib served in the Egyptian army for a few months where he, after a brief stay in the Western Desert, decided that his life should be spent on ‘working for sake of Islam’. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 1969 and three years later obtained his doctorate in geology.34 During the 1970s, he travelled repeatedly to the United States for postgraduate training, and was briefly imprisoned during the September arrests of 1981. Shortly after his release, Habib was informed that Ahmed al-Malt needed his help. In mid 1982, Brotherhood representatives of the various governorates of Egypt met in Cairo to establish the ‘Egypt Office’ (al-Maktab al-Misri), which was a provisional body whose purpose was to coordinate the rebuilding of the organization. Headed by Ahmed al-Malt, the Egypt Office was divided into five sectors, each of which was placed under the management of a former student activist. The Eastern and Western Delta sectors were allocated to Mamduh alDeiri and Ibrahim al-Za‘farani respectively. Anwar Shahata was tasked with reconstituting the organization in the Middle Delta while Upper Egypt fell under the jurisdiction of Mohammed Habib. The powerful Greater Cairo Sector, which oversaw the Brotherhood’s activities across an area of 529 square kilometres, was supervised by ‘Abd al-Sattar al-Meligui. The set-up of administrative offices on the level of the governorates was completed in 1987.35 Before long, the reconstruction of the Brotherhood’s local organization triggered a number of disagreements, as different personalities proposed contradictory ideas on how the Brotherhood should be managed. The Tilmisanieducated former student cadres were inspired by the ‘golden period’ of the 1930s, when the Brotherhood had experienced a time of phenomenal growth and expanded its operations across the country by absorbing Muslims from all walks of life into its ranks.36 These activists envisioned an open and transparent organization where decisions would be made democratically, and which would cooperate with other state institutions and societal groups. This view was starkly opposed to the tanzimi preference of the vanguard leadership. For the former members of the Special Apparatus, it was imperative that the Brotherhood should preserve its secretive culture, as this alone was able to ensure the organization’s long-term survival. The conflict of these contradicting ideas soon led to a first public clash between Malt and Tilmisani. Since Malt was nominally in charge of the Egypt Office, the student organizers manning the organization’s lower levels were theoretically supposed to turn to him for 34

35 36

Habib, Muhammed. Dhikrayāt D. Muhammad Habīb: ʻAn al-Hayā wa-l-Daʻwa wa-l˙ ˙Habib: On Life, ˙ Da‘wa, Politics and Siyāsa wa-l-Fikr (Memories of Dr Mohammed Ideology). Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2012, pp. 67 and 109. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 128. Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 14 April 2014. On the process of the Brotherhood’s reconstitution in 1951, see Mitchell. The Society, pp. 162 ff.; Harris. Nationalism and Revolution in Egypt, pp. 188–9.

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practical advice regarding the rebuilding efforts. However, many simply bypassed Malt and instead consulted with Tilmisani directly – a fact that the former considered a personal insult.37 The formal establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood occurred during a Shura Council meeting on 29 July 1982. One hundred and thirty Brotherhood members, including forty from abroad, came together to approve the adoption of the Brotherhood’s General Statutes – the first formal regulation since the Internal General By-laws of 1951.38 Within five chapters and forty-seven articles, these Statutes became the central document that would define the Brotherhood’s objectives, its terms of membership, its main administrative bodies, its electoral procedures and the terms of office. Chapter five established the nature of the relationship between the centre in Cairo and other national chapters at the periphery, showcasing the way in which the Egyptian leadership intended to centralize political authority.39 In comparison to the bylaws of 1951, the General Guide’s jurisdiction was enlarged, giving him formal control over Brotherhood chapters in other countries. In an effort to ensure international representation at the top level of decision-making, article 9 mandated that the fourteen members of the Guidance Office should be composed of eight Egyptians and five foreigners, in addition to the General Guide, who was always an Egyptian. The Shura Council was similarly mandated to include thirty members from abroad. According to the provisions, the leaders of national Brotherhood chapters outside Egypt had to abide by the decisions of the General Guide, the Guidance Office and the Shura Council, as mandated in article 43, paragraph 1. According to paragraph 2 of the same article, they were compelled to ‘adhere to its general policies and attitudes towards public issues’ and obtain the approval of the Guidance Office before adopting any important political decisions. Article 64 obliged the leaders of national chapters to pay part of their annual income from membership fees to the founding organization in Egypt. The General Statutes of 1982 thus assured that power remained firmly vested in the hands of the Egyptians, represented by the General Guide and the members of the Guidance Office.

The International Organization With the reconstitution of its ranks well underway in Egypt, the vanguard leaders now focused on what became known as the Brotherhood’s ‘International Organization’ – the famous al-Tanzim al-Dawli.40 Reflecting 37 38

39

40

Habib. Memories, p. 437. al-Shami, Khalid. ‘Statements by Muslim Brotherhood Leaders on the Position of General Guide.’ Al-Quds al-Arabi, 8 April 2009. ‘The General Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood [AD 1982]’ in Statutes and Bylaws, pp. 260–72. Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 20 December 2012.

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the desire of the leadership to hedge its bets against the uncertainties facing the Brotherhood at home, the International Organization was regulated in 47 articles by the International Regulation of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been adopted by the Shura Council during the same meeting on 29 July 1982.41 Together with the General Statutes governing the organization at home, the International By-laws became the binding legal document for all Brotherhood chapters outside of Egypt. On 28 March 1994, the document was amended and rewritten into six sections comprising 54 articles. The International Organization’s headquarters were relocated to London and became known as the ‘Liaison Office’; al-Rabita in the Brotherhood’s jargon. This office acted as the ‘global headquarters of the Shura Council and the Guidance Office’ of the International Organization.42 It would come to play a largely ceremonial role in managing the Brotherhood’s relations to foreign governments and the management of the international relations between various national chapters. Before long, the International Organization became the focal point of a number of conspiracy theories, as career-hungry ‘terrorism experts’ pushed the narrative of a secretive but tenacious global institution that was determined to ‘infiltrate’ Western societies, ‘destroy Western culture’ and ‘dominate the world’.43 To some extent, this narrative originated within the utopian ideas of the International Organization’s own founders, who created a perception of ‘this wonderful office, this skyscraper with a hotline and communications around the world’, as one of its critics later remarked.44 This image was 41

42

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Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 16 December 2012; Madi, Abu al-‘Ala’. Interview with author. Cairo, 21 May 2013. al-Talawi, Ahmed. ‘Al-Tanzīm al-Duwalī wa-l-Abwāb al-khafiyya li-Azma Ikhwān fī ˙ Masr (The International Organization and the hidden Doors of the Brotherhood’s ˙ Crisis in Egypt).’ Noon Post, 13 February 2016. https://goo.gl/FBXmRf (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 1 June 2018). Similar examples of this narrative can be found for instance in Vidino, Lorenzo. The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010; Rubin, Barry M. The Muslim Brotherhood: The Organization and Policies of a Global Islamist Movement. New York; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; ‘The Muslim Brotherhood in the USA . . . very secret.’ Ornina Media Production. www.youtube.com /watch?v=0E8_owx8qeE (accessed 17 August 2017). al-Tikriti, Anas. Interview with author. London, 27 February 2019. Tikriti called the International Organization ‘a ghost’ and a ‘red herring’, which existed only ‘in our Egyptian Brothers’ minds’. He painted the picture of ‘a very loose coordination meeting where people exchange stories and have big fights’, but which caused the Brotherhood considerable reputational damage due to its perception as ‘a global monster that wants world domination’. Another source, who had occupied a key position in the Libyan Brotherhood, similarly admitted that the International Organization had proven to be a largely ineffective body: ‘Not once did we receive any concrete instructions or advice’ from the International Organization, this source said, describing it as a forum for meeting and information exchange, rather than an effective organization in the sense of furthering

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boosted following the attacks of 11 September 2001, when the Brotherhood’s headquarters in Egypt came to be seen as the ‘leading branch of the worldwide organization’ – a fact that seems to have been taken at face value within the highest levels of the US government.45 A number of attention-seeking websites hosted by a cabal of self-declared Brotherhood specialists dedicated themselves exclusively to the task of exposing the group’s malign global aspirations and unsavoury international financial transactions – narratives that played well into the hands of US neoconservative ideologues.46 While the International Organization was formally inaugurated in Munich in 1982, the origins of this project went back to the days of Hasan al-Banna.47 According to his seven-step blueprint, the founder had regarded a supra-national institutional arrangement to be a prerequisite for the Brotherhood to consolidate and coordinate the activities of various chapters in individual countries.48 Once Muslims in different nations would have adopted the ‘correct’ method of Islam, so the theory went, they would unite under a reconstituted caliphate and ‘spread the call of Islam to all corners of the globe’.49 To this end, a ‘Communications Bureau with the Islamic World’ (Qism al-Ittisal bi-l-‘Alam al-Islami) had been created already in 1945, with the task of coordinating the activities of various national chapters.50 Distinguished dignitaries were sent to different countries to

45

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47 48 49 50

the policy objectives of the various national Brotherhood chapters. Senior Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. August 2017. Emerson, Steve. ‘Report on the Roots of Violent Extremism and Efforts to Counter It: The Muslim Brotherhood.’ Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 10 July 2008. https://fas.org/irp/congress/2008_hr/roots.pdf (accessed 17 August 2017). The website ‘The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch’ was launched after 2001, dedicated to provide ‘intelligence’ covering the ‘developments in the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood network’. Run by Steven Merley, a self-declared ‘investigator and intelligence specialist’ focusing on the ‘investigation of political extremism’, the website claimed to be ‘read widely by US government agencies as well as by other governments and users worldwide’. See www.globalmbwatch.com (accessed 17 August 2017). Merley is a former ‘Senior Analyst with the NEFA Foundation’ and a ‘Chief Analyst’ for Kronos Advisory, a dubious organization founded by James E. Livingston, a retired Major General of the US Marine Corp: http://kronosadvisory.com/ (accessed 17 August 2017). The International Organization has since been absorbed into a sprawling multimillion dollar ‘Islamophobia’ industry, led by the illustrious trio Frank Gaffney, who in 1988 had founded the far-right think-tank Center for Security Policy; Pamela Geller, who in 2010 founded the America Freedom Defense Initiative (also known as Stop Islamization of America); and the (nonArabic speaking) ‘Islam expert’ Robert Spencer, who in 2003 launched the website Jihad Watch and in 2006 doubled down with a book titled The Truth about Mohammed. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2006. al-Helbawy, Kamal. Interview with author. Cairo, 10 March 2013. Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 14 April 2014. al-Banna. ‘Letter on Teaching’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 207–48. Tammam, Husam. Tahawwulāt al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn: Tafakkuk al-Aydulūjiyya wa ˙ Transformations of the Muslim Brotherhood: Ideological Splits Nihāyat al-Tanzīm (The ˙ and the End of the Organization). Cairo: Maktaba Madbouli, 2006, p. 30.

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establish local chapters, such as Mustafa Mu’min and Nadah Sa‘id, who built the Brotherhood’s operations in Syria, Jordan, Sudan, Indonesia, Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan. One of the Brotherhood’s most effective foreign activists was Banna’s private secretary Sa‘id Ramadan, the husband of his daughter and the father of the Oxford scholar Tariq Ramadan. Having volunteered as part of the Special Apparatus during the Palestine War of 1948, Ramadan’s international connections enabled him to establish a global network of Brotherhood-linked institutions and Islamic centres across Europe, including the Centre Islamique de Genève in the Quartier des Eaux-Vives in Geneva, Switzerland. The Brotherhood’s international efforts had intensified significantly during the 1960s, as many prominent Brothers had travelled abroad to establish associations and companies acting as local franchises of the International Organization. These efforts were partly coordinated by the ‘Executive Office of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab Countries’ (al-Maktab al-Tanfidhi li-l-Ikhwan al-Muslimin fi-l-Bilad al-‘Arab) – a body presided over by ‘Issam al-‘Atar, the General Observer of the Brotherhood in Syria.51 Other highranking members included its Vice President Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman Khalifa, the General Observer of the Jordanian Brotherhood, as well as Amin Lalsar who headed the Muslim Brotherhood in Lebanon. The heads of the Brotherhood chapters in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Sudan and Palestine later joined the Executive Office. Since the Guidance Office in Egypt had not been functional since the 1965 crackdown, the Executive Office became the Brotherhood’s de facto general secretariat, coordinating the activities of different national chapters until the Guidance Office became operational again in 1982.52 As the birthplace of Islam and an emerging global oil power, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia occupied a particularly prominent role in the Brotherhood’s International Organization. Banna had established cordial relations with Ibn Sa‘ud since his visit in 1932, when the King had granted gracious financial support to the Brotherhood. In exchange, Brotherhood jurists and experts provided the King with much-needed legal advice, helping him to address the various challenges stemming from Saudi Arabia’s rapid modernization. The Brotherhood having thus contributed to strengthening the religious legitimacy of the House of Sa‘ud, Ibn Sa‘ud consented to Banna’s request to open one of the first national Brotherhood chapters outside of Egypt in the Kingdom in 51

52

The name of this entity is referred to in different variations in the historical literature and in current journalism. See for example al-Talawi. ‘The International Organization and the hidden Doors of the Brotherhood’s Crisis in Egypt.’ Tammam, Husam. ‘Al-Tanzīm al-Duwalī li-l-Ikhwān (The International Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood).’˙ Al-Manar al-Jadid, Summer 2004. www.ahewar.org/debat/ show.art.asp?aid=23729 (accessed 3 July 2017).

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1946. In an effort to seize control of educational curricula and institutions, Brotherhood members over the coming years eagerly worked behind the scenes in order to establish patronage and clientele networks and promote their members to key positions.53 One of the Brotherhood’s most influential emissaries to Saudi Arabia was Manna‘ al-Qattan, who arrived in the Kingdom in 1953 in order to mediate in an emerging conflict between a local Saudi branch and the Guidance Office in Egypt. Under the patronage of the Saudi royal family, Qattan set up various additional branches, including the Brotherhood in the Hejaz and the famous ‘Zubayr Brotherhood’ – named after a town situated between Basra and Kuwait, which had been annexed to the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq in 1922 and which would later play a pivotal role in the formation of the Brotherhood’s Kuwaiti chapter, the ‘Association of Social Reform’ (Jama‘iyyat al-Islah al-Ijtima‘i). The amicable relationship between the Kingdom’s rulers and the Brotherhood continued in the context of the Arab Cold War, when large numbers of Brotherhood leaders who were persecuted by the Nasser regime emigrated to Saudi Arabia. In an attempt to ‘open up the Kingdom [in order] to get rid of that single line of intellectual understanding’ of Wahhabism, Ibn Sa‘ud’s third son Faysal bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, who was King from 1964 to 1975, granted asylum to a large number of Brotherhood members, flooding them with lavish financial resources in support of their mission to ‘spread the Islamic da‘wa by means of a modern da‘wa’.54 Faysal allowed the Brothers to establish Islamic charities across the Kingdom, including the ‘Muslim World League’ (Rabita al-‘Alam al-Islami) in 1962, the ‘Organization of the Islamic Cooperation’ (Munazama al-Ta‘awun al-Islami) in 1969 and the ‘World Assembly of Muslim Youth’ (al-Nadwa al-‘Alamiyya li-l-Shabab alIslami, known as WAMY) in Jeddah in 1972. Saudi Arabia’s policy of openness towards the Muslim Brotherhood stood firmly within the logic of the Cold War. To a considerable degree, it was driven by US attempts to counter Saudi Arabia’s progressive leftist, communist and socialist forces, represented by an intelligentsia that subscribed to anti-imperialist ideologies and demands for power sharing and political representation.55 The members of the Brotherhood who had

53

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The activities of the Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia are analysed in Lacroix. Awakening Islam, pp. 64 ff. al-Helbawy, Kamal. Interview with author. Cairo, 10 March 2013. Bsheer, Rosie. ‘A Counter-Revolutionary State: Popular Movements and the Making of Saudi Arabia.’ Past and Present 238, no. 1 (2018), pp. 233–77; Matthiesen, Toby. ‘Migration, Minorities, and Radical Networks: Labour Movements and Opposition Groups in Saudi Arabia, 1950–1975.’ International Review of Social History 59, no. 3 (December 2014), pp. 473–504.

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fled the persecution inflicted upon them by Nasser, therefore served the national interests of the United States, whose strategic planners used an active and conscious policy of mobilizing political Islam as a means to crush ideologies unfavourable to US interests. Following a major labour strike by workers employed by Saudi Aramco in 1956, the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower bankrolled a propaganda campaign that depicted Crown Prince Faysal as a reformer and a modernizer. This policy initiated a reversal from years of progressive and anti-imperialist Saudi politics, which had characterized the reign of Sa‘ud bin ‘Abd al‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud, instead setting the Kingdom on a course of becoming a reactionary, conservative and authoritarian monarchy under Faysal.56 Saudi foreign policy henceforward became more Islamized, which responded to the need of the House of Sa‘ud to keep the ‘ulama’ outside the political realm of decision-making.57 It was in this context that the Muslim World League was used as a vehicle to funnel money and people to the mujahedeen fighting the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan.58 It was similar with WAMY, an international relief agency placed under the Saudi Ministry of Social Affairs that used zakat contributions and Saudi government funds to spread Salafi ideas to schools and mosques across the region. The organization also supported Muslim youth and student organizations around the world by building mosques and schools and distributing religious readings. Under King Faysal’s watch the Brotherhood in the Hejaz acquired the WAMY’s networks and organizational resources, thereby transforming this body into the Brotherhood’s primary recruitment and propaganda tool while spreading its da‘wa throughout the Kingdom’s eastern provinces. Within the framework of the WAMY, Brotherhood jurists and Wahhabi clerics mutually influenced one another, as the former group experienced a gradual ‘salafization’ on the cultural level. The traditionally quietist Wahhabiyya trend, on the other hand, saw a creeping politicization of its ideology, which formed the basis for the subsequent development of the Sahwa Islamiyya during the 1990s.59 One individual who was at the centre of these developments was Kamal alHelbawy – a strange and somewhat mercurial character who would later be despised as a traitor among the Brotherhood rank and file. Born in 1939 in Kafr

56

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Massad, Joseph Andoni. Islam in Liberalism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016, p. 82. Hammond, Andrew. ‘Producing Salafism: From Invented Tradition to State Agitprop’ in al-Rasheed, Madawi. Salman’s Legacy: the Dilemmas of a New Era in Saudi Arabia. London: Hurst & Company, 2018, pp. 147–63. Roy, Olivier. The Failure of Political Islam. London: Tauris, 1994, p. 218, footnote 7. On this point, see also Tammam, Husam. ‘Tasalluf al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn (The Salafization of the Muslim Brotherhood)’ in The Muslim Brotherhood, pp. 95–135.

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al-Batanun, a small village in the Munifiyya governorate, Helbawi had joined the Brotherhood in early 1952 – a few months before the military coup of 23 July – while attending his secondary school in the village of Shabin alKawm, which was situated seven kilometres from his hometown. This decision stemmed from his realization that the ‘Islamic idea and the Islamic project’ was ‘the closest to my thinking, my nature and my upbringing in the farm villages’. Equally important was the fact that the Brotherhood provided English teachers for himself and other kids in his school. In 1956, he enrolled in the Humanities Faculty at Cairo University, from where he graduated in 1960, at a time when numerous Brotherhood members languished in prison or had left Egypt: There was a tightening of circumstances, so you wouldn’t connect with the Brotherhood, [in order] not to be discovered [as a Muslim Brother]. However, [we could] connect with one person and meet [this person] to study together and memorize [the Quran] together, and develop a program – but with just one person. Most of the work was done in secret.60

As the Brotherhood lived through its second ordeal during the 1950s and 60s, Helbawy frequented the house of Sheikh al-Bahi al-Khuli – a founding member of the Brotherhood who was ‘well connected to the men of the revolution’, and who in 1953 had been the liaison between the Brotherhood and Nasser’s Liberation Rally, as the loosely structured organizing platform of the RCC was called.61 Sheikh Khuli’s voluminous library provided Helbawy with access to plenty of books and treatises, providing the young student with the opportunity to familiarize himself with the ‘moderate and beautiful books’ of a Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Sayyid Qutb and an Ibn Taymiyya.62 As Helbawy later admitted, the writings with the most lasting impact on his mind were those of Hasan al-Banna: ‘Imam al-Banna was a giant and a leader and a thinker and a creator’, he mused years later, sitting in his office behind a pile of books and magazines. He pointed to a certain Robert Jackson, an American journalist who allegedly had visited Cairo to write an article about Hasan al-Banna that was published in February 1946 in the New York Chronicle and was later translated to Arabic by the well-known researcher Anwar al-Jindy. In this article, the American journalist had supposedly written: ‘This week I visited a man who turned out to be one of the most outstanding men in modern history. His name is not well known because the events seem bigger than him. This is Sheikh Hassan al-Banna, the leader of

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al-Helbawy, Kamal. Interview with author. Cairo, 10 March 2013. Mitchell. The Society, p. 111. Ibid.

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the Brotherhood.’63 The article went on to describe Banna as ‘a strange man in how he dealt with his opponents and followers’: He didn’t attack his opponents and didn’t fight them. He tried to convince them as much as possible to win them on his side. And he [understood that] fighting between two sides didn’t bring any good outcome. He believed in ideological opposition, not personal opposition . . . . From the events that captured my attention is that he took [inspiration] from ‘Omar [Ibn al-Khattab], one of the highest characters. He used to hold [his brothers] accountable, just like ‘Omar [Ibn al-Khattab] used to hold his own family accountable. He would multiply their punishment more than others if they fell short.64

Helbawy remained in Egypt for most of the 1960s, keeping himself busy by training ‘some youth in da‘wa and the Islamic project’. In 1970, he travelled to Nigeria for a two-year stint at the Usmanu Danfodiyo University in Sukoto, and from there went on to Saudi Arabia in 1972, where he worked as a ‘manager for the International Commission for the Islamic Project’. Due to his managerial skills, Helbawy became one of the WAMY’s founding members and from 1973 onwards acted as its director. In this capacity, and with the support of the then-governor of Riyadh and the future King of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud, Helbawy organized various conferences and youth camps, such as the one that took place in 1977 in Abha, the capital of 63

64

Jackson, Robert. Hasan al-Banna: al-Rajul al-Qur’ānī (Hasan al-Banna: Man of the ˙ Quran). Cairo: Mu’assasa Iqra’ li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawziʻ wa-l-Tarjama, 2012, p. 4. The original version of this book had been published by a publishing house called alMukhtar al-Islami. A copy of this document can be found in the National Library of Israel, and it contains an introduction explaining how Anwar al-Jindy got his hands on the book. I have unsuccessfully tried to track down both Robert Jackson as well as the New York Chronicle through several channels, including by marshalling the support of Isabel Holowaty, the Chief History Librarian of the Bodleian Library in Oxford. According to the US Newspaper Directory, a New York Chronicle had indeed existed, but it was published only during the mid-nineteenth century and again in the 1980s. The only researchable person with the name Robert Jackson was a former US Attorney General who, while alive in 1946, is unlikely to have been the author of this article. The opinions and observations expressed in the article run against the grain of US public opinion, which was negatively disposed towards the Brotherhood. Banna’s assassination in 1949, for instance, was welcomed in the US media – a fact that had a profound impact on Sayyid Qutb, who at the time was travelling in the United States. This, as well as other analogies expressed by Jackson (an American journalist visiting Egypt in the 1930s would hardly refer to ‘Omar Ibn al-Khattab as ‘one of the highest characters’) leads to the conclusion that the article is a forgery. The fact that Helbawy referenced it in my interview with him can thus be interpreted as an example of what is known in Egypt as the ‘foreigners complex’ – a kind of internalized, self-inflicted Occidentalism that requires Western sources as quasi-authentic proofs to confirm the authenticity and correctness of a statement. Ibid., pp. 8–9.

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the south-western province of ‘Asir near the Red Sea, as well as in Cyprus and Kenya. He was actively involved in the activities of the Brotherhood’s International Organization, establishing relationships with the Islamic movement in Turkey, Pakistan and the United Kingdom, where he became the manager of the ‘Muslim Welfare House’ (Dar al-Ra‘aya al-Islamiyya). It seems that Helbawy had also played a role in the International Organization, acting as the Brotherhood’s ‘official spokesperson in the West’ between 1995 and 1997, when he was based in London. He used this position to endear himself to Western audiences by frequently granting interviews to unassuming researchers and journalists, claiming to speak on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood while adopting the aura of a public figure – a role that was incongruent with his actual influence in Egypt.65 His precise function in the Brotherhood remained unclear and Helbawy remained a controversial figure. He would later be dismissed by many as a renegade and traitor who had ‘left the Brotherhood a long time ago’, as one base member affirmed.66 The fact that Helbawy regularly represented the Brotherhood without the consent of his superiors in Cairo brought him into repeated conflict with the Guidance Office. ‘Anything he said he related to the Brotherhood. For instance, he said [that] we should fight the United States. But this is his own vision, not that of the Brotherhood. He doesn’t have the right to speak on behalf of the Brotherhood.’67 The fact that individuals like Helbawy were able to instrumentalize the International Organization for their own purposes was perhaps the least serious issue this body faced. Difficu-lties in the Brotherhood’s international strategy had become evident in other places, such as in the context of the Palestinian struggle for liberation. In 1965, as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) started to assume an influential role in Jordan, Yasser Arafat’s military command built its own political and social institutions, with its fighters openly carrying weapons and wearing uniforms, thus challenging the authority of King Hussein of Jordan.68 In March 1968, Israeli forces launched a series of raids on Jordanian territory to root out Arafat’s fighters, which led to clashes with Jordanian security forces. In September 1970, after the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine had hijacked three aircraft, King Hussein took the opportunity to strike at the PLO’s presence in his country. The national Brotherhood chapter in Jordan circulated a memorandum whose purpose was 65

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See for example Helbawy’s ‘About’ page on Facebook: ‘Dr Kamal Helbawy.’ www .facebook.com/pg/Dr-Kamal-Helbawy-198223513536336/about/ (accessed 31 August 2017). Group interview with author. Hani al-Ithi Mosque, Cairo, 22 March 2013. Ibid. Sayigh, Yezid. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: the Palestinian National Movement, 1949–1993. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997; Robins, Philip. A History of Jordan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; Shlaim, Avi. Lion of Jordan: the Life of King Hussein in War and Peace. New York: Vintage Books, 2007.

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to define their relationship to the PLO. The leadership in Cairo supported the aspirations of many younger Jordanian members to form a guerrilla force under the command of the Jordanian branch of Fatah, which would assist the Palestinian Brothers in their resistance against Israel.69 While the Jordanian branch attempted to use the resources of the Executive Office to further their national goals, the leaders of the Iraqi and Sudanese branches vehemently resisted this strategy. They understood the International Organization as merely a coordination office between otherwise independent national chapters, and were opposed to any attempts to instrumentalize the Executive Office for furthering specific national policies.70 This example shows how already, early in its existence, conflicting priorities of various national chapters highlighted the ineffectiveness of the International Organization.

Expansion into Syndicates and Parliament Strengthened by their newly established organizational structure in Egypt as well as abroad, the Brotherhood undertook the process of expanding its societal presence by prioritizing two constituencies in terms of recruitment. The first was made up of Egypt’s youth at pre-university levels who attended primary and secondary schools.71 As the former organizers of the Jama‘a Islamiyya graduated from university, Tilmisani placed them in the Students Section, from where they were able to build strategic links with high-school and university students. Special emphasis was placed on recruiting children at pre-schooling levels, whose indoctrination was likened to an ‘inscription on a rock’, in reference to the easily impressionable minds of young children.72 By penetrating a pool of younger recruits at an early age, the Brotherhood hoped to motivate them to absorb its ideology before they reached the schooling age.73 As a second constituency, the Brotherhood concentrated on labour associations and professional syndicates. Tilmisani understood that if the Brotherhood wanted to strengthen its relations with the middle class, the former student organizers of the Jama‘a Islamiyya would need to expand their presence within these vibrant and strategic institutions of the Egyptian state.74 If they were able to acquire leadership positions on the boards of the 69 70 71 72 73

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‘Ali. The Road to Ittihadiyya, p. 65. Ibid., p. 64. Also see al-Haddad, Abdullah. Interview with author. London, 11 July 2015. Madi, Abu al-‘Ala’. Interview with author. Cairo, 21 May 2013. Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 22 September 2013. Faruq, ‘Amr. Dawlat al-Khilāfa al-Ikhwāniyya: Asrār wa Wathāʼiq takshifu al-Jamāʻa min al-Dākhil (The Brotherhood Caliphate State: Secrets and Documents revealing the Society from Within). Giza: al-Jazirah li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawziʻ, 2010, p. 11. Fahmy, Ninette S. ‘The Performance of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Egyptian Syndicates: an Alternative Formula for Reform.’ Middle East Journal 52, no. 4 (Fall 1998), pp. 551–62.

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syndicates, they would not only enjoy high levels of prestige, but also create opportunities for themselves to converge their activism into tangible political gains. The fact that these institutions formed an important part of the wider network of state institutions and as such were financed by the state, opened a new arena of potential conflict with the regime.75 Conscious of this risk, Tilmisani advised his followers to avoid a discourse that could be perceived as hostile by the regime. Rather than openly competing for leadership positions, he instructed them to focus on administrative issues and penetrate the syndicates gradually and from the bottom-up. The Brotherhood witnessed its first electoral success within the syndicates in 1984 when Helmi Gazzar, the former amir of the Jama‘a Islamiyya in Egypt, became Assistant Secretary General of the Doctors’ Union in Giza. During the following years, the Brotherhood made inroads into the Engineers’ Syndicate of Cairo University and by 1987 had won fifty-four out of a total of sixty-one seats on the executive board. In 1988 Abu al-‘Ala’ Madi became the Assistant Secretary General of the Engineers’ Syndicate, while Abu al-Futuh was elected Secretary General of the national Doctors’ Union.76 The Brotherhood achieved similar victories in the professional associations of pharmacists, scientists, agronomists, journalists and traders, as well as on the governing boards of universities, such as in Asyut in 1985 and in Cairo in 1986. By strengthening their presence and political influence in these institutions, the former student activists were able to progressively undermine the regime’s legitimacy in front of the professionals of the middle class.77 The Brotherhood’s political ambitions, however, stretched beyond student unions, the teachers’ clubs and professional syndicates. ‘Omar al-Tilmisani believed that the only way of making real inroads into Egyptian society was through the establishment of a political party.78 After consulting with Islamist party leaders in Turkey, Jordan and Yemen, he charged an internal committee with the drafting of two separate manifestos: one for the ‘Egyptian Reform Party’ (Hizb al-Islah al-Masri) and one for the ‘Consultation Party’ (Hizb alShura). As a concession to the vanguard leaders, he stated that any future party would not become a substitute for the Brotherhood, but instead would remain under its wing. He assured his rivals that the Brotherhood would not enter parliament in order to seek political power, but to spread the word of God: ‘Our goal is not . . . a political victory but rather . . . a victory for God and the application of His Law.’ Strangely, he even mentioned during an interview that Islam did not recognize the word ‘party’: ‘If you read the Quran from start to 75 76 77 78

ʻAli. The Road to Ittihadiyya, p. 84. Ibid., p. 92. Springborg. Mubarak’s Egypt, pp. 86 and 228. Zahid, Mohammed. The Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s Succession Crisis: the Politics of Liberalisation and Reform in the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010, p. 97.

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finish, you will not find the word “parties”. Hence, we don’t accept the idea of parties.’79 Tilmisani had considered entering the People’s Assembly as early as 1983, when parliament passed Law 114, which replaced the system of individual party lists with one allowing for combined lists, thus opening the door for Brotherhood members to run as individuals on lists of coalition partners. The prospect of participating in parliamentary elections was exciting news to politically ambitious professionals such as Abu al-Futuh, ‘Issam al-‘Arian, Helmi Gazzar and Ibrahim al-Za‘farani. They agreed with Tilmisani’s ‘representative model’, which sought to turn the Brotherhood into a political organization that would be ‘owned’ by all its members.80 In early 1984, the Brotherhood negotiated a political alliance with its historical rival, the secular Wafd Party, of which Tilmisani had been a member in his youth. This arrangement served the interests of all sides: it made the Brotherhood a junior partner of an officially registered party that could look back on a long historical legacy. The Wafd, on the other hand, would ally itself with an organization that commanded an impressive mass following on the street and could mobilize hundreds and thousands of supporters during the upcoming electoral campaign. Finally, the electoral alliance provided the student cadres with a platform through which they could express their political ideas. The alliance turned out to be a success. The Brotherhood won eight seats out of a total of fifty-eight, while the charismatic ‘Issam al-‘Arian became the youngest member of parliament in Egypt’s People’s Assembly. The integration of the former student organizers into the syndicates and the parliament entailed a gradual shift in their attitudes towards religious and social questions, thereby contributing to the emergence of an organizational culture that valued meritocracy and social inclusion. As these individuals attempted to develop a more sophisticated political programme, they came to realize that the defensive and exclusivist mentality of Wahhabi Salafism 79

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al-Tilmisani, ‘Omar. Interview, al-Ahrar, 7 November 1983, quoted in Wickham, The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 51, referring to Haydar, Khalil ‘Ali. Al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn: Sujāl al-Ahdāth (The Muslim Brotherhood: Documentation of Events). Kuwait: Kazima Company ˙for Publishing, Translation and Distribution, 1989, p. 91. This statement by alTilmisani is surprising, since the Arabic word for ‘party’ (hizb) occurs numerous times in the Quran: three times in a positive sense as the ‘party of God’ (hizb Allah); once in the sura al-Ma’ida (the Table), verse 56; twice in the sura al-Mujadala (the Pleading Woman), verse 22; and four times in a pejorative sense: twice in the suras al-Mu’minun (the Believers), verse 53 and al-Rum (the Romans), verse 32, in the sense of ‘sect’; and twice in the sense of the ‘party of Satan’ (hizb al-Shaytan) in the sura al-Mujadala (the Pleading Woman), verse 19. Furthermore, sura 33 is named al-Ahzab (the Parties). Since it is impossible that Tilmisani was not aware of this fact, it is likely that he may have wanted to draw a distinction between moral and political aims, the former being properly Islamic and the latter not. I thank James McDougall for this observation. ʻAli. The Road to Ittihadiyya, p. 82.

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limited them intellectually and did not support their political and professional ambitions. Rather than turning away from the liberals, the Nasserists and the socialists, it seemed much more expedient to engage with these individuals in order for the Brotherhood to achieve its goals of Islamic reform.81 Gradually, the followers of ‘Omar al-Tilmisani dispensed with outward signs of religiosity, such as wearing beards and traditional Islamic dress, replacing these markers of Wahhabi-Salafi identity with Western-style suits and ties and moving closer to the cultural normativity prevailing within Egypt’s political establishment. The success of the 1984 parliamentary elections entailed a wave of repression against the Muslim Brotherhood. Mubarak had instructed his Minister of Interior, Hasan Abu Pasha, to ensure that the NDP would gain no less than 95 per cent of the vote. The threatening posture of regime-hired thugs against voters vindicated those in the Brotherhood who opposed Tilmisani’s political approach. Although Mustafa Mashhur and Ahmed al-Malt supported electoral politics in principle, they did so out of the logic that participation in key state institutions would strengthen the Brotherhood’s da‘wa priorities. This strategy was supported by senior Guidance Office figures such as Salah Shadi, Farid ‘Abd al-Khaliq and Ahmed al-Malt, who saw this as an opportunity to bolster the Brotherhood’s credibility among ever wider segments of Egyptian society.82

Mustafa Mashhur and the Enemies of the Open Society One of the most powerful figures among the vanguard leaders, and the Brotherhood’s General Guide from 1996 to 2002, was Mustafa Mashhur. Having already been abroad when the September arrests occurred in Cairo in 1981, Mashhur was one of the founding members of the International Organization.83 He was born in September 1921 in al-Sa‘diyya, a small farmers’ village situated in the Sharqiyya governorate. Hailing from a rural and a highly conservative background, Mashhur received his secondary education at Fu’ad I. School in Cairo. When he was fifteen years old, he attended a lecture by Hasan al-Banna – an event that had a life-changing impact on the young man’s seeking mind. In Banna’s circles, he found a community of like-minded individuals to whom he would devote the rest of his life. After having taken the pledge of allegiance to the General Guide, Mustafa Mashhur swiftly moved through the ranks of the Brotherhood’s hierarchy and, by early 1948, became a member of the Special Apparatus. As one of its soldiers, he took part in the Brotherhood’s efforts in supplying weapons and ammunition to the Egyptian 81 82 83

Abu al-Futuh. Quoted in ibid., p. 65. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, pp. 98–9. Mashhur had apparently travelled abroad shortly before the arrests and must have been aware of the impending crackdown. See Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 20 December 2012.

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army, which was besieged in the so-called Faluja pocket that had been created by the Israeli advance after the breakdown of a truce in October 1948. In December of that year, after the assassination of Nuqrashi Pasha, Mashhur was charged with the possession of explosives and subsequently imprisoned. While Mashhur’s precise function in the historical Special Apparatus remains unclear, it was rumoured that he had acted as its deputy head.84 It is doubtful that this claim is true, for in the wake of the crackdown of 1954 Mashhur was sentenced to ten years of hard labour, unlike many other Brotherhood members who had received double that time despite not having been part of the Special Apparatus.85 Upon his release in 1964, he engaged himself in the clandestine efforts of rebuilding the Brotherhood’s ranks under the spiritual leadership of Sayyid Qutb. Under constant surveillance by the security services, Mashhur and other fellow activists were in the early stages of planning an assassination attempt on the life of Gamal Abdel Nasser, with the aim of replacing the military regime of the Free Officers with an Islamic government.86 When the authorities got wind of these efforts in the summer of 1965, they cracked down on the ‘Organization’65’, rounding up and imprisoning thousands of Brothers, including Mustafa Mashhur and the Brotherhood’s second General Guide Hasan al-Hudaybi. After his release from prison in 1974, Mashhur worked closely with ‘Omar alTilmisani in reorganizing the Brotherhood’s ranks in Egypt. As head of the University and Youth Section, he frequently interacted with student leaders, trying to change their rigid Wahhabi-Salafi views towards the Brotherhood’s modernist social reform agenda. But his vision of the Brotherhood’s role, purpose and organizational outfit differed sharply from that of Tilmisani, whom Mashhur repeatedly accused of promoting ‘uncultivated’ student activists with lax moral standards to key leadership positions. As some rank-and-file members later explained, Mashhur was ‘a person of the Special Apparatus . . . strong and fierce, and a man who magnified the tanzim’. His character having been formed in the trenches of the Palestine War, Mashhur’s outlook and temperament stood in sharp contradiction to that of the ‘rich and decent’ Tilmisani.87 However, since the Brotherhood still lacked proper organizational capabilities at that time, Mashhur acquiesced – albeit reluctantly – to Tilmisani’s strategy of participating in parliamentary elections. Indeed, this seemed to be the only viable way to augment the Brotherhood’s reputation and strengthen its impact among ordinary Egyptians, which served the goal of rebuilding a strong organizational structure. In reality, however, Mashhur’s vanguardist ideal foresaw a ‘total organization . . . 84

85

86 87

‘Obituary: Mustafa Mashhur, 1921–2002.’ Impact International 32, no. 12 (December 2012), p. 44. Neither is Mustafa Mashhur’s name mentioned anywhere in Mitchell’s account, making the claim of him having been the Special Apparatus’ deputy head even less likely. Calvert. Sayyid Qutb, pp. 229–71. Group interview with author. Hani al-Ithi Mosque, Cairo, 22 March 2013.

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which organizes people’s lives in this world as well as in the next life’. In line with Sayyid Qutb’s recommendations, Mashhur aspired to a Brotherhood that would be able to transform the Islamic umma into one ‘single body’, where ‘if one of its limbs suffers, the whole body comes to its protection’.88 One of Mashhur’s key allies, and another founding member of the International Organization, was Mohammed Mahdi ‘Akif, who resided in Munich at the time of the September arrests in 1981. Nine years younger than Mashhur, ‘Akif was born in 1930 in Kafr al-‘Awd, a small farming village situated in the Daqahliyya governorate. After having completed his primary education in Mansura, ‘Akif travelled to Cairo to study at the prestigious Fu’ad I. School. Suddenly exposed to the lifestyle of a big metropolis, this son of a well-off rural family felt treated ‘like a farmer’ by his classmates in Cairo: I came from Mansura as the son of a well-fated and rich family. When I came to Cairo, I found myself a farmer, not the son of rich or refined people, because the Fu’ad I. Secondary School [was attended] only by the sons of pashas and big people, as well as by people of the Wafd Party. I was only a small student coming from Mansura! I used to pray, but my accent was not the accent of Cairenes. I had been thinking that I was the son of a sophisticated family, but [in Cairo], I found myself but a peasant.89

‘Akif’s effendi-from-the-province story was a typical experience of rural migrants, recounted as a familiar trope in various movies, and frequently translated into a sense of estrangement by these rural novices vis-à-vis their more sophisticated urban peers.90 This sense of alienation evaporated in 1943, when the fifteen-year-old Mohammed attended a lecture by Hasan al-Banna. Like many before him, ‘Akif was dumbstruck by Banna’s charisma and the powerful appeal of his message. In those who surrounded the young imam, he found a community that provided him with an emotional home to compensate for his feelings of nostalgia, estrangement and disorientation. A few weeks after this first encounter, he pledged the oath of allegiance to the Murshid and subsequently became engaged in educating and indoctrinating younger members. In 1945, ‘Akif 88

89 90

Mashhur. Jihad is the Way. The analogy comes from a Hadith narrated by Sahih alBukhari (277) and Abu Muslim (6011): ‘The example of the believers in their affection, mercy and compassion for each other is that of a body: when any limb aches, the whole body reacts with sleeplessness and fever.’ Quoted by al-Durar al-Saniyya. www.dorar.net /enc/mazahib/332 (accessed 17 August 2017). ‘Akif, Mahdi. Interview with author. Cairo, 19 May 2013. In Egyptian cinematography, such figures are sometimes portrayed as having taken on the sartorial trappings of the city, which contrast markedly with the peasant dress of their fathers, who are nonetheless rich. A classical movie in this respect is Hunā al-Qāhira (Here is Cairo) with Mohammed Subhi, which was released in 1985. See also the experience of ‘Abdallah al-Tukhi, as recounted by Lucie Ryzova in The Age of the Efendiyya, pp. 237–58.

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organized several demonstrations and rallies to protest against the British presence in Palestine. As a consequence of these activities, he was sent to a behaviour-correction facility for several months. Upon his release, he completed his secondary schooling and the following year matriculated in the Engineering College of Cairo University. In early 1947, at Banna’s request, ‘Akif took charge of the physical training of Brotherhood cadres. After another brief arrest in 1948, he joined the Law Faculty of Ibrahim College (today’s ‘Ain al-Shams University) while continuing his job of instructing his fellow Brothers in the use of explosives and combat training, with the aim of ‘killing the British’.91 In 1951, he headed a Brotherhood training camp and was involved in an operation to ship 300 kilograms of dynamite to blow up British railway tracks. He later claimed to have had a close relationship with Nasser, who apparently had urged him to convince the Brotherhood leadership to become part of the Liberation Rally.92 In April or May 1954, when the Brotherhood’s relationship with the Free Officers started to sour, ‘Akif was arrested and spent the following twenty years behind bars: I was in prison for twenty years and met the entire leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood. I was responsible for many things. There were another two hundred [Brotherhood members] in Torah prison, and another one hundred from the Oasis [the Wahat prison in the Western desert]. After this, seventy more [Brotherhood] members came to us.93

Like other imprisoned members, ‘Akif idealized the years he spent behind bars, remembering them ‘as a blessing’ that allowed him to become part of a community of individuals sharing the same fate. Although prison life was difficult, we benefited from it . . . . We transformed the prison into a paradise and into an entire life. We elected responsible leaders who were not from the Guidance Office . . . and we used to elect administrative committees every six months. I divided the prison into three clubs: the Nasr club, the Fath club and the Jihad club. I was elected to be the head of the clubs. Our life was all about sports, knowledge and brotherhood, and our daily programme consisted of praying and lectures . . . . The programmes of dawn prayers were excellent, consisting of fasting and lectures, and the large contingent of famous sheikhs, such as Mohammed al-Ghazali and al-Sayyid Sabiq, added to the overall prison experience.94

Prison life also gave ‘Akif an opportunity to get intimately acquainted with the ideas of Sayyid Qutb, with whom he frequently discussed the priorities and goals of the Islamic project, once the Brotherhood’s leaders would be free again. 91 92

93 94

‘Akif, Mahdi. Interview with author. Cairo, 19 May 2013. Kandil, Hazem. Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen: Egypt’s Road to Revolt. London: Verso, 2012, p. 22. ‘Akif, Mahdi. Interview with author. Cairo, 19 May 2013. Ibid.

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the rise of the vanguard (1981–1991) We read [Signposts on the Road] before it was printed. And I commented on it, [mentioning] that the book contained some words that can be interpreted in various directions. The book was ultimately printed and published, so does it make sense after its publication and distribution across the entire world to issue a death sentence over Sayyid Qutb because of the publication of a book? What a big mistake!95

With respect to Qutb himself, ‘Akif remembered him as follows: Sayyid Qutb, my brother and my love . . . was a noble, moral man – a man with ethics and a great scientist. My relationship with him continued until he was sentenced to death . . . . Only those who lived with him and read his works can judge. Any Muslim person who is aware of his religion, who can distinguish between what is permitted and forbidden, and who knows the Islamic rules, will confess that Sayyid Qutb is his master.96

In July 1974, after a two decades-long prison sentence, the forty-six-year-old Mahdi ‘Akif was set free and, at the suggestion of ‘Omar al-Tilmisani, married the nineteen-year-old sister of Mahmud ‘Izzat – another key figure among the future vanguardist leaders. Fully convinced of Hasan al-Banna’s theory, ‘Akif initiated a process of organizing Islamic seminars in various Muslim and Western countries, including in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Mali, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Austria. Following the foundation of the International Organization in 1982, he became director of the Islamic Centre in Munich – a post he held until 1987.97 Besides Mashhur and ‘Akif, the third key figure involved in the establishment of the International Organization was Mahmud ‘Izzat, who had also left Egypt before the arrests of September 1981.98 ‘Izzat was a close associate of Mashhur and the man who, during the 1990s, would enable the rise of Khairat al-Shatir within the ranks of the Brotherhood. In the wake of the hyper-nationalist atmosphere following July 2013, ‘Izzat was rumoured to have ‘directed’ the Islamist sit-in in Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya ‘from a beachside hotel in Gaza’.99 In early 2014, news transpired that he had been killed, which was denied days later by the Brotherhood leadership in exile.100 He was finally arrested on 28 August 2020. 95 96 97 98 99

100

Ibid. Ibid. Habib. Memories, p. 171. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 128. “Dībkā”: Maḥmūd ‘Izzat wa 5 min Qāda al-Ikhwān harabū ilā “Ghazza” … wa yudīrūn al-‘amaliyyāt al-irhābiyya min hunāk” (Debka: Mahmud ‘Izzat and five Members of the Brotherhood Leadership flee to Gaza and manage the terrorist Operations from there).’ Al-Watan, 24 July 2013. www.elwatannews.com/news/details/231149 (accessed 17 August 2017). ‘Ikhwan without Violence: Mahmud ‘Izzat is killed in Gaza – Hamas: this is not true.’ AlMasry al-Youm, 5 March 2014. www.almasryalyoum.com/news/details/405157 (accessed 17 August 2017).

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Little factual information is known of the man whom the sensationalist Egyptian press sometimes described as the mysterious ‘Mr X’ who was the real decisionmaker behind the ‘puppet Guide’ Mohammed Badi‘.101 Today, the elusive Mahmud ‘Izzat continues to be one of the most important leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, mainly by virtue of the connections that he maintains across all levels of the organizational apparatus, as well as the high levels of respect he commands among the rank-and-file membership.102 Born in August 1944 in Cairo, ‘Izzat became acquainted with the Brotherhood in the early 1950s. He formally joined the group in 1962 while completing his studies at the Medical College of Cairo University.103 During the rebuilding efforts of the ‘Organization’65’, ‘Izzat and a small band of fellow Brothers organized the formation of training and educational cells in Cairo, the Delta region and Upper Egypt.104 Together with the future General Guide Mohammed Badi‘, who joined the Brotherhood during the same year, these men worked in strict secrecy. Contrary to the directives of the then-General Guide Hasan al-Hudaybi to abstain from any sort of violence, they planned to assassinate Nasser by attacking his motorcade. Like Mashhur, ‘Izzat and Badi‘ were both imprisoned in 1965 and received sentences mounting to ten years of hard labour. It is not clear what ‘Izzat’s exact involvement was in the reorganization of the Brotherhood, but having taken the oath of allegiance only in 1962, it is unlikely that he was part of the senior leadership at the time. While in prison, ‘Izzat became attracted to the circle around Shukri Mustafa and Sayyid Qutb.105 The organizational skills he had acquired during his work in secrecy would be put to effective use after his release in 1974, when he played an instrumental role in the reconstitution of the Brotherhood, only to subsequently assume a key decision-making position within the inner circle of the vanguard leadership. In 1981, he was nominated to the Guidance Office. He later took over the leadership of the University and Youth Section from Mustafa Mashhur, where he supervised the expansion of the membership at Egypt’s universities. He also became closely involved in the management of the Brotherhood’s financial resources and, during the late 1990s, became the Secretary General. When Mohammed Badi‘ became the General Guide in October 2010, ‘Izzat 101

102 103

104 105

‘Brūfīl: Mahmūd ‘Izzat: “al-Tha‘lab al-hākim” (Profile: Mahmud Izzat: “the ruling Fox”).’ ˙ Al-Watan, ˙ 5 August 2014. www.elwatannews.com/news/details/158581 (accessed 17 August 2017). Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 8 October 2017. The biographical information on Mahmud ‘Izzat is very sparse. The only details of his biography were extracted from ‘Mahmūd ‘Izzat (Mahmud ‘Izzat).’ Ikhwanwiki, date ˙ shortened with URL link shortener, accessed unknown. https://bit.ly/2DKFTAM (link 17 August 2017). Calvert. Qutb, pp. 229 ff. ‘New Brotherhood Supreme Guide linked to “radical Qutb Current”.’ Al Monitor. www .al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2013/08/egypt-brotherhood-new-interim-supremeguide.html (accessed 17 August 2017).

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became his first deputy while Mahmud Hussein, who would play a central role after 2013, moved into ‘Izzat’s previous post as Secretary General.106 Mustafa Mashhur, Mahdi ‘Akif, Mahmud ‘Izzat and Mohammed Badi‘ were among the most important representatives of the Brotherhood’s ‘Qutbist’ school of thought – as the vanguardist trend would be referred to in the Egyptian press. These individuals favoured the idea of a closed, exclusivist and secretive organization led by an enlightened vanguard who would lead the faithful believers ‘through the vast ocean of ignorance that has encompassed the entire world’.107 They were tied to one another through a strong esprit de corps and a sense of loyalty and camaraderie that had been forged during their common experience as part of the Special Apparatus during the late 1940s, as well as through their shared personal experience of lengthy ordeals in Nasser’s prison cells. While the former two had held important administrative and logistical functions in the activities of the Special Apparatus, the latter two were of a younger age. Nevertheless, they had been part of the underground activities of the Organization’65 during the 1960s. A fifth individual belonging to this group was Khairat al-Shatir. Also part of the vanguardist school of thought, Shatir would experience a meteoric rise in the Brotherhood’s hierarchy during the 1990s. He was indoctrinated by former members of the Special Apparatus and as such shared the vanguardist-tanzimi vision of the Brotherhood’s organizational design that became a pivotal part of Qutbist ideology. With the exception of Mustafa Mashhur, who passed away in 2002, these men came to form the inner sanctum of power in the Guidance Office during the presidency of Mohammed Morsi.108 The lives and trajectories of these individuals make it clear why the idea of a closed and exclusive organization became such a strong focal point within the institutional culture of the vanguard leadership, and the extent to which the design stemming from this value-system was diametrically opposed to the open Society formulated by Tilmisani and his reform-minded student followers.

The Interregnum of Hamid Abu Nasr ‘Omar al-Tilmisani died on 22 May 1986. His funeral was attended by tens of thousands of Egyptians and was an impressive event by any standard, illustrating the extent to which the Brotherhood had rehabilitated itself among the Egyptian public since its leaders had been released from prison a little over a decade ago. After the burial ceremony, the members of the Shura 106 107 108

‘Profile: Mahmud ‘Izzat.’ Qutb. Signposts, p. 58. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 128.

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Council gathered in the house of one of the Brothers to discuss the leadership transition.109 During these negotiations, Mustafa Mashhur played a shrewd political game, where he skilfully managed to further consolidate his supremacy over the Brotherhood’s organizational apparatus. As the deceased General Guide’s deputy, Mashhur was already in control of much of the Brotherhood’s administrative levers and financial resources, while his loyalists controlled important sections such as the University and Youth Section, and the Upbringing Section. As Tilmisani’s natural contender, Mashhur’s rivals saw him as a danger whose powers needed to be checked. His ambitions were curbed by different internal contestants, including Salah Shadi, a former Special Apparatus member with close contacts to the radicalized wing of the Jama‘a Islamiyya,110 as well as others among the left-of-centre moderate conservatives, such as the Islamic preachers Mohammed al-Ghazali and alSayyid Sabiq, and especially Hasan al-Banna’s younger brother ‘Abd alRahman.111 The latter had resented the impending ascendancy of the vanguardist faction since the late 1960s, and had even chastised Qutb himself for having failed to pay due respect to the established chain of command. Abd alRahman’s main grievance was that Qutb had cultivated and trained a new breed of individuals without authorization, which had undermined the authority of the traditional leadership. Finally, Mashhur faced an insurrection by an increasingly assertive and self-confident camp of younger adherents who were, however, too weak to impose a candidate of their own. Faced with such an unstable parallelogram of forces, Mashhur calculated that his best bet was to throw his weight behind Hamid Abu Nasr, and so he exerted ‘huge efforts’ on Shura Council members to agree with his choice.112 As a result of Mashhur’s intrigues, the unassuming notable from Upper Egypt ended up becoming the fourth General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood. Abu Nasr was born in 1913 in Manfalut, a small village in the Middle Egyptian governorate of Asyut, to a family of wealthy notables. Similar to other Brothers from the ‘first cohort’, Abu Nasr had been drawn to the Brotherhood’s salvific message at an early age. Upon hearing a lecture by Hasan al-Banna in 1934, he took the oath of allegiance at a time when the Brotherhood witnessed a rapid expansion of its ranks in Upper Egypt. Like Tilmisani, Abu Nasr never had any affiliation with the Special Apparatus and as such was an outsider to the inner networks of hardened Brotherhood cadres.113 He was sentenced to life in prison in 1954 and was freed only in the wake of the general amnesty under Sadat in 109 110 111 112 113

Habib. Memories, p. 186. Mitchell. The Society, p. 102. Springborg. Mubarak’s Egypt, pp. 235 ff. Habib. Memories, p. 189. Ban, Ahmed. Al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn wa Mihnat al-Watan wa-l-Dīn (The Muslim ˙ Religion). ˙ Cairo: Markaz al-Nil liBrotherhood: the Crises of the Nation and the l-Dirasat al-Iqtisadiyya wa-l-Istiratijiyya, 2013, p. 79.

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mid 1974. Upon his release, he returned to Manfalut, where he lived a secluded village life far removed from the political intrigues taking place in the capital. By means of his adept political manoeuvring, Mashhur was able to fill the highest leadership position with a person who could act as a buffer between the intransigent factions of political rivals and accommodate the contradictory claims to power raised by various groups and personalities, while buying himself more time to strengthen his internal positioning. In the decade before his death in 1996, Abu Nasr acted as a figurehead while Mustafa Mashhur, like an éminence grise behind a senile king, exerted effective control.114 Mokhtar Nuh later remembered Abu Nasr as a ‘very kind, humble and polite person, but his hearing and his eyesight were weak. Mustafa Mashhur sat with him in the room to help him [make decisions] while in fact it was Mashhur who was in control of the situation.’115 On the surface, the Brotherhood seemed to proceed along Tilmisani’s trajectory, contesting in syndicate and parliamentary elections and broadening the Brotherhood’s access to civilian institutions. In reality, however, Abu Nasr’s weak guidance made it possible for Mashhur and the vanguard leadership to further entrench themselves in strategic positions. The period after 1986 saw a sharpening of the struggle for power between the tanzimi-focused leaders of the Qutbist vintage, and the mid-ranking Brothers of the Tilmisanian school of thought.116 The fact that the Brotherhood became involved in politics before having resolved crucial questions over its identity hinted at the dawning prospect of disintegration that would continue to haunt the Brotherhood for years to come. Internal conflicts broke into the open with growing frequency, as a self-confident class of younger cadres challenged their senior leaders over a variety of issues.117 While during Tilmisani’s tenure many key administrative positions had been allocated to the former student activists of the Jama‘a Islamiyya, the advancement of this group was now either repeatedly blocked, or they were simply replaced by loyalists of the vanguard elite. Abu al-Futuh, for instance, who had become a member of the Guidance Office in 1987 and headed the important Section for Professionals, suddenly lost this position to the Mashhur loyalist Sa‘d al-Katatni – a hardened supporter of the tanzimi conception who would become the head of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) after 2012. The Section for Rovers and Families was placed under the command of Mahmud

114

115 116 117

Wisner (Cairo) to Secretary of State. ‘Muslim Brotherhood: eager for U.S. Contacts, fearful of GOE.’ 16 September 1986, Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy. https:// wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/86CAIRO21221_a.html (accessed 17 August 2017). Nuh, Mokhtar. Interview with author. Cairo, 11 March 2013. Madi, Abu al-‘Ala’. Interview with author. Cairo, 21 May 2013. Saghiya, Hazem. ‘Profile of Abu al-‘Ila Madi.’ Al-Hayat, 25 December 1996.

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‘Izzat, who used his position to appoint new captains in the families.118 Meanwhile, the project of creating a political party, which had been the crown jewel of Tilmisani’s reformist vision, was postponed ad kalendas Graecas.119 But the former student organizers would not easily give up their recently acquired power. They disagreed with the way in which the senior leadership sacrificed the internal By-laws and Statutes on the altar of a politics of nepotism and gerrymandering. Along the lines of Tilmisani, they wanted to mould the Brotherhood into an open, democratic and meritocratic organization, but increasingly saw it escaping their control in favour of a tightly knit group of hardened insiders exclusively loyal to one another. They started to use Shura Council sessions as a platform to openly challenge the authority of the vanguard leaders. At various instances, they tried to introduce a reformist discourse and lobbied for a revision of the Brotherhood’s programmatic positions, particularly with respect to those concerning the status of women and Coptic Christians. Some even went as far as questioning some of the central tenets of Banna’s doctrine.120 Thinking of themselves as being more closely involved in the everyday issues of ordinary Egyptians, they came to regard the former cadres of the Special Apparatus as being subjected to a psychological crisis.121 In February 1986, over 17,000 conscripts from the Central Security Forces protested against low wages, horrendous living standards and abusive treatment by their superiors. In the midst of an increasingly restrictive political environment, Brotherhood propagandists grasped the opportunity to articulate a pointed moralistic argument that blamed Egypt’s malaise on the ‘moral decadence’ of its ruling elites.122 They accused the president of having failed to ‘purify Islamic society of moral abominations and depravities’ and demanded that he shut down liquor factories and ‘forbidden entertainment places’, and instruct ‘the media, and especially television, to protect our sons, daughters

118

119

120

121

122

Nuh, Mokhtar. Interview with author. Cairo, 11 March 2013. This section was abandoned in the General By-laws of the Society of the Muslim Brothers of 1990. Statement of al-Hudaybi, 29 March 1989, cited in Dalal, ‘Abdullah Sami Ibrahim. AlIslāmiyūn wa-l-Dīmuqrātiyya fī Masr (The Islamists and Democracy in Egypt). Cairo: ˙ ˙ Madbouli Publishers, 2006. Ghanim, Ibrahim Bayoumi. Interview, 9 March 2004, quoted in Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 69. Nuh, Mokhtar. Interview with author. Cairo, 11 March 2013; Madi, Abu al-‘Ala’. Interview with author. Cairo, 21 May 2013. Hasan, ‘Ammar ‘Ali. ‘Adā al-Tahāluf al-Islāmī fī Majlis al-Sha‘b khilāl al-Fasl al-Tashrī‘i ˙ Islamist al-Khāmis: Dirāsa fī-l-Riqāba ˙al-Barlamāniyya (The Performance of the Alliance in the Fifth Legislative Session of Parliament: a Study in Parliamentary Oversight)’ in al-Tatawwur al-Siyāsī fi Misr 1982–1992 (Political Development in Egypt ˙ Cairo: Markaz al-Buhuth wa-l-Dirasat al1982–1992), Kharbush, Muhammad (ed.). Siyasiyya, 1994, pp. 133–60.

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and wives’.123 Enthusiastic rank-and-file members joined the mob of rioting Central Security Forces conscripts to raid nightclubs, grocery shops selling alcoholic beverages and video stores advertising Western movies. The riots ended with a trail of destruction along al-Haram Street in Giza. These protests dragged into the parliamentary elections of April 1987, when the Brotherhood competed as part of a negotiated alliance with the ‘Liberal Party’ (Hizb al-Ahrar) and the ‘Labour Party’ (Hizb al-‘Amal).124 Running under campaign slogans such as ‘give your vote to God, give it to the Muslim Brotherhood’ and ‘Islam is the solution’, the Brotherhood was able to assure the enthusiastic support of wide segments of the Egyptian populace. Out of the fifty-six seats won by the alliance, the Brotherhood pocketed roughly twothirds and became the largest opposition block in parliament. But instead of nominating candidates who were well-versed in the world of politics, the vanguard leadership advanced populist preachers who understood how to attract people to the Islamic da‘wa, but who otherwise had little knowledge of drafting legislation, introducing parliamentary motions, chairing meetings or designing public policies. Out of the thirty-six seats that went to the Brotherhood, only ten were accorded to seasoned politicians of the likes of Mokhtar Nuh and ‘Issam al-‘Arian.125 This practice of nominating da‘wa propagandists rather than people with political skills and backgrounds showed the degree to which the vanguard leaders’ anti-political tendency had prevailed over those who were concerned with the business of politics. For the ruling elite, legitimacy was conferred not through meritocratic principles, but through strict obedience to the leadership. Mashhur and ‘Izzat in particular regarded the newcomers from the Jama‘a Islamiyya as rebellious young Turks bent on usurping their long-established and hard-earned power, and who furthermore lacked the credentials of religious erudition that could give authority to their claims. Finally, these youngsters had not undergone the defining prison ordeals, nor had they experienced the rigorous ideological training of Sayyid Qutb. Instead, they simply echoed the shallow liberal arguments promulgated by sheikhs representing the socalled new Islamist discourse. The Brotherhood under Hamid Abu Nasr’s tenure was thus united only superficially, while in reality centrifugal forces were already working to pull the Society apart. Following the Brotherhood’s electoral success, the regime realized that it now faced a broad-based, well-financed and tightly organized opposition movement. As the Brotherhood’s emboldened youth cadres established themselves on the benches of the People’s Assembly, and with a committed rank-and-file membership fanning discontent in the streets, Mubarak instructed his security forces 123 124 125

Hudaybi is quoted in Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 55. Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 52. Habib. Memories, p. 211.

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in the summer of 1987 to launch a broad crackdown against the Society. While more than 3,000 Islamist activists were arrested, these measures could not hide the fact that the Brotherhood’s continued emphasis on corruption had hit the nerve of the time. Ever larger segments of the middle class, who saw their wealth and status deteriorating from the impact of neoliberal reforms, started to embrace the Brotherhood’s discourse of social justice and political freedom.

Towards the First Gulf War These developments occurred in the context of a rapidly deteriorating macroeconomic situation. The replacement of Soviet assistance with US aid, which Sadat had initiated in 1974, had gradually integrated the Egyptian economy within global markets and now caused major societal dislocations. As the price of oil dropped from $36 to $12 per barrel between 1980 and 1886, revenues from petroleum exports halved to $1.2 billion, while Suez Canal tariffs fell by $100 million, entailing a 70 per cent drop in government revenues and leaving the treasury exposed to a rapidly widening budget deficit.126 The oil price slump further caused a loss in the value of remittances that were sent home by Egyptian workers in Libya and the Gulf. At 2.9 per cent on average, GDP growth reached an all-time low in the period from 1985 to 1990.127 Meanwhile, international civilian debt had quadrupled to $33 billion since 1977, while military debt had inflated by $11 billion during the same period.128 According to a study commissioned in 1985, Egypt’s nonindustrial sector represented 60 per cent of GDP and employed 53 per cent of the workforce, while industry represented a mere 19 per cent of GDP and employed only 14 per cent of the workforce.129 In May 1987, Egypt’s debt obligations forced the government to enter into negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Mubarak knew that in order to maintain social peace in the face of growing economic inequality, he had to revert to borrowing in international capital markets.130 A stabilization plan was adopted whereby the IMF would assist the Egyptian government to break out of the debt trap and permit it to reschedule parts of its repayments in exchange for a series of measures, including price controls, subsidies cuts on basic commodities and a unification of the multiple exchange 126

127 128 129

130

For a more detailed discussion, see Mitchell, Timothy. Rule of Experts: Egypt, TechnoPolitics, Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Owen. A History of Middle East Economies, p. 138. Ibid., p. 136. Oweiss, Ibrahim (ed.). ‘The Political Economy of Contemporary Egypt’ in Digest of Middle East Studies 1, no. 2 (1 April 1992), pp. 69–72. Also, see the discussion in Kandil. ‘Why Did the Egyptian Middle Class March to Tahrir Square?’ Seddon, David. ‘The Politics of Adjustment: Egypt and the IMF, 1987–1990.’ Review of African Political Economy, no. 47 (1990), pp. 95–104.

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rate regime.131 Mubarak was much concerned by the impact of such a broadsweeping wave of privatization on the country’s social stability, as well as of the potentially detrimental effect of a devaluation of the Egyptian pound, as had happened during the Bread Riots of 1977. In an effort to prevent a potential escalation, the regime proceeded to extend the Emergency Laws of 1981. By early 1989, a high import bill and a simultaneous drop in foreign currency reserves had pushed the Egyptian economy into an augmenting debt spiral. Imports from the United States between 1974 and 1984 were at around $22.8 billion, while non-oil exports accounted for a mere $5 million. External debt had reached the staggering level of $51.5 billion, or 165 per cent of GDP. With the government at risk of defaulting on its debt, new loans were required to keep up interest payments on previous loans. But the Egyptian economy was no longer able to support its loss-making public industries. The government was forced to reject a further reduction of public expenditures, causing the IMF to refuse the release of the next tranche of loan payments. By now, global lenders were no longer willing to float an economy dependant on state-run enterprises and the government had to declare bankruptcy. It was at this point that the regime was presented with an unexpected opportunity. On 2 August 1990, to the surprise of strategic planners in the Pentagon as well as of Arab political leaders, the Iraqi Armed Forces invaded Kuwait. Taking a border dispute as pretext, Saddam Hussein had manufactured the failure of the first Palestinian Intifada into an opportunity to profile Iraq as the new hegemonic power centre in the northern Gulf region.132 As Iraqi troops built up their presence at the Kuwaiti border, King Fahd bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz feared that Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province would be next to be invaded and called on the United States to protect the Kingdom. US President George H. W. Bush reacted favourably to this request and in October 1990, under the mandate of UN Security Council Resolution 660, initiated ‘Operation Desert Shield’. As more than 200,000 US troops were deployed in the Persian Gulf, Bush extended an offer to Mubarak whereby America was to write off $7 billion of military debt and relax the repayment of the remaining $28 billion long-term bilateral debt, if Egypt would participate in the coalition’s war effort. Finding this offer difficult to refuse, Mubarak ordered his military command to dispatch two army divisions to Iraq while granting the United States Air Force overflight rights through the Egyptian airspace.133

131

132 133

See Hanieh, Adam. Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2013; Seddon. ‘The Politics of Adjustment’. For a more detailed analysis of Egypt’s debt problems, see Sulayman, Samir. The Autumn of Dictatorship: Fiscal Crisis and Political Change in Egypt under Mubarak. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. Tripp, Charles. A History of Iraq. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 243. Amin. Egypt in the Era of Hosni Mubarak, p. 58.

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While the state’s fiscal crisis was mitigated and the regime was able to regain control over its debt situation, the Muslim Brotherhood openly opposed this kind of US intervention on ‘Islamic soil’, thereby implicitly legitimizing Saddam’s expansionist military adventure. Regardless of the Brotherhood’s obstruction, on 29 November the UN Security Council adopted resolution 678, which gave Iraq a final chance to withdraw its forces from Kuwait. When the ultimatum expired on 15 January 1991, ‘Operation Desert Storm’ was set into motion, starting with an aerial bombing campaign, followed by a ground operation on 24 February. Less than one-hundred hours later, George Bush declared that the war had ended and that Kuwait was liberated.134 The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait had a number of major consequences – for the region in general and for the Brotherhood in particular. On the level of geopolitics, the collapse of the Soviet Union inaugurated an era of unrivalled American dominance in the Middle East. It was the starting point for a wave of neoliberal reforms whereby indebted ‘third world’ economies became the targets of American investments, allowing the United States to double its trade volume from $33.76 billion in 1990 to $63.38 billion in 2000, while Russia’s trade with the Arab countries accounted for less than 1 per cent of the total. The new unipolar international system further established a more balanced regional order, as Iran and Iraq were neutralized in the framework of Bill Clinton’s ‘dual containment’ policy. Meanwhile, the security of the Persian Gulf region, and thus US dominance, was guaranteed through the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) security arrangement as well as through a string of US military bases in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Central Asia.135 In 1991, Israel and Palestine were brought together in the framework of the Madrid peace process, with the World Economic Forum co-sponsoring a series of pioneering regional meetings to increase contacts among the business communities of the two countries.136 The collapse of communism also led to a re-evaluation of the Muslim Brotherhood in the minds of international policymakers. Whereas during the Cold War political Islam had served the United States as a means to defeat ideologies deemed unfavourable to US strategic interests, the disappearance of this threat led US strategists to cast the Brotherhood’s strategic role in a new light.137 The case was similar with policymakers in Saudi Arabia, which had seen a growing politicization of Saudi society due to the Sahwa Islamiyya – a broad134 135

136

137

Cleveland. A History of the Modern Middle East, pp. 450 ff. Dreyfuss, Robert. Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. New York: Metropolitan; Godalming, 2005, p. 246. Oliker, Olga (ed.). Russian Foreign Policy: Sources and Implications. Santa Monica: RAND Project Air Force, 2009, p. 113. Bsheer, Rosie. ‘A Counter-Revolutionary State: Popular Movements and the Making of Saudi Arabia.’ Past and Present 238, no. 1 (2018), pp. 233–77.

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based socio-religious trend that fused Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi ideology with the Brotherhood’s political activism.138 Due to the potential threat the Brotherhood’s politicized discourse had for the hegemonic position of the House of Sa‘ud, its perceived role was transformed from a potential ally to a latent danger. Added to this was King Fahd’s dismay at the reaction of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which caused him to further downgrade Saudi Arabia’s support for the group. To a certain degree, this changing international perception was of the Brotherhood’s own making. It was related in the first instance to the mutually divergent national conditions faced by the Brotherhood in Egypt, and by its national affiliate in Kuwait, as well as to the unique role of the latter organization within its own country. Having been established in 1951 when the thenGeneral Observer, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Mutawa, had opened the ‘Islamic Guidance Association’ (Jam‘iat al-Irshad al-Islami) as the Brotherhood’s first chapter in the Gulf, the Kuwait Brotherhood had initially consisted largely of merchants and members of Kuwait’s wealthy families. As an apolitical movement concerned with preaching and social work, al-Irshad’s original role had been to facilitate the commercial interests of its members. When conflicting points of view over the question of how the Brotherhood should react to the 1954 crackdown in Egypt started to separate the group’s senior bourgeois leaders from its younger members, membership rates declined dramatically and eventually led to the closure of the organization.139 In July 1963, the Kuwait Brotherhood re-constituted itself under the name ‘Association of Social Reform’ (Jama‘iyyat al-Islah al-Ijtima‘i). This new organization featured a more diverse membership. In addition to the businessoriented remnants of al-Irshad, it included independent judges, religious scholars, as well as significant parts of the Zubayr Brotherhood who had fled Iraq after the military coup of 1958.140 During the 1970s, al-Islah established itself as a cohesive organizational structure and subsequently expanded its activities and membership. This trend continued following the adoption of the Constitution of 1962, as al-Islah emerged as a powerful domestic player that managed to institutionalize its cultural and societal agendas by means of student organizations, libraries, mosques, labour unions, trade and professional associations, charity associations and even the first Sharia-compliant 138

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al-Khalidi, Sami Nasir. Al-Ahzāb al-Islāmiyya fī-l-Kuwait: al-Shī‘a, al-Ikhwān, al-Salaf ˙ the Shias, the Brotherhood, the Salafis). Kuwait: Dar al(The Islamic Parties in Kuwait: Naba‘ li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzi‘, 1999, p. 182; Hedges, Matthew and Giorgio Cafiero. ‘The GCC and the Muslim Brotherhood: What Does the Future Hold?’ Middle East Policy 24, no. 1 (1 March 2017), pp. 129–53. https://doi.org/10.1111/mepo.12256. The narrative of the emergence of the Kuwaiti Brotherhood follows the account of Freer, Courtney Jean. Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Lacroix. Awakening Islam, p. 66.

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bank. In the wake of the collapse of Arab nationalism following the 1967 war, the Brotherhood’s popularity was strengthened, leading to its further expansion in Kuwaiti parliamentary life. In 1981, al-Islah formally entered politics as a unified block. After the dissolution of parliament in 1986, al-Islah became a founding member in the so-called Constitutional Movement – a crossideological alliance that campaigned to restore the National Assembly. The ensuing political compromise exacerbated previously existing tensions between a fundamentalist wing, led by ‘Abdullah al-Nafisi, and a more moderate wing represented by Isma‘il al-Shatti, who advocated political work as a means to further the Brotherhood’s objectives.141 The Iraqi invasion came in the midst of this deepening internal schism. While rank-and-file members provided for the needs of Kuwait’s citizenry in the face of a brutal Iraqi occupation, the invasion gave backwind to the political wing within al-Islah and in 1991 led to the creation of a separate political branch, the ‘Islamic Constitutional Movement’ (al-Haraka al-Dusturiyya alIslamiyya). Al-Islah at this point enjoyed deep roots within Kuwaiti society, which were strengthened by means of a broad network of institutions and associations and its formidable ties to the country’s political leadership. These connections included the Emir, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah, who had fled into exile in the wake of the Iraqi invasion. Upon his return, the 1962 constitution was reinstated with a substantially expanded field for popular representation. Given the Brotherhood’s stabilizing effect on Kuwait’s societal and political systems, the insistence of the Guidance Office in Cairo that Egypt should not participate in the US-led anti-Iraq coalition frustrated al-Islah’s leaders enormously. Faced with the onslaught of looting and pillaging Iraqi troops, they naturally favoured the US intervention and accordingly saw the Egyptian Brotherhood’s obstructionism as an affront. The episode illustrated the extent to which the vanguard leaders in Cairo were constrained by the narrow confines of national priorities, which led to acrimonious debates between the Brotherhood’s headquarters in Egypt and the leaders of the Kuwaiti chapter.142 These conflicting national priorities entailed a deepening chasm between the Brotherhood in Egypt and al-Islah in Kuwait. As a consequence, the latter organization stopped its monthly membership payments to the International Organization, thereby cutting the Egyptian Brotherhood off from a significant revenue stream.143 With its wider regional position weakened, the Brotherhood found it difficult to articulate any meaningful supranational strategy that was able to subordinate national priorities to the larger ideological goal of uniting the umma in the framework of an Islamic 141 142 143

Freer, Rentier Islamism, pp. 70–87. Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 20 December 2012. ʻAli. The Road to Ittihadiyya, p. 268.

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caliphate. Similar to the discrepancy between the rhetoric and reality of secular pan-Arab ideologies, any pan-Islamic attempts, while attractive in theory, collapsed when confronted with the logic of nationalism. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait exemplified the extent to which the Brotherhood’s International Organization could not be called an ‘organization’ in any meaningful sense of the term, but rather a utopian aspiration that lacked both a coherent strategy as well as historical momentum. Mubarak, for his part, took the Brotherhood’s position as an opportunity to launch the next crackdown against the group. Following a popular referendum in October 1990, the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) prematurely dissolved the parliament in Egypt due to alleged irregularities during the 1987 elections. As it became clear that the regime was determined to undermine the presence of Brotherhood deputies in the People’s Assembly, new elections were held between 29 November and 6 December 1990, resulting in the overwhelming victory of the NDP, whose deputies captured a total of 386 out of 444 seats. Although these elections were boycotted by several major opposition parties, Mubarak was most offended by the Brotherhood’s absence.144 Adding insult to injury, Brotherhoodled syndicates in January 1991 issued a public statement to denounce Egypt’s involvement in the American war effort in Kuwait. From this point on, Mubarak’s regime began to assault the Brotherhood more openly, thereby attuning the state apparatus to the general tenor of relations with the Brotherhood during the following decade.

144

Ibid., p. 57.

4 Brotherhood Incorporated (1991–2001)

I chose the Muslim Brotherhood as a young man because, away from the vicious smears of the Mubarak regime, it presented a vision for the renaissance of the nation, a vision for a renaissance with an Islamic reference. Khairat al-Shatir, Interview with ‘Amr al-Laythi (2012)

During the last decade of the twentieth century, Egypt went through a profound socio-economic transformation that significantly shaped the organizational evolution of the Muslim Brotherhood. Following the victory of Western liberal democracy over the forces of communism in 1991, local Egyptian markets became increasingly saturated with foreign capital and Western consumer goods.1 After several rounds of negotiations between Egypt and international lending institutions, the IMF, the World Bank and the Egyptian government adopted an ‘Economic Reform and Structural Adjustment Programme’, which imposed heavy subsidy cuts and reduced public expenditures. Neoliberal capitalism made its debut in Egypt in the form of a deregulation of industry and agriculture, large-scale privatizations, the curbing of the power of labour, the dismantling of the welfare state, diminished taxation for the rich and the liberalization of financial markets.2 When the first McDonald’s opened its golden gates in October 1994, Egyptians stood in line for several blocks down Marghany Street to catch their first Big Mac.3 The government’s economic policies entailed a growing concentration of wealth in the hands of a newly emerging, internationally connected bourgeoisie. 1

2

3

The British retailer Sainsbury’s had paid £100 million in 1999 for an 80 per cent share of local retailer Egyptian Distribution Group. The company pulled out of Egypt after rumours spread by local shopkeepers accused the group of having Jewish connections. See ‘Sainsbury’s pulls out of Egypt.’ BBC News, 9 April 2001. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ business/1268099.stm (accessed 5 March 2017). Harrigan, Jane R. and Hamed el-Said. ‘The Economic Impact of IMF and World Bank Programs in the Middle East and North Africa: a Case Study of Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, 1983–2004.’ Review of Middle East Economics and Finance 6, no. 2 (2010), pp. 1–25. The McDonald’s franchise was operated by Manfoods & Orascom Foods, a business conglomerate owned by the Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris.

141

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Consortiums of global and local businessmen colluded with state banks and stateowned enterprises to form public–private partnerships, creating a new breed of global capitalists, local business bosses and fin de siècle oligarchs.4 In many cases, the business successes of these individuals depended on their parasitic relations with government employees, who provided them with the licences and building permits to pursue their profiteering projects. The Muslim Brotherhood formed a distinct sub-group within this emerging bourgeoisie. It was spearheaded by Khairat al-Shatir who, after his elevation to the Guidance Office in 1995, emerged as the Society’s most powerful figure. At the opposite pole of the socio-economic spectrum were average-income families who saw their standards of living gradually evaporate. As the government divested funds from public projects and steered them into nonproductive sectors, publicly owned land in central Cairo was sold at favourable rates to private property developers, while grandiose building schemes and housing projects started to dominate the urban landscape. Entire new cities emerged in the desert, forcing large numbers of workers to migrate from the urban centres to informal settlements at Cairo’s peri-urban fringes.5 The new socio-economic conditions created by this activity constituted the backdrop against which the Brotherhood’s recruitment and social service provision took place during this decade. The structural adjustment of the Egyptian economy was accompanied by an intensifying repression on the part of the regime. Mubarak had not forgotten the international embarrassment that the Brotherhood’s electoral boycott of 1990 had caused him. He now ordered his security forces to prohibit religious and personality-based parties across the board. By the end of the decade, any previously achieved progress towards a democratic political system had been reversed. Instead, it was replaced by a series of military trials against Brotherhood leaders and rank-and-file members, which increasingly resembled the practices of the days of Nasser. Faced with the threat of trial and arrest, and barred from the legal status Tilmisani had aspired to, the Brotherhood became known as ‘the banned Society’. This chapter focuses on the major socio-economic and ideological developments that shaped the Brotherhood’s evolution during the 1990s. Picking up the story of Khairat al-Shatir from Chapter 2, the narrative centres on the Brotherhood’s internal transformations during the second decade of Mubarak’s rule. Against larger transformations taking place within Egypt’s political economy, the chapter shows how the deepening disagreements between the followers of ‘Omar al-Tilmisani on the one 4

5

These consortiums drove more than $10 billion worth of currency deposits into the treasury. See Kandil, Hazem. ‘Why Did the Egyptian Middle Class March to Tahrir Square?’, pp. 197–219. Sims. Understanding Cairo. Also, see the architectural study on informality by Angélil, Marc and Charlotte Malterre-Barthes. Housing Cairo – The Informal Response. Berlin: Ruby Press, 2016.

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hand, and an increasingly assertive group of business-minded vanguardists on the other, was progressively tilted in favour of the latter. The chapter ends by recounting how, against the backdrop of an intensifying wave of regime repression, the Brotherhood was pushed back into the underground. Based on Oral History interviews with eyewitnesses of the events in question, memoires and available online material, original texts published by the Brotherhood and a reading of the available literature, the chapter exposes how an increasingly acrimonious internal conflict gradually morphed into the formalization of distinct political coalitions, each of which advocated for conflicting visions of the Brotherhood’s political future. ***

Khairat al-Shatir and the Salsabil Affair The wave of economic liberalization of the early 1990s enabled a number of Islamic investment companies that had made profits in the late 1980s to divert their assets into lucrative speculative sectors such as currency exchange, tourism, real estate and trading. The owners of these companies ranged from politically active Brotherhood members to apolitical entrepreneurs who used the ‘Islam brand’ strategically for marketing purposes. The latter group included ventures such as al-Rayan, a conglomerate founded by Fathi Tawfiq ‘Abd al-Fattah, whose twenty subsidiaries had an annual turnover of E£6.5 billion. One of the largest Islamic corporations in Upper Egypt was the Asyut-based ‘Tali‘at al-Iman’ (the Vanguard of the Faith), which encouraged customers to be ‘good Muslims’ and requested male employees to grow their beards. This bourgeoisie islamique remained absent from Western business organizations such as the Rotary Club or the Egyptian–American Chamber of Commerce, and instead entertained memberships with organizations from within the Islamic cultural milieu. They spoke Arabic as their primary language and were committed to Arab–Islamic values. In terms of investment portfolios, many were oriented towards Turkey, the Gulf countries and Malaysia, while investment decisions were based on religious considerations.6 One of the most emblematic figures among the Brotherhood’s group of businessmen was Khairat al-Shatir. Later ominously portrayed by the Egyptian media as the ‘political devil who rules Egypt’, Shatir was a unique character by any standard.7 His imposing physical stature of 1.95 metres and his stern facial 6 7

Springborg. Mubarak’s Egypt, p. 48. ‘Abd al-Sahfo, ‘Ussam. ‘Al-Shātir: Qissa al-Shaytān al-siyāsī alladhī yahkum Masr (AlShatir: the Story of the political˙ Devil˙˙that rules˙Egypt).’ El-Mogaz, 20 ˙December˙ 2012. www.elmogaz.com/node/60044 (accessed 11 April 2017).

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expression made for an almost intimidating appearance. This impression was countered by a clear and soft-spoken tenor voice and sophisticated rhetorical talents. Many rank-and-file members painted a mystical picture of this man, who was said to organize his thoughts ‘in such a way that it is hard to escape from what he wants to tell you’.8 A former high school friend remembered him as ‘sharp, polite, terribly neat and a good student’.9 Another acquaintance described him as a relatively shy man, ‘thin and almost translucent because he was a tad fair’.10 But the trait that was perhaps most characteristic of Shatir was the combination of a highly charismatic personality and a sharp intelligence (ironically, the Arabic adjective shatir means ‘shrewd’, ‘cunning’ or ‘smart’), which earned him the respect of friends and foes alike. Mohammed Khairat al-Shatir was born on 4 May 1950 in Mansura, situated in the Daqahliyya governorate on the banks of the Nile. Some Brotherhood sources claim that his father had owned a trading business and tens of feddans of land, while others assert that he came from a middle-income household.11 According to Brotherhood websites, he had earned two bachelor degrees in ‘Civil Engineering and Anthropology, and several diploma degrees in Islamic studies, business administration, social work and NGOs, and international marketing’. The same source also claims that he had been ‘engaged in Islamic work since 1967’ and that he had ‘played a pivotal role in bringing about Islamic awakening’.12 It seems, however, that when he and another student from Mansura had fired up the crowds in the auditorium of the University of Alexandria’s Engineering College in November 1968, he had not yet made up his mind with respect to his ideological inclination. It was only after his subsequent imprisonment, and a two-year stint in the army, that Shatir developed an inclination for Islamic activism, sometime in 1970 or 1971. According to a former school friend, he had even been the head of one of the Socialist Union’s ‘neighbourhoods’ as late as 1970. But once religious life started to flourish at the University of Alexandria, he organized seminars and lectures in his college and established several organizations, such as the Fatima al-Zahra’ Association for Sisters in 1973. 8 9

10 11

12

Hasan al-Banna. Interview with author. Giza, 9 June 2013. Abu Khalil, Haitham. Ikhwān Islāhīyūn (The Reformist Brotherhood). Cairo: Dar al˙ ˙ Dawwin, 2012, p. 212. Howeidy, Amira. ‘The Brotherhood’s Engineer.’ Al-Ahram, 29 April 2012. Shatir’s biography is based on the account provided by Abu Khalil. The Reformist Brotherhood, pp. 216–46. For the Brotherhood’s version, see ‘Khayrat al-Shātir (Khairat ˙ al-Shatir).’ Ikhwanwiki, date unknown. www.ikhwanwiki.com/index.php?title=%D8% AE%D9%8A%D8%B1%D8%AA_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%A7%D8%B7%D8% B1 (accessed 22 August 2017). ‘Muslim Brotherhood – Khairat al-Shatir.’ Islamic Human Rights Commission, May 2007. www.ihrc.org.uk/file/PF070515KhairatAlShatirFinal.pdf (accessed 2 June 2014). alHaddad, Abdullah. Interview with author. London, 11 July 2015.

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After having completed his studies in 1974, Shatir returned to his home village near Mansura. It was an important milestone in the young man’s intellectual development, for it was here where he was drawn into the study circles of Sabri ‘Arafa al-Kawmi and Mohammed al-‘Adawi – two senior figures of the ‘first cohort’ who had been involved in the rebuilding efforts of the Organization’65 during the 1960s.13 Through these interactions, Shatir intimately acquainted himself with Qutbist teachings and their emphasis on a strong organization, which attracted his managerial mind. After having travelled in the Gulf and in Europe over several years, Shatir finally settled in Cumbernauld in 1983 – a small town in the Scottish region of North Lanarkshire, about a twenty-minutes’ drive from Glasgow – to complete his doctorate in civil engineering. Shatir by that time was thirty-three years of age and had fathered five daughters, the eldest of whom is called Zahra’, which is why his friends affectionately referred to him as Abu Zahra’.14 In Cumbernauld, he also met Mohammed ‘Abd al-Malik, the Manchester-based European representative of the Libyan Brotherhood, who like Shatir studied engineering at the University of Glasgow and shared the neighbouring flat. ‘Abd al-Malik remembers Shatir as follows: Mohammed Khairat al-Shatir made me think. We often hear about the Prophet, and about [his] companions. But we don’t really hear about [what kind of people] they are. Are they people like us, or do they stand out? Of course, they must stand out! Abu Zahra’ helped me understand this, because he stood out. Why did he stand out? Because of his education, his commitment and his endless hard work. I joined the circle of the mosque [in Cumbernauld] about a month before Mohammed Khairat al-Shatir . . . . There were only about five or six people [in this circle]. When Mohammed Khairat al-Shatir came and took over this circle – one month later, sixty people were attending! He had the ability to gather people around himself. And he had the ability to make people pay.15

Soon after his arrival in Scotland, Shatir’s ‘interests changed and he became involved in business activities’, trading in garments, textiles and furniture.16 Although he does not seem to have been particularly successful in any of his ventures, he managed to establish broad personal and commercial networks within the global Islamic scene. Shatir returned to Egypt in 1984, partnering up with his old friend Hasan Malek, with whom he established a company called Salsabil. There are 13 14 15 16

Calvert. Sayid Qutb, p. 230. ‘Abd al-Malik, Mohammed. Interview with author. Manchester, 9 August 2017. Ibid. ‘Muslim Brotherhood – Khairat al-Shatir.’

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incomplete details available on Salsabil’s revenue and operations. It seems that the company was founded as an ‘international company for development and advanced systems’, at a time when a nascent information technology sector provided opportunities for newcomers to reap lucrative profits. Together with Taher ‘Abd al-Mun‘im, another prominent Brotherhood businessman, Shatir and Malek developed training and research manuals for private sector clients.17 Shatir also lectured aspiring management consultants on ‘doing business’, using auxiliary centres that were set up by Salsabil’s sister company, the Umma Administrative Centre.18 Over the years, Salsabil’s profits multiplied and the company established itself as a competitive player in the Egyptian market.19 Its biggest success came during the trade exhibitions of 1991, when the company was selected to submit a proposal to bid for a contract in the upcoming pan-African games. Although, according to Brotherhood sources, Salsabil’s pitch was solid, the tender was granted to a French company, whose CEO was apparently well connected to the father-in-law of Mubarak’s younger son ‘Ala’.20 Salsabil’s accomplished bid brought it to the attention of the State Security Apparatus, which now started to monitor the movements of Brotherhood members more closely. Since Salsabil at the time acted as a front for the Brotherhood’s clandestine activities, Mustafa Mashhur frequently visited its headquarters, raising the suspicions of the intelligence services.21 On 5 February 1992 the regime raided Salsabil’s offices and confiscated large quantities of papers and computer disks, including a database of the Brotherhood’s membership.22 Its directors were accused of belonging to a ‘forbidden group’ and of possessing ‘illegal documents’.23 Salsabil’s board members were arrested, including Shatir, Malek and Mun‘im, and so were other senior Brotherhood leaders, such as Gum‘a Amin and Mahmud ‘Izzat.24 A few days later, state prosecution issued arrest warrants for another 1,250 17

18

19 20 21 22 23 24

‘Khayrat al-Shāter wa Qadiyat Salsabīl (Khairat al-Shatir and the Salsabil Case).’ Ikhwanwiki, date unknown.˙ https://bit.ly/2HljScy (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 22 August 2014). Tammam, Husam and Patrick Haenni. ‘A l’ombre du sourire des winner pieux. Le positive thinking et autres ruses musulmanes de la raison néolibérale,’ Cairo: unpublished article, 2004. Tammam. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 57. ‘Khairat al-Shatir and the Salsabil Case.’ Abu Khalil. The Reformist Brotherhood, p. 220. ‘Khairat al-Shatir and the Salsabil Case.’ Al-Akhbar, 20 September 1992. ‘Awda, Hisham. Sirāʻ ʻalā al-Sharʻiyya: al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn wa Mubārak, 1982–2007 (The Assault on ˙Legality: The Muslim Brotherhood and Mubarak, 1982–2007). Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahdah al-ʻArabiyya, 2009; al-Anani, Khalil. “A different Game for ˙ the MB.” Al-Ahram Weekly Online, 31 December 2009–6 January 2010; “Khairat al-Shatir on ‘The Nahda Project”.’ Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, Vol. 13, 2012.

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individuals.25 The pro-regime journalist ‘Abd al-Rahim ‘Ali doubled down with claiming that Salsabil had financed the regime in Iran with $60 billion.26

The Empowerment Plan During the raid on Salsabil’s headquarters, the State Security Apparatus discovered a cache of documents and papers, one of which was ominously titled ‘the Empowerment Plan’. Regime-controlled press organs quickly seized this opportunity to claim how this document illustrated the Brotherhood’s ‘overwhelming desire’ to ascend to power.27 In 1994, stateowned magazine al-Musawwar published a summary of this paper, along with a poorly designed, hand-written sketch that supposedly illustrated how the Brotherhood intended to implement the ‘Islamization of reality’. Another document titled ‘We are a Jihadi Group’ was said to lay bare the Brotherhood’s will to impose their presence on the streets through public preaching and proselytizing. The Egyptian press subsequently stylized the Empowerment Plan into a conclusive proof of the Brotherhood’s ambition to engineer a radical change of the social, political and economic structures of the state, thereby revealing ‘the power of the Brotherhood, which had come close to a parallel state’.28 Brotherhood members, on the other hand, had an alternative narrative to explain the existence of the Empowerment Plan. They claimed that Shatir’s professionalism and managerial skills had begrudged ‘envious businessmen’ around Mubarak and his nepotistic sons, who had pressured their father to order State Security to raid Salsabil’s offices. The Empowerment Plan had been subsequently drafted to provide the regime with an ex post facto justification for the raid.29 The idea for this plot had allegedly sprung out of the cunning mind of a certain Hamdi Rizq – a popular talking head on Egyptian news shows and a deeply despised figure within Brotherhood 25

26

27 28 29

Al-Jumhuriyya, 23 September 1992, quoted in Habib. Memories, p. 341. The information about Salsabil and the seizure of the Brotherhood’s internal documents is recounted by several current and former members, including ‘Abd al-Sattar al-Meligui: ‘Former Egyptian Shura Council Member from Muslim Brotherhood ‘Abd al-Sattar al-Meligui accuses presidential Candidate Khayrat al-Shater of embezzling MB Funds.’ The Middle East Media Research Institute, 9 September 2014. www.memri.org/reports/formeregyptian-shura-council-member-muslim-brotherhood-abd-al-sattar-al-meligui-accuses (accessed 29 September 2015); al-Haddad, Abdullah. Interview with author. London, 11 July 2015. Posted on ‘Yalla Nebny Masr (Let’s build Egypt)’ Facebook Group, 14 February 2013. www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=147948195264243&story_fbid=47628495243056 4 (accessed 29 September 2015). Abu Khalil, Haytham. Interview with author. Alexandria, 17 December 2012. Al-Musawwar, 25 December 1992. Heshmat, Gamal. Interview with author. Cairo, 1 April 2013.

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circles.30 To support this theory, rank-and-file members pointed to the fact that the general prosecutor had closed the Salsabil case eleven months after the raid, and that Salsabil’s directors had been freed without any charges.31 Although the pro-regime press had certainly inflated the importance of the Empowerment Plan, such a document seems to have existed nevertheless. It was drafted by a group of younger cadres in the wake of the collapse of the International Organization following the first Gulf War. The atmosphere among the younger generation at that time was one of unbridled optimism. Despite the weakening of the organization in Egypt, these individuals were convinced of the potential of the Brotherhood’s reform methods and had no doubt that the Islamic project would ultimately prevail. They founded two committees, one of which was based in Cairo and presided by Hussein al-Qazzaz, a lecturer in the field of organizational behaviour at the American University in Cairo who in 2013 became the chief architect of the FJP’s economic development plan. The second committee, called the Directions Committee, was based in Alexandria and was headed by ‘Amr Abu Khalil, a freshly graduated and highly energetic psychology student, and a member of the political committee in a sub-regional branch of the Alexandria Administrative Office.32 Like many of his generation, Abu Khalil believed that only the Brotherhood’s reform model would be able to solve Egypt’s social, economic, cultural and political malaise. In late 1991, he and five of his colleagues presented their superiors with a proposal that outlined their vision for the Brotherhood’s long-term development.33 They intended to support the Guidance Office with a third-party analysis over the Brotherhood’s activities, an assessment on how these activities should be adapted to changing circumstances, and an outline of the concrete steps on how the Islamic project should be implemented.34 Calling their report somewhat clumsily the ‘Empowerment Plan’, they sent the document to Khairat al-Shatir at Salsabil’s headquarters, who absorbed Khalil’s unofficial Directions Committee into the Administrative Development Section. Abu Khalil interpreted this as evidence that the Guidance Office felt threatened by his

30

31 32 33 34

‘Al-Kātib Hamdī Rizq wa Kitāb “Fath Misr” wa Khitat al-Tamkīn al-Ikhwān (The Writer ˙ the Book “the Opening ˙ of ˙ Egypt” ˙and ˙ the Empowerment Plan of the Hamdi Rizq, Brotherhood).’ ON TV, 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=__dU5R6er80&feature=youtube _gdata_player (accessed 22 July 2015). ‘Khairat al-Shatir and the Salsabil Case.’ Ikhwanwiki. Abu Khalil, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Alexandria, 28 March 2013. Ibid. Al-Musawwar, 2 December 2005.

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unsolicited initiative, which had been launched independently and without the knowledge or consent of the Guidance Office.35 The episode around the Empowerment Plan provides a glimpse into the state of affairs among the Brotherhood’s middle ranks during the early 1990s. It illustrated the aspirations of a new generation of activists of the Tilmisani school of thought who were eager to assume a greater role in the Brotherhood’s organizational development. Ambitious and upwardly mobile, these individuals were frustrated with the fact that their access to senior leadership positions remained blocked by an unyielding and obscurantist clique of insiders, who appointed only yea-sayers and loyalists to key posts.36 Anxious to contribute intellectually and practically to the Brotherhood’s development, this generation of reform-minded Brothers challenged prevailing cultural norms, instead advocating for the introduction of democratic electoral procedures. These included the establishment of an independent supervisory body to monitor elections, greater accountability in recruitment and promotion, and more transparency in financial management.37 The leaders of the vanguardist faction, on the other hand, were determined to maintain an efficient commandand-control structure modelled, along the design of a state, with the Guidance Office equivalent to the prime minister’s office and the Shura Council to parliament.38 The ‘Salsabil affair’ was a wake-up call for Hosni Mubarak. From the point of view of the regime, the information that had been confiscated during the raid had shown the extent to which the Brotherhood had re-established itself as an influential organization on the Egyptian social scene. It had an effective and countrywide ground operation and a well-organized network of hundreds of thousands of highly motivated members and supporters. Particularly troubling was the Brotherhood’s sharp increase in popularity among the middle class, whose material and political gains had dissipated as a result of the restructuring of the Egyptian economy.

Regime Repression Indeed, the country’s macro-economic fundamentals were at a dire state in the early 1990s. Since the influx of foreign investments was intimately linked to the peace treaty with Israel, the Egyptian economy during the last decade had grown increasingly dependent on the United States. Despite the relief package following the first Gulf War, public debt remained around the 35 36

37 38

Abu Khalil, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Alexandria, 28 March 2013. The empowerment plan is mentioned in al-Sayyid, Yasin. ‘Al-Taqrīr al-Istratījī al-‘Arabī 1995 (Arab Strategic Report 1995).’ Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, 1996. Abu Khalil, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Alexandria, 28 March 2013. Tammam. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 34.

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$30 billion mark for most of the decade due to Egypt’s heavily subsidized arms purchases.39 Structural changes in labour market policies in the Gulf had increased the demand for skilled South Asian workers, reducing the need for Egyptian teachers, doctors, pharmacists and engineers, and causing a steep fall in remittance revenues. Chronic public deficits forced the government to end its practice of hiring university graduates, which led to growing numbers of unemployed youths. Official unemployment fluctuated between 5 to 7 per cent during the early 1990s and peaked at 11 per cent in 1995. Demographic growth as a result of high fertility rates had pushed the population to more than 56 million people by 1990. With GDP at around $40 billion, annual per capita income stood slightly above $700. The desolate state of the Egyptian economy presented the Brotherhood with unprecedented opportunities in terms of recruitment. The organization steadily expanded its networks of charitable, educational and social institutions, working in a wider range of sectors, including medical care delivery, schooling, childrearing and other critical services that the state was unable or unwilling to provide.40 Since charitable organizations active in the informal social services provision sector traditionally did not politicize their activities, the regime tolerated, and even encouraged, their contribution, seeing them as guarantors of social and political stability.41 This perception changed after October 1992, when an earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale hit some of Cairo’s poorest areas, resulting in more than 500 deaths, the destruction of more than 8,000 homes, and an estimated financial loss of more than E£1 billion.42 Hardest hit among Egypt’s citizens were those who lived in informal areas, which lacked public infrastructure and access to much-needed social services.43 The Brotherhood displayed an extraordinary organizational efficiency in mobilizing its rankand-file members and activating its charity and social service networks to mount a rapid rescue operation and provide healthcare, educational and other critical services and facilities.44 Mobilizing more than 500 skilled volunteers within a few days, the Brotherhood-controlled Engineers’ Syndicate formed an emergency team to assess damaged infrastructure and 39

40

41 42 43 44

Mitchell, Timothy. ‘Dreamland: the Neoliberalism of Your Desire.’ Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), Spring 1999. See on this point Brooke, Steven and Neil Ketchley. ‘Social and Institutional Origins of Political Islam.’ American Political Science Review 112, no. 2 (May 2018), pp. 376–94. Also see Brooke, Steven. Winning Hearts and Votes: Social Services and the Islamist Political Advantage. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019. ‘Awda. The Assault on Legality, p. 231. Habib. Memories, pp. 357–8. Sims. Understanding Cairo, p. 68. Springborg. Mubarak’s Egypt, p. 225.

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prepare for rebuilding efforts.45 The Doctors’ Union organized an emergency relief fund that raised E£200 for each of the affected families. Doctors were dispatched to Madinat al-Salam, where many victims were sheltered to provide medical assistance. While Mubarak was on a state visit in China, broadcasting stations praised the Society, whose popularity surged among the urban poor as a result of their rapid response.46 The image of a slow and cumbersome government apparatus managed by an absent president was exacerbated by a wave of protests by the newly homeless in the aftermath of the quake.47 The same month, Brotherhood candidates won a majority of seats in the elections of the Lawyers’ Syndicate. As one of the most prestigious professional associations in Egypt, this institution had a long history of involvement in the political field.48 Although the infighting between competing ideological camps had paralysed the body during much of the 1980s, the Brotherhood was able to leverage this situation to its advantage and in 1992, its candidates won eighteen seats on the executive board. Having secured majority control, the Brotherhood now turned this influential body into a mouthpiece for its Islamist propaganda. Its members challenged their internal rivals in fierce debates over issues such as Islamic versus secularist law, as well as the necessity for economic reforms.49 One of the key personalities in these debates was the charismatic star-lawyer Mokhtar Nuh, who had been recruited by Tilmisani in the early 1980s and who had become the former Murshid’s key advisor on legal matters. Nuh had been imprisoned for approximately one year following the September crackdown of 1981 and shortly after entered the Lawyers’ Syndicate. In 1987, he was elected to parliament and subsequently became one of the Brotherhood’s most efficient legislators. Through my work at the syndicate and through the training of ‘Omar alTilmisani, I learned to understand the meaning of loving others, working with others, opening up to others. This was Tilmisani’s curriculum, and this is what we all discovered. This is what ‘Abd al-Mun‘im [Abu al-Futuh] and ‘Issam [al-‘Arian] and everyone else discovered, [as well as] Helmi Gazzar, and Ahmed ‘Omar. [Tilmisani] was like a fisherman of pearls.50

45 46

47 48

49 50

Al-Hayat, 16 October 1992. See for example Murphy, Kim. ‘Muslim Groups take Lead in Cairo Quake Relief’. Los Angeles Times, 15 October 1992. http://articles.latimes.com/1992-10-15/news/mn411_1_muslim-groups (accessed 22 August 2017). Al-Wafd, 18 October 1992. ‘Abd al-Hafiz, A. Niqābāt al-Muhāmiyīn: Sūrat Misr fī-l-Qarn al-‘Ashrīn (The Lawyers’ ˙ Century). Al-Ahram ˙ Syndicate: Egypt’s Image in the 20th Center for Political and Strategic Studies, 2003. Zahid. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 118. Nuh, Mokhtar. Interview with author. Cairo, 11 March 2013.

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The rising popularity of the Brotherhood among the lower and middle classes coincided with a broader regional resurgence of Islamist groups and movements across the Middle East and North Africa. In Tunisia, Rashid al-Ghanoushi’s Ennahda movement had mobilized public opinion by raising slogans that denounced the government of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had been in power since his soft coup in 1987.51 In Jordan, the Brotherhood’s political wing, known as the Islamic Action Front (Jabhat al-‘Aml al-Islami), had entered the country’s national parliament. In Algeria, the Front Islamique du Salut (alJabhat al-Islamiyya li-l-Inqadh, or FIS) had seen a peak in its popularity during the parliamentary elections of late 1991 and now threatened to take control of the legislature in January 1992, when the military stepped in to cancel the election. Islamist guerrilla commandos sprouted up across the country, using their bases in the hinterland to launch a fierce guerrilla campaign that plunged Algeria into a brutal civil war.52 This region-wide Islamic upsurge resonated strongly in Egypt, where radical groups escalated their attacks against government property and security installations. In June 1992, Farag Fuda, a prominent secular intellectual who during the 1992 Cairo Book Fair spoke out against renowned Brotherhood preachers such as Mohammed al-Ghazali, was assassinated.53 Attacks on civilian targets, especially Coptic churches and establishments associated with Western influence became more frequent. In December, Islamist militants from the Jama‘a Islamiyya announced the foundation of the ‘Islamic Republic of Imbaba’ in one of Cairo’s poorest suburbs. What followed was a low-level urban insurgency that resulted in the attempted assassinations of the Minister of Interior and the Speaker of Parliament and lasted until 1997, ending with a body count of more than 2,000 people and the arrest of tens of thousands.54 In November of that year, the wave of Islamist militancy escalated dramatically in Luxor, as members of the Jama‘a Islamiyya killed sixty-two people, including thirty-six Swiss tourists, in front of the monumental Djeser-Djeseru mortuary temple built for the ancient Egyptian Pharaonic queen Hatshepsut.55

51

52

53

54

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For an ethnographic study on Ennahda in Tunisia, see McCarthy, Rory. Inside Tunisia’s al-Nahda: Between Politics and Preaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. On the Islamic insurgency in Algeria, see Willis, Michael J. The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: a Political History. New York: New York University Press, 1997. Also see MacDougall, James. A History of Algeria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Beinin, Joel and Joe Stork. Political Islam: Essays from Middle East Report. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Ibrahim, Saad Eddin. ‘The Changing Face of Egypt’s Islamic Activism’ in Marr, Phebe (ed.), Egypt at the Crossroads: Domestic Stability and Regional Role. Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1999, pp. 29–46. Müller, Felix E. ‘Schreie, Gewehrsalven, Kommandorufe.’ Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 18 November 1997. www.nzz.ch/international/augenzeugenbericht-vom-terrorueberfallin-luxor-1.18102401 (accessed 25 October 2018).

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The combination of the Salsabil case, the surging popularity of the Brotherhood in the wake of the 1992 earthquake, and the fear of an ‘Algerian scenario’ in Egypt brought the gentlemen’s agreement between the Brotherhood and the regime to an end. A growing number of state functionaries became convinced that the Brotherhood was able and willing to undermine state institutions in a potentially damaging way.56 As a result, the regime launched a concentrated media campaign that portrayed the Brotherhood as an illegal organization opposed to the existing social and political order, accusing them of providing material, logistical and moral support to jihadi groups.57 With state media referring to the Brotherhood as ‘the banned Society’, the government did everything in its power to rein in its activities and revenue streams. In 1993, the government restricted syndication legislation under the pretext of seeking to prevent an ‘organized minority’ from eroding state institutions for political purposes. The Egyptian University Act was amended to curb the growing influence of Brotherhood-dominated faculty clubs. These measures, however, incited a cross-section of Egyptians, who opposed what they perceived as an ‘assassination of the professional associations in parliament’. Trying to counter this broad societal resistance, the regime pursued a strategy of ‘vertical intervention’, designed to cause a ‘maximum amount of fear and confusion’ and effectively disrupt the Brotherhood’s organizational capabilities. More than 15,000 activists were arrested within a few months. Khairat al-Shatir later remembered this period as follows: The changes occurred in order to curb, confuse and constrict the Brotherhood. This new strategy was based on two primary lines: the first line was the enactment of a number of oppressive procedures, [and the second] consisted of the imprisonment of Brotherhood members . . . . In 1992, Mubarak began to arrest entire groups of Brotherhood members and placed them in prison. These groups consisted of a number of the higher leaders [such as] a member or two from the Guidance Office, some of the officials of sections or committees, as well as groups of Brothers on various administrative levels. [Mubarak arrested individuals of] key sectors from top to bottom, with all [organizational] levels represented, so that no one within the Society’s body felt safe from prison.

This episode highlighted the state of heightened uncertainty among Brotherhood members anticipating arrest at any moment: We all began to put our ‘prison suitcases’ under our beds, as we expected to be imprisoned at any time. Any door that was knocked on at 12 a.m. or 1 a.m. at night – even if a Brother was coming to you about an issue or a problem – the first thing to come to your mind was that State Security 56 57

Weaver, Mary Ann. ‘The Novelist and the Sheikh.’ New Yorker, 30 January 1995. Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 79.

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brotherhood incorporated (1991–2001) had arrived . . . . They prevented our children from getting hired for faculty positions at universities. Those who came out [of prison] were not appointed as lecturers or representatives in the unions or in the judiciary or in the press. Those who worked as teachers in education, [as well as] those who worked as mosque preachers, were moved to administrative positions.58

The Shura Council Elections of 1995 In the late fall of 1994, the Guidance Office announced that the Brotherhood’s administrative offices would hold elections in all governorates of Egypt to form a new Shura Council.59 During a discussion among the members of the Alexandria Administrative Office in December, ‘Amr Abu Khalil and his colleagues, who had not yet digested the fact that their reform ideas had been so bluntly rejected two years ago, voiced their dissatisfaction with the way things were run. The person who headed the Alexandria Administrative Office at the time was Osama Nasr al-Din, a microbiologist born in 1956 who had joined the Brotherhood in his teenage years and who was a loyal subordinate of Mustafa Mashhur.60 At one point during the debate, Abu Khalil insinuated that the partial Shura Council elections of 1992 had been rigged. Not only had the forty heads of the administrative offices been nominated by the Guidance Office, he argued, but of those eighty-three candidates who had run for elections, only one-third had been aged below sixty years. Rehearsing some of the grievances he and his colleagues had previously voiced in their position paper, he reiterated that the Brotherhood needed to introduce transparent electoral procedures and complained that positions held by younger members had become ‘limited to the extreme’.61 He suggested that a supervisory body should be set up to monitor the elections and that the Brotherhood’s budget should be submitted to an independent audit. When Nasr al-Din rejected Abu Khalil’s suggestion, the meeting rapidly descended into an acerbic quarrel.62 The tone and nature of these debates illustrated the diametrically opposed viewpoints regarding the Brotherhood’s organizational development. Nasr alDin and other followers of the vanguardist school considered the proposals of the younger cadres to be a danger and advocated for an ‘organization made of 58 59 60

61 62

al-Shatir. ‘The Project of Islamic Renaissance.’ Habib. Memories, pp. 425–6. ‘al-Duktūr Usāma Nasr: ‘Adū Maktab al-Irshād (Dr. Osama Nasr: Member of the ˙ ˙ date unknown. https://bit.ly/300n4on (link shortened Guidance Office).’ Ikhwanwiki, with URL link shortener, accessed 22 August 2017). al-Sayyid. ‘Arab Strategic Report 1995.’ Abu Khalil, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Alexandria, 28 March 2013.

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iron’ that could push the Islamic project forward while defending the Society against external aggressors.63 But the vanguardist leaders could not afford to simply ignore the younger generation’s repeated calls for internal reform. The adoption of revised By-laws in April 1994 was thus an attempt to accommodate these demands. New divisions and committees were added to the Brotherhood’s existing administrative structure, such as the Political Apparatus, the Planning Apparatus, the Committee on Elections and Parliamentary Affairs, the Committee on State Security and the Committee on Human Rights.64 To a certain extent, the proliferation of administrative bodies showed how the Brotherhood became a functionally more specialized organization.65 While the actual power yielded by the heads of these units was limited, their creation nevertheless illustrated the willingness of the leadership to acknowledge the younger activists’ contributions to the Brotherhood’s administrative development. The Shura Council elections of 1995 also laid bare the degree to which the hostility between the Brotherhood and the regime had intensified. State Security was aware that the impending elections would not only bring about a newly constituted Shura Council, but potentially also a new Guidance Office – a scenario the regime was seeking to prevent at all cost. During the Salsabil raid, a database had been discovered on one of Shatir’s computers, which had provided the regime with detailed knowledge about the identities of senior Brotherhood cadres.66 A re-staffed executive and legislative body, potentially composed of younger and less-known individuals, would have significantly complicated the efforts of State Security to monitor the Brotherhood’s activities. The introduction of democratic electoral procedures would possibly yield a more dynamic, less pyramid-shaped organization, hampering the efforts of intelligence services to stay on top of internal developments. Finally, the regime had established a number of unwritten rules with the incumbent Brotherhood leadership as to the limits of their behaviour – rules that a younger leadership might want to change or simply ignore.67 Shortly before the elections were supposed to take place in January 1995, an officer from State Security telephoned Ibrahim Sharaf, a former officer of the Egyptian Armed Forces and the current Secretary General of the Brotherhood. 63 64

65 66

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Ibid. ‘Al-Lāʼiha al-‘ālamiyya li-Jamā‘a al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn [1994 M] (The ˙ International By-laws of the Muslim Brotherhood [AD 1994])’ in Statutes and Bylaws, pp. 273–87. Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 71. ‘Former Egyptian Shura Council Member from Muslim Brotherhood Abd al-Sattar al-Meligui accuses Presidential Candidate Khayrat al-Shatir of embezzling MB Funds.’ The account of the 1994 elections is based on Habib. Memories, pp. 425–6.

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The purpose of the call was to warn Sharaf that the regime would not tolerate the planned meeting of the Shura Council, and that the election of a new Guidance Office would be regarded as a ‘red line’. After Sharaf had informed his colleagues of this veiled threat, the Guidance Office agreed that the regime’s demands were unacceptable and that the meeting should go ahead as planned. The place and time of the meeting was communicated orally to the Brotherhood’s senior cadres. The Shura Council assembly took place in Cairo in the afternoon of 19 January 1995. Almost all council members attended, including topranking heavyweights such as Hamid Abu Nasr, Mustafa Mashhur, Ahmed Hasanin, Ahmed al-Malt, Hosni ‘Abd al-Baqi, Ma’mun al-Hudaybi, ‘Abbas alSisi, Mohammed Hilal, Mohammed Habib, ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh, Mahmud ‘Izzat and Ibrahim Sharaf. As in previous sessions, widespread disagreements existed over the question of whether the Brotherhood should be transformed into a political party, as Abu al-Futuh and Mohammed Habib argued, or whether such a party should be simply an appendix to the Brotherhood’s existing structure, as Mashhur and the vanguard loyalists around him thought. The elections were held by secret ballot. According to recently adopted procedural rules, each member was supposed to write the name of the individual he wished to nominate on a piece of paper. Abu Khalil later complained about the lack of clear guidelines regarding the criteria according to which Guidance Office candidates should be chosen.68 Many Shura Council members saw each other for the first time and were therefore unsure whom they should nominate. The only council members who knew each other were the senior figures of the vanguard leadership, who had spent time together in Egypt’s jails and shared the defining experience of persecution and imprisonment. It was for this reason that numerous individuals, especially among the younger generation, considered the elections a farce that was unable to deliver a new leadership capable of facing the challenges of a rapidly changing national and global environment.69 When Abu Khalil submitted a blank paper as a sign of protest, he broke a taboo and caused an uproar within the Brotherhood’s ranks. According to his own account, this was the first time that a member of the younger generation had so obviously defied the command of the leadership.70 The notion that senior leaders were out of touch with the reality on the ground entrenched itself further in the minds of youth members. It was for this reason that the Empowerment Plan had emphasized the need for the Brotherhood to stay in touch with ordinary Egyptians, as well as representatives of other ideological leanings. These calls for transparency and reform illustrated how younger 68 69 70

Abu Khalil, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Alexandria, 28 March 2013. Habib. Memories, p. 427. Abu Khalil, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Alexandria, 28 March 2013.

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members understood their proposals as contributions to ‘create a strong Brotherhood that is open and inspires people’s empathy’.71 The elections were followed by a series of consequential changes in the distribution of power in the Guidance Office. ‘Abbas al-Sisi, who had played an instrumental role in the re-constitution of the Alexandria Administrative Office, resigned due to old age, making room for Gum‘a Amin, another adherent to the vanguardist school of thought. A few months later, on 15 May, Abu alFutuh’s spiritual mentor Ahmed al-Malt passed away, which emptied another seat in the Guidance Office. This finally allowed Khairat al-Shatir to rotate into the Brotherhood’s top executive body.72 In quick succession, Shatir first became the head of the influential Greater Cairo Sector and then, shortly before his arrest on 22 July 1995, was appointed to the post of deputy to the General Guide. His rapid ascendency was facilitated by Mahmud ‘Izzat, who had spotted in him the organizational competencies he and other Qutb-educated leaders deemed imperative for the Brotherhood to revive its original strength. According to ‘Amr Abu Kahlil’s younger brother Haitham, Khairat al-Shatir represented ‘the crystallization of [Mahmud ‘Izzat’s] dream’: a strong and charismatic personality who was able to ‘lead the organization towards the project of an Islamic caliphate in a traditional form’.73 With the appointment of Amin and Shatir, two advocates of the vanguardist conception had entered the Guidance Office, curbing the influence of Tilmisani-minded Brothers such as Mohammed Habib and ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh.

The Brotherhood’s Neoliberal Turn The elections of 1995 occurred against the backdrop of a broader transformation of the Brotherhood’s discourse. Many activists, who before the first Gulf War had worked as teachers, administrators and merchants in Kuwait, had fled the country as a result of the Iraqi invasion, accused of having colluded with the enemy. Converging in Britain and the United States, some of these political émigrés enrolled in MBA programmes at Western universities and business schools. There, they started to merge classical Quranic ideals with newly acquired capitalist concepts, which they picked up in management science textbooks. The emerging Islamic discourse embraced the modern business corporation as a model through which one could articulate specifically Islamic policies and objectives. Appropriating the conceptual universe of the modern enterprise, they acquired the kind of categories necessary to invigorate the spirit of the Islamic ‘renaissance’ through the lens of 71 72

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Nuh, Mokhtar. Interview with author. Cairo, 11 March 2013. ‘Profile: Egypt’s Khairat al-Shatir.’ Al Jazeera, 1 April 2012. www.aljazeera.com/news/ middleeast/2012/04/20124117205835954.html (accessed 22 August 2017). Abu Khalil. The Reformist Brotherhood, p. 223.

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capitalist values .74 In a quasi-Weberian twist, the spirit of Western corporate capitalism was absorbed into a system of Islamic ethics enriched by US-style managerialism and entrepreneurialism. Over the following years, notions ch as ‘efficiency’, ‘ambition’, ‘networking’ and ‘leadership’ expanded the value-system of this nascent breed of ‘Brothers with MBAs’.75 This transformation was reflected in a number of publications issued during that time. In his 2002 book Renew Your Life (Jaddid Hayatak), for instance, Mohammed al-Ghazali employed notions such as ‘personal development’, ‘positive thinking’ and ‘quality of life’, which had been originally articulated by Dale Carnegie in his 1936 bestseller How to Win Friends and Influence People.76 The conflagration of American management verbiage and Islamic injunctions represented a strange postmodern inflection of two otherwise rather distinct conceptual universes.77 Khairat alShatir had already employed similar concepts when he trained a cohort of pious Brotherhood consultants, while Salsabil supplied aspiring Islamic entrepreneurs with textbooks familiarizing them with the conceptual toolkit, the entrepreneurial methods, and the personal skills in order to succeed in the twenty-first century’s global economy. The Brotherhood’s value-system was well equipped to absorb the ideals of modern capitalism. Hasan al-Banna had already charted the way for this development, having defined Islam as ‘material and wealth or gain and prosperity’78 and the Brotherhood as an ‘economic company’.79 But although Banna was convinced of the importance of Western science and technology as a means to reform the Muslim umma, he bemoaned the spiritual emptiness of a ‘modernity’ that had ‘failed to satisfy human needs and fulfil the conditions of a stable life’. He believed modern secular values to be unable to ‘give the human soul a ray of light, a hint of spiritual inspiration, or a strand of faith’. Only Islam was able to offer ‘the most detailed, most complete, all-encompassing system compared to all other social philosophies that have ever emerged’.80 In his Letter of the Fifth Conference of 74

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78 79 80

Haenni, Patrick and Husam Tammam. ‘Penser dans l’au-delà de l’islamisme.’ Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, no. 123 (4 July 2008), pp. 179–201. As Charles Tripp had aptly pencilled down on the margins of a physical copy of my doctoral thesis. See al-Ghazali, Mohammed. Jaddid Hayātak (Renew Your Life). Cairo: Nahda Masr, 2005; Carnegie, Dale. How to Win Friends ˙and Influence People. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1937. When I interviewed Mohammed al-Sudan, a media spokesperson of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) in his office in Alexandria, I found an Arabic edition of Dale Carnegie’s book on his library. al-Banna. ‘Letter on Teaching’ in Collection of Letters, p. 208. al-Banna. ‘Letter of the Fifth Conference’ in ibid., pp. 249–94. al-Banna. ‘Peace in Islam’ in Islam Bulletin. www.nsw.islamicbulletin.org/free_down loads/resources/peace_in_islam.pdf (accessed 22 August 2017).

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1939, Banna had further described the idealtype of Muslim Brother he had in mind, which bared close resemblance to the archetypical modern-day management consultant. Similar to McKinsey’s model of the ‘insecure overachiever’, so the newly conceived Brother–consultant was supposed to be ‘a busy man with a full schedule [who] participates in four big gatherings in thirty hours across the country, remains away from home for a month or two, does not aggrandize his activities [and] is everywhere all the time’.81 This model of the ‘pious winner’ furthermore neatly fitted into the conception of the vanguard as the revolutionary avant-garde in charge of the implementation of Islamic reform, now enriched by the flavour of modern neoliberal attributes.82 In many ways, Shatir was the perfect embodiment of this kind of new leader. Efficient in his everyday dealings, and gifted with a high degree of business acumen, he possessed management and fundraising skills and an ability to think strategically and with a view towards the long-term. The fact that he combined profit-seeking business motives with a deeply conservative worldview distinguished him from other members in the Guidance Office. He was a man of Qutbist vintage – a fact that situated him at the opposite pole to ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh, the other major contender for supremacy in the Brotherhood. Abdullah al-Haddad, the son of Morsi’s future foreign policy adviser, explained: Here you have someone who is conservative, who understands internal politics, who is intelligent and has a business mindset. He also has money and is rich, and is a well-known figure in the Brotherhood. He started to be accepted in terms of his ideas and influence . . . [It] is very difficult to find someone like him. He’s like Abu al-Futuh, but more business professional, more charismatic and more conservative. Someone from the older Brothers told me once: ‘the Muslim Brotherhood [consists] only [of] Abu al-Futuh and Khairat al-Shatir’.83

While Shatir was born during the same decade as other former student leaders such as Abu al-Futuh, Khalid Dawud, ‘Issam al-‘Arian and Ibrahim alZa‘farani, he does not seem to have been interested in engaging with people outside the Islamist ideological spectrum. Rather different from the boastful Abu al-Futuh, Shatir was reserved and introverted. He mastered the Brotherhood’s organizational politics with great skill, passing decisions through the Shura Council by employing standard administrative procedures 81 82

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al-Banna. ‘Letter of the Fifth Conference’ in Collection of Letters, p. 267. Tammam and Haenni. ‘A l’ombre du sourire des winner pieux.’ Also see Roy, Olivier and Amel Boubekeur. Whatever Happened to the Islamists? Salafis, Heavy Metal Muslims and the Lure of Consumerist Islam. London: Hurst & Company, 2012. al-Haddad, Abdullah. Interview with author. London, 11 July 2015.

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as well as his personal networks. After 1995, he surrounded himself with trustworthy friends, many of whom came from the governorates of Daqahliyya and Sharqiyya, and established these newcomers as functionaries in key organizational positions.84 Among Shatir’s men were Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Morsi, who would come to play a major role after 2013, as well as the future president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi. The rise of ‘Pasha Engineer’ or Bash Muhandis, as many younger activists affectionately referred to him, entailed an influx of younger apparatchiks into the Brotherhood’s ranks.85 Many of these entrepreneurial-minded activists were versed in the craft of trade, finance and project management, and over the years they would come to impress on the Brotherhood’s organizational culture the mark of a new Islamic managerialism.86 The rise of this emerging breed of capitalists showed that the Brotherhood was not simply a ‘cult’ made up of delusional millenarians, but a well-functioning and efficient ‘parallel bureaucracy’ through which one was able to gain access to services, economic and financial resources, networks and business opportunities.87 The members of the Haddad family were examples of this rising breed of professionals. Part of the affluent segment of the Islamic bourgeoisie, the Haddads had benefitted from the wave of privatizations of the late 1980s and early 90s. The youngest brother, Hisham, became a businessman who was involved in durable goods exhibitions in the Engineers’ Syndicate, but who otherwise remained a marginal figure in the Brotherhood. The oldest, Midhat, was an engineer and a Shura Council member since 1994- As part of the Alexandria Administrative Office, he had played a key role in the revival of the Brotherhood during the 1970s and 80s. He had developed a grasp for financial topics and later became a close confidant of Ibrahim Munir, the gatekeeper of the Brotherhood’s London office. As a teenager, Midhat had been part of a Christian youth group and according to his own account, had been an ‘ordinary young person who prayed at home, went to the mosque only on Fridays and fasted during Ramadan. The rest of the time I’d play football and basketball, watch TV, and so on.’ It was only in 1975, after he had read Tawfiq al-Hakim’s bestseller The Return of Consciousness (‘Awdat al-Wa’i) and heard a Friday sermon by Gum‘a Amin, that he started to develop an interest in the question of ‘how a human being can fix society’.88 The middle child of the family, and the one who would rise to the highest level of prominence, was ‘Issam al-Haddad. He would later come to occupy the 84 85 86 87 88

Abu Khalil. The Reformist Brotherhood, p. 225. Ayyash, Abdelrahman. Interview with author. Berlin, 2 October 2015. Tammam and Haenni. ‘A l’ombre du sourire des winner pieux.’ Sudan, Mohammed. Interview with author. Alexandria, 16 October 2012. al-Haddad, Midhat. Interview with author. Istanbul, 8 January 2017.

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post of Morsi’s foreign policy advisor and in November 2012 attained some global fame after he successfully brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.89 His son Abdullah later remembered his father’s youth as follows: [He] had [many female] friends, girls and girlfriends. Not like girlfriends [in the Western sense] – just female friends from the university. He attended parties and most of his friends were normal liberals . . . . Then, the day came where he attended a lecture where someone started to cite the Quran in a higher voice . . . . He didn’t like it and he said to [the reciter]: ‘why do you recite the Quran in a higher voice?’ He actually went to the guy and had a fight with him!90

In an effort to assuage the argument the reciter introduced Haddad to Ibrahim al-Za‘farani, who at the time of this incident was a senior student leader of the Jama‘a Islamiyya in Alexandria. The two men had a long discussion where they talked about the necessity of preaching as a fundamental engine for the Islamic reform project. Following these discussions, ‘things started to get pretty serious for him and he started to change’.91 ‘Issam al-Haddad later travelled to England, where he completed an MBA at Aston University before reading microbiology at the University of Birmingham. He became a member on the board of trustees of the Islamic Relief Committee, an ‘independent non-governmental organization (NGO) founded in the UK in 1984 by a group of concerned postgraduate students’ that opened more than one-hundred offices in forty countries.92 Residing in the UK at the same time as Shatir, Haddad was marginally involved in the constitution of the International Organization.93 Upon returning to Egypt, he established the Arab Development Group, a consortium of engineering companies that organized exhibitions for Egypt’s construction sector. Later, he founded Interbuild, a construction company operating in more than twenty markets, and became the deputy head of Hasan Malek’s ‘Society for Business Development’, known as Ebda. In 2009, he was elected to the Guidance Office, where he gained the reputation of a skilled public speaker and an apt negotiator who was able to advance the Brotherhood’s outreach to Western nations. After the foundation of the FJP in April 2012, Haddad took charge of the party’s Foreign Relations Committee. The following June, he appeared at a World Economic Forum meeting in Istanbul to reassure

89 90 91 92

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Ayyash, Abdelrahman. Interview with author. Berlin, 2 October 2015. al-Haddad, Abdullah. Interview with author. London, 11 July 2015. Ibid. See the website of the Islamic Relief Committee at www.islamic-relief.org.uk/ (accessed 22 August 2017). ‘“Af‘ā al-Ikhwān” dhāt al-Ru’ūs al-muta‘addida fī Qaṣr al-Ḥukm (“The Brotherhood Snake” has different Heads in the Governing Palace).’ Al-Masry al-Youm, 15 April 2014. www .almasryalyoum.com/news/details/429269 (accessed 22 August 2017).

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sceptical investors, in the kind of glib corporate verbiage that is typical for such gatherings, that Egypt was ‘ready for business’.94 ‘Issam’s two sons similarly assumed important roles in the Muslim Brotherhood. The older son, Gehad, studied business, marketing and filmmaking in the UK. As a child, he had been attracted to Hollywood movies and technology, inspired by the gadgets his father brought back to Egypt from his overseas trips. After having worked for the Muslim televangelist ‘Amr Khaled in his programme Life Makers (Sunna‘ al-Hayat), and a short stint at the Clinton Foundation, Gehad returned to Egypt. He married Basma Abu Zayd, the daughter of Guidance Office member Mahmud Abu Zayd, whom he met in prison when both were visiting their respective fathers. It was during one of these visits that Gehad came to the attention of Khairat alShatir, who immediately spotted the young man’s business and media talents. After the removal of Morsi in 2013, Gehad took charge of the Brotherhood’s media office, but he was later arrested and then imprisoned. His younger brother Abdullah, born in 1988 in the UK, then assumed responsibility for the Brotherhood’s press office in London before emigrating to Istanbul in 2016.95 This rising class of entrepreneurially minded Islamist activists increasingly drew the Muslim Brotherhood into the world of big business. Shortly after Shatir’s elevation to the Guidance Office in 1995, he was charged by Mahmud ‘Izzat to take over the financial file – a decision that concentrated the Brotherhood’s accounts in the hands of a small clique of insiders around ‘Izzat and Shatir.96 The conversion of the Brotherhood into a quasicorporatist venture spurred intense protests by Shatir’s rivals, who accused the deputy guide of embezzling membership contributions for private gains. Echoing a classical Tilmisanian grievance, they criticized the Brotherhood’s lack of transparency and reproached Shatir and his coterie for wasting valuable cash for speculative investments in global financial markets.97 ‘Abd al-Sattar al-Meligui, a leader of the obstreperous Alexandria Administrative Office who, having been forced to give up control over the powerful Greater Cairo Sector, was a personal rival of Khairat al-Shatir, paid a personal visit to Mahdi ‘Akif, urging him to ‘take the financial file away from Shatir’ and pointing to the ‘big danger’ for the Brotherhood’s da‘wa.98 In a subsequent Shura Council session, Meligui stressed that local administrative offices should present a clear budget over which the Council should 94 95

96 97

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Author’s fieldnotes. Istanbul, 5 June 2012. Trew, Bel. ‘London Underground.’ Foreign Policy, 27 September 2013. http://foreign policy.com/2013/09/27/london-underground/ (accessed 22 August 2017). Abu Khalil. The Reformist Brotherhood, p. 224. ‘Former Egyptian Shura Council Member from Muslim Brotherhood Abd al-Sattar alMeligui Accuses Presidential Candidate Khayrat al-Shatir of Embezzling MB Funds.’ Abu Khalil. The Reformist Brotherhood, p. 22.

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guard financial oversight, instead of streamlining the collection of membership contributions directly through the General Headquarters.

Transformation of the Social Base The rise of the new class of capitalists within the Muslim Brotherhood coincided with a diversification of its social base, and as a gradual transformation of the value-system among the rank-and-file members. This development was intimately connected to the corrosive impact of Egypt’s neoliberal reform policies on the poor, who lived in villages and towns in Middle and Upper Egypt and the Nile Delta. In 1996, the government introduced a liberalized rent regime, which enabled a spree of apartment-block constructions. Trade and building permits, business licences and tax breaks were renegotiated, creating advantages for well-connected investors who benefitted from discounted bank loans.99 The diversion of foreign capital into non-productive sectors created a massively bloated housing market. Infrastructure mega-developments, such as the extension of the Cairo Ring Road and the completion of a second metro line, as well as the introduction of mobile phones, facilitated an expanding wave of migration from the urban centres to the agglomeration, creating shadow zones of economic informality in which the state was virtually absent.100 The grandeur of these development projects stood in stark contrast to the daily reality faced by Egyptians living in the peri-urban agglomerations and the ‘new villages’ of the Delta. The downgrading of development programmes and the termination of agricultural rent controls caused severe social dislocations, particularly in the urban villages of the Nile Delta, as economic activity shifted away from agriculture to the secondary and tertiary sectors. Faced with lower wages and higher prices for basic goods and services, Egypt witnessed a migratory pattern where residents moved from the countryside towards the periphery of urban settlements.101 While the main wave of rural-to-urban migration had occurred already under Nasser, the termination of free education as well as politicians’ growing focus on real estate and banking, led to a situation where the economy was increasingly unable to absorb the hundreds of thousands of workers entering the labour force every year. These rural-to-urban migrants were differently related to metropolitan values than those who had arrived in Cairo in the 1930s and early 40s. The 99

100 101

Waterbury, John. The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: the Political Economy of Two Regimes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014, pp. 424 ff. Sims. Understanding Cairo, pp. 55 ff. Fletcher, Lehman. Egypt’s Agriculture in a Reform Era. Iowa City: Iowa State University Press, 1996, p. 4.

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life story of Mahdi ‘Akif shows how Egyptians during that time had migrated to proper cities, which had given the Brotherhood an opportunity to recruit among first-generation urban arrivals. In contrast, the generation of the 1990s and early 2000s migrated to satellite villages on the fringes of Cairo, Alexandria, Tanta, Mansura, Damanhur and other Delta cities, where they lived in marginal spaces of informality. The expansion of global media networks and the penetration of Egyptian markets by the telecommunications industry brought these neophytes in touch with alternative life models. It reminded them of their own, uprooted status and the fact that they had become deprived of the kinship networks of the rural villages that had provided them with a sense of community and belonging. It also confronted them with the impossibility of ever benefiting from the privileges enjoyed by those living properly urban and urbane lifestyles.102 In an effort to turn the disappointed hopes of these migrants into an advantage, the Brotherhood intensified its recruitment efforts in the newly created shantytowns. Its expansion in informal areas replicated a social dynamic of earlier times, as the first-generation rural newcomers were seen as ‘low-hanging fruits’ ready for recruitment. The Brotherhood’s transforming social base was quite at odds with the habits and lifestyles of their urban middle-class peers. Before their arrival in Cairo, these individuals had been embedded in rural, conservative and closeknit family and kinship structures, while their education had been provided by schools that had been neglected by the state.103 Excluded from the lucrative business opportunities flowing from the privatizations of the early 1990s, the Brotherhood offered this lumpenproletariat a communal home that compensated them for the loss of their rural habitat.104 Many teachers recruited during this decade were first-time educated sons and daughters of farmers, who had greatly suffered from the negative impact of Egypt’s neoliberal reforms. Rural culture in Egypt was patriarchal and parochial, while relationships between elders and the young were characterized by strict obedience and deference. The proliferation of markers of identity such as the zabiba, which designates the spot on an individual’s forehead resembling a permanent bruise, were styled into signs of religiosity, thereby exemplifying the extent to which a ruralconservative culture had gained hold among the newly urbanized masses. The contrast between the ethos of the newly recruited rural class and the middle-class values of urban elites led to a burgeoning cultural clash within 102

103

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Schielke, Samuli. ‘Surfaces of Longing. Cosmopolitan Aspiration and Frustration in Egypt.’ City & Society 24, no. 1 (1 April 2012), pp. 29–37. For a description of the quality of schooling in these cities, see Samih, Fayz. Jannat alIkhwān: Rihlat al-Khurūj min al-Jamāʻa (The Paradise of the Brotherhood: Journey of the ˙ Society). Beirut: Al-Tanwir li-l-Taba‘a wa-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawziʻ, 2013. Exit from the Tammam, Husam. ‘Tarīyyf al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn (The Ruralization of the Muslim Brotherhood)’ in The Muslim Brotherhood, pp. 71–93.

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the ranks of the Brotherhood. This ‘ruralization’ of the rank and file also had important institutional consequences, as it led to a new distribution of seats on the executive and legislative bodies, which were increasingly dominated by rural and semi-urban upstarts. After 1994 individuals from Sharqiyya and Daqahliyya held eight and ten seats respectively, thereby increasing their weight in the Shura Council to the disadvantage of Cairo and Giza, who had only five seats each. This despite the fact that these latter governorates had significantly higher population figures. The Shura Council elections of May 2008 further increased the relative weight of rural members at the expense of those from urban governorates. At that point, more than one-quarter of the seventy-five Shura Council members came from Sharqiyya and Gharbiyya.105 The transformation of the Brotherhood’s social base went hand-in-hand with an alteration of the value-system and cultural–religious practices among its members. This development was caused by the thriving popularity that Wahhabi Salafi ideals, lifestyles and practices gained among the recently migrated semi-urbanized generation.106 Already during the early 1970s, Saudi Salafism had exploited the political opportunities created by Sadat’s infitah policies – a development that was encouraged by the oil price hike of 1973 and the proliferation of Saudi-subsidized literature within Egyptian publishing markets. The disintegration of the Brotherhood’s internationalist project following the Gulf War of 1990 created further opportunities for the spread of Salafi discourse, which conquered the intellectual space that had previously been filled by the politicized discourse of the Brotherhood. As the influence of famous sheikhs such as Mohammed al-Ghazali and al-Sayyid Sabiq dissipated, spaces were created for culturally salafized Brotherhood-sheikhs to move into the limelight. These preachers included individuals such as Ahmed Farid, Mohammed Isma‘il, ‘Abd al-Khaliq al-Sharif, Mohammed Hussein ‘Aisa and Yassir Burhami – all of whom had been educated in Saudi Arabia during their exile in the 1950s and 60s, and who now propagated variants of Wahhabi-inspired piety. Using critical argumentative reasoning and leveraging satellite television technology to spread their ideas, they addressed contemporary questions around Egypt’s socio-economic transformation. During the latter part of the decade, the discourse promoted by these clerics was met with growing interest by the Brotherhood’s social base. Educational curricula were reformed to put greater emphasis on Salafi values, while the works of Sayyid Qutb became

105 106

Ibid. Tammam, Husam. ‘Tasalluf al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn (The Salafization of the Muslim Brotherhood)’ in The Muslim Brotherhood, pp. 95–135.

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primary reading material among the rank and file, alongside Banna’s Letter on Teaching and the Letter of the Fifth Conference.107

Start of the Military Trials On 26 June 1995, Hosni Mubarak and his chief of security, ‘Omar Sulayman, arrived in Ethiopia to attend the opening summit of the Organization of African Unity. As the president’s motorcade passed the Palestinian Embassy in Addis Ababa, two vehicles suddenly blocked its pathway while gunmen opened fire on the president’s limousine. In quick reaction, the president’s driver wrenched the limousine across the road, turned around under gunfire and sped back to the airport, where Mubarak and Sulayman hurriedly boarded their jet back to Cairo.108 As it turned out, the attack had been coordinated by Shawqi al-Islambuli, a member of the Islamic Jihad and another brother of Khalid al-Islambuli, who had been executed in April 1982. Although no evidence was produced that the Brotherhood had been involved in this assassination attempt, the regime seized the opportunity to crack down on the group’s networks in Egypt.109 Pointing to Mustafa Mashhur’s visit to the Sudan around the same time as the president’s, the Central Security Forces raided the facilities of various charity associations, mosques and cultural establishments associated with the Brotherhood and other Islamist groups, arresting hundreds of activists. During one of the raids, State Security found a stack of videotapes showing young Egyptians waging jihad in Bosnia, which were used as evidence to charge a Brotherhoodfinanced committee for humanitarian relief of having sponsored these military training camps. These accusations were propagandistically backed by the Saudi-owned daily al-Hayat, which reported senior Brotherhood cadres to have met with members of the radical Jama‘a Islamiyya group for the purpose of planning terrorist attacks. However, as the future General Guide Ma’mun al-Hudaybi pointed out, those whom the regime had accused were members of an official committee that had been previously established by the Ministry of Social Affairs, and as such were part of the Egyptian state. He reiterated that the 107

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Other books that were widely read among the rank and file included ‘Abd al-Halim Mahmud’s al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn-Ahdāth sanaʻat al-Tārīkh: Ruʼya min al-Dākhil (The ˙ ˙History: View From Inside). Alexandria: Dar Muslim Brotherhood: the Events that Made al-Daʻwa, 2004. In addition, a widely cited book among the rank and file was the antiSemitic tract The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 6 March 2013. ‘Mubarak narrowly escapes Gunmen.’ The Independent, 27 June 1995. www .independent.co.uk/news/world/mubarak-narrowly-escapes-gunmen-1588511.html (accessed 27 August 2017). Ibrahim, Youssef. ‘Egyptian Group says it tried to kill Mubarak.’ New York Times, 5 July 1995. www.nytimes.com/1995/07/05/world/egyptian-group-says-it-tried-to-killmubarak.html (accessed 22 August 2017).

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Brotherhood’s position on the use of violence was well known and that, despite the regime’s smearing attempts, all arrested were subsequently released ‘without charges’.110 Mubarak also leveraged the assassination attempt to root out the Brotherhood’s activities abroad, focusing particularly on the United Arab Emirates. The Brotherhood had established a chapter in Dubai in 1974, known as the ‘Reform and Social Counselling Association’ (Jam‘iat al-Islah wa-l-Tawjih al-Ijtima‘i), under the patronage of Sheikh Rashid bin Sa‘id Al Maktum. During a state visit to the UAE in late 1995, Mubarak emphasized the danger the Brotherhood posed to Emirati national security. The previous year, Egyptian intelligence had revealed to the Emirati authorities that individuals linked to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad had received financial donations through the Relief and External Activities Committee, which was part of the Brotherhood’s Emirati chapter. Indeed, the Jam‘iat al-Islah played a considerable role within Emirati society while entertaining close relations to the Egyptian Brotherhood.111 These relations originated during the time of the UAE’s declaration of independence in 1971, when the newly formed Emirati state needed skilled personnel to supply its nascent government bureaucracy with administrators, judges and teachers. During the 1970s, young Emiratis had frequently travelled to Egypt and Kuwait in pursuit of higher education, and during these trips had become familiarized with the Brotherhood’s ideology and methods.112 Their subsequent employment in key state institutions, such as student councils, teacher’s associations and charity organizations, provided these ambitious and upwardly mobile graduates with a locus from where they could attract fellow Emiratis to the Brotherhood’s cause. By the late 1980s, the Jam‘iat al-Islah had evolved into the most influential voice in Emirati society.113 When the integration of the UAE into the global economy accelerated towards the end of the twentieth century, the country’s 110 111

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This account of is based on the memoires of Habib. Memories, p. 431. According to Abdullah Aqil’s biography of Sheikh Abdullah bin ‘Ali Mahmud, the first head of Islamic Affairs and Endowments of Sharjah, the latter had founded the Da‘wa alIslah before 1974, and with significant involvement of and support by the Qatari Brotherhood. Quoted in ‘The Brothers and the Emirates.’ Majalla Magazine, 14 February 2013. http://eng.majalla.com/2013/02/article55238281/the-brothers-andthe-emirates (accessed 25 March 2018). The UAE government in December 1971 instituted a grant-making scheme for Emiratis to study abroad. See Al Suwaidi, K.A. ‘Higher Education in the United Arab Emirates’ in Shaw, K. E. Higher Education in the Gulf: Problems and Prospects. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997. ‘Al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn fī-l-Imārāt: al-Qissa al-Kāmila (The Muslim Brotherhood in the Emirates: the whole Story).’ Al-Sharq˙˙al-Awsat, 1 February 2013. http://archive .aawsat.com/details.asp?article=715512&issueno=12484§ion=4#.WtA78NNubUK (accessed 25 March 2018).

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leaders undertook different attempts to co-opt the informal religious sector into its orbit. The Jam‘iat al-Islah’s strong appeal within the conservative tribal culture of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, whose peoples were suspicious of the liberalizing tendencies of the political elites, acted as a centrifugal force in the statebuilding process, thereby hindering the UAE’s attempts to consolidate its bureaucratic and administrative control over society. This was particularly the case in the Northern Emirates, where socio-economic grievances as a result of an unequal distribution of rent incomes had rendered citizens sympathetic to the Brotherhood’s supranational Islamic reform project.114 In 1994, based on tips from Egyptian intelligence, Emirati authorities froze all external activities of the Jam‘iat al-Islah, dissolved its board of directors and administrative councils, and appointed the Ministry of Social Affairs to supervise its activities.115 With the Brotherhood’s international project thus curtailed at home and abroad, the regime of Hosni Mubarak reinstated the practice of military trials – thirty years after the last such trial had been held.116 The Brotherhood had failed to obtain the status of a legal political party, which would have allowed for civilian proceedings. For this reason, the regime pointed to the Emergency Laws of 1981, arguing that it had no other choice than to try the Brotherhood in military courts.117 These trial continued on a bi-annual basis until 2007, and became a characteristic locus for a series of theatrical confrontations between the regime and the Brotherhood. The first trial was held from August to September at Hikestep military prison, located at the eastern periphery of Cairo International Airport. The only witness produced by the prosecution was an officer from State Security, while the main evidence was a videotape showing Brotherhood members leaving their headquarters in Suq alTawfiqiyya after the Shura Council assembly of the previous year.118 In October, Khairat al-Shatir, Mahmud ‘Izzat, Abu al-Futuh, ‘Issam al-‘Arian, Mohammed Habib, Ibrahim al-Za‘farani and Khalid Dawud were all charged with holding secret meetings and sentenced to between three to five years of hard labour.119 Convicted along with them was Mahmud Hussein, a professor 114 115

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Freer, Rentier Islamism, pp. 96–105. al-Nuqdian, Mansur. ‘Al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn fī-l-Imārāt: al-Tamaddud wa-l-Inhisār (The ˙ 2013. Muslim Brotherhood in the Emirates: Extension and Regression), 16 September https://goo.gl/8XJuo9 (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 18 June 2018). ‘Military Courts: long History of Human Right Violations.’ Ikhwanweb, 10 February 2007. www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=2466 (accessed 22 August 2017). For a discussion on the historical origins of the military trials during the days of Nasser, see Meital, Yoram. Revolutionary Justice: Special Courts and the Formation of Republican Egypt. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. ‘Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood Detainees face military Tribunals.’ Human Rights Watch, 14 February 2007. www.hrw.org/news/2007/02/14/egypt-muslim-brotherhooddetainees-face-military-tribunals (accessed 22 August 2017). Habib. Memories, p. 457. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 93.

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in civil engineering at the University of Asyut who was born in July 1947 in Jaffa to an Egyptian father and a Palestinian mother. Entering the Guidance Office in 2004, the enigmatic Hussein would, after 2013, emerge as one of the Brotherhood’s most powerful figures, commanding vast control over the organization’s administrative and financial resources.120 The issuing of the verdicts by the military court preceded the parliamentary elections of November 1995 only by a few weeks in what was a deliberate effort by the regime to obstruct the Brotherhood from running an effective electoral campaign. The harshness of the sentences and the humiliation of the proceedings infuriated the Brotherhood’s rank and file and led to massive demonstrations on the streets of Egypt. The regime responded with another wave of arrests and a systematic shutdown of the Brotherhood’s communication channels.121 When the election took place on 29 November, regime-hired thugs provoked skirmishes at the voting booths that led to the death of 51 Egyptians and the injury of more than 800. From the 150 candidates who did end up running as independents, the Brotherhood won only one seat, which was subsequently contested in court due to alleged irregularities in the electoral law. With many of its key leaders in prison, the regime raided and subsequently shut down the Lawyers’ Syndicate, which had been a stronghold of the Brotherhood since 1992. Despite these setbacks, the Brotherhood remained defiant. The military trials merely confirmed what had been written down in the Brotherhood’s core ideological texts. Had not Hasan al-Banna, when speaking about the implementation of the Islamic project, demanded ‘complete and total obedience’ from his followers, foretelling that the future would hold ‘trials and tribulations, which only the truthful people can endure’?122 In his letter Between Yesterday and Today, the founder had further prophesized that the Brothers would be confronted with ‘stern opposition and sharp hostility’ from their enemies, and that the way towards the Islamic caliphate would be ‘riddled with hardship and obstacles’. Only those who were steadfast enough to endure such calamity would be able to follow ‘the path of those who convey the message’: The ignorance of the people as to what constitutes true Islam will remain an obstacle in your path, and you will find among the religious body and 120

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‘Mahmūd Hussein: Muhandis Inqilāb al-Ikhwān (Mahmud Hussein: the Engineer of the ˙ ˙ Coup).’ Al-Mesryoon, 2 October 2015. https://goo.gl/ohiAWZ (link shortBrotherhood ened with URL link shortener, accessed 18 June 2018). Scobey (Cairo) to Secretary of State. ‘MB internal Clashes continue.’ Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, 15 December 2009. https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/ 09CAIRO2298_a.html (accessed 22 August 2017). al-Banna. ‘Letter on Teaching’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 207–48.

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brotherhood incorporated (1991–2001) the official scholars those who will regard your understanding of Islam as outlandish, denouncing your campaign. Chiefs, leaders and men of rank and authority will hate you. Every government without exception will rise against you, each one trying to limit your activities and hinder your path. The oppressors will use all the mechanisms to oppose you and extinguish the light of your mission.123

These kinds of forebodings created a powerful state of readiness in the psychological disposition of the Brotherhood’s rank-and-file members – an eschatological and fanatical state of mind that allowed the vanguard leaders to interpret the military trials as portent harbingers of Hasan alBanna’s prophecy. The repressive wave of 1995 was neither able to prevent the rise of the Brotherhood, nor the ascendency of Khairat al-Shatir within its internal power structure. One reason for this was the unique conditions at Hikestep military prison, which were more relaxed than they had been during the days of Gamal Abdel Nasser. High degrees of corruption, enabled by Egypt’s economic liberalization, made the security guards supervising the prisoners ‘eager to achieve material advantages and social prestige’ for their own benefit. The cunning Khairat al-Shatir was able to leverage this situation in order to emerge as the most prominent figure inside the prison, gaining the respect of inmates and guards alike. The wide-ranging connections he had previously built outside of prison facilitated a situation whereby many guards depended on him for the provision of certain goods and services, such as schooling and healthcare for their families. They accepted him as a fixer who could solve the disputes between competing factions and keep the conditions in prison quiet and stable. Shatir also organized religious lectures and Quran reading groups for his fellow inmates. One of them later remembered: ‘He excelled in promoting himself, as he had a talent for persuasion and charisma, which enabled him to attract all sides around him.’124

The Birth of the Wasat Party With several important vanguard figures locked away, a group of cadres of the Tilmisani vintage now seized the opportunity to push the Brotherhood deeper into the political arena. An initiative to forge a ‘national consensus on constitutional and political reform’ had been launched at a syndicate conference in October 1994, but had collapsed due to the intransigence of Ma’mun alHudaybi, who had objected to the presence of secular representatives. The 123

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al-Banna, Hasan. ‘Bayna al-Ams wa-l-Yawm (Between Yesterday and Today)’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 375–98. For a discussion about the historical context in which this text was written, see Mitchell. The Society, pp. 29–30. Abu Khalil. The Reformist Brotherhood, p. 224.

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reformist-minded younger cadres were angered by the manner in which the selfrighteous Hudaybi arrogated quasi-dictatorial powers without even consulting the Shura Council. When, during the elections of January 1995, the imprisoned Guidance Office members were replaced by a bunch of handpicked appointees, this was seen as yet another indication of how readily the vanguard leaders violated electoral rules and procedures. The younger activists reproached their superiors for using ‘Machiavellian tactics’, pointing to the necessity for a thorough division of labour, and even going as far as suggesting that the elders should restrict themselves to the role of advisors, rather than decision-makers.125 These organizational differences largely materialized along a generational trajectory, as many of the technical and political committees were populated by younger activists in their thirties and early forties. Meanwhile, actual power remained concentrated within the Guidance Office, which consisted overwhelmingly of individuals in their seventies and eighties, and whose vision of the Brotherhood bore a strong Qutbist and tanzimi imprint.126 The generational imbalance created the image of a Society controlled by an ageing leadership whose strenuous opposition to internal reforms obstructed the Brotherhood’s agility as a political actor. The power struggle intensified at the beginning of 1996, when a group of younger members made a bid to establish the ‘Centre Party’ (Hizb al-Wasat). The head of this coalition was the-then thirty-seven-year-old Abu al-‘Ala’ Madi, who argued that it was precisely because of the Brotherhood’s aura of secrecy that the regime had launched such a vicious crackdown against them the previous year. As long as the Brotherhood operated in the shadow of illegality, the organization would never be able to meaningfully shape the political system. Together with a group of fellow activists, including ‘Issam Sultan, Mohammed ‘Abd al-Latif, Salah ‘Abd al-Karim and the respected lawyer Selim al-‘Awa, he proposed a forty-nine-page document that elaborated the drafters’ vision in some detail. Based on the Consultation Party of 1984, Madi’s attempt to articulate an intermediate position between Western values and Islamic orthodoxy was situated squarely within the intellectual tradition of the Tilmisani school of thought. The initiative expanded the concept of umma to include Christians who, as the programme argued, shared a common identity with ‘Arab–Islamic civilization’. The objective was to direct the Brotherhood towards the political centre, while the advocacy of a ‘human interpretation of Islam’ sought to improve its perception in the Western world.127 Yet, the Wasat Party 125

126 127

Ramih, Tal‘at. Al-Wasat wa-l-Ikhwān: al-Wathāʼiq wa-l-Qissah al-kāmilah li-akhtar ˙ (The Wasat and the Brotherhood:˙˙the Documents and ˙the Sirāʻ siyāsī fī al-Tisʻīnāt ˙complete Stories of the most serious political Conflict in the Nineties). Cairo: Markaz Yafa li-l-Dirasat wa-l-Abhath, 1997, pp. 226 ff. Al-Ahram, 30 July 1998. Madi, Abu al-‘Ala’. Interview. Cairo, 2 July 1997, quoted in Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 90.

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would not renege on the imperative that any future constitutional order should be based on Sharia law. The initiative attempted to formulate a kind of pseudo-pluralism between the contradictory impulses of defending conservative values from an apparent ‘invasion of Western secularism’, while simultaneously broadening the sphere for political, intellectual and cultural freedom of expression. The Wasat Party initiative stirred different reactions. The regime denounced the Brotherhood’s internal conflict as a camouflage that was designed to mislead the Egyptian public into believing that the Wasat Party had split off from the mother ship, while in truth it acted as merely another front, allowing the Brotherhood to impose its atavistic social vision through the backdoor, so to speak. The initiative was met with a different kind of resonance in the international press. One American scholar called this the ‘greatest conflict in the Brotherhood’s history’,128 while a report published by the al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies ominously predicted: ‘This year marks the Brotherhood’s 70th anniversary. Unless they reach agreement on a new method to keep them going, there will not be anything called the Brotherhood by the turn of the century.’129 But these fears proved to be ill-placed. Despite the media frenzy, the Brotherhood’s rank and file remained overwhelmingly loyal to the leadership. The Wasat Party was the result of a top-down driven initiative that failed to include representatives of the administrative offices, or the midranking cadres of the regions or the local branches. The Section for Upbringing, with its important responsibilities for recruitment, indoctrination and promotion, for instance, remained firmly in the hands of those who were faithful to Qutbist orthodoxy.130 From 1996 until 2011, no major departures from the Brotherhood took place, except by certain individuals such as Sayyid ‘Abd al-Sattar al-Meligui and Mokhtar Nuh.131 Factually, the initiative remained inconsequential. A court later refused to give the Wasat Party legal recognition, arguing that the party did not contribute anything novel to the existing political landscape while failing to meet the requirements of the Political Parties Law of 1977. Nevertheless, the Wasat Party had an impact in terms of the Brotherhood’s aggravating internal squabbles. It deepened the fault lines between the tanzimi-vanguardist faction and the adherents of the Tilmisani method. The fact that on 3 April the regime cited the party initiative as a pretext to arrest and sentence another sixteen senior leaders, including Rashid al-Bayumi and

128 129 130 131

Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 92. Al-Ahram, 30 July 1998. Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 20 December 2012. Tammam. Transformations, p. 46.

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Mahdi ‘Akif,132 strongly irritated those among the vanguard faction who saw Madi’s initiative as an act of rebellion by a group of junior members.133 The most outspoken critic was Mashhur’s right-hand man Ma’mun al-Hudaybi, who demanded that the party’s signatories should withdraw their names or risk expulsion from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood.134 Many signatories caved to this threat, while the main initiators submitted their resignation to the General Guide. This exacerbated the divisions within the Tilmisanian camp itself. While Madi, Sultan and others left the Brotherhood, Abu al-Futuh, Ibrahim Za‘farani, Mokhtar Nuh and ‘Issam al-‘Arian remained within the Society, convinced that they could reform the Brotherhood from the inside. The most consequential repercussion of the Wasat Party initiative, however, was of a symbolic nature. Although the comparatively small number of defectors was unable to cause a wider schism within the Brotherhood’s social base, the mutiny of Madi and his collaborators constituted a precedent that, for the first time, exposed the Brotherhood to the risk of disintegration. It challenged the Society’s cherished credo of unity, and thus touched on the ‘very basis of the Brotherhood’s existence, preservation, and the principles and rules and foundations’, as Hudaybi declared.135 It also exemplified how the principle of unity, which for Banna had constituted a political imperative, had become an ideological sine qua non that was reproduced instinctively within Qutbist organizational culture. To prevent an exodus by younger members, the vanguard leaders pointed to the dissidents’ moral degeneracy and framed the splitoff as a ‘crime of rebellion’.136 Because of the perceived monopoly the Brotherhood had over the meaning of ‘true Islam’, the Wasat Party initiative was framed as an outright sin. This organizational and generational conflict was all the more grave when the General Guide Hamid Abu Nasr died in January 1996, to be succeeded by Mustafa Mashhur. After the memorial service for Abu Nasr, a public ceremony took place at the Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya Mosque. In broad daylight and under the eyes of the State Security Apparatus, Brotherhood members pledged allegiance to the new Murshid in what became known as the ‘cemetery pledge’. In an 132

133 134

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‘Fī Dhakrā Mawladihi: Mustafā Mashhūr a‘ād al-Hayāt li-l-Nizam al-Khass wa-l-Tanzīm ˙ ˙ ˙ reviews ˙the ˙ Life of ˙the al-Dawlī (On the Anniversary of his Birth: Mustafa Mashhur Special Apparatus and the International Organization).’ Bawab al-Harakat alIslamiyya, 15 September 2014. www.islamist-movements.com/3393 (accessed 22 August 2017). Ramih. The Wasat and the Brotherhood pp. 226 ff. Utvik, Bjørn Olav. ‘Hizb al-Wasat and the Potential for Change in Egyptian Islamism.’ Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 14, no. 3 (2005), p. 296. al-Hudaybi, Hasan. Interview quoted in al-Hayat, 20 February 1996. Madi, Abu al-‘Ala’. Interview with author. Cairo, 21 May 2013.

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unprecedented display of solidarity, the vanguardist Mustafa Mashhur, a firm believer in an ‘organization made of iron’, was elevated to the highest executive post. His coronation occurred without elections, not to mention any discussion in the Shura Council. Ma’mun al-Hudaybi became the deputy guide and the Brotherhood’s official spokesperson.137 By 1996, the vanguard leadership was firmly in control, while the disciples of Tilmisani found themselves increasingly marginalized.138

Brotherhood Online The final years of the twentieth century are marked by a general absence of sources. With numerous senior leaders in prison, the Brotherhood as an organization seems not to have undertaken a great deal of public activities. Some clues as to the internal state of affairs can be gauged from the Brotherhood’s nascent online activity, which started to take off in mid 1998.139 Since its inception, the Brotherhood had embraced a variety of communication tools, including newspapers, magazines and radio broadcasts, which it used to spread its message to the public. After its second founding in the mid 1970s, the shutdown of al-Da‘wa’s headquarters in 1981 had temporarily ‘confused’ the Brotherhood’s media experience, according to one source.140 While the Brotherhood in the mid 1980s had resumed its publishing activities through the newspapers and magazines such as al-Mukhtar (The Chosen One), al-I‘tisam (Adherence to God) and Liwa’ al-Islam (The Banner of Islam) – the latter grew to a circulation rate of more than 95,000 copies in 1987 – these publications were shut down during the wave of crackdowns following the Salsabil affair.141 Throughout the 1990s, the Brotherhood also made use of the al-Sha‘b (The People) newspaper of the Labour Party (Hizb al-‘Amal) in order to spread its da‘wa. But it was mainly the onset of the global information technology revolution that offered the Brotherhood new ways of spreading its message to the wider public in the form of a virtual da‘wa. Over the coming years, the Brotherhood 137 138 139

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el-Ghobashy. ‘Metamorphosis.’ IJMES, p. 390. Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 22 September 2013. One of the broadest and most ambitious sociological study on the communication revolution and the emergence of the Internet and digitization are the three volumes by Castells, Manuel. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture: Vols. I, II and III. Chichester; Malden: John Wiley & Sons, 2009–10. Hamza, Khalid. ‘Faith and Media: Muslim Brotherhood’s Media, from the missionary to the political Discourse.’ Ikhwanweb, 16 June 2009. www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php? id=20546 (accessed 22 August 2017). Breuer, Anita. ‘Media Experiences and Communication Strategies of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood from 1928 to 2011: A Brief Historical Overview.’ Rochester: Social Science Research Network, 4 April 2014. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers .cfm?abstract_id=2430090 (accessed 22 August 2017).

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accustomed itself to, and gained proficiency in, the use of the Internet, enthusiastically embracing this communication medium in order to share information, organize activities and challenge the regime. The origins of the Brotherhood’s online adventures were characterized by trial and error. An Arabic-language websites was launched in 1998, one hosted on a server in Jordan under the domain name www.ikhwanmuslimoonjordan.org. The domain was migrated to www.ikhwan-jor.org in July 2002. The site featured official statements of the leadership as well as comments critiquing domestic and international policies, while issuing religious proclamations in support of the Palestinian cause.142 Calling on local supporters to engage more proactively in the political field, the website served as a rudimentary tool for recruitment and mobilization. A newsletter called Letters of the Brotherhood featured an email list of supporters, which seemed to indicate a joint venture between the Jordanian and Egyptian chapters. This newsletter operated well beyond the confines of informal censorship, as it provided politically contentious regional news and analysis while lambasting Arab governments for abandoning the Palestinian cause. It also featured a weekly column written by Mustafa Mashhur. The Brotherhood attempted to circumvent government censorship in Egypt through the establishment of two websites: an English-language website hosted under the domain name www.ummah.org.uk/ikhwan, which consisted of only a few-dozen pages with general information on the Brotherhood’s goals and methods, and a Q&A section highlighting some fairly generalist positions on Islamic economics, politics and law. The content of the Arabic site, hosted under the domain name www.al-ikhwan-al-muslimoon.org, resembled the English site, with the difference that it included a summary of the Brotherhood’s religious credos, peppered with Quranic quotations and exhortations from Hasan al-Banna’s letters. Both websites remained untouched until they were shut down in the early 2000s.143 These early online archives framed the Brotherhood’s goals in mainly religious terms while political references were avoided Quite in the fashion of the vanguard leaders, the Brotherhood presented itself as focused on moral reform and education, while the Internet was used as simply another propaganda tool for promoting its da‘wa. A disclaimer on the English-language website emphasized that ‘the maintainer of this page is not a member of the al-Ikhwan party [sic]’, while explicitly underlining the fact that the page featured no political orientation whatsoever. This renunciation of 142

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The website is not active anymore, but was cited by McLaughlin, W. Sean. ‘The Use of the Internet for Political Action by Non-State Dissident Actors in the Middle East. First Monday 8, no. 11 (3 November 2003). http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/ view/1096 (accessed 22 August 2017). This material was published on the domain www.ikhwan-info.net, which is no longer available. An archived version of the website can be found under https://archive.org/ (accessed 22 August 2017).

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politics showed the Brotherhood’s tendency towards religious-focused domestic mobilization and thus adequately reflected the political reality the movement faced in Egypt during that period. By the early twenty-first century, the Brotherhood’s virtual da‘wa entered a new era, as the Brotherhood launched its ‘first serious media outlet in the cyberspace’ under the domain name www.ikhwanonline.com.144 The decision to establish Ikhwanonline.com had been taken at a conference hosted in Doha in 2003, as the political elite there had been eager to build on its success following the foundation of Al Jazeera in 1996, which provided the motivation for investing E£3 million into the launch of the website.145 The individuals driving the Brotherhood’s expansion into the online sphere consisted of a group of tech-savvy managers, programmers, journalists and coders, namely Ahmed Abdullah, Hisham Ga‘far, Hibah Ra’uf ‘Izzat and Hussam al-Sayyid. The process was incentivized by Khairat al-Shatir, who spotted the Internet’s potential in expanding the Brotherhood’s da‘wa virtually, diverting significant amounts of money to fund technology start-ups. He encouraged the emerging generation of online wizards to refine their programming and coding skills in order to spread the Brotherhood’s message to a wider Arabic-speaking audience. Dissidents later claimed that Shatir was driven by his desire to build a ‘parallel organization’ operating alongside the Brotherhood’s physical structure, using his networks in the media industry to solidify his control over the Brotherhood’s ranks.146 The Brotherhood’s online activity was an opportunity for younger Brothers to gain practice in the art of political rhetoric, all the while bypassing traditional mechanisms of censorship.147 Certain articles went far beyond accepted norms of decency. This was the case, for instance, with a post published on Islamonline.com by the psychologist ‘Amr Abu Khalil and his colleague Mohammed ‘Abd alJawwad, both of whom used this platform to promote a self-realization process they had developed. In a piece titled ‘Enthusiasm and Touching: the Language of Dialogue’, they proposed a reading of the Quran that focused on ‘intimate relations’ between men and women and that featured a number of sexually quite suggestive passages. But as they quickly came to learn, they had ‘entered a nest of hornets’. The recalcitrant Abu Khalil, who had already stirred up feathers a few years ago with his Empowerment Plan, was stripped of his voting rights in the Shura Council and disinvited from all further family gatherings.148 144

145 146 147

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Hamza, Khalid. ‘Faith and Media: Muslim Brotherhood’s Media, from the Missionary to the political Discourse.’ Ikhwanweb, 16 June 2009. www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php? id=20546 (accessed 22 August 2017). Abu Khalil, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Alexandria, 28 March 2013. Ibid. el-Amrani, Issandr. ‘Virtual Brotherhood.’ The Arabist. 8 July 2010. https://arabist.net /blog/2010/7/8/virtual-brotherhood.html (accessed 22 August 2017). Abu Khalil, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Alexandria, 28 March 2013.

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Other websites launched over the following years included the Brotherhood’s online encyclopaedia www.ikhwanwiki.com, a video channel called www.ikhwantube.com, where ‘footages of tortures against some of its elements or violations committed against its demonstrators or any election fraud in constituencies of its candidates’ were uploaded, and an ‘island’ on the virtual reality platform Second Life, where activists intended to ‘show the group’s cultural project’.149 In 2005, the Brotherhood launched its main Englishlanguage portal Ikhwanweb.com in order to improve the Brotherhood’s image among Western audiences. The website targeted ‘the public, academics, researchers, media, think-tanks and decision-making centres in the West’, and its mission was to ‘bridge the knowledge gap between the Brotherhood and Western intellectuals’ so that ‘they get to know our ideology without distortion, and understand our political, cultural and moderate religious message’.150 In contradistinction to the Brotherhood’s Arabic-language portals, Ikhwanweb. com avoided religious references and instead adopted a more secular narrative concentrated around political, cultural and societal issues. By 2010, both sites had grown into impressive online portals with over 6,000 pages on Ikhwanonline.com and over 3,400 pages on Ikhwanweb.com.151

At the Dawn of the Millennium The expansion of the Brotherhood’s online presence was testimony to the communication and public relations skills certain cadres had acquired since the ascendancy of Khairat al-Shatir, as well as to the political atmosphere that prevailed in Egypt at the end of the twentieth century. It was no coincidence that the Brotherhood’s digital dawn concurred with a phase of intensifying repression by a regime that, in the lead-up to the parliamentary elections of 2000, cracked down on the movement with growing vigour. While the Brotherhood was allowed to field only seventy-five candidates, the group was still able to secure seventeen seats – more than all other opposition parties combined. Baffled by this unexpected victory, the regime fabricated yet another mock trial in order to send twenty candidates to prison. This did not deter the Brotherhood from intensifying its demands for social and moral reform even further. When the newly elected People’s Assembly entered into session, Brotherhood MPs submitted a torrent of inquiries and requests for legal opinions regarding a whole range of issues, such as the distribution of sanitary napkins for female students in high schools. Mohammed Morsi, at the 149 150 151

Hamza . ‘Faith and Media. Ibid. ‘Opening Closed Regimes – what was the Role of social Media during the Arab Spring?’ Scribd (accessed 3 October 2014). www.scribd.com/doc/66443833/OpeningClosed-Regimes-What-Was-the-Role-of-Social-Media-During-the-Arab-Spring (accessed 22 August 2017).

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time the parliamentary spokesperson for the Brotherhood bloc, justified this intervention by arguing: ‘in our culture, these matters are dealt with between a mother and her daughter in the privacy of the home’. He accused school authorities of ‘distributing only the American Always brand; schools shouldn’t be used to market specific products to students!’152 While Brotherhood parliamentarians debated these matters in the People’s Assembly, the tectonic plates of regional politics started to shift once again. On 28 September 2000, the Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, along with an escort of more than 1,000 Israeli police officers. Given the cataclysmic failure of the Camp David Summit of 2000 and the high levels of corruption within the Palestinian Authority, the frustration of Palestinians erupted in what became known as the al-Aqsa Intifada. The Brotherhood leadership in Egypt seized this opportunity in order to advance their own priorities. In an effort to turn the outpouring of sympathy for the Palestinian cause into political gains at home, the Guidance Office ordered the formation of popular solidarity committees, where rankand-file members from the countryside contributed livestock and other valuable assets, selling them at fundraising auctions in order to support their Palestinian brothers and sisters. In what was one of the earliest collaborative efforts among Islamist and secular activists, Brotherhood youth members worked hand-in-hand with socialists and leftists to stock goods and send aid caravans across the Rafah border to Gaza. In November 2000, Abu al-Futuh, ‘Issam al-‘Arian, Ibrahim al-Za‘farani and Khalid Dawud were released from prison and reassumed their previous posts, thereby patching up the Wasat Party split and re-establishing ceremonial and substantive ties with other political groups. In an effort to publicly showcase their commitment to political and societal reforms in Egypt, the Brotherhood’s annual iftar dinner, traditionally hosted at the beginning of Ramadan, was held on 27 November 2000 at the Heliopolis Sheraton Hotel in Cairo. Notable intellectuals and public figures were invited, including the secular sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who dined to the right of the General Guide. It was a symbolic event that exemplified how the Muslim Brotherhood, despite having been repeatedly harassed by State Security throughout the decade, remained a prominent and well-respected player on Egypt’s national scene. Having survived the vagaries of repeated waves of repression, the obstacles mounted against the Society could not deprive it from a seat at the table of national politics. The Muslim Brotherhood, so it seemed, was here to stay.

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Mursi, Mohammed. Interview. Cairo, 26 June 2002, quoted in el-Ghobashy. ‘Metamorphosis.’ IJMES, p. 388.

5 Struggle for Leadership (2001–2011)

I blog because I believe in the role of blogging as the blogger’s way of expressing himself and his opinion. I blog because I believe that blogging confronts corruption and injustice. I blog to communicate with all types of people: my brothers from the Muslim Brotherhood, socialists, Nasserists and, of course, my friends in the ‘black hole’ (the Brotherhood youth). Mohammed al-Qassas, Qassas for All (2007)

On 11 September 2001, far away from Cairo, two passenger planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, and another one into the Pentagon in Washington, DC. As news anchors declared that the United States was under attack, a frightened public turned its eyes towards Osama bin Laden – a mysterious Saudi construction tycoon of Yemeni origin, who had previously declared an armed jihad on the United States. Ten days later the recently elected US president, George W. Bush, declared: ‘Enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country.’ America’s new ‘war on terror’, he continued, would begin with al-Qaida and ‘will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated’.1 Bush’s message was received with mixed feelings in Cairo. The Brotherhood had only just recovered from the wave of persecutions it had encountered the previous decade. Having secured for itself a fragile position within Egypt’s political space, the Brotherhood now found itself under the spotlight of an inquisitive global media, in addition to the accusations it faced from a hostile regime at home.2 Within an international environment newly governed by the dictates of ‘global security’, the Brotherhood was eager to reassure the Americans of its peaceful and pro-democratic proclivities. Soon after Mahdi ‘Akif assumed the role of General Guide in 2002, he unveiled plans to launch 1

2

Bush, George W. ‘Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People.’ White House Archives, 20 September 2001. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/ releases/2001/09/20010920–8.html (accessed 15 April 2017). Matar, ‘Ala’. ‘Al-Jihad and the Brotherhood are two Faces of the same Coin.’ Arab-West Report, 19 September 2001. www.arabwestreport.info/en/year-2001/week-51/22general-fou%E2%80%99ad-allam-al-jihad-and-brotherhood-are-two-faces-same-coin (accessed 15 April 2017).

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a ‘reform initiative’ that would place the representatives of the Tilmisanian school of thought at the forefront of the Brotherhood’s public image. This presumed metamorphosis was further supported by America’s foreign policy objectives. After the failed invasion of Iraq, these objectives turned from ‘regime change’ to ‘democratization’, putting pressure on the Egyptian government to implement the political reforms Mubarak had promised years ago. The shifting geopolitical landscape added an American dog to the cat and mouse game that was already underway between the Egyptian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt’s political dynamic during this decade was also shaped to a considerable degree by a nascent protest movement, which emerged among Egypt’s disaffected and increasingly politicized youth population. Younger members of the Brotherhood played a central role in this burgeoning movement of social contestation. Galvanized by the Israeli incursion into the West Bank in the spring of 2002, and then by the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, these protests gained growing traction and by 2008 severely compromised the country’s social stability.3 As Egypt’s labour movement was drawn into the orbit of national politics, the disciples of Tilmisani, who for long had advocated for the the intensification of the Brotherhood’s engagement with wider society, found themselves vindicated. This weakened the relative power of the vanguard leadership within the Guidance Office. Confrontations at the highest echelons of decision-making were battled out in an increasingly public way, as tech-savvy youth members leveraged social media to reproach their leaders of failing to grasp Egypt’s social transformation. Pressured by calls for reform, a hostile regime and a weary US political establishment, the simmering conflict within the Brotherhood escalated during the fateful Guidance Office elections of early 2010, when the vanguard leaders sacked the remaining advocates of internal reform to assume exclusive control. This chapter looks at the Brotherhood’s evolution in the decade after 9/11, and how debates about procedural and ideological matters gradually morphed into an identity crisis concerning the whole organization. Against the setting of an unstable global security environment, the chapter highlights the debates between the followers of the Tilmisani school on the one hand, and the vanguardist faction on the other. The chapter also introduces the youth members of the Muslim Brotherhood who, in the context of a gradually more potent social protest movement, found themselves increasingly at odds with their leadership. The chapter ends with the Guidance Office elections of the winter of 2009, when the vanguard leaders asserted total control of the Brotherhood’s executive office. The narrative is based on Oral History interviews with key Brotherhood members from across all organizational ranks, memoirs and available online material, original texts published by the Brotherhood, an 3

Alexander, Anne. Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: Workers and the Egyptian Revolution. London: Zed Books, 2014.

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analysis of the Brotherhood-related diplomatic correspondence of the US Embassy in Cairo as published by Wikileaks, and a reading of the available scholarly literature. It recounts how the Muslim Brotherhood, while meandering through an unstable global security environment, became deeper entrenched within its own internal bickering and squabbles to yield a weakened organization that was unready to meet the challenges of the Egyptian uprising of 2011. ***

The Question of Political Violence Days after 11 September, Mustafa Mashhur issued a statement maintaining that the Brotherhood was ‘horrified’ by the attacks, which were said to be ‘against all humanist and Islamic morals’.4 Referring to Hasan al-Hudaybi’s 1969 pamphlet Preachers Not Judges, Brotherhood members pointed to the fact that the Brotherhood had abstained from violence since the late 1940s. Rather than pursuing its goals through terroristic activities, the Brotherhood’s mission was to prepare the youth to be good Muslims – Muslims that contribute to humanity, Muslims that call others to Islam. Terrorism is not a part of us at all. How is it even possible for me to be a Muslim and call others to Islam while hiding a dagger, a gun or an explosive belt? That is not Islam!5

Such pronouncements could not disguise the fact that many Brotherhood members had an apologetic, if not outright conspiratorial, view of 9/11. Expressing a point that was widely shared across the organizational membership, Midhat al-Haddad, a senior leader in the Alexandria Administrative Office, suspected a Western plot behind the attacks, designed and executed by the US government with the intent to ‘smear Muslims’ and provide a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq: They said that Mohammed ‘Atta went to Chicago airport with his car, and that he left an Arabic book in the car titled: ‘How to Operate an Airplane.’6 4

5 6

Al-Quds al-‘Araby, 14 September 2001. See also the statement: ‘[We] strongly condemn such activities that are against all humanist and Islamic morals . . . . [We] condemn and oppose all aggression on human life, freedom and dignity anywhere in the world.’ AlAhram Weekly Online, 13–19 September 2001. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2001/551/fo2 .htm (accessed 10 April 2018). al-Haddad, Midhat. Interview with author. Istanbul, 8 January 2017. Midhat al-Haddad is referring to a four-page letter that had been found in the baggage of Mohammed ‘Atta left in his car at Portland (not Chicago) International Airport. See ‘Last Words of a Terrorist.’ The Guardian, 30 September 2001. www.theguardian.com/world/ 2001/sep/30/terrorism.september113 (accessed 10 April 2018). For the officially sanctioned investigation of the events of 11 September 2001 by the National Commission on

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struggle for leadership (2001–2011) So this Mohammed went to the airport with the intent to hijack [an airplane] and [carried] a book with such a title? And he leaves it in the car? Is this credible? And then he’s able to fly the plane and direct it right into the tower? Is this credible? I am an engineer . . . and for Mohammed ‘Atta to fly such a large Boeing plane with this number of passengers – how many hours of training would he need? So how is it possible he could fly it into a tower? And as an engineer you would know that in order to bring down such a tower, the impact has to occur in a certain point called ‘CG’ (centre of gravity). Any building has a CG. For him to fly the plane right into the CG of the tower – how is this credible?

Haddad also doubted that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with the attacks: Bin Laden didn’t have the capabilities. Not even ten Bin Ladens could pull something like this off. Bin Laden was part of al-Qaida and he did fight the Russians and the Americans, but could he have sent people to the US to do this? No one can believe this. This guy was sitting in a mountain in Tora Bora. It’s so illogical and unreasonable. There must have been a machine inside the building to pull the plane [towards it]. The pilot could not have such control. Only an autopilot and a machine pulling the plane towards the building could do this.7

Such denials undoubtedly increased the level of suspicion many Western analysts and policymakers had with respect to the Brotherhood, thereby complicating the efforts of the Guidance Office to clear the group from being associated with international terrorism. Indeed, the Brotherhood’s relationship with political violence was more entangled than Mashhur and his comrades would have liked to admit. Despite the public affirmations by the General Guide, the Brotherhood’s habitual and frequent references to ‘jihad’ created an ambivalence in its public discourse whereby acts of violence could be legitimized as easily as they could be denied. The Brotherhood had toyed with this question since 1939, when Hasan al-Banna, during his address to the fifth bi-annual congress in Cairo, contemplated the extent to which the Society was ready to use force in order to attain its objectives: ‘Power is a way of Islam, which is apparent in all its systems and works’, the General Guide had mused at the time. ‘As far as possible, you acquire power and keep ready tied horses against [your enemies], in order that you may frighten the enemies of God and your enemies.’8 The

7 8

Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, see The 9/11 Commission Report: the Attack from Planning to Aftermath. New York: WWNorton & Co, 2011. www.9-11commission.gov /report/911Report.pdf (accessed 20 April 2018). al-Haddad, Midhat. Interview with author. Istanbul, 8 January 2017. See the Quranic Sura al-Anfal (the Spoils of War), verse 60. The same verse is also quoted today by ISIL in their propaganda video ‘Flames of War’. An excerpt can be found on www .youtube.com/watch?v=Sai2gqP2tJU (accessed 20 April 2017).

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acquisition of power, therefore, was an intrinsic part of the political theory of Hasan al-Banna, who had no doubt that ‘the Muslim Brotherhood will become powerful and will necessarily use power’. However, it would do so only ‘when there is no other way out and when [the Brotherhood] will be fully satisfied that they have also already gained the power of belief and surety and unity and oneness’.9 Banna’s position with respect to the use of force was a function of the historical situation Egypt had faced at the time of the Brotherhood’s establishment. The experience of the British occupation, and the accompanying penetration of the Muslim world with secular ideas and materialist values, had led Banna to advise his followers to ‘prepare’. Such was the importance of this directive that the two words ‘and prepare’ became emblazoned on the Brotherhood’s banner. It was a call to action that drew its inspiration from a late ninth-century Hadith, which had been reported by Abu Dawud on the authority of Thawban: ‘You are about to be attacked furiously by [other] nations from all over the world.’10 Banna built on this long-standing intellectual tradition that portrayed a Muslim umma under existential threat by the values of a technologically strong but morally decadent foreign aggressor that was determined to deprive Muslims of their history, identity and capacity to resist. The anticipation of inevitable hardship and struggle subsequently became entrenched in the psychological disposition of Brotherhood members. Preparing for, and resisting, such an attack was stylized into a religious– political imperative, since such resistance alone could secure the survival of the Islamic umma. Since the Brotherhood conceived of itself as the repository of the meaning of ‘true Islam’, the survival of the umma became intimately intertwined with not only the organizational survival of the Brotherhood, but also of Islam itself. The imperative of defending the Brotherhood from outside aggressors represented a religious justification for the use of power, including acts of political violence.11 But Banna had a differentiated idea of the use of force, and he distinguished three expressions of power. In its most basic form, power was equated with individual spirituality, consisting of ‘faith and belief’ in God and His messenger. On a second level, power was conceptualized through an organizational and ideological lens. Once individual spirituality was firmly entrenched in the heart and mind of the believer, ‘unity and oneness’ should be created as a precondition to forge a sense of belonging to the Islamic umma as a whole. It was imperative for power to exist in these two forms before any use of 9 10

11

al-Banna. ‘Letter of the Fifth Conference’ in Collection of Letters, p. 274. A prophetic tradition narrated by Sunan Abi Dawud, Book 038, Hadith 4284. https:// sunnah.com/abudawud/39 (accessed 1 September 2017). ‘Risāla ilā Sufūf al-Thuwwār: wa-A‘iddū (Message to the Rows of Rebels: Prepare!).’ ˙ Ikhwanonline.com. 7 January 2015. www.ikhwanonline.com/Section/220195/Default .aspx (accessed 1 July 2018).

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military might – the third expression of power – could be considered: ‘No organization is powerful unless it has all these powers. If it uses military force, and it is disunited and the organization disjoined, and faith is weak and belief feeble, then surely it will meet disaster.’ Even when the moment came ‘when [the Brotherhood] uses force, they would be an epitome of gentleness, bravery and boldness. First of all, they would warn, then they would wait, thereafter they would proceed with honour and dignity.’12 Sayyid Qutb later elaborated on the question of the timing and the circumstances when the use of violence could be justified. Qutb’s conception of power was based on his notion of jahiliyya, which he defined as a state of permanent rebellion against the ‘sovereignty of God’. As we have seen in Chapter 3 the contemporary ‘age of ignorance’, where men had assumed lordship over others, was characterized by a state of continued humiliation of mankind through the institution of the modern secular nation-state. ‘Only in the Islamic way of life do all men become free from the servitude of some men to others and devote themselves to the worship of God alone, deriving guidance from Him alone and bowing before Him alone.’13 Qutb understood this liberation not along the lines of the French Revolution – as freedom from absolutism through popular sovereignty – but as ‘freedom of man on earth from every authority except that of God, and the declaration that sovereignty is God’s alone’.14 In order to abolish the organizations and authorities of the jahili system, and thus liberate the Muslim world from these corrupted forms of aggression, the Islamic movement had to employ methods of preaching and persuasion, but also of physical ‘jihad by the sword’, conceptualized by Qutb as a ‘declaration of man’s freedom’. Along the lines of Hasan al-Banna, Qutb viewed jihad not as a tool of aggressive warfare, but as a defensive device that the wretched and oppressed of the earth could use to free themselves from the imposition of foreign mores and values. Qutb is infamous today for his adaptation of the concept of takfir into a modern context. Although the Brotherhood’s second General Guide, the judge Hasan al-Hudaybi, had refuted takfir on legal grounds, the question about the means by which an unjust regime could be legitimately confronted remained an important point of friction within the Brotherhood during the latter part of the decade, and indeed continues to be one of the central bones of contestation in contemporary debates within the Brotherhood.15 The theoretical acceptance of political violence as a ‘defensive’ tool continued to exist within the Brotherhood’s ranks and spread rapidly during the period after 12 13 14 15

al-Banna. ‘Letter of the Fifth Conference’ in Collection of Letters, p. 275. Qutb. Signposts, p. 27. Ibid., p. 68. Abu al-Futuh. Witness, p. 69.

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2013. The Brotherhood’s vanguard leaders remained ambivalent towards this question. For Mustafa Mashhur, for instance, jihad was not simply ‘an inevitable necessity’, but a ‘religious collective duty to spread the da‘wa incumbent upon the Islamic nation’. In his mind, it was an ‘obligation cast upon Muslims to establish an Islamic state and the Islamic caliphate’. He explained that ‘preparation towards jihad [is] not only for the purpose of fending-off assaults and attacks of God’s enemies from Muslims, but also for the purpose of realizing the great task of establishing an Islamic state, strengthening the religion and spreading it around the world’.16 Complicating the Brotherhood’s relationship with the use of political violence was the fact that several key plotters of the 9/11 attacks had been part of the Muslim Brotherhood in their youth. This was the case with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who had masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and had been a key operative during the 9/11 attacks,17 as well as to the al-Qaida theorist ‘Abdullah ‘Azzam, who had been introduced to the Muslim Brotherhood by Mohammed ‘Abd alRahman Khalifa, the General Observer of the Jordanian Brotherhood.18 After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, ‘Azzam issued a revolutionary fatwa that was subsequently published under the title Defence of Muslim Territories: the First Obligation after Faith (al-Difa‘ ‘an Aradi al-Muslimin: Ahamm Furud al-A‘yan). In this treatise, ‘Azzam declared that waging a ‘defensive jihad’ was an ‘individual duty’ cast upon every Muslim, and accused those who failed to honour this sacred duty of committing a sin before God. He thus broke with traditional Muslim jurisprudence, which considered jihad to be a ‘collective duty’ incumbent only on those who inhabited a country under occupation – which was also the position held by Mustafa Mashhur. ‘Azzam received financial and logistical aid from Saudi institutions, such as the Muslim World League, which had emerged as a central funding vehicle for the Afghan mujahideen in their fight against the Soviet invasion. The thengovernor of Riyadh, Salman bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud, played an instrumental role in facilitating these transactions. As the Saudis tried to solidify the Brotherhood as an informal pillar of Saudi foreign policy, first under King Faysal and, after 1975, under King Khalid, ‘Azzam relied on the infrastructure and the networks of Saudi academic institutions, including the University of 16 17

18

ʻAbd al-Jawad. The Life of Mustafa Mashhur, p. 17. For Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s association with the Brotherhood, see The 9/11 Commission Report 2011, p. 145. Hegghammer, Thomas. ‘Abdallah Azzam, Imam of Jihad’ in Kepel, Gilles and JeanPierre Milelli. Al Qaeda in Its Own Words. Cambridge, MA; London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008, pp. 81–101.

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Medina and the King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz University in Jeddah.19 It was there where he met Osama bin Laden – a young, pious and academically gifted student and the scion of one of the Kingdom’s most prestigious families, who was a member of the Brotherhood in the Hejaz. In 1984, bin Laden followed his spiritual advisor to Peshawar to establish the ‘Bureau of Services’ (Maktab al-Khidmat) near the Afghani border, which recruited candidates for the jihad against the Russians. Ayman al-Zawahiri later recounted that bin Laden had acted by order of the Muslim Brotherhood: ‘When the Russians invaded Afghanistan, [bin Laden] left immediately to Pakistan to get to know the jihadi fighters. The Brotherhood had given him orders to go to the Jama‘at-i-Islami in Lahore to provide aid there.’20 The Bureau of Services received significant financial support from Osama bin Laden, who ‘would sneak off under the guise of family business’ to spend ‘all his money on Afghanistan’, according to his mother.21 By August 1988, bin Laden had set up al-Qaida as a tightly knit jihadi network. Its fighters had forged a strong identity that was culturally anchored in the Arabic language, doctrinally in Saudi Wahhabi theology, politically in Qutbist revolutionary ideals, and socially in a robust esprit de corps, which they had developed in the trenches of Afghanistan. Two individuals of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood had been closely involved with the jihad in Afghanistan. The first was Kamal al-Sananiri, the man who had convinced Abu al-Futuh to join the Brotherhood’s ranks during that memorable shoe shop meeting in 1974. In 1979, he had travelled to Afghanistan to negotiate an agreement between the squabbling Afghan fighters, whom he managed to unite in the face of the Russian invasion. During the Hajj pilgrimage in October 1980, Sananiri had met ‘Azzam in Mecca, where he was able to ‘open [‘Azzam’s] eyes to his great destiny: jihad in Afghanistan’.22 The second key figure was Kamal al-Helbawy, the director of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) in Jeddah, who later prided himself on having written and translated ‘more than twenty books and many articles, especially on Afghanistan, [the] Islamic Movement, and the affairs of the Muslim world’.23 Following the inauguration of the International Organization in 1982, Helbawy had travelled back to Saudi Arabia, where he acted as an advisor in the ‘Office of Arab Upbringing for the Gulf Countries’ (Maktab al-Tarbiyya al19

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Hegghammer, Thomas. Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979. New York; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 41. ‘Al-Zawahiri: “Bin Laden was a Member of the Muslim Brotherhood”.’ Al-Arabiya, 31 January 2015. www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOJGh-jCSO8 (accessed 8 October 2015). Chulov, Martin. ‘My Son, Osama: the al-Qaida Leader’s Mother speaks for the first Time.’ The Guardian, 2 August 2018. www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/03/osama-binladen-mother-speaks-out-family-interview (accessed 10 August 2018). Hegghammer, Thomas. ‘Abdallah Azzam, the Imam of Jihad’ in Kepel and Milelli. Al Qaeda in Its Own Words, pp. 90–1. See for example the conference on Muslim–government relations, hosted at SOAS in June 2008, titled ‘Which Muslims, Whose Security?’ www.soas.ac.uk/politics/events/ muslimgovtconf/programme/ (accessed 1 September 2017).

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‘Arabi li-l-Duwal al-Khalij). He was also in charge of organizing a conference in Bahrain in 1985, which assembled ‘seventy-five Islamic thinkers and secularists at the same time’ and produced a paper with the title ‘The Direction of Modern Islamic Thought’.24 In 1984, as the collapse of the pro-communist government in Kabul gave way to an intensification of the civil war in Afghanistan, Helbawy was warned by Pakistani intelligence that the Americans intended to arrest him and that he should leave the country immediately. He went back to the United Kingdom and later became a founding member of the Muslim Council of Britain, which developed into a locus for Islamist activities in Europe, bringing together various personalities from the global Islamist scene, including Necmettin Erbakan and Mustafa Mashhur. Helbawy further established the Media Centre for the Brotherhood – an accomplishment he mentioned with considerable pride: [This was] the first time that an institution with the Brotherhood’s name was created in the West. I became the Brotherhood’s official spokesperson in the West in 1995 and created a unit of research, called Centre for the Study of World Civilizations, and another research unit called Centre for the Study of Terrorism. We used to produce a magazine called ‘Islamism Digest’ [which we published] for three years. It talked about terrorism from a [non-American] point of view.25

In 1988, Helbawy was asked by the then-deputy Guide Mustafa Mashhur to settle in Afghanistan, where he became engaged in the ‘supervision of the Brotherhood and their activities’. As part of the wave of Arab youth who fervently supported the Afghani jihad through a variety of auxiliary activities such as teaching, research, medical and relief work, Helbawy established ‘a division for research in Arabic in the Institute for Political Studies in Afghanistan’ where he and his fellow Brothers studied ‘the whole issue [of jihad] in a scientific way’.26 Like many other young jihad-enthusiasts, Helbawy felt inspired by the symbolic victory bin Laden and his fighters had won against the Russian forces in April 1987 during the famous battle of Jaji, when the mujahideen had bravely resisted the fierce Russian onslaught. During this battle, the then-thirty-year-old Osama bin Laden had risen as an independent actor in the Afghan jihad. Controlling a contingent of ‘Afghan Arabs’, bin Laden had set up the ‘Den of the Companions’ a year before. His organization enjoyed ample financial support from the CIA, whose intelligence officers had concluded that Arab fighters were easier to control than Afghans. American financial support shifted towards bin Laden’s fighters in Peshawar, who scored 24 25 26

al-Helbawy, Kamal. Interview with author. Cairo, 10 March 2013. Ibid. Khashoggi, Jamal. ‘Arab Youth fight Shoulder to Shoulder with Mujahideen.’ Al-Majalla, 4 May 1988, quoted in Bergen, Peter L. The Osama Bin Laden I Know: an Oral History of alQaeda’s Leader. Simon and Schuster, 2006, p. 58. Also see Dreyfuss. Devil’s Game, pp. 274 ff.

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considerable recruiting success among the Saudi Muslim Brotherhood of the Hejaz.27 Zawahiri later remembered that Mashhur had asked bin Laden ‘to come to Peshawar for a visit. Thus, they met, and Mustafa Mashhur said to Osama bin Laden: “Osama, you should come back to us!”.’28

The Brotherhood in Western Imagination The connection between the Brotherhood and the theorists of armed jihad gave rise to a growing consensus among a group of Western scholars who sought to portray Islam through the cultural attributes of violence.29 It empowered a group of neoconservative Orientalists for whom the attacks of 9/11 corroborated their theories about Islamic culture and religion as something ‘essentially’ violent corroborated. The towering figure of this tradition, and indeed the bête noire of contemporary Middle East studies, was Bernard Lewis, who manufactured complex socio-historical concepts such as ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’ into catchphrases from where analysts could derive simple and straightforward ‘policy recommendations’.30 Although the explanatory models promoted by Lewis and others were based on ideological bias, rather than empirical fact, they managed to create an image that portrayed the Brotherhood as a stepping-stone for violent extremism.31 Over the coming years, culturalist arguments of that kind clouded the analyses of an entire generation of students and journalists. Lawrence Wright, in his bestseller The Looming Tower, sketched a narrative arc that linked Sayyid Qutb’s unpleasant experiences in the United States directly to the attacks of 11 September.32 In an attempt to create ideological counter-narratives to those that were advanced by Islamist movements, think tanks such as the RAND Center for Middle East Public Policy began to sponsor conferences promoting political Sufism as an alternative.33 A number of non-profit organizations were established, such as 27

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31 32 33

Hegghammer, Thomas. ‘Abdallah Azzam, the Imam of Jihad’ in Kepel and Milelli. Al Qaeda in Its Own Words, p. 94. ‘Al-Zawahiri: “Bin Laden was a Member of the Muslim Brotherhood”.’ Al-Arabiya, 31 January 2015. www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOJGh-jCSO8 (accessed 8 October 2015). See on this point Burgat. Face to Face with Political Islam, pp. 5 ff. For example Lewis, Bernard. What Went Wrong? The Clash between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002. Vidino. The New Muslim Brotherhood. Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda’s Road to 9/11. London: Allen Lane, 2006. Baran, Zeyno (ed.). ‘Understanding Sufism and its potential Role in US Policy.’ Nixon Center Conference Report, March 2004. www.files.ethz.ch/isn/28788/ Understanding_Sufism.pdf (accessed 16 April 2018); RAND Center for Middle East Public Policy, which outlined a strategy whereby the most effective way to fight radicalization was by supporting Sufi Islam. Rabasa, Angel, Cheryl Benard, Lowell H. Schwartz and Peter Sickle. ‘Building Moderate Muslim Networks.’ RAND Center for Middle East Public Policy, 2007.

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the Clarion Project, whose purpose was to ‘educate’ the public about the ‘dangers of radical Islam’, and which featured a number of experts providing ‘unique perspectives’ about this topic.34 Over the years, the causal chain between the Brotherhood and terrorism became a truism among America’s neoconservative foreign policy establishment. The essentialist school of thought around Lewis was countered by a group of scholars from the liberal social science tradition who argued that ‘mainstream Islam’, as articulated by the Brotherhood, was a catalyst for democratization. This argument was the outcome of an intellectual evolution propagated by reformist Islamic thinkers in Egypt. In 1992, on the occasion of the Cairo Book Fair, the famous cleric Mohammed al-Ghazali had thought to reconcile Islamic governance with the legal and institutional framework of the modern nationstate.35 A number of liberal American scholars expanded his arguments to make the case for the US government to engage with the Brotherhood. Some argued that, rather than a stepping-stone for terrorism, the Brotherhood should be seen as a bulwark against extremism.36 Others portrayed the Brotherhood as a ‘civil society organization’ that acted as a democratic and pluralist element within the constraints of an authoritarian state.37 It was in the interest of regional stability, they argued, that the US government should adopt an ‘accommodationist’ approach.38 In a widely read article published by Foreign Affairs in 2007, Western leaders were urged to engage with the Brotherhood.39 The same article was later flaunted on the Brotherhood’s 34

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See the homepage of the ‘Clarion Project’ at https://clarionproject.org (accessed 15 April 2017). The debates at the Cairo Book Fair of 1992 are recounted in Flores, Alexander. ‘Secularism, Intergralism and Political Islam: the Egyptian Debate’ in Benin, Joel and Joe Stork (eds.). Political Islam: Essays from Middle East Report. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Voll, John and John Esposito. ‘Islam’s Democratic Essence.’ Middle East Quarterly, 1 September 1994. www.meforum.org/151/islams-democratic-essence (accessed 15 April 2017). Sullivan, Denis. Islam in Contemporary Egypt: Civil Society vs the State. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1999. For a discussion about the misappropriation of Western concepts in other social contexts, see the essays by Israel Gershoni, Juan Cole and Walter Armbrust in Gershoni, Israel, Amy Singer and Y. Hakan Erdem (eds.). Middle East Historiographies: Narrating the Twentieth Century. Seattle; London: University of Washington Press, 2006. Abed-Kotob, Sana. ‘The Accommodationists Speak: Goals and Strategies of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt.’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 27, no. 3 (1995). Leiken, Robert and Steven Brooke. ‘The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood.’ Foreign Affairs, April 2007. www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/62453/robert-s-leiken-and-steven-brooke /the-moderate-muslim-brotherhood (accessed 15 April 2017). Other authors following this line of argument include Esposito, John. Islam and Democracy. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996; Tibi, Bassam. The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder. Berkeley; London: University of California Press, 1998; Ehteshami, Anoushiravan. ‘Is the Middle East Democratizing?’ British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 26, no. 2 (1999); Baker, Raymond W. ‘Invidious Comparisons:

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English-speaking website Ikhwanweb.com, as a quasi-authentic proof of the movement’s democratic proclivities. The neoconservative Orientalists felt vindicated in November 2001, when the authorities in Switzerland launched a raid on the residence of Youssef Nada in Campione, an Italian enclave situated in the Swiss Canton of Lugano. Nada was an Italian–Egyptian dual-national and the chairman of al-Taqwa Bank, whose name had been placed on a blacklist by the US Department of the Treasury as a suspect of terrorism-financing. In his autobiography, whose chapters open with epigraphs quoting Albert Einstein, William Shakespeare and George W. Bush, as well as the Quran and Youssef Nada himself, the protagonist of this rags-to-riches story is described as ‘a good and honest man’ and ‘an acrobat with thought and languages’. Endowed with a ‘hard, clear, lucid vision’, Nada is said to deliver an ‘enlightened message’ whose content ‘at its simplest – and most provocatively – is to live and let live’. Among a torrent of other accolades, Nada portrayed himself as an ‘ambassador of reason’ and, somewhat tantalizingly, as ‘the mystery inside the heart of the Middle East mystery; the part of the puzzle no one could place; that final part of the jigsaw out of reach, like a wisp of smoke on the horizon’.40 Although Nada was known as the Brotherhood’s ‘foreign minister’ by rankand-file members in Egypt, he had little influence on the Society’s activities on the ground.41 But during the raid on Nada’s villa, the Swiss federal police discovered a fourteen-page document that, within a short while, gained notoriety as ‘the Project’. Similar to the Empowerment Plan, this was yet another awkwardly and vaguely worded paper that pronounced in the most general terms a ‘global vision of a worldwide strategy for Islamic policy’, which would follow a ‘flexible, multi-phased, long-term approach to the cultural invasion of the West’. Situating itself within the vanguardist outlook of Mustafa Mashhur’s and Mahdi ‘Akif’s International Organization, ‘the Project’ proposed that ‘local Islamic policies . . . in different regions’ should be established. The paper further advised that the Brotherhood should ‘use deception in all areas of government and society to disguise the Islamist agenda’. Brotherhood members were called upon to ‘support movements engaged in jihad across the world’ and ‘conduct covert operations within the

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Realism, Postmodern Globalism, and Centrist Islamic Movements in Egypt’ in Esposito, John. (ed.) Political Islam: Revolution, Radicalism, or Reform? Boulder; London: Lynne Rienner, 1997; Baker, Raymond W. Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists. Cambridge; London: Harvard University Press, 2003. Nada, Youssef and Douglas Thompson. Inside the Muslim Brotherhood. London: Metro, 2012, pp. xii–xv. Somewhat amusingly, the book’s ghostwriter, Douglas Thompson, is described on the book’s cover as a ‘biographer, broadcaster and international journalist’. His other oeuvres include ‘bestselling biographies of Madonna, Clint Eastwood, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dudley Moore, John Travolta, Nicolas Cage and Leonardo DiCaprio’. Group interview with author. Hani al-Ithi Mosque, Cairo, 22 March 2013.

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halls of power in support of the global movement’, having as an objective to ‘infiltrate existing Western institutions and work within them until they can be subverted to Islam’.42 ‘The Project’ provided plenty of material for a sensationalist press to cement the narrative of the Brotherhood’s devious globalist intentions.43 In 2012, the conservative American TV personality Glenn Beck adapted this subject into a one-hour documentary, where the Brotherhood’s treacherous plans were exposed by a baritone male voice to the soundtrack of eerily suspenseful music. Despite the sensationalism, the Swiss authorities were unable to corroborate their suspicion of al-Taqwa’s terrorism financing, which forced them to drop the charges levelled against the bank. Following a request from the United States, Nada’s name was de-listed from the UN Security Council Sanctions Committees List. Regardless, an Egyptian military tribunal in 2009 sentenced Nada in absentia to ten years of prison for ‘providing financial support’ to the Muslim Brotherhood.44

Emergence of a Protest Movement Besides the Western debate about the Brotherhood’s true nature, its leaders were increasingly scrutinized by their own youth members. This development was connected to the disruptive impact of the communication revolution, whose accelerating pace linked growing segments of Arab youth populations to each other as well as to activists outside of Egypt. Over the following years, internetsavvy individuals within the Brotherhood’s youth wing would forge informal links with activists from other political and ideological groups. This event that not only made them more critical of their own leadership, but also created the nucleus of a protest movement that would continuously strengthen throughout the decade until its remarkable culmination in the uprisings of January 2011. The intensification of this youth-led and bottom-up criticism converged around the symbolic figure of ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh. This added another layer

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Beck, Glenn. ‘The Muslim Brotherhood “Project”.’ YouTube, 2012. www.youtube.com /watch?v=Dmt-jdgmsew (accessed 15 April 2017). See for instance Besson, Sylvain. La conquête de l’Occident. Le projet secret des islamistes. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2005. ‘Prosecutors drop Terror Investigation.’ Swissinfo, 2 June 2005. www.swissinfo.ch/eng/ prosecutors-drop-terror-investigation/4538006 (accessed 15 April 2017); ‘Security Council al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee removes Names of three Entities.’ UN Security Council Press Release, 11 March 2010. www.un.org/press/en/2010/sc9877 .doc.htm (accessed 1 September 2017). Nada subsequently sued Switzerland in front of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and won the case. See ‘Case of Nada v. Switzerland.’ Judgment of the ECHR. 12 September 2012. www.law.umich.edu/faculty home/drwcasebook/Documents/Documents/14.7_CASE%20OF%20NADA%20v.% 20SWITZERLAND.pdf (accessed 1 September 2017).

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of complexity to the ongoing power struggle between the representatives of the Qutbist and Tilmisanian schools of thought. The starting point for this development was the fraudulent student union elections of October 2001. In an effort to prevent its rivals from winning, regimehired stooges first tried to prohibit the elections from taking place and, once the regime seemed to lose control of the unions, cancelled them altogether.45 The eighteen-year-old engineering student ‘Ammar Fayed, who had become an Associate Brother a few months ago, was one of the student candidates at the University of Mansura. Today a thoughtful young man with a sophisticated demeanour and an interest in political philosophy, ‘Ammar had familiarized himself at a young age with the writings of Hasan al-Banna, Mohammed alGhazali and especially Sayyid Qutb, whose Signposts on the Road he had read more than a dozen times. Motivated by a willingness to play an active role in the moral, cultural and economic elevation of Egyptian society, ‘Ammar was intrigued by Qutb’s ‘out of the box’ thinking, and the ‘creative ability’ of this intellectual ‘to provide answers to questions around Islam’s challenges with modernity’. The engagement with Qutb’s ideas inspired him ‘to become one of those people who should have a role to play in the future of the Islamic umma’ and ‘restore its glory and rightful place in the world’.46 In light of the fraudulent student union elections of 2001, ‘Ammar Fayed and other young Brotherhood activists took the opportunity to team up with their peers from other political and ideological movements in order to organize separate student union elections. The newly formed and unofficial ‘Free Unions’, which came out of these parallel elections, were independent from government control and provided alternative meeting spaces for students to express their opinions. The environment of the university during these days was generally more open than in other state institutions, which made it ‘easy to talk to people and take action against the government’. Within the informal space of the Free Unions, open-minded Brotherhood youth members such as ‘Ammar Fayed interacted with liberal, secular, socialist and even atheist students in order to ‘pursue the activities they liked – whether political, charity-focused or da‘wa-focused’.47 The camaraderie forged among these activists through this cross-sectorial collaboration was strengthened in the spring of 2002, when the IDF, under the command of Ariel Sharon, invaded the West Bank. The shelling of the headquarters of PA President Yasser Arafat, widely seen as humiliating by the Palestinians, and the alleged behaviour of Israeli soldiers during the ‘massacre of Jenin’ enraged people across the Arab world.48 In Egypt, the Free Unions 45 46 47 48

‘Abd al-Ghany, Ayman. Interview with author. Istanbul, 1 April 2018. Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2018. Ibid. The Israeli incursion in Palestinian-controlled territory, which lasted from early March until 7 May, was said to have caused 497 Palestinians’ deaths. See Bennet, James. ‘U.N. Report rejects Claims of a Massacre of Refugees.’ New York Times, 2 August 2002 www

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spontaneously formed solidarity committees to oppose the Israeli aggression and, on 29 and 30 March, thousands of students demonstrated at university campuses in Cairo, Alexandria, Mansura and Suez, calling for the Israeli ambassador’s ouster and deploring Hosni Mubarak’s cowardly lip service vis-à-vis the attack: Hosni Mubarak zay Sharon, nafs al-shakl wa nafs al-lawn! – Hosni Mubarak is like Sharon, with same shape and of the same breed!49

. . . they shouted as they marched towards the Lawyers’ Syndicate. The protests of March 2002 were still limited in scope, as students’ grievances centred on demands for reforming the university charter and acquiring greater freedoms for student unions.50 However, they were symbolically important, as they constituted one of the first instances when a group of youth activists publicly spoke out against the regime of Hosni Mubarak.51 It was an early and timid whisper of what would, nine years later, rumble as a raucous roar across Tahrir Square. While the Guidance Office formally denounced the Israeli incursion, the Brotherhood’s rank and file remained largely absent from the protests. Deputy Guide Ma’mun al-Hudaybi justified this decision by arguing that Egypt needed to stay unified in the face of ‘external aggression’.52 However, as Abu al-Futuh later admitted, the Guidance Office had been unwilling to mobilize its foot soldiers, as they perceived the danger of regime repression suspended above them like the sword of Damocles.53 This double standard led to a growing dissatisfaction within the organization’s lower ranks. The historically disobedient Alexandria Administrative Office called for a ‘million-man march’ and, although Cairo had given explicit orders to the contrary, mobilized tens of thousands of base supporters into the streets.54 The Guidance Office’s

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.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/world/death-on-the-campus-jenin-un-report-rejects-claimsof-a-massacre-of-refugees.html (accessed 1 September 2017). However, Human Rights Watch later put the Palestinian death toll to 52 individuals. See ‘Israel/Occupied Territories: Jenin War Crimes Investigation needed.’ Human Rights Watch. 2 May 2002. www.hrw.org/news/2002/05/02/israel/occupied-territories-jenin-warcrimes-investigation-needed (accessed 1 September 2017). ‘Street Days.’ Al-Ahram Weekly Online (issue no. 580), 4–10 April 2002. http://weekly .ahram.org.eg/Archive/2002/580/eg5.htm (accessed 1 September 2017); ‘Egypt Analysis and Whimsy: Kifaya: asking the right Questions.’ Baheyya, 30 April 2005. http://baheyya .blogspot.co.at/2005/04/kifaya-asking-right-questions.html (accessed 1 September 2017). ‘Abd al-Ghany, Ayman. Interview with author. Istanbul, 1 April 2018. Abou-El-Fadl, Reem. ‘The Road to Jerusalem through Tahrir Square: Anti-Zionism and Palestine in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution.’ Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume XLI 41, no. 2 (2012), pp. 6–26. Hudaybi is quoted in Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, pp. 99–100. al-Hamalawy, Hossam. ‘Closer to the Street.’ Cairo Times, 6–19 February 2003. Howeidy, Amira. ‘Stepping into a burgeoning Gap.’ Al-Ahram Weekly Online (issue no. 622), 23–29 January 2003. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/Archive/2003/622/sc2.htm (accessed 1 September 2017).

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pursuance of ‘pragmatic’ policies increasingly antagonized certain elements within the organization’s rank and file. Throughout the decade, the leadership’s tightrope walk between truthfulness to its ideological credo on the one hand, and the imperatives imposed by the constraints of national politics on the other, led to growing tensions within the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood. The atmosphere intensified after 29 October 2002, when the eighty-oneyear-old vanguard leader Mustafa Mashhur, who had controlled the Brotherhood since 1986, passed away. As the news of the Murshid’s death spread, various contestants mounted competing claims over the prize of the Brotherhood’s guidanceship. For decades, the reformist-minded cadres of the Tilmisani generation had demanded for the Murshid to be elected by the Shura Council, as the General Statutes stipulated. This claim had been categorically rejected by the vanguard leaders, whose representatives argued that the changing geopolitical circumstances of the post-9/11 world required extra-legal measures. When Mashhur’s eighty-one-year-old deputy Ma’mun al-Hudaybi, one of the last remaining figures of the ‘first cohort’, succeeded him, it was obvious to Abu al-Futuh and other former student leaders that the ‘climate of repression and exclusion’ had taken preponderance over demands of internal organizational reform, and that the hands of ‘those who rejected the growth of democracy within the group’ had been permanently strengthened.55 This leadership transition came at a sensitive moment in the history of the Middle East. The Bush administration had just begun intensifying its fearmongering campaign about Iraq’s alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).56 Over the following months, America’s neoconservative policymaking establishment, in collusion with the British Labour Party led by Bush’s docile surrogate Tony Blair, launched a concentrated and carefully orchestrated propaganda campaign that bogusly positioned Iraq as the new frontline in the ‘war on terror’.57 On 19 March 2003, a US-led international coalition of thirty-six countries launched ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’. In order ‘to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism and to free the Iraqi people’ 160,000 troops were deployed at Iraq’s southern border.58 The subsequent military adventure would turn out to be the biggest blunder in modern US

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Tammam. Transformations, p. 106. Bush, George W. ‘The Iraqi Threat.’ Presidential Rhetoric, 7 October 2002. www .presidentialrhetoric.com/speeches/10.7.02.html (accessed 1 September 2017). Gershkoff, Amy and Shana Kushner. ‘Shaping Public Opinion: The 9/11–Iraq Connection in the Bush Administrations Rhetoric.’ Perspectives on Politics 3, no. 3 (2005), pp. 525–37. ‘President discusses beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.’ The White House, 22 March 2003. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/03/ 20030322.html (accessed 17 April 2017).

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military history, claiming the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens and destabilizing the country’s fragile sectarian equilibrium for years to come. The US invasion of Iraq, and particularly the dubious claims of regime change as a way to bring democracy to the Middle East, enflamed the ire of youth activists in Cairo, who in the weeks leading up to the invasion began organizing a series of marches and rallies. A daylong sit-in in Tahrir Square morphed into widespread anti-regime demonstrations as the masses, alluding to Sadat’s assassination in 1981, chanted: Ya ‘Ala’ qul li-Mubarak al-manassa fī’intizarak! – O ‘Ala’, tell Mubarak, the stage is awaiting you!59

This was the second time within one year that activists publicly accused the president of hypocrisy, challenging the limits of acceptability of their demands among the general public.60 Again, a group of Brotherhood youth cadres marched at the forefront of the demonstrations, side by side with liberal and secular activists.61 Having witnessed the effectiveness of collaborating with other activists during the student union elections of October 2001, the protesters increasingly merged into a cross-ideological coalition, familiarizing themselves with protest tactics such as crowd mobilization and the organization of sit-ins and demonstrations. The activists would refine these lessons over the course of the decade and employ them to great effectiveness in early 2011.62 While the Guidance Office had remained absent from the street actions organized by youth members, the invasion of Iraq was too symbolic an event for the Brotherhood to remain silent. Mubarak had occasionally allowed the Brotherhood to hold controlled protests as long as its members would limit their demands to foreign policy issues and abstain from criticizing the regime.63 On 27 February the Guidance Office, anxious to avoid allowing the demonstrations to morph into an anti-regime rally, gathered tens of thousands of members in the Cairo International Stadium in Heliopolis. The carefully choreographed nature of the event failed to convince the Brotherhood’s youth

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‘Egypt Analysis and Whimsy.’ Information Project (MERIP), 31 March. www.merip.org/mero/mero033103 (accessed 1 September 2017). Mahmud, Hani. Interview with author. Doha, 18 April 2017; al-Qassas, Mohammed. ‘Mū’tamar al-Qāhira al-Dawlī: Nawāa li-Ta’sīs al-mushtarik (The Cairo International Conference: the Nucleus of the common Foundation).’ Al-Araby, 8 November 2015. https://bit.ly/2Hs0MBC (linked shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 6 September 2017). ‘Amer (revolutionary leader). Interview with author. Cairo, 18 August 2012. ‘Reforming Egypt: in Search of a Strategy.’ International Crisis Group (Report no. 46), 4 October 2005, p. 15. www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/north-africa/egypt/ reforming-egypt-search-strategy (accessed 1 September 2017).

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activists who, timidly but scathingly, shared their frustration about the leadership with close confidants.64

The Democratic Paradox Despite the Guidance Office’s tactical manoeuvring, the Brotherhood was unable to avoid a cooling-off in its relationship with the United States after the 9/11 attacks.65 The geopolitical context of the ‘war on terror’ had simply rendered the maintenance of direct contacts too risky for either side.66 This situation started to change on 6 November 2003, when George W. Bush gave a speech at the National Endowment for Democracy, where he proposed a ‘forward strategy of freedom’ for the promotion of democracy throughout the Middle East. As the Bush administration had been unable to substantiate its claims of WMD stockpiles in Iraq, US officials were under pressure to legitimize the Iraqi invasion ex post facto. Gradually, the Bush administration started to manufacture a discourse that portrayed authoritarianism as the breeding ground for terrorism, thereby linking US national security interests to the ‘democratization’ of the Middle East. In February 2004, a ‘Greater Middle East Initiative’ was leaked and subsequently endorsed by heads of state and governments at the G-8 summit in Georgia.67 To the discomfort of Mubarak, Egypt was singled out as the target of high expectations: ‘The great and proud nation of Egypt’, Bush declared, ‘has shown the way toward peace in the Middle East, and now should show the way to democracy in the Middle East.’68 The changing objectives of US foreign policy presented the Guidance Office with an unexpected opportunity to revive its stalled relationship with the American superpower. The driving force behind this effort was Mahdi ‘Akif, who became the Brotherhood’s eighth General Guide. He was nominated a few months after Ma’mun al-Hudaybi’s death on 9 January 2004, following a brief period when the office was occupied by Mohammed Hilal as the oldest living Guidance Office member. ‘Akif had taken the lead over Mohammed Habib, who was the preferred candidate among the members of the Tilmisani faction, 64 65

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Mahmud, Hani. Interview with author. Doha, 18 April 2017. Ricciardone, Francis J. (Cairo) to Secretary of State. ‘Contact with Muslim Brotherhood Parliamentary Leader.’ Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, 20 March 2007. https:// wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/07CAIRO795_a.html (accessed 1 September 2017). Frampton, Martyn and Ehud Rosen. ‘Reading the Runes? The United States and the Muslim Brotherhood as Seen Through the Embassy Cables.’ The Historical Journal 56, no. 03 (September 2013), pp. 827–56. Perthes, Völker. ‘America’s “Greater Middle East” and Europe: Key Issues for Dialogue.’ Middle East Policy 11, no. 3 (1 September 2004), pp. 85–97. Bush, George W. ‘Remarks by President George W. Bush at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy.’ 6 November 2003. www.ned.org/remarks-bypresident-george-w-bush-at-the-20th-anniversary/ (accessed 1 September 2017).

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but who had remained an outsider of the Brotherhood’s inner circles of power.69 ‘Akif, on the other hand, shared with the vanguard figures of his generation the defining experience of torture and prison. At the same time, his eight-year-long activism in two Egyptian legislatures (one from 1987 to 1990, and the second from 1995 to 2000) had made him intellectually more flexible, which made him a suitable compromise candidate between the Brotherhood’s conflicting factions.70 Well aware of the precarious balance of power inside the Brotherhood, ‘Akif appointed the sixty-year-old Mohammed Habib as his first, and the fifty-three-year-old Khairat al-Shatir as his second deputy.71 Both Habib and Shatir were significantly younger than the majority of the members in the Guidance Office, and both commanded the respect of middle-ranking and younger members.72 Throughout his tenure, the man who would be nicknamed the ‘scale’ by rank-and-file members tried to bridge the cultural and intellectual divisions separating the two camps by adopting an intermediary position between the upwards-pressing, reform-seeking members of the Tilmisanian school and the vanguardist tanzimi-faction.73 It was only once ‘Akif resigned in early 2010 that the ideological and organizational differences between the two camps broke into the open, tilting the balance of power decisively in favour of the vanguard. In March 2004, in an effort to capitalize on the growing American pressure on Mubarak’s regime, ‘Akif introduced an initiative whose alleged purpose was to prepare the Brotherhood for ‘democratic reform’.74 During a press conference at the Journalists’ Syndicate, he presented a document that stated the Brotherhood’s desire for ‘comprehensive reform’, which could not be achieved ‘except by implementing democracy, which we believe in, and whose fundamentals we commit ourselves to . . . while fully accepting that the people are the source of all authorities [sic]’.75 Although ‘Akif tried to presented this initiative as something novel, it was in fact the culmination of a trend whose origins dated back to the days following the forged parliamentary elections of 1995. Back then, the Guidance Office had commissioned the publication of a series of legal studies on a variety of topics, in order to pressure the regime to revoke the Emergency Laws of 1981, curtail presidential powers and release 69 70 71

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Nuh, Mokhtar. Interview with author. Cairo, 11 March 2013. Tammam. Transformations, p. 82. Traeger, Eric. ‘Who’s who in Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.’ The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/whos-who-in-themuslim-brotherhood (accessed 1 September 2017). Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, pp. 103–4. ʻAkif, Mahdi. Interview with author. Cairo, 19 May 2013. Yacoubian, Mona. Promoting Middle East Democracy II: Arab Initiatives. Washington, DC: DIANE Publishing, 2008. ‘Muslim Brotherhood Initiative: On the General Principles of Reform in Egypt.’ Cairo: Unknown publisher, 2004.

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political prisoners. One of these studies had evaluated the possibility of admitting women and Coptic Christians to senior government posts, including the presidency, and it was the substance contained in that specific paper that ‘Akif now unveiled as the Brotherhood’s ‘Reform Initiative’.76 ‘Akif’s proposal was welcomed by the strategic planners in the Bush administration, who could capitalize on the initiative to showcase the early success of the US ‘democratization’ project in the Middle East.77 The Brotherhood’s image was suddenly rebranded ‘from an enemy of democracy to its biggest supporter’ – a phenomenon the Egyptian social scientist Husam Tammam had aptly labelled the ‘democratic paradox’.78 However, the majority of substantive points of the Reform Initiative were either reiterations of the age-old grievances formulated by various proponents of Islamic politics, or mere repetitions of what Abu al-‘Ala’ Madi had already asked for in 1996. For instance, the Reform Initiative warned of the dangers of the growing penetration of Egypt’s legal and educational systems with Western materialist values. These values were said to have a corrosive impact on society by causing social stagnation and cultural backwardness, as seen in the dangerous trend of growing divorce rates.79 Anyone who sought to rebuild Egypt’s ‘character’ was advised to do so ‘on the basis of faith and morals’, while consolidating the respect for the fixed principles of the nation, represented by the faith in God, His Books, His Prophets and His Laws . . . There is no hope for us to achieve any progress without returning to our religion, executing our laws, adopting modern science and technology [and] gaining as much knowledge and education as we can.80

Meanwhile, the Brotherhood reserved for itself the task of ‘inform[ing] the masses, Muslims and non-Muslims, of Islamic teachings [and] explaining the signs in detail to those who understand the pure human nature upon which God has created men’.81 The people needed to be guided ‘to abide by worship and good morals and upright actions’, with the intention of establishing ‘God’s rule on the basis of our faith. This is our true and effective way to escape all our internal and foreign problems, whether political, economic, social or cultural.’ The only institution able to guarantee this was 76 77

78 79 80 81

al-Haddad, Midhat. Interview with author. Istanbul, 29 March 2018. ‘Issam al-Din, Gamal. ‘Brotherhood steps into the Fray.’ Al-Ahram Weekly Online (issue no. 681), 11–17 March 2004. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/Archive/2004/681/eg3.htm (accessed 1 September 2017). Tammam. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 52. al-Qazzaz, Hussein. Interview with author. Istanbul, 28 March 2018. ‘Muslim Brotherhood Initiative.’ Cairo, 2004. Article 2, ‘The General Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood [AD 1982]’ in Statutes and By-laws, p. 263.

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an Islamic state that executes the laws and teachings of Islam in practice, protecting them domestically and working to spread them internationally . . . And preparing the nation in terms of jihad in order to stand united in the face of tyrants, enemies of God, to ultimately establish the guided Islamic state.82

In somewhat ambiguous terms, the programme embraced religious and political freedoms and supported a system that is ‘republican, parliamentary, constitutional and democratic in the framework of the principles of Islam’. It paradoxically claimed that the people were the source of authority while simultaneously affirming that ultimate sovereignty belonged to God alone. Another inconsistency was its conception of ‘freedom of expression’, understood as the right to promote one’s ideas, but only within ‘the framework of the public order and public morals’.83 Substantial and innovative arguments regarding the relationship between Islam and democracy remained marginal while the overall initiative was closely aligned with the reasoning of Hasan alBanna’s 1939 Letter of the Fifth Conference. In this letter the founder had concluded that ‘individuality and unlimited liberty’ would lead to ‘chaos and other short-comings’, and the ‘fragmentation of social structures and the family system’. In contrast to Western liberal interpretations, Banna believed that democracy would ‘not lead to the empowerment of the people, but [rather] to the establishment of chosen tyrants’.84 Similarly, Mustafa Mashhur had reiterated in a 1981 article in al-Da‘wa: ‘Democracy contradicts and wages war on Islam. Whoever calls for democracy means they are raising banners contradicting God’s plan and fighting Islam.’85 Irrespective of its content, the initiative’s repercussions on the Brotherhood’s internal politics were substantial, as they magnified the influence of the Tilmisani faction vis-à-vis Sayyid Qutb’s followers. Emboldened by their enhanced public profile, the former student activists seized the momentum to push forward their project of transforming the Brotherhood from a revivalist, religious reform movement with international aspirations towards a modern political party prioritizing national objectives. The status of Tilmisani’s adherents was enhanced internationally, as American priorities of ‘democratizing’ the Middle East had increasingly moved to the centre stage of the global agenda. Confronted with these realities, the vanguard elite tolerated, and for the purpose of international consumption even encouraged, the Brotherhood’s newly acquired reformist drive. At the same time, they despised the unorthodox ideas promoted by the followers of Tilmisani, which they believed would not 82 83 84 85

‘Muslim Brotherhood Initiative.’ Cairo, 2004. Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, pp. 106–8. al-Banna. ‘Letter of the Fifth Conference’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 249–94. Mashhur, Mustafa. ‘Al-Iltizām wa-l-Wafā’ bi-l-‘Ahd (Commitment and Loyalty to the ˙ Covenant).’ Al-Daʻwa, January 1981.

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only weaken the Brotherhood’s spiritual and moral prowess, and thus negatively affect its capacity to mobilize, but ultimately jeopardize the very survival of the Society. In order to mitigate these risks, they made sure that key positions, such as the Section on Upbringing, remained firmly within the purview of loyalists of the Qutbist conception.86 The presumed ‘metamorphosis’ of the Brotherhood, as one scholar had termed these developments, occurred on a phenomenological level rather than in terms of a fundamental alteration of the Brotherhood’s underlying power structures.87

The Kefaya Moment On 14 July 2004, Hosni Mubarak charged Ahmed Nazif with the formation of a new government. Born in Cairo in 1952 as the son of a wealthy ship owner, Nazif was a computer engineer and former doctoral graduate from McGill University, and a technocrat chosen for his willingness to execute Mubarak’s commands. Nazif’s appointment was part of a larger strategy, whereby the president’s and his son’s friends and business partners were promoted with the view of laying the groundwork to position Gamal Mubarak as Egypt’s future president. Gamal had only recently become the head of the NDP’s Policy Committee – a body tasked with advising the government on economic policy. It was within this small insider circle where a culture of crony capitalism was forged around businessmen such as Ahmed Ezz, Rashid Mohammed Rashid, Yusuf Butros Ghali and Ahmed al-Maghraby – and along with them a kind of client–patron relationship that became a hallmark of Egyptian politics during years to come. In an effort to consolidate their power base, Egypt’s new ‘cabinet of businessmen’ dramatically accelerated the pace of neoliberal deregulation with the view of implementing reforms. Over the coming months, substantive stakes of the Egyptian public sector were sold off to the highest bidder. Compared to the period between 2001 and 2004, the state’s total revenue from privatization increased eightfold between 2005 and 2009.88 Although GDP continued to grow at around 4 per cent, this had little do with the performance of Egypt’s real economy. Rather, it was a result of the cancellation of half of Egypt’s debt following the Gulf War, which had

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Tammam. Transformations, p. 82. el-Ghobashy, Mona. ‘The Metamorphosis of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 37, no. 3 (2005). Duboc, Marie. ‘Reluctant Revolutionaries? The Dymanics of Labour Protests in Egypt, 2006–13’ in Abou-El-Fadl, Reem. Revolutionary Egypt: Connecting Domestic and International Struggles. London: Routledge, 2015, pp. 29 ff.

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made $15.5 billion available to the treasury.89 Nazif’s privatization programme severely affected the standards of living of the Egyptian people. Poverty rates in 2005 stood at almost 20 per cent – equivalent to 28 million individuals earning less than $2 per day. Average families faced significantly higher inflation rates (from 2.9 per cent in 2003 to 16.5 per cent in 2004 and 18 per cent in 2008) and a strongly diminished purchasing power. As a consequence of Mubarak’s neoliberal reforms, average Egyptian middle-class citizens witnessed a progressive and increasingly corrosive erosion of their living standards.90 As a culture of corruption entrenched itself ever deeper within state institutions, calls for reform became increasingly loud.91 In September 2004, an ideologically heterogeneous group of intellectuals, including the Brotherhood defector Abu al-‘Ala’ Madi, saw an opportunity to make themselves heard on the national stage. They founded the ‘Egyptian Movement for Change’ (al-Harakat al-Masriyya min ajl al-Taghayyir), known as Kefaya, which translates as ‘Enough’. Kefaya was formed by about three-hundred academics, artists, students and workers, as well as a few farmers. Its signatories came from Egypt’s diverse political and ideological landscape and included Nasserists, socialists, communists, liberals, activists standing close to the Muslim Brotherhood and also a few independents. The group issued a declaration that advocated for a broad range of political and economic reform measures and organized a number of unauthorized demonstrations that criticized Hosni Mubarak and other senior members of the ruling elite.92 The initiative provoked strong reactions in the Guidance Office. The vanguard leaders believed that the Brotherhood should refrain from recognizing any social or political movements other than those advocating ‘comprehensive’ educational, social, political and moral reforms.93 They were opposed by a growing number of Brothers at intermediate levels of the hierarchy, who rejected the Guidance Office’s position. Among those mid-level cadres was Ahmed Ban, a thirty-eight-year-old researcher on political Islam from Cairo, who was a member of one of the political committees. Ban’s story is representative of the grievances of an entire group of urban and educated middle-class Egyptians who had joined the Brotherhood during the early 1990s. Inspired by figures such as ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh and Abu al-‘Ala’ Madi, these 89

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For a study of Egypt’s debt situation under Mubarak, see Sulayman. The Autumn of Dictatorship. ‘Arab Republic of Egypt: Selected Issues.’ IMF Country Report (issue no. 07/381), December 2007. Tammam. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 58. Madi, Abu al-‘Ala’. Interview in Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 109; ‘Egyptian Reformists break Taboos.’ BBC, 1 November 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/mid dle_east/3965977.stm (accessed 30 August 2018). Tammam. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 55.

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reform-minded individuals were drawn to what they believed to be their ‘national duty’, which implied supporting Kefaya’s cross-ideological outlook and engaging in a national dialogue with other political groups – even if this meant infringing on the authority of their leaders.94 The differences between the followers of Tilmisani and the da‘wa-focused vanguardist elite was accentuated in April 2005, when Kefaya made plans to hold its most dramatic protests yet. During a discussion in the Shura Council, Abu alFutuh, ‘Issam al-‘Arian and Sayyid ‘Abd al-Sattar urged their internal rivals to consent to the Brotherhood’s participation in the protests. Given the international pressure by the United States and Mubarak’s refusal to implement political reforms, they argued, street action was the Brotherhood’s best option to escalate the pressure against the regime.95 The vanguard leaders, on the other hand, rejected these arguments out of hand. As the second deputy Guide Khairat al-Shatir made clear, any attempt to engage with social and ideological forces that were not directly controlled by the Brotherhood was anathema.96 But Shatir found himself opposed by another powerful dissenter: the General Guide himself. For Shatir’s rejection of the arguments of the former student activists could not obscure the fact that Kefaya had boosted the momentum of a vibrant youth movement, whose participants were emboldened to engage in more sustained forms of street activism. These realities had convinced Mahdi ‘Akif that the Brotherhood should give up its practice of limiting protests to international issues and instead focus more on the Egypt scene – including on corrupt government practices and the thorny issue of Mubarak’s hereditary succession.97 On 27 April, ‘Akif ordered the Brotherhood’s rank and file to join protests called for by Kefaya. During massive demonstrations taking place across fifteen cities, more than 50,000 Egyptians took to the streets.98 As activists gathered in front of makeshift stages set up near the People’s Assembly and the Fath Mosque in Ramsis Square, they vociferously chanted: La li-l-tamdid la li-l-tawrith! – No to extension, no to hereditary succession!99

The participation of the Brotherhood’s rank-and-file members was embraced by large sections of the youth movement, including a number 94 95

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Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 22 September 2013. Abdel-Latif, Omayma. ‘Abdel-Moneim Abul-Futuh: a different Kind of Syndicalism.’ AlAhram Weekly Online (issue no. 743), 19–25 May 2005. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg /Archive/2005/743/profile.htm (accessed 1 September 2017). Habib, Mohammed. Interview. Cairo, 20 April 2005, quoted in ‘Reforming Egypt.’ International Crisis Group, p. 12. Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2018. ‘Reforming Egypt.’ International Crisis Group, p. 19. ‘Egypt Analysis and Whimsy.’

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of Brotherhood MPs, as well as by many in the opposition. As there was no political party with an effective field apparatus, the Brotherhood’s public association with Kefaya enabled the opposition to score critical political points among ordinary Egyptians. However, although representatives of various parties and movements shared the stage with the Brotherhood, the large majority of the protesters came from its own ranks.100 ‘Ammar Fayed, who was among the crowds demonstrating in Mansura, remembers: [this was] the first time that the Muslim Brotherhood went out in large numbers against the regime. These were reform protests, where people asked for political reforms and voiced anger against the regime, regarding corruption, arrests and inheritance. It was not only students who protested, but the central organization of the Brotherhood participated as well.101

Buoyed by this reformist resurgence, Abu al-Futuh declared in May 2005 that the Brotherhood was prepared to accept the principles of a secular state ‘with religious terms of reference’. While this statement was symbolically relevant, it did not change the underlying structures of the Brotherhood’s internal balance of power, as observed in a memo by a US diplomat, who advised his superiors at the American Embassy in Cairo to interpret Abu alFutuh’s statement as a ‘tactical shift rather than an indication of evolving ideology’.102 Yet, the former student leader’s as-yet-unheard-of proposition constituted a sharp reversal from the Brotherhood’s traditional position. Having always upheld the belief that Egypt should be ruled by Islamic law, the vanguard leaders interpreted Abu al-Futuh’s contumacious statement as a danger to the Brotherhood’s very survival. Although he had spoken independently and without any agreement on the part of his superiors, his widespread popularity among base supporters inoculated him – at least for the time being – from being dismissed from the Guidance Office. The Brotherhood’s growing popularity and its willingness to engage in grassroots-organized protests came at a heavy price. During a series of raids by State Security, more than 1,500 members were incarcerated, including ‘Issam al-‘Arian and Mahmud ‘Izzat – the most senior leaders to enter prison since 1996.103 Worried diplomatic staffers in the American Embassy in Cairo informed Washington that the arrests 100 101 102

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‘Abd al-Ghany, Ayman. Interview with author. Istanbul, 1 April 2018. Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2018. Gray (Cairo) to unknown. ‘The GOE and the Muslim Brotherhood: Anatomy of a Showdown.’ Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, 17 May 2005. https://wikileaks .org/plusd/cables/05CAIRO3755_a.html (accessed 1 September 2017). Al-Ahram, 7 May 2005, quoted in ‘Reforming Egypt.’ International Crisis Group, pp. 5 and 19–20.

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struggle for leadership (2001–2011) broke a precedent that had held for at least ten years – that the [Government of Egypt] would not target the [Brotherhood’s] senior echelons for arrest. Their arrests were cited by observers as evidence that relations between the [Government of Egypt] and the [Brotherhood], tense but generally on slow-boil in recent years, were heating up into a full confrontation.104

The gentlemen’s agreement, which had previously existed between the Brotherhood and the Mubarak regime, thus broke down, tilting the mood in the Guidance Office towards a more hard-line approach.105 Khairat al-Shatir in particular was outraged about ‘Akif’s independent manoeuvres and he expressed his dismay for the ‘public trial balloons’ that had led to the imprisonment of ‘Arian and ‘Izzat. In the following years, ‘Akif was increasingly sidelined in what the American Embassy memo termed an ‘internal coup’.106 With respect to Kefaya, its ideological heterogeneity made it impossible for its members to reach a consensus regarding its political future.107 For all its intents and purposes, the ‘Egyptian Movement for Change’ remained an elitist, top-down led initiative that was unable to meaningfully connect to the base of society, and whose only tangible achievement was the protest of April 2005.108

The Cairo Spring In June 2005, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a speech at the American University in Cairo, where she challenged Mubarak to ‘fulfil the electoral promise he has made to his people’.109 Rice’s diplomatic jargon did hardly veil the Bush administration’s annoyance with the regime’s reluctance to implement domestic reforms.110 Under growing pressure, Mubarak issued a revised legislative agenda that foresaw a redistribution of power within the framework of wide-ranging constitutional reforms. This move was fraught 104 105 106 107

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Gray. ‘Update on the GEO–Muslim Brotherhood Standoff.’ Ibid. Ibid. ‘Al-Azma al-dākhlīyya fī Haraka Kifāya al-Masrīyya (The internal Crisis in the Egyptian ˙ Kifaya Movement).’ Al Jazeera Arabic, date˙ not specified. www.aljazeera.net/home/ Getpage/0353e88a-286d-4266-82c6-6094179ea26d/45fef4c3-9a0e-4307-baff -68ad1a5594e3 (accessed 1 September 2017). Habib, Mohammed. Interview. Cairo, 20 April 2005, quoted in ‘Reforming Egypt.’ International Crisis Group, p. 12. ‘Remarks at the American University in Cairo.’ Department of State – the Office of Electronic Information, Bureau of Public Affairs, 2001–2009. www.state.gov/secretary/ rm/2005/48328.htm (accessed 1 September 2017). Ricciardone, Francis J. (Cairo) to Secretary of State. ‘Advancing the Freedom Agenda in Egypt.’ Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, 17 July 2007. https://wikileaks.org /plusd/cables/07CAIRO2206_a.html (accessed 1 September 2017).

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with risks, however. The Brotherhood was certain to carry away a massive victory if free and fair elections were to be held. Eager to maintain the goodwill of his Western benefactors, Mubarak was determined to stay in control of the legislative branch. He planned to resolve this dilemma by engineering a moderate Islamist victory to ‘frighten’ the Americans. He instructed the State Security Apparatus to negotiate with the Brotherhood the districts where the group was allowed to run, as well as the number of seats it was permitted to gain.111 For its part, the Guidance Office formed a subcommittee consisting of Shatir, ‘Akif, Habib and Abu al-Futuh to negotiate with the regime. This episode stood at the beginning of a more intricate relationship between State Security and the Muslim Brotherhood, with Khairat al-Shatir emerging as a key player.112 The elections for the People’s Assembly were to be held in three rounds between 9 November and 7 December 2005. Many among the Brotherhood’s rank and file were excited when they realized that the combination of foreign pressure and their own popularity among the Egyptian people provided them with a unique chance to conquer a significant portion of the seats in the new parliament.113 The Guidance Office launched an impressive get-out-and-vote operation.114 Campaigning under the slogan ‘Islam is the solution’, Brotherhood candidates were able to capture the hearts and minds of many who saw them as the best option to root out widespread corrupt practices by regime figures.115 According to one Brotherhood member, the first electoral round in early November ‘was very democratic. It was something special in the modern history of Egypt – the fact that one can join elections and have one’s voice counted.’116 But once it became clear that the number of elected Brotherhood parliamentarians stood at seventy-six, the regime realized that its gamble had backfired and that the final distribution of seats would vastly exceed the agreed-upon number to be allocated to the Brotherhood.117 When, during the second round of the elections on 20 November, the Brotherhood gained even more seats, the regime calculated that it would lose its parliamentary majority during the third round. If the democratic process continued, the opposition was likely to gain enough seats to obstruct laws the regime would 111 112 113 114 115

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‘Akif, Mahdi. Interview cited in Kandil. Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen, p. 198. Abu Khalil. The Reformist Brotherhood, pp. 226–7. Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2018. Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 117. Bassiouni, M. Cherif. Chronicles of the Egyptian Revolution and its Aftermath; 2011– 2016. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, p. 21. Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2018. ‘Egypt’s Muslim Brothers: Confrontation or Integration?’ International Crisis Group (Report no. 76), 18 June 2008. www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/north-africa/egypt/ egypt-s-muslim-brothers-confrontation-or-integration (accessed 1 September 2017).

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want to enact. Zo prevent such a scenario, agents from State Security pressured Shatir to ensure that the remaining candidates would withdraw their candidatures. Shatir called them up personally and ordered them to pull out of the race. Whoever objected was excluded unilaterally. He undertook all these steps without consulting Abu al-Futuh or Mohammed Habib, who he knew would object to these measures.118 When the votes were counted after the conclusion of the third round, the Brotherhood had gained 88 seats out of a total of 454 – equal to 20 per cent of the total. Strengthened by this victory, the Brotherhood’s media office embarked on an ostensive public relations campaign that aimed to assuage a sceptical Western audience of the Brotherhood’s good intentions. In an interview with The Guardian, Shatir reiterated that the Brotherhood was committed to democracy and that the organization would not seek to get more than ‘a small piece of the parliamentary cake’. He lambasted the ‘provocations of a corrupt, oppressive government’ and affirmed that the regime would not be able to browbeat ‘our organization, which has survived for seventy-seven years, or the Egyptian people, who have increasingly come to trust us’. Repeating an age-old Islamist trope, he echoed the Brotherhood’s conviction that only Islamic values would be able to ‘effectively deal with the obstacles that have hindered reform and development’.119 The political opening of 2005 entailed a shift in the thinking of senior US officials about the role and status of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Although six months before neither side had been prepared to engage with the other, the Brotherhood’s landslide victory led to a reassessment of this relationship.120 Gradually, the Bush administration started to see the Brotherhood as a social and political reality, and as a potential ally that could be leveraged in order to advance US foreign policy in the Middle East. This change in attitude was reciprocated by the Guidance Office, as the American Embassy in Cairo noted. Starting in 2005, various regional affiliates of USbased NGOs reached out to the Brotherhood in an effort to initiate lower-level communication lines with administration officials.121 The electoral victory of 2005 triggered a mutual rapprochement that would ultimately convince US 118

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This information was revealed by a Guidance Office member to Abu Khalil. The Reformist Brotherhood, pp. 226–7. al-Shatir, Khairat. ‘No Need to be afraid of Us.’ The Guardian, 23 November 2005. www .theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/23/comment.mainsection (accessed 1 September 2017). Frampton and Rosen. ‘Reading the Runes?’ in The Historical Journal, pp. 827–56. ‘Ali, ‘Abd al-Rahim. al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn: min Hasan al-Bannā ilā Mahdī ʻAkif (The ˙ ‘Akif). Cairo: Markaz al-Mahrusah Muslim Brotherhood: from Hasan al-Banna to Mahdi li-l-Nashr wa-l-Khidmat al-Suhufiyya wa-l-Maʻlumat, 2007, pp. 275–6; Sharp, Jeremy. ‘U.S. Democracy Promotion Policy in the Middle East: the Islamist Dilemma.’ Congressional Research Service (Report RL33486). Published on Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, 15 June 2006. https://file.wikileaks.org/file/crs/RL33486.pdf (accessed 1 September 2017).

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policymakers that they could do business with the Brotherhood. The relationships that were forged during that autumn formed the basis for the Obama administration’s decision in February 2011 to drop Mubarak like a hot potato and instead shift its allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood.122 The emerging entente between the Brotherhood and the United States was not without obstacles, however. On 26 January 2006, the ‘Islamic Resistance Movement’ (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya), known as Hamas, won more than half of the seats of the Palestinian legislature. The democratic victory of yet another Islamist group – this time one that was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the US Department of State – irritated the neoconservative architects of US foreign policy. As Hamas’ Political Bureau proceeded to form the next cabinet, it dawned on US strategists that the ‘democratization’ of the Middle East would be trickier than they had previously imagined. It was inconceivable that the United States should be perceived as violating Egyptian sovereignty by dealing with a group that posed a threat to the national security of one of its key allies in the Middle East.123 The victory of Hamas implied that the economic and military alliance with the Egyptian government would necessarily trump concerns regarding the democratization of the Middle East. Backtracking from its previous strategy, the United States refused to recognize Hamas’ victory, while simultaneously downgrading its official contacts with those Brotherhood members who were not elected parliamentarians. The victory of Hamas elevated the combativeness of the Muslim Brotherhood in crucial ways. Mahdi ‘Akif had concluded that, since the state would crack down whatever the Brotherhood did, ‘we will do what we want’.124 In March 2006 the Brotherhood rallied its supporters once again, together with other citizens from various political orientations, to demonstrate against the regime’s plans for nationalizing the judiciary. At a demonstration in Mansura, one member was fatally shot by riot police – an episode that shaped the thinking of a number of youth members in crucial ways. ‘Ammar Fayed, who participated in this rally, began to understand that the Brotherhood’s struggle was about more than just da‘wa. The events of the previous years had made it clear to him and others of his age group that a broad social movement had taken root in Egypt, which demanded political reform on all levels. ‘It was a very dynamic situation and the Brotherhood became politically more active than they had ever been before.’125

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Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 14 April 2014. Frampton and Rosen. ‘Reading the Runes?’ in The Historical Journal, pp. 827–56. Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2018. ‘Abd al-Ghany, Ayman. Interview with author. Istanbul, 1 April 2018.

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Hamas’ victory created the international conditions for Mubarak to take revenge for the 2005 electoral victory. Ahmed Nazif admitted that, had it not been for the government’s interference, another forty Brothers would have won during the second round of the elections, which would have brought the number of Brotherhood-occupied seats to more than 120.126 Hamas’ electoral success thus played into the hands of a regime eager to brand the Brotherhood with the stigma of terrorism. Over the coming weeks, hundreds of Brotherhood members were arrested, including ‘Issam al-‘Arian, as well as an inconspicuous functionary and a US-trained doctor in materials science by the name of Mohammed Morsi. But the repressive wave was unable to thwart the Brotherhood’s parliamentarians from dramatically escalating their critique of the regime. Over the following years, the Brotherhood’s presence in the People’s Assembly significantly changed the style of parliamentary politics in Egypt. Eager to assure a permanent representation within the legislative chamber, the Brotherhood’s deputies camped in a hotel located in the upscale Cairo neighbourhood Ma‘adi during the entire duration of the legislative period in order to attend every single parliamentary session. Their permanent and continued presence was a nuisance to NDP candidates, as it forced them to be physically present at all times in order to avoid being out-voted.127 In late 2006, the regime found another opportunity to escalate its pressure against the Brotherhood. During the student union elections in November, State Security banned 200 Brotherhood candidates from taking part – a move that outraged the student community at al-Azhar University. During ensuing demonstrations, some were arrested and expelled from the campus. On 10 December, Brotherhood-affiliated students wearing black balaclavas and white headbands with the word ‘steadfast’ emblazoned on them, performed a series of martial arts exercises in the university’s courtyard.128 These actions were picked up by the Egyptian media the following day, as anchors and reporters denounced the threatening ‘military show’ staged by these ‘Brotherhood militias’. On Christmas Eve, agents from State Security rounded up some 140 members from their homes and workplaces. Seventeen senior figures, including Khairat al-Shatir, Hasan Malek, Midhat al-Haddad and the former Secretary General of the Engineers’ Syndicate Mohammed ‘Ali Bishr were apprehended and transferred to the Liman alTorah prison, where an ad hoc military tribunal charged them with money 126

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Basam, Amir. Hakamat al-Mahkamah (The Court Ruled). Cairo: Dar al-Tawzi‘ wa˙ l-Nashr al-Islamiyya, 2012, pp. ˙14–16. Shehata, Samer and Joshua Stacher. ‘The Brotherhood Goes to Parliament.’ Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), no. MER240 (Fall 2014). www.merip.org /mer/mer240/brotherhood-goes-parliament (accessed 1 September 2017). ‘Mīlīshīāt al-Ikhwān fī-l-Azhar (The Brotherhood Militias in al-Azhar).’ YouTube, 2 April 2012. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMPpGR-Pc3k&feature=youtube_gdata_ player (accessed 1 September 2017).

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laundering, tax evasion and illegitimate attempts to revive the Brotherhood’s paramilitary wing.129 The ‘al-Azhar militias case’, as the event became known, provided the regime with a justification to freeze the assets of twentynine Brotherhood cadres, including seven individuals who lived abroad.130 Over seventy companies were shut down, which dried up one-third of the Brotherhood’s funding streams – some $88 million according to one source.131 Brotherhood members later asserted that the freezing of the Brotherhood’s assets dealt a shock to Egypt’s financial system, causing the stock market to crash by E£20 billion.132 Following this wave of repression, it was rumoured that the regime had arrested specific individuals with the view of shaking up the balance of power in the Guidance Office.133 This strategy certainly seems to have succeeded, as it exacerbated the power struggle between ‘Akif’s first and second deputies, Mohammed Habib and Khairat al-Shatir. According to the Brotherhood’s bylaws, the second deputy’s responsibilities would be automatically delegated to the first deputy should the former be arrested. As Khairat al-Shatir oversaw the Brotherhood’s membership in the Greater Cairo Sector – a key position that included the administration, organization and communication across the entire Cairo area – Habib would have been legally entitled to take over this assignment following Shatir’s imprisonment. However, in violation of the bylaws, Habib’s nomination was dropped without him being even informed. Instead, the prestigious post was awarded to Mohammed Morsi.

Rapprochement with the United States In March 2007, the regime organized a referendum in order to amend four articles of the constitution, presenting this as a next step on the way to the ‘democratization’ of Egypt. Mubarak hoped that the introduction of a partylist system would prevent the Brotherhood from forming a political party and thus assure that a repetition of the disaster of the 2005 elections could be avoided. For the vanguardist leaders in the Brotherhood, this move made obvious that the parliamentary strategy that had been previously advocated by Tilmisani’s disciples had failed.134 The subsequent period saw a reassertion of Qutbist influence within the Guidance Office. Shatir and ‘Izzat now embarked on a concentrated campaign of denouncing their rivals in front of 129 130 131

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al-Haddad, Midhat. Interview with author. Istanbul, 8 January 2017. Basam. The Court Ruled, p. 12. ‘The Egyptian Regime vs. the Muslim Brotherhood.’ Frontpagemag, 5 February 2007. http:// archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=293 (accessed 1 September 2017). Basam. The Court Ruled, p. 21. Gazzar, Helmi. Interview with Sara Ramadan. Cairo, 3 June 2013; Basam. The Court Ruled, p. 19. Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 127.

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rank-and-file members, escalating attacks against those who had occupied the political space during the summer of 2005. Faced with the reality of harsh new prison terms members brushed off ideas of democratization and reform as merely the personal opinions of a few individuals. They were not in any way representative of the Brotherhood’s official ideology. The vanguard similarly proceeded to cement the Brotherhood’s relationship with the United States.135 Determined to exploit their 2005 electoral victory, Brotherhood leaders and MPs started to reach out to foreign journalists and state officials with growing frequency. They travelled abroad, organized press conferences and undertook all kinds of public relations activities in order to establish a ‘constructive dialogue’ based on ‘mutual understanding and the appreciation of diversity’.136 As the new leader of the Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc, Sa‘d al-Katatni played a particularly important role in this regard. Born in 1952 in Girga, a medium-sized town located on the west bank of the Nile River in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Sohag, Katatni had studied microbiology at the University of Asyut. He had completed his doctorate in 1984 and five years later had started a career as a professor in Fungal Physiology in the Department of Botany at the University of Minya, where he had written ‘30 publications in peer reviewed journals’ and given ‘numerous lectures and poster presentations’, as he mentioned in his curriculum vitae.137 Over the coming years, Katatni would emerge as one of the key decision-makers among the Brotherhood’s vanguard leaders and play an important role in the Political Section. Having been brought up ‘according to the curriculum of the Special Apparatus’, he was an insider to the Brotherhood’s inner circle, and a trusted wingman of the likes of Khairat al-Shatir and Mahmud ‘Izzat.138 As the government prepared for the referendum in early March 2007, Katatni visited the American Embassy in Cairo to obtain a visa for an upcoming trip to the United States. According to embassy cables, a ‘warm and friendly meeting’ took place where ‘pleasantries and business cards’ were exchanged. Both parties expressed their regret for the long absence of contact while declaring their hope for mutual relations to continue.139 In mid April, during a cocktail reception at the residence of the US Ambassador to Egypt, senior members of Congress were said to have ‘briefly chatted’ with Katatni about the role of Hamas, which the latter – to the bewilderment of the 135 136

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Frampton and Rosen. ‘Reading the Runes?’ in The Historical Journal, pp. 827–56. ‘Katatny: Dialogue between Islamists and the West a Necessity.’ Ikhwanweb, 15 December 2006. www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=936 (accessed 1 September 2017). Curriculum Vitae, ‘Saad el-Katatni.’ www.minia.edu.eg/cv_minia/MN_FSCN_BOTA__ST AFFDATA_STAFFDATA_Mohamed.ElKatatny.pdf (accessed 3 September 2017). Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 14 April 2014. Ricciardone. ‘Contact with Muslim Brotherhood Parliamentary Leader.’

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American officials – apparently sought to ‘rationalize’.140 Travelling to the United States the following month, Katatni was hosted at a symposium at Georgetown University, where he delivered a strongly worded statement in support of an improved mutual relations between the Brotherhood and the United States. Pointing to the recently enacted constitutional amendments, he suggested that Washington’s support for Mubarak was anti-democratic: ‘U.S. support for unpopular regimes is one of the main reasons for the popularity of Islamists.’ A subsequent report summarized his talking points as follows: ‘Moderate groups like the MBs [sic] will continue to struggle, but more people will be driven to radical discourse by repressive governments. This is most harmful for Western security.’141 Katatni’s diplomatic overture was accompanied by a public relations campaign that sought to leverage the Brotherhood’s media machinery as a way to intensify the pressure on the regime. From his prison cell, Shatir organized meetings with journalists, correspondents and bloggers, addressing various human rights committees and speaking out forcefully against the regime. His lawyer, Hazem Salah Abu Isma‘il, argued that his case was marred by procedural irregularities and that investigators had committed numerous incidents of fraud.142 At a court hearing, an emboldened deputy guide could be seen shouting from behind the bars: ‘I am being tried militarily for the second time . . . . I have spent five years [in prison], was released, and now I am being tried again!’143 From within the large facilities of the Torah prison complex, Shatir continued to manage the Brotherhood’s political and financial portfolios through his extended networks and contacts, interacting with his colleagues in the Guidance Office ‘as if he was present among them’.144 The combination of the electoral victory of 2005 and Hamas’ unexpected success in 2006 had convinced US strategists that democratization would inevitably lead to the empowerment of Islamist parties, and that the United States’ relations with these groups therefore needed to be approached 140

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Isikoff, Michael and Mark Hosenball. ‘U.S. may be softening Stance on Muslim Brotherhood.’ Newsweek, 23 April 2007. http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/ Soc/soc.culture.arabic/2007-04/msg00010.html (accessed 3 September 2017). ‘Georgetown Symposium on Islamist Politics.’ Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 2007. www.wrmea.org/2007-may-june/muslim-american-activismgeorgetown-symposium-on-islamist-politics.html (accessed 1 September 2017). al-Anani, Khalil. ‘At the Brotherhood Trial: the Defense accuses State Security of Fabrication of the Case.’ Islamists Today, 28 December 2007. http://islamists2day-a .blogspot.com/2007/12/blog-post_28.html (accessed 1 September 2017). Basam. The Court Ruled, p. 53. Abu Khalil. The Reformist Brotherhood, 2012, pp. 227–8. For the Brotherhood’s version of these events, see ‘Qadiyya Mīlīshīāt al-Azhar (The al-Azhar Milita Case).’ ˙ Ikhwanonline.com, 20 March 2007. www.ikhwanonline.com/Article.aspx? ArtID=26011&SecID=420 (accessed 1 September 2017).

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strategically rather than on an ad hoc-basis.145 It was thus that, by late 2007, the United States came to recognize the Brotherhood as the ‘dark horse’ to place their bets on, which led to the resumption of direct communications between US officials and Brotherhood representatives.146 At the same time, US policymakers had grown increasingly frustrated with Egypt’s slow pace of political reform. Mubarak’s constitutional engineering, and particularly his plans to install his son as the heir to the Egyptian presidency, caused a great deal of annoyance in Washington. Mubarak, for his part, upon having been informed about the United States’ intensified relations with the Brotherhood, reacted ‘testily’ to this news, as one US diplomat observed.147 Galvanized by their invigorated international standing, the vanguard leaders felt strong enough to reassert their power against their internal rivals. At the end of 2007, they published a new platform that rolled back some major advances having been articulated in the Reform Initiative of 2004. The revised document envisioned establishing a body of religious scholars whose function would be to assure that any executive and legislative bills were compliant with Sharia law. The same provision would later be implemented as part of the 2012 constitution. Paradoxically, the text reaffirmed ‘citizenship rights’ for women and Copts, while excluding representatives of these two ‘minorities’ from running for the presidency.148 The injection of this detail alone signified a dramatic shift in the Brotherhood’s previous position, indicating the degree to which the Guidance Office had become dominated by the conservative attitudes of the vanguard leaders.149 The manner in which the 2007 programme was adopted, and the debates this process triggered, illustrated the state of the Brotherhood’s internal politics at this stage. When Shura Council members were asked to approve the programme, they voted on a different version from the one that was ultimately adopted.150 Once the voting was completed, Mahmud ‘Izzat personally intervened to change the two central articles regarding the rights of women and Copts, which sufficed to empty the entire programme of its ‘reformist spirit’. The final version essentially boiled down to a draft that had been previously 145 146 147

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Frampton and Rosen. ‘Reading the Runes?’. Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 14 April 2014. Ricciardone, Francis J. (Cairo) to Secretary of State. ‘Muslim Brotherhood: Government Crackdown continues, Party Platform still in Draft.’ Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, 30 August 2007. https://cablegatesearch.wikileaks.org/cable.php? id=07CAIRO2683 (accessed 1 September 2017). Brown, Nathan and Amr Hamzawy. ‘The draft Party Platform of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: Foray into political Integration or Retreat into old Positions?’ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 14 January 2008. http://carnegieendowment.org/ 2008/01/14/draft-party-platform-of-egyptian-muslim-brotherhood-foray-into-polit ical-integration-or-retreat-into-old-positions (accessed 1 September 2017). Tammam. ‘Salafization’ in The Muslim Brotherhood, pp. 95–135. Tammam. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 61.

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written by Mohammed Morsi and Sheikh Mohammed ‘Abdullah al-Khatib – commonly known as the Brotherhood’s ‘mufti’. It engendered an outraged response from Abu al-Futuh, Gamal Heshmat and ‘Issam al-‘Arian, who saw key achievements of the 2004 Reform Initiative being brushed away with the stroke of a pen, thereby taking the Brotherhood back to the pre-Cairo spring period. Anxious about the anti-liberal spirit of the new programme, a group of younger Brotherhood cadres from the Student Committee refused to succumb to the dogmatism of the vanguard leadership. They launched an independent initiative whose objective was to present the Guidance Office with an alternative vision about the Brotherhood’s future.151 The nucleus of this group consisted of three individuals, whose responsibilities included campaigning, political communication and coalition-building with other student groups. The first one was Islam Lotfy, a charming middle-class intellectual from Heliopolis, who studied law at Cairo University while working in a human rights programme at the American University in Cairo. The second was Ahmed ‘Abd al-Gawwad, who was the grandson of Mustafa Mashhur and came from a conservative rural family in Upper Egypt, but whose views had undergone a transformation as he became increasingly involved in youth activism. The most emblematic figure of the Brotherhood youths, however, was Mohammed al-Qassas – the articulate author of the popular blog Qassas lil-Jami‘a (Qassas For All). Like Lotfy, Qassas was born into a liberal middleclass family in Heliopolis, but he distinguished himself through his highly versatile persona. Qassas’ ability to act as a centre of gravity for other youths is the reason why the Brotherhood youth wing sometimes was referred to as a ‘black hole’. Like a chameleon, Qassas moved among different kinds of people, spending the morning in the mosque with his conservative colleagues and the afternoon with his liberal, artistic and musician friends in the Greek Club in Downtown Cairo. His thirst for political activism led him to work in multiple Brotherhood committees at the same time, which caused him to remain unmarried until his mid thirties.152 Regardless of their different personalities and backgrounds, Lotfy, ‘Abd al-Gawwad and Qassas shared their first common experience in street activism during the organization of anti-regime protests following the 2002 Israeli incursion into the West Bank, and again during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Since that moment, they had interacted regularly with one another in various workshops and discussion groups, forging deeper bonds and personal friendships. Together with the activists of other grassroots movements, these individuals would come to form the core of the ‘Revolutionary Youth Coalition’ (I’tilaf

151 152

‘Affan, Mohammed. WhatsApp call with author. Geneva-Istanbul, 2 November 2018. Ibid. Geneva-Istanbul, 16 May 2019.

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Shabab al-Thawra), which emerged during the heydays of the uprising of January 2011.153 The initiative of the Student Committee indicated the degree to which the Brotherhood had become fractured into several competing camps. The first one was made up of senior reform-leaning loyalists of the Tilmisanian school, led by the Guidance Office members Abu al-Futuh, Mohammed Habib, ‘Issam al-‘Arian and Mohammed ‘Ali Bishr, as well as the Alexandrians Khalid Dawud, Ibrahim al-Za‘farani and Hamid Dafarawi. A second camp, ideologically aligned with the former but of a younger generation, consisted of Lotfy, Qassas and ‘Abd al-Gawwad. They closely interacted with youth activist from other political groups and as such were in touch with the pulse of society.154 The third camp comprised hardliners of the Qutbist heritage, such as Mahmud ‘Izzat, Mohammed Badi‘, Khairat al-Shatir, Gum‘a Amin, Mahmud Hussein, Rashid al-Bayumi and Mahmud Ghozlan, who occupied key organizational roles and dominated the majority of seats in the Guidance Office. In the midst of it all was Mahdi ‘Akif, trying to hold together a Society whose joints, like the planks of a decomposing raft, gradually drifted apart. As the General Guide would soon learn, the Brotherhood’s disintegration made it increasingly impossible to preserve the Brotherhood’s cherished image of unity and organizational cohesion towards the outside world. In light of the growing number of youth members who openly vented their frustration online, the episode illustrated the glaring disagreements that existed within the Society of the Muslim Brothers.155

Consolidation of the Protest Movement In September 2007, more than 20,000 workers of the Egypt Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahallat al-Kubra, the country’s largest textile mill, participated in a strike of hitherto unheard proportions. While Egypt had witnessed an incremental uptick of grassroots activism since 2002, the focus of popular demands during previous protests had largely been on international politics or internal political reform and rarely related to the grievances of Egyptian workers. This started to change after Ahmed Nazif’s ‘cabinet of businessmen’ had taken over the government in July 2004, as an accelerated pace of privatization pushed growing segments of marginalized workers into contentious collective action. According to a Cairo-based NGO focusing on workers’ and farmers’ rights, between 2004 and 2011 more 153 154

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Mahmud, Hani. Interview with author. Doha, 18 April 2017. Madi, Abu al-‘Ala’. Interview in 1 July 2008, quoted in Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 125. al-Anani, Khalil. ‘Brotherhood Bloggers: a New Generation Voices Dissent.’ Arab Insight, Vol. 1, issue 3 (Winter 2008), pp. 29–38.

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than two million Egyptians participated in organized labour actions such as strikes, demonstrations and sit-ins.156 In what turned out to be the largest labour action since the early 1950s, the Mahallat al-Kubra strike attracted not only workers from the industrial sectors, but also a diverse constituency of professionals from a range of socio-economic sectors and industries. These individuals had traditionally abstained from street activism and included medical doctors, university professors, intellectuals, movie actors, journalists, university teachers, lawyers, judges and tax collectors.157 The strike of 2007 was closely related to the deepening impact of the economic policies that had been implemented by the Economic Reform and Structural Adjustment Programme of 1991. According to the orthodoxies of neoliberal theory, growth could only come about if the power of labour was crushed – measures which its evangelists euphemistically referred to as the ‘deregulation of labour markets’.158 By 2004, the economy had essentially bifurcated into two spheres: one servicing the small percentage of the population with a conspicuously high purchasing power; and the other, informal one, catering to the needs of the marginalized and the poor.159 State institutions became contaminated by the greed of a coterie of capitalists around Gamal Mubarak, who teamed up with CEOs of large multinational corporations eager to cut off a piece from the lucrative Egyptian pie. The corrosive effect of these policies contributed to the further erosion of the middle class, as social programmes were dismantled and retirement benefits cut, resulting in tens of thousands of workers to be laid off. Spiralling inflation rates and rampant corruption at the highest levels of government made it increasingly impossible for an educated, upwardly mobile and young population to achieve a higher living standard. Even the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), which had represented Egyptian workers since the days of Nasser, was co-opted into the system of crony capitalism. In the absence of any political representation, rank-and-file unionists to abandoned institutionalized politics, which led to a proliferation of protests, strikes and other forms of street action. Whereas between 1998 and 2003 the average number of strikes had numbered 27 per year, this figure had risen to 265 in 2004 and to more than 700 in 2008.160 156

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Duboc, Marie. ‘Reluctant Revolutionaries? The Dymanics of Labour Protests in Egypt, 2006–13’ in Abou-El-Fadl, Reem. Revolutionary Egypt: Connecting Domestic and International Struggles. London: Routledge, 2015, pp. 28–42. Beinin, Joel. ‘The Rise of Egypt’s Workers.’ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 2012. http://carnegieendowment.org/files/egypt_labor.pdf (accessed 1 September 2017). Saad-Filho, Alfredo and Deborah Johnston. Neoliberalism: a Critical Reader. London: Pluto Press, 2005; Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Kandil. Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen, pp. 208–18. Aidi, Hisham. Redeploying the State: Corporatism, Neoliberalism, and Coalition Politics. New York; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp. 142–3.

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Thus, in the four years between 2004 and 2008, a total of over 1.7 million workers participated in contentious collective action.161 These protests encompassed ‘virtually every industry, public services, transport, civil servants and professionals’.162 Following the successful outpouring of workers in the autumn of 2007, labour unions planned another strike action for 6 April 2008. In anticipation of this event, the twenty-seven-year-old civil engineer Ahmed Maher, the twenty-threeyear-old business administration graduate Asmaa‘ Mahfuz and the twenty-sevenyear-old former Kefaya organizer Mohammed ‘Adel set up a Facebook group that gathered more than 65,000 ‘likes’ in a matter of a few days. The ‘6th of April Movement’ (Harakat Sitta Abril) was overwhelmingly composed of students from the leftist, liberal and secular milieu who linked the economic grievances of industrial workers to broader national demands for regime change.163 Leveraging social media to great effect, these activists managed to mobilize thousands of ordinary Egyptians to join the unions in their protest action against social and economic injustices. The movement was typically referred to as ‘6th of April’ and had a particular impact on young middle-class Egyptians, breaking a psychological ‘barrier of fear’ that had previously existed with respect to the regime.164 Its core organizers were the same individuals who, three years later, would be at the centre of the group that ignited the uprising of 2011.165 The Brotherhood adopted an ambivalent position with respect to 6th of April. Sunni clerics had traditionally been unsympathetic to contentious politics, arguing that such actions carried within them the danger of dragging Muslim societies into a civil war and thereby weakening the Islamic umma in its ability to face outside aggressors. The Brotherhood was particularly suspicious of labour movements, with their secular-leftist and ‘atheist’ bias and their class-specific grievances, such as demands for lower rents, higher wages and improved living conditions for the poor. While the members of the vanguard elite considered the Brotherhood to be ‘rooted in the deepest parts of society’, they in fact had spent most of their lives in ‘small dark rooms’ or in prison cells, and therefore had not been able to develop a deeper understanding of the plights of ordinary workers or the urban poor.166 Being part of the middle 161

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164 165 166

Abdalla, Nadine. ‘Egypt’s Workers – from Protest Movement to organized Labor. A major Challenge of the Transition Period.’ Stiftung für Wissenschaft und Politik, October 2012. www.swp-berlin.org/en/publications/swp-comments-en/swp-aktuelledetails/article/egypts_workers.html (accessed 1 September 2017); Kandil. Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen, p. 217. Beinin. The Rise of Egypt’s Workers, p. 4. Sowers, Jeannie and Christopher Toensing. The Journey to Tahrir: Revolution, Protest, and Social Change in Egypt. London; New York: Verso, 2012, p. 104. Sara (revolutionary activist). Interview with author. Cairo, 4 February 2013. ‘Amr (revolutionary activist). Interview with author. Cairo, 25 December 2012. ‘Abd al-Sahfo. ‘al-Shatir: the Story of the Political Devil Who is Ruling Egypt.’

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class, the vanguard leaders were not in favour of the labour movement’s desire to redraw a new social contract based on a redistribution of wealth, rendering them unsympathetic to the concerns of average working-class citizens.167 The burgeoning influence of the protest movement put the Guidance Office in an uncomfortable position. The United States’ advocacy for democratic reform had created a favourable climate for the followers of Tilmisani, who painted an image of a Brotherhood in transformation. The maintenance of this image was important if the Brotherhood wanted to sustain US support in its attempts to hedge its bets against further potential onslaughts of the regime. This implied, on the other hand, that the Brotherhood continued to support workers’ demands for economic and political reforms. But it was exactly this support that carried the risk of exposing the Brotherhood to further crackdowns. The compounded effect of these internal and external pressures caused intense controversies between the vanguard leadership and the disciples of the Tilmisanian school of thought, who were eager to leverage the societal dynamics created by the protest movement in their attempts to expedite demands for internal organizational reform.168 In April 2008, Egyptians went to the polls to elect representatives for the municipal councils. This provided the regime with an opportunity to launch its next wave of repression against the Muslim Brotherhood. After the arrest of more than 800 candidates, only a small fraction of the almost 6,000 would-be contestants remained to register. By the end of the month, two acting members of the Guidance Office were in jail, one had recently passed away, and two others suffered from health problems. This furnished the vanguard leaders with an opportunity to further bolster their position against their reformist rivals. They moved on 26 May 2008 by calling for partial elections for the Guidance Office. From his prison cell in Liman al-Torah, Shatir assisted Mahmud ‘Izzat in placing five trusted loyalists in the Brotherhood’s top executive body. All were born in the 1950s or early 60s and all of them were committed to a closed and disciplined tanzim along the organizational vision of Sayyid Qutb. They were Sa‘d al-Katatni from Sohag, the Alexandrian Osama Nasr al-Din, Sa‘d al-Hosseini from Gharbiyya, Muhi Hamid from Suez and Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Morsi from Daqahliyya.169 While the Tilmisanians saw this latest twist in organizational engineering as yet another piece of evidence for the vanguards’ desire to assert total control over the Brotherhood, it delivered a further justification for the regime to launch a new crackdown. In January 2009, after tens of thousands had protested against the Israeli Air Force’s bombardment of the 167 168 169

Tammam. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 54. Ibid., p. 60. Ibid., p. 61.

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Gaza Strip, the regime arrested more than 1,200 members of the Brotherhood. This was followed by a second repressive wave in mid 2009, resulting in the arrests of Osama Nasr al-Din and twelve mid-level cadres in May, Mahmud Hussein in June, and ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu alFutuh in July. With Mohammed ‘Ali Bishr and Khairat al-Shatir having been convicted by military courts already in December 2006, the number of arrested Guidance Office members now stood at five. This was part of a deliberate strategy to weaken the Brotherhood ahead of the forthcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for November 2010, and to discourage them from participating in the political process altogether. At the same time, arresting Mohammed ‘Ali Bishr and especially Abu al-Futuh allowed the vanguard leaders to consolidate their authority in the Guidance Bureau and tighten their control on the organization’s day-to-day affairs. The Brotherhood’s alleged ‘radicalization’ would, in turn, allow the regime to relieve itself from the US dictate for implementing political reforms, as confirmed by an American Embassy cable of July 2009.170

The Vanguardist Palace Revolt On 4 June 2009, the recently elected US President Barack Obama gave a muchanticipated speech in Cairo. The former Senator from Illinois had come to office with the promise to roll-back US engagement in the Middle East, rebuild America’s reputation in the region and diffuse the historical tensions between the Islamic and the Western worlds. In front of a packed audience at Cairo University, the youthful American leader announced a ‘new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world’. He underlined the obligation of Arab governments to respect the rights of their citizens, if indeed they wanted to achieve political stability and economic growth, and affirmed his unyielding belief that people everywhere yearned for certain inalienable rights, such as the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.171

Obama’s presidency seemed to herald a novel era of US engagement in the Middle East. From an American perspective, such a reset was urgently needed, 170

171

Tueller (Cairo) to Secretary of State. ‘Ramping up Pressure on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: recent Arrests.’ Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, 30 July 2009. https:// wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09CAIRO1467_a.html (accessed 3 September 2017). ‘Text: Obama’s Speech in Cairo.’ New York Times, 4 June 2009. www.nytimes.com/2009/ 06/04/us/politics/04obama.text.html (accessed 3 September 2017).

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especially after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which had enabled Iran to break out of its isolation. The fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein had incentivized Iranian expansionist instincts, raising fears within the Saudi royal establishment of being encroached by a ‘Shia crescent’.172 The general weakening of US power in the Middle East also created a vacuum for Iranian proxies to assume a growing role in Middle East politics. With Syria, Iraq and Lebanon emerging as new theatres of confrontation in a low-level proxy conflict between a Saudi-led pro-US bloc and an Iran-led ‘axis of resistance’, Obama’s promise to Iranian leaders that they would find ‘an extended hand’ if they were ‘willing to unclench their fist’ shocked Saudi decision-makers to the core.173 It was for this reason that, a year earlier, King ‘Abdullah had tried nudging the United States to step up the confrontation with Iran in order to ‘cut off the head of the snake’.174 From the standpoint of America’s oldest ally in the region, Obama’s willingness to reward Iran for its destructive behaviour was an unforgivable mistake, which entailed a gradual deterioration of the US–Saudi relationship. While Saudi Arabia’s autocratic leaders were apprehensive of Obama’s style and rhetoric, the same was welcomed by opposition groups across the region. During the days following the US president’s speech, the leaders in the Guidance Office ‘anxiously [awaited] signals from the new administration on how it would handle its relationship with the group’.175 Indeed, Obama seemed to have upped the ante during his visit to Cairo, when he had agreed to personally meet with representatives of Egypt’s Islamist opposition, including with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, who took the opportunity to assure him of ‘their support for democracy and the war on terror’.176 But as it 172

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Saudi Arabia has since become the world’s second-largest arms importer behind India, with 61 per cent of imports coming from the United States in 2017. The phrase ‘Shia crescent’ had been used by King Abdullah of Jordan in 2004 in an interview with Robin Wright and Peter Baker. See ‘Iraq, Jordan Threat to Election from Iran.’ Washington Post, 8 December 2004. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43980-2004Dec7 .html (accessed 10 April 2018). On US arms exports to Saudi Arabia, see Arms Transfers Database. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. www.sipri.org/databases/ armstransfers (accessed 10 April 2018). ‘Obama’s first Interview as President.’ Al-Arabiyya, 26 January 2009. www.youtube.com /watch?v=HO_lLttxxrs (accessed 11 May 2018). US Embassy in Riyadh. ‘Saudi King Abdullah and senior Princes on Saudi Policy toward Iraq.’ Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, 20 April 2008. https://wikileaks.org /plusd/cables/08RIYADH649_a.html (accessed 16 May 2018). Scobey (Cairo) to Secretary of State. ‘Egyptian Islamist meets with Staffdel Hogrefe.’ Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, 3 September 2009. https://wikileaks.org /plusd/cables/09CAIRO1723_a.html (accessed 3 September 2017). ‘Obama met Muslim Brotherhood Members in U.S.’ Haaretz, 4 June 2009. www .haaretz.com/news/obama-met-muslim-brotherhood-members-in-u-s-1.277306 (accessed 3 September 2017).

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became obvious during the coming months, Obama’s pronouncements did not lead to any substantive alteration of US national security priorities in Egypt. The much-expected intensification of mutual relations between the American Embassy in Cairo and the Muslim Brotherhood did not transpire, although mutual visits continued sporadically.177 The continuation of the status quo ante between the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood did little to temper the already boiling atmosphere in the Guidance Office. Both the followers of Tilmisani in the Shura Council and the Brotherhood’s youth members had been irritated by the way in which the Guidance Office ‘elections’ had been conducted during the previous May. Rather than leading to a fair representation of the political forces within the Brotherhood, the obviously rigged electoral process was yet another proof of the vanguards’ unsavoury scheme to marginalize any alternative viewpoints. Many younger individuals became increasingly vocal in demanding accountability and a stricter subjection of electoral procedures to the principles of transparency and democratic representation. As accusations of Machiavellian politicking at the highest levels of the Society were voiced on social media, rumours and previously well-guarded secrets trickled with growing frequency into the public domain. In October 2009, the simmering tensions escalated into a full-blown confrontation. The starting point for this development was the death of the ninetyyear-old Mohammed Hilal, who had been a senior member of the Guidance Office for almost two decades and who had acted as the Murshid for a brief period in 2004. According to the Brotherhood’s By-laws, Hilal should have theoretically been succeeded by ‘Issam al-‘Arian, who had obtained the sixthhighest number of votes during the elections of May 2008.178 But for reasons unbeknown to most, the secretariat blocked Arian’s progression and Hilal’s seat remained empty. A number of second- and third-ranking cadres warned of an internal rebellion if ‘Arian would not soon be placed in his behoved position.179 An acrimonious conflict erupted between Mahdi ‘Akif and Mahmud ‘Izzat, who mistrusted ‘Arian because of his affiliation with the student movement and his involvement in the Reform Initiative of 2004. The episode left the representatives of the two political coalitions with a bitter aftertaste, and this precisely at the moment when the Brotherhood headed into the Guidance Office elections of December 2009. The outcomes of these elections were captured in a leaked video that provides rare insight into the Brotherhood’s inner workings at its top levels of decision-making. In the 177

178 179

Scobey (Cairo) to Secretary of State. ‘Update on Reports of Divisions within the Muslim Brotherhood.’ Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, 21 October 2009. www.telegraph .co.uk/news/wikileaks-files/egypt-wikileaks-cables/8327131/Update-on-Reports-ofDivisions-within-the-Muslim-Brotherhood.html (accessed 3 September 2017). Abu Khalil. The Reformist Brotherhood, p. 229. Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 150.

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video, several top commanders can be seen sitting in a crammed office in the Brotherhood’s headquarters in al-Manyal. Behind a desk filled with papers, a banker’s lamp and two small flags – one of the Egyptian state and the other of the Muslim Brotherhood – sat a tense General Guide. Mahdi ‘Akif was surrounded by a group of senior figures, including the head of the Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc, Hussein Ibrahim, and Ahmed ‘Abd al-Rahman who would play a key role in the Brotherhood’s ‘revolutionary’ wing after the military coup of 2013. The atmosphere had all the trappings of a last-minute arrangement. Reading the election’s results into a microphone, Mahdi ‘Akif announced the new members of the Guidance Office in a stern voice: Osama Nasr al-Din, Gum‘a Amin, Sa‘d al-Hosseini, Rashid al-Bayumi, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Barr, ‘Issam al-‘Arian, Mohammed Badi‘, Sa‘d al-Katatni, Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Morsi, Mohammed Morsi, Mahmud Abu Zayd, Mahmud Hussein, Mahmud ‘Izzat, Muhi Hamid, Mustafa alGhonaymi and Mahmud Ghozlan.180 ‘Arian was finally admitted to the Guidance Office, but only after mounting pressure from Tilmisani’s followers in the Shura Council and following the arrest of Mohammed ‘Ali Bishr during the same elections. While Khairat al-Shatir was the de facto first deputy Guide, the fact that he was in prison at the time of the elections led Mahmud ‘Izzat to formally assume this role, while Mahmud Hussein succeeded ‘Izzat in his previous position as Secretary General.181 Nevertheless, Shatir seems to have participated in the elections ‘from inside the prison’. This was apparently arranged by State Security, which had previously transferred Shatir to the Qasr al-‘Aini university hospital in Dar el-Hikma before the elections, giving him the opportunity to pass messages to his colleagues in the Guidance Office. One of the most intriguing details of the video was the behaviour of Mohammed Morsi – the former parliamentary spokesperson for the Brotherhood bloc who had spoken out against the distribution of sanitary napkins in the People’s Assembly back in 2000. Born in August 1951 in the village of al-‘Adwa in the Sharqiyya governorate, this son of a farmer and a housewife had been recruited into the Brotherhood in 1982. At that time, Morsi completed his doctorate at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Southern California, before spending three years as a teaching assistant at the University of Northridge.182 Returning to Egypt in 1985, he landed 180

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‘The Former General Guide during the Announcement of the Results of the Guidance Office Elections, 2013.’ YouTube, date unknown. www.youtube.com/watch? v=0OpYzXbrhDM (accessed 1 September 2017). Ibrahim, Shadi. Skype conversation with author. Geneva-Istanbul, 3 January 2019. Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 12 January 2012. There are conflicting reports as to Morsi’s accession to the Brotherhood. See ‘Mohamed Morsi.’ Biography. www.biography.com /people/mohamed-morsi-20862695 (accessed 1 September 2017); ‘Profile: Mohamed Morsi.’ Al Jazeera, 21 July 2013. www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/07/

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a teaching assistant job at the Department of Engineering of Zaqaziq University and became a member of the teachers’ association club. It was in this context where he met Mohammed Badi‘, Sa‘d al-Katatni and Mahmud Ghozlan, who all held faculty posts at the same institution. Later, Morsi became a member of the Zionist Resistance Committee in Sharqiyya and then saw a steady rise in the Brotherhood’s hierarchy – a fact that he mainly owed to his mentor and enabler Khairat al-Shatir, to whom he had a deep sense of personal fealty.183 From the beginning, Morsi was seen to be a controversial figure, with some disgruntled former Brotherhood cadres later describing him as a haughty and self-righteous sycophant who acted as Shatir’s willing executioner and was ready to snitch on anyone whom he suspected of ideologically leniency.184 The irregularities of the elections, and the growing amount of nepotism at the highest echelons of decision-making, gave rise to a barrage of criticism from various corners, including from former Wasat Party signatory Ibrahim al-Za‘farani, who had been a member of the electoral supervision committee and as such had first-hand insight into internal voting procedures. Following the publication of the results, Za‘farani submitted a legal appeal to the ‘generous father Mahdi ‘Akif and to the members of the respectable Guidance Office’, where he listed a number of procedural flaws.185 His first grievance concerned the question of the opaque manner in which the electoral procedures had been agreed upon, namely based on a poll wherein the Guidance Office had asked Shura Council members whether they, or the members of the next Shura Council, should elect the members of the new Guidance Office. Za‘farani argued that this issue had been already dealt with in the General Statutes, but that the very question was farcical, for why would the members of an incumbent council decide against their own right to vote? Second, Za‘farani criticized the new distribution of quotas in the Guidance Office. According to the General Statutes, the Brotherhood’s top executive body was supposed to be composed of sixteen members, two of whom were supposed to live abroad. However, article 12 of a newly introduced rule mandated that the Guidance Office had the right to nominate 20 per cent of the members of the Guidance Council, which provided the vanguard leaders with a means to influence its composition and therefore the outcome of any future election. Furthermore, article 36 was added to the General By-laws of 2009 shortly before the elections. The article stipulated that ‘the membership of the Guidance Office shall not be revoked when the member is subjected to

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20137314127329966.html (accessed 1 September 2017); al-Haddad, Abdullah. Interview with author. London, 11 July 2015. Dawud, Khalid. Interview with author. Alexandria, 29 March 2013. Abu Khalil, Haytham. Interview with author. Alexandria, 17 December 2012; Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 22 September 2013. Za‘farani’s letter is reprinted in Abu Khalil. The Reformist Brotherhood, pp. 66–78.

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political imprisonment and detention until such time as the circumstances cease’. This clause was expressly designed to guarantee that Khairat al-Shatir could maintain his seat in the Guidance Office.186 Za‘farani also pointed out that the two Delta governorates Sharqiyya and Daqahliyya, with eight and ten seats respectively, were over-represented in the Shura Council when compared to Cairo and Alexandria, which had only five and six seats respectively.187 This gerrymandering ensured that the Guidance Office was enlarged to eighteen seats – two seats in excess of what was stipulated in the General By-laws of 1990. But the issue most eagerly contested by Za‘farani concerned the timing of the elections. Mahmud ‘Izzat had pressed for the elections to take place in December 2009, thereby giving the vanguard leaders a head start in influencing the voting preferences among Shura Council members. This was opposed by Mohammed Habib, who favoured postponing the elections to June 2010. As usual, ‘Izzat’s recommendation prevailed. Trying to rush the process through as quickly as possible, the Guidance Office announced on 16 December 2009 at 10 p.m. that Shura Council members should submit their votes by 9 a.m. on 18 December, giving them less than 36 hours to make up their minds: The General Shura Council had only [a] few hours to choose. As a result, nobody could effectively supervise the process. Even the members [of the Shura Council] did not know the results of the elections and only learned [about] them from the media. This meant that the people chosen to supervise the elections were not permitted to discuss the validity of the proceeding. [We were] a committee by name only!188

The entire procedure left Shura Council members frustrated and led to widespread discontent within the Brotherhood’s ranks. As a result, Mahdi ‘Akif on 16 January 2010 resigned from his position as the General Guide making good on his announcement of October 2009 that he would not run for a second term.189 The de facto resignation of a sitting Guide was a novelty in the history of the Brotherhood. Several outside observers pointed out that ‘Akif had resigned due to the power struggle between ‘Akif and Mahmud ‘Izzat over the nomination of ‘Issam al-‘Arian.190 But this was only one issue alienating ‘Akif from the hard-liners around ‘Izzat and Shatir. Another factor concerned the 186 187

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Ibrahim, Shadi. Skype conversation with author. Geneva-Istanbul, 21 February 2019. ‘The General By-laws of the Society of the Muslim Brothers of the Year AD 1990 and the Amendments of the Year AD 2009’ in Statutes and By-laws, pp. 293–4. Abu Khalil. The Reformist Brotherhood, p. 70. Yeranian, Edward. ‘Egypt’s Opposition Muslim Brotherhood denies Reports of Dissension.’ Ikhwanweb, 22 October 2009. www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=21374 (accessed 1 September 2017). Gerges, Fawaz. ‘The Muslim Brotherhood: new Leadership, old Politics.’ The Guardian, 20 January 2010. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/20/muslimbrotherhood-egypt (accessed 1 September 2017).

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nomination of the Brotherhood’s new spokesperson in the West, Ibrahim Munir. Following the death of the previous post-holder Hassan Huwaydi in 2010, the as General Guide was legally entitled to nominate a new candidate. In an effort to assuage the ongoing tensions between the Egyptian Brotherhood and various national chapters, ‘Akif wanted to replace Huwaydi with a non-Egyptian. However, Shatir and ‘Izzat opposed ‘Akif’s decision and pushed for their own man, Ibrahim Munir, to occupy the prestigious post. Munir, who was committed to the Qutbist organizational model, had played a key role in the activities of the Special Apparatus during the 1940s, for which he had received a life sentence. Having travelled abroad following his release in 1975, he had been instrumental in establishing Islamic centres in Europe and the Gulf. Although he had worked with ‘Akif in founding the International Organization, the latter considered him incompetent and for this reason opposed his appointment. But the General Guide was outmanoeuvred by his rivals. His intention to nominate a candidate of his choosing was rendered null and void by Mahmud ‘Izzat, who had already dispatched Sa‘d al-Katatni and Sa‘d alHosseini to London to inform Munir of their decision.191 With ‘Akif gone, the vanguard leaders advanced another vanguardist loyalist, Mohammed Badi‘, to the post of General Guide. The sixty-seven-year-old veterinarian was largely unknown among the rank-and-file membership, but was part of the Brotherhood’s inner circle.192 Born in August 1943 in al-Mahalla al-Kubra in the governorate of Gharbiyya, Badi‘ had been recruited in 1962, when former Special Apparatus members attempted to reconstitute the organization’s ranks in the shadow of Nasser’s surveillance apparatus. He was arrested in 1965, along with Mahmud ‘Izzat, and spent the next nine years in prison. After his release in 1974 he worked as a teaching assistant at Zaqaziq University while serving two terms as the Secretary General of the Veterinaries’ Syndicate. Badi‘ was said to be a ‘quintessential insider’ with intricate knowledge over the Brotherhood’s internal administrative procedures.193 His underground experience during the 1960s, and his intellectual proximity to Sayyid Qutb, had made him into a committed vanguardist with a strong preference for the Brotherhood’s da‘wa over its political objectives. Quite in opposition to the independent-minded ‘Akif, he would run the Brotherhood in 191

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‘Ibrāhīm Munīr: al-Rajul al-ghāmid fī Aūrūbā sabab Khliāfāt ‘Akif wa Qyiādāt al-Ikhwān ˙ in Europe is the Reason for the Conflicts between (Ibrahim Munir: the ambiguous Man ‘Akif and the Brotherhood).’ Youm 7, 2 April 2009. https://goo.gl/76haLA (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 1 September 2017). Hamida, Mohammed. ‘Ta‘ayyin Muhammad Badi‘ Murshidan li-l-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn ˙ General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in fī Masr (Mohammed Badie nominated ˙ Egypt).’ I’laf, 17 January 2010. www.elaph.com/Web/news/2010/1/524249.html (accessed 1 September 2017); Scobey, Margaret. ‘MB internal Clashes continue.’. Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 131.

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close consultation with other vanguard loyalists – a fact that was reflected in the choice of his four deputies: Mahmud ‘Izzat, Rashid al-Bayumi, Gum‘a Amin and Khairat al-Shatir. The fiercest contestation against the nomination of Mohammed Badi‘ came from Mohammed Habib, whose hopes for the top job had suddenly vaporized. Threatening to resign, Habib was amazed to find that his colleagues in the Guidance Office were hardly impressed. This deeply troubled the man who had thought of himself as a prestigious figure with a high degree of influence. Perhaps he had not realized the extent to which he was just another pawn in a larger game of chess. Neither had the diplomats of the American Embassy in Cairo, who had placed their bets on Habib and were taken aback by the nomination of Mohammed Badi‘.194 As one dissident later laconically remarked, the ‘final decision over who could stay and go’ always remained with that ‘small clique of insiders’ who managed the Brotherhood as their private turf.195 Weakened, sidelined and humiliated, Habib launched a ferocious attack on the new Murshid and the Qutbist loyalists who had engineered his sacking before indignantly leaving the Brotherhood. ‘Izzat sent a letter to Shatir in prison to inform him of the development.196 With the resignation of Mohammed Habib, almost all the heads of Tilmisanian school of thought had been axed. Besides Abu al-Futuh as the last remaining heavyweight of the generation of the 1970s, only ‘Issam al‘Arian and Mohammed ‘Ali Bishr remained in the Guidance Office; however, they were all assigned to positions carrying little organizational influence. The same was true for middle-rank figures such as Gamal Heshmat, Ibrahim alZa‘farani and Helmi Gazzar, who were handed meaningless sinecures. By early 2010, the vanguard leaders had achieved a virtual monopoly over the Muslim Brotherhood.

On the Eve of the Revolution From early 2010 onward, the Muslim Brotherhood was gradually drawn into a torrent of events that were soon to fundamentally alter the region’s future. Since several years, debates among the general public in Egypt had been fanned by Mubarak’s attempts to enact a system of hereditary succession. When the former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Mohammed al-Baradei, announced in January 2010 that he was to 194 195 196

Scobey, Margaret. ‘MB internal Clashes continue.’. Nuh, Mokhtar. Interview with author. Cairo, 11 March 2013. Hassan, Amro. ‘Former Muslim Brotherhood Leader slams hardline Power Grab.’ LA Times, 6 January 2010. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/01/egypt-resigneddeputy-leader-Slams-brotherhood-elections.html (accessed 1 September 2017).

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return to Cairo, many believed that he would be the right person to unite the fractured Egyptian public and lead the country through the upcoming parliamentary elections of November 2010, and the presidential elections the following September. On 19 February, as news spread that Baradei was to arrive at Cairo International Airport thousands of Egyptians, including many youth members of the Muslim Brotherhood, flocked to the airport to greet him. As one journalist observed, the stiff bureaucrat with his sophisticated spectacles, who had lived in the city of Mozart for many years, was ‘somewhat reluctantly transformed into a dissident leader-in-waiting’.197 And although it was still unclear how the upcoming presidential elections were to play out, Egypt experts had a premonition that the country was ripe for revolution. Reflecting on the political situation from his office in the Middle East Centre at Harvard University, Professor Roger Owen, the doyen of the economic history of the Middle East, ominously mused that ‘something is bubbling underground’.198 Owen’s instinct turned out to be presentient indeed, for on 6 June 2010 a twenty-eight-year-old computer programmer from Alexandria named Khaled Said was brazenly murdered by two police officers. The brutality of this killing broke a psychological barrier in the consciousness of young Egyptians across the political spectrum. Said was representative for the average young, urban, liberal and educated middle-class Egyptian. ‘Everyone else could see in him their neighbour, their sibling or their cousin’, as a 6th of April activist later explained.199 The fact that he was beaten to death in broad daylight was a deep shock to many. The Google executive Wael Ghonim set up a Facebook page called ‘We Are All Khaled Said’, which gained hundreds and thousands of likes within days, and Khaled Said rapidly emerged as a symbol for all those who had fallen victim to the brutal practices of Mubarak’s security forces.200 Over the coming weeks and months, thousands of young Egyptians participated in weekly marches, lining the streets of Cairo and Alexandria in black clothes and showing an impressive ability at peacefully defying an increasingly unhinged regime. Through his ‘National Association for Change’ (al-Jam‘iyya al-Wataniyya li-l-Taghyir) – a loose grouping of opposition movements established in February 2010, whose goal was to ‘form a government of national salvation to restore security and hold accountable those responsible for killing protesters’ – the opposition that coalesced 197

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Shenker, Jack. ‘Supporters give Mohamed ElBaradei Hero’s Welcome at Cairo Airport.’ The Guardian, 19 February 2010. www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/19/mohamedelbaradei-egypt-heavy-security (accessed 1 September 2017). Owen, Roger. Interview with author. Boston, 12 May 2010. Sara (revolutionary activist). Interview with author. Cairo, 4 February 2013. ‘Kullunā Khālid Sa’īd (We are all Khalid Said)’ Facebook group. www.facebook.com /ElShaheeed (accessed 2 August 2015).

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around Baradei leveraged the momentum of growing public discontent to great effectiveness.201 The impunity of the police also occupied the minds of youth members within the Brotherhood’s Student Committee in Cairo. In the wake of Said’s murder, the group around Islam Lotfy, Mohammed al-Qassas and Ahmed ‘Abd al-Gawwad was gradually enlarged to include other politically-minded youth activists such as ‘Abd al-Gawwad’s younger brother Tariq, Hani Mahmud, Mohammed ‘Abbas, Mohammed Uthman and Mohammed ‘Affan. Back in April, the Student Committee had been tasked by Ayman ‘Abd al-Ghany, the deputy head of the Student Section and the husband of Khairat al-Shatir’s oldest daughter Zahra’, to prepare the outline of a ‘New Egypt campaign’ that could be run at universities during the autumn semester of 2010. In drafting their concept note, the members of the Student Committee invited their colleagues from the Political Committee for a mutual brainstorming session. This violated the Brotherhood’s By-laws, which stipulated that any form of collaboration across different functional committees was the exclusive prerogative of the Guidance Office. According to this rule, a committee attached to an Administrative Office was prohibited from contacting members of another committee attached to the same Administrative Office. However, the youth activists around Lotfy and Qassas believed that it was exactly such measures that were necessary. This was particularly true in light of the regime’s determination to install a system of hereditary succession in Egypt, which would exclude the Brotherhood from participating in the upcoming People’s Assembly elections. They argued that, despite their strong performance at the ballot box during the 2005 elections, the Brotherhood had made little progress in advancing its agenda, and for this reason pushed their leaders to form a political party that could escalate street protests and further weaken the regime’s position.202 When the leaders of the Student Committee presented Ayman ‘Abd alGhany with the outcomes of their discussions, the latter rejected their proposal out of hand. ‘Abd al-Ghany argued that the conception of change advocated by the youth members was ‘too narrow’. Instead of focusing exclusively on political aspects, he advised them to embrace a ‘comprehensive’ understanding of change – one that included moral, ethical and religious criteria as well. During a heated discussion, ‘Affan and others challenged ‘Abd al-Ghany, reproaching him that the Brotherhood needed to adapt to a changing reality. The label ‘comprehensiveness’ to them represented a mere excuse that was apologetically used in order for the Brotherhood to remain idle and stagnant. It 201

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‘ElBaradei: we need to form a Government of National Salvation.’ Daily News Egypt, 12 July 2011. www.dailynewsegypt.com/2011/07/12/elbaradei-we-need-to-form-a-gov ernment-of-national-salvation/ (accessed 30 April 2017). ‘Affan, Mohammed. Interview with author. Istanbul, 20 March 2017.

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was incomprehensible to them how the decision-makers in the Guidance Office, despite the political upheaval caused by Baradei’s arrival and Khalid Said’s murder, could so stubbornly remain focused on piety and morality. Opposing the vanguard leaders’ ‘closed organizational style’, the younger members pressed for a ‘looser, less centralized’ structure. And while they were certain that their requests for change would not be taken seriously by their leaders, they also felt that there was ‘nothing to do outside the Brotherhood’.203 These internal conflicts materialized to an even greater degree during the elections for the People’s Assembly in November 2010, which constituted the latest sign that the processes of democratic opening and national political reform had been permanently reversed. All major political parties in Egypt had boycotted the elections, knowing that participating in such an obviously fraudulent process would lend legitimacy to Mubarak’s ‘fantasy project’ of installing his son in power.204 The refusal of the vanguard leaders to follow the same line infuriated many younger Brothers, among them Hani Mahmud and Mohammed ‘Affan, who wrote a document whose idiomatic title ‘Fi-l-mishmish’ referred to the attitude of the Guidance Office to continuously postpone and never realize its promises.205 When Hani Mahmud visited Helmi Gazzar, the head of the 6th of October City Administrative Office, to get an explanation for this decision, the latter replied that the Brotherhood’s participation would at least enable them to engage with the people through the election programme. At this point, Mahmud lost his temper. ‘Doctor’, he said: We have repeated this many, many times and at various levels [of the organization]: this is a political operation, not a da‘wa [operation]. For you to enter a political operation during such a sensitive time for the nation, purely for reasons [related to] da‘wa, is simply not right.206

Mohammed Badi‘ later justified the decision of the Guidance Office by claiming that it was supported by a large majority of Shura Council members. In reality, it seems that only 52 per cent of the Council’s members had agreed with this decision.207 Overall, the way in which the elections of 2010 were conducted constituted a blighting example for the arrogance with which the regime treated its citizens. Violence instigated by regime-hired thugs claimed eight lives while international 203 204 205

206 207

Ibid. Mahmud, Hani. Interview with author. Doha, 18 April 2017. The Egyptian idom bukra fi-l-mishmish, which translates as ‘tomorrow, there will be apricots’, refers to a promise that is continually postponed but never realized, analogous to the Latin expression ad kalendas Graecas. ‘Affan, Mohammed. Interview with author. Istanbul, 20 March 2017. Hill, Evan. ‘The Muslim Brotherhood in Flux.’ Al Jazeera English, 21 November 2010. www .aljazeera.com/indepth/2010/11/2010111681527837704.html (accessed 1 September 2017).

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monitoring organizations criticized the elections due to high levels of voter intimidation and fraud. After the NDP had captured 83 per cent of the seats, not a single one of the 135 participating Brotherhood candidates had won. Instead, over 1,200 Brotherhood members were arrested. The stage-managed election wiped out the formal opposition and axed the 88-member-strong parliamentary contingent of the Brotherhood down to zero. Islamist candidates pulled out of the race during the second round, causing another embarrassment for Mubarak vis-à-vis the United States. By the end of December, Egypt’s prisons counted over 17,000 inmates. The 2010 elections also exacerbated the tensions within the ranks of the Brotherhood. Various political disputes, intrigues, scandals and inflated senses of ego had polarized a Society that had always prided itself for its spiritual and organizational cohesion. Thus was the internal state of the Muslim Brotherhood when, on 17 December 2010, in the remote town of Sidi Bouzid in central Tunisia, a young street vendor named Mohammed al-Bu‘azizi set himself on fire after a policewoman had confiscated his fruit chart. As protests rumbled across the Tunisian hinterland, the activists in Cairo felt that ‘revolution was in the air’.208 On 10 January, as massive crowds of Tunisians demonstrated against their dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, youth activists in Egypt issued calls for protests to be held. As a date, they chose the upcoming ‘Police Day’ on 25 January – a national holiday that commemorated the lives of the Egyptian police officers killed in 1952 by the British during their defence of the Ismailiyya police station. Hashtags such as #fuckmubarak went viral on Twitter. The stage was set for the dramatic chain of events that would enter the history books as the ‘Arab Spring’.

208

Qutb, Hassaneen. Interview with author. Cairo, 25 December 2012.

6 Revolution, Rise and Fall (2011–2013)

Keep protecting Egypt. Keep protecting the revolution, which we gained, with our sweat, and the blood of our martyrs in two and a half years. Keep it safe, all of you. O you who are with me. O you who are against me. Don’t let the revolution be stolen from you – without any excuses! There are so many magicians, and the challenges are huge! Mohammed Morsi, televised address (July 2013)

On 25 January 2011, Egypt witnessed the start of an unprecedented popular uprising. Coming at the heels of the fall of Ben Ali in Tunisia eleven days before, urban insurgencies flared up in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Port Said, Mansura, Tanta and other cities before spreading like wildfire across the country. On 6 February, as an embattled State Security Apparatus sought to contain an increasingly uncontrollable situation, Egyptian workers began to join the uprising in large numbers. On 11 February, pressured by the United States and following an internal coup by the Egyptian Armed Forces, the regime of Hosni Mubarak was ousted after thirty years in power. As the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) took over the affairs of governing the country, a turbulent transition was set into motion. Confronted with this novel situation, the members of the Guidance Office for the first time contemplated the idea that the Brotherhood could play a leading role in Egypt’s post-revolutionary order. While the scale and vehemence of the uprising had caught them off guard, they cleverly seized the momentum by framing the uprising as an opportune moment for their empowerment. Through a combination of political manoeuvring on the national and international levels and a campaign of sustained pressure on the streets, in November 2011 the Brotherhood’s recently constituted Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) managed to gain a majority of seats in the People’s Assembly. Seven months later, Mohammed Morsi became president in what many considered to be Egypt’s first free and fair election. As they faced the task of governing Egypt, the Brotherhood’s structural weaknesses became quickly apparent. A growing rebellion among the Brotherhood’s own youth cadres transformed the previously contained 230

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diversity of opinions into an open insurgency. This situation was exacerbated as the vanguard leaders were unable to formulate a political vision that was capable of uniting their own ranks, not to speak of an Egyptian populace fractured along multiple religious–political, socio-economic and generational lines. Neither were they capable of delivering on the demands of the revolution – immortalized in the iconic chant ‘bread, freedom, social justice’. Absent a strategy to improve Egypt’s worsening crisis, the government of Mohammed Morsi reproduced the same neoliberal policies of previous regimes while trying to wrestle through a constitutional draft even against the opposition of wide segments of Egyptian society. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood’s enemies within the army, the State Security Apparatus and the bureaucracy did their utmost to obstruct any possibility for Morsi’s government to succeed. Staffed with inexperienced individuals, Morsi’s two administrations displayed an erratic and uncoordinated behaviour that embarrassed Egypt internationally and increasingly estranged Morsi from the citizens he was chosen to represent. The duplicity of the vanguard leaders’ policies, the Guidance Office’s lack of preparedness and imagination, and the Brotherhood’s general inability to transform itself from an opposition movement to a governing party weakened Morsi’s popular mandate at critical junctures and increasingly turned the popular tide against him. In the end, and with the active support of the national and international forces of the counter-revolution, the masses that had enabled the Brotherhood’s rise to power mobilized once again to push them back into the underground. This chapter focuses on the tumultuous two-and-a-half years from the outbreak of the Egyptian uprising on 25 January 2011 to the removal of Mohammed Morsi on 3 July 2013 by the Egyptian Armed Forces. The chapter excavates the debates between the Brotherhood’s revolutionary activists and the vanguard leaders in the Guidance Office, It reveals an organization grappling with questions of power and whose leaders, finding themselves increasingly at odds with the demands of the revolution, dismissed the Brotherhood’s own youth members in favour of an alliance with the military. The chapter further focuses on the increasingly acrimonious debates within the Brotherhood during the transition and Morsi’s one-year presidency, giving way to an organization that was incapable of adapting to the rapidly changing circumstances of a revolutionized society. It shows how the Society’s decision-makers committed a series of fatal errors that enabled a broad popular opposition against the Morsi government, allowing a resurgent military regime to oust the president. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Egypt, more than one-hundred Oral History interviews with current and former Brotherhood members from across all organizational ranks, dozens of interviews with eyewitnesses, a wide reading of Brotherhood-related online sources and social media accounts, the reading of memoirs and articles, as well as of the available literature, this chapter traces the

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Brotherhood’s rapid rise and sudden fall within the unpredictable and fastmoving context of revolutionary Egypt. ***

The Origins of the Uprising Like any great historical event, the revolution of 25 January 2011 was caused by a complex set of circumstances.1 As the murder of Khaled Said showed, the degeneracy of a security apparatus operating with complete impunity exemplified a general lack of accountability and democratic governance.2 Egypt’s foreign policy contributed to the erosion of the regime’s legitimacy as well. The fact that Mubarak squeezed Hamas by supporting Israel in tightening its siege on the Gaza Strip made him look like a deferential contractor for the interests of his American and Israeli patrons.3 On a structural level, decades of neoliberal economic policies had failed to deliver any tangible progress, causing high levels of nepotism and corruption within the governing elite while the middle class saw its modest levels of affluence evaporate. When a wave of droughts in the United States, Australia and Russia during the summer of 2010 caused sharp spikes in global grain prices, exacerbated by speculative practices 1

2

3

These have been extensively analysed in a wide range of scholarly and journalistic accounts, such as Khalil, Ashraf. Liberation Square: Inside the Egyptian Revolution and the Rebirth of a Nation. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011; West, Johnny. Karama! Journeys through the Arab Spring. London: Heron, 2011; Dabashi, Hamid. The Arab Spring: the End of Postcolonialism. London: Zed Books, 2012; Lynch, Marc. The Arab Uprising: the Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East. New York: Public Affairs, 2013; Gunning, Jeroen. Why Occupy a Square? People, Protests and Movements in the Egyptian Revolution. London: Hurst & Company, 2013; Tripp, Charles. The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013; Alexander, Anne. Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: Workers and the Egyptian Revolution. London: Zed Books, 2014; Cole, Juan Ricardo. The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014; Achcar, Gilbert. Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in the Arab Uprising. London: Saqi, 2016; Bassiouni, M. Cherif. Chronicles of the Egyptian Revolution and Its Aftermath; 2011–2016. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016; Chalcraft, John T. Popular Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016; Ketchley, Neil. Egypt in a Time of Revolution: Contentious Politics and the Arab Spring. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017; Bayat, Asef. Revolution without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017; Kirkpatrick, David D. Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East. London: Bloomsbury Circus, 2018. ‘The Arab Barometer Project: Arab Republic of Egypt.’ Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, June 2011. www.arabbarometer.org/country-report (accessed 3 September 2017). Gerges, Fawaz A. Obama and the Middle East: the End of America’s Moment? New York; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, p. 164.

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of global commodity trading firms, the situation went out of control. At the end of 2010, rising costs of living cut deep into the household budgets of average-income families.4 All these factors combined to inflate the grievances of average Egyptians who, after having been ruled by the same corrupt regime for thirty years, were simply fed up with the status quo.5 Beyond these factors, the most decisive reason for the outbreak of the ‘25 January Revolution’ was the courage and determination of a small group of activists who managed to mobilize hundreds and thousands – and in some cases even millions – of citizens into the streets and squares of Egypt.6 These activists were able to draw on a decade of experience in urban mobilization and street action, which they had gained since the early 2000s. By January 2011, the culture of protest and dissent embodied by these activists had attained such a vehemence that they were able to sustain the revolutionary momentum for eighteen days. In a series of demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins and marches, the revolutionaries occupied the iconic space of Tahrir Square, defending it against invading thugs of the old regime and putting a symbolic mark on what became known as the ‘Arab Spring’. The core group of these activists consisted of approximately twenty individuals in their late twenties or early thirties.7 They were supported by the Ahlawy 4

5

6

7

‘Glencore reveals Bet on Grain Price Rise.’ Financial Times, 24 April 2011. www.ft.com/cms/s/ 0/aea76c56-6ea5-11e0-a13b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3dR1wxWgo (accessed 3 September 2017). On this point, see Troughton, Michael J. Globalized Agriculture: Political Choice. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1993. Protectionist policies by the governments of the affected countries further exacerbated grain shortages on global markets. See Sternberg, Troy. ‘Chinese Drought, Bread and the Arab Spring.’ Applied Geography 34 (2012), pp. 519–24. The relationship of global food prices and the uprising in Egypt is analysed in the doctoral dissertation of Barthes, Charlotte Malterre. Food Territories. The Political Economy of Food Systems and its Effects on the Built Environment: Case Study Egypt. Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich, 2016. ‘3rd Annual ASDA’A Burson-Marsteller Arab Youth Survey, 2010–2011.’ ASDA’A BursonMarsteller. www.arabyouthsurvey.com/en/media/whitepaper (accessed 3 September 2017). el-Chazli, Youssef. ‘Four Scenes of the Egyptian Revolution in Alexandria: a MicroHistory of January 25.’ Mada Masr, 25 January 2017. www.madamasr.com/en/2017/01/ 25/feature/politics/four-scenes-of-the-egyptian-revolution-in-alexandria-a-microhistoryof-january-25/ (accessed 3 September 2017). The main ringleaders of the revolution were Ahmed Maher, Asmaa‘ Mahfuz, Mohammed ‘Adel and Israa‘ ‘Abd al-Fattah from the 6th of April Movement; the independent blogger ‘Ala’ ‘Abd al-Fattah and his sister, the human rights activist Mona Seif; Sameh Naguib, Mustafa Shawki and Hussam al-Hamalawy from the Revolutionary Socialists; Wael Ghonim, a computer engineer and the initiator of the ‘We are all Khaled Said’ Facebook group; Khalid al-Sayyid and Khalid ‘Abd al-Hamid from the leftist group ‘Youth for Justice and Freedom’ (Shabab min ajl al-‘Adala wa-l-Hurriyya); Ziyyad al-‘Alaymi and ‘Amr Salah from the ‘Elbaradei for President of Egypt’ campaign; ‘Abd al-Rahman Faris and ‘Abd alRahman Samir from the Kefaya movement; the unaffiliated activist Sally Tuma; as well as – in an unofficial capacity – youth activists from the Muslim Brotherhood. The Ultras soccer fans from the Zamalek and al-Ahly football clubs, traditionally suspicious of any kind of

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and White Knights Ultras – the soccer fans of the al-Ahly and the Zamalek football clubs – who commanded tightly organized structures of battlehardened youths. The activists followed a number of well-defined strategies they had tested and refined during previous protest actions. Relying on social media in terms of communication and planning, they had started preparing for the marches at a time when the revolution in Tunisia was still unfolding.8 Via Facebook and Twitter, they initiated a steady communication flow with their fellow revolutionaries in Tunisia, exchanging best practices on crowd mobilization and protest action. Control rooms were set up at the homes of some activists, from where the news of the revolution was disseminated to global audiences.9 The fact that some activists had previously participated in a youth summit that was co-sponsored by US tech giants and the Department of State later gave rise to rumours that the US government had been planning the uprising.10 According to one theory, US secret service agents had bribed the protesters by handing out free chicken wings and coleslaw salad through the Kentucky Fried Chicken fast-food franchise at Tahrir Square.11 In a twist of tragic irony, after 2013 the military regime used these stories as evidence for blaming the activists of the 25 January uprising for having colluded with foreign powers in a devious scheme to destabilize the country.12 The revolutionaries were systematic and meticulous in the way they mobilized the masses. During the weeks before 25 January, scores of activists roamed the streets of Cairo and Alexandria in order to distribute flyers and leaflets political activism, were particularly fearless, fighting at the frontlines against an increasingly unchecked security apparatus and feeding the revolution with many of its early martyrs. See Marwa (revolutionary activist). Interview with author. Cairo, 12 January 2013. 8 With 39.8 users per 100 people and a rate of 71.2 per cent social media network penetration, the Arab region – bound together by a shared language, history and heritage – was certainly a fertile ground for one of the twenty-first century’s first major revolutions to unfold. See World Bank. ‘World Development Indicators: Internet users (per 100 people).’ http://databank.worldbank.org/ (accessed 3 September 2017). 9 ‘Amr (revolutionary activist). Interview with author. Cairo, 25 December 2012. 10 ‘U.S. Department of State: Press Release on Alliance of Youth Movements Summit, December 3–5 [2008].’ Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, 28 January 2011, published on https://anarchitext.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/usds-alliance-of-youth/ (accessed 3 September 2017); Nixon, Ron. ‘U.S.-Financed Groups had supporting Role in Arab Uprisings.’ New York Times, 14 April 2011. www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/ world/15aid.html (accessed 3 September 2017). 11 ‘The Arab Awakening – the End of a Dictator.’ Al Jazeera, 8 April 2011. www .youtube.com/watch?v=VzNzOiao418#t=773.114982 (accessed 3 September 2017). 12 Magd, Zeinab. ‘Occupying Tahrir Square: The Myths and the Realities of the Egyptian Revolution.’ South Atlantic Quarterly 111, no. 3 (2012), pp. 565–72, and the arguments made by Tariq Ramadan in The Arab Awakening: Islam and the New Middle East. London: Allen Lane, 2012.

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announcing the impending demonstrations. Random debates were initiated in microbuses, at metro stations and at street corners in order to get a sense of the level of dissatisfaction among the general population. Anonymous surveys were collected and the survey data was subsequently evaluated in Excel sheets in order to obtain metrics on the percentage of people who were likely to join the protests.13 The abdication of Ben Ali in Tunisia on 14 February had an electrifying effect on the Egyptian activists, as they spread a new narrative that framed the demonstrations planned for the Police Day of 25 January as a ‘revolution’.14 Activities were considerably intensified on 21 January, when a crossideological group of activists came together in the nucleus of what would become known as the ‘Revolutionary Youth Coalition’ (I’tilaf Shabab alThawra).15 During the following days, the core activists left their homes to avoid a potential arrest by the police. On 24 January in the morning, they announced two official protest sites for people to gather during the next morning: the High Court in Downtown Cairo and the Doctors’ Union at Qasr al-‘Aini Street in Garden City. Other locations were agreed upon as well, but they were not publicly announced. In what was a deliberate tactic aimed at confusing the security forces, only the core organizers knew where the actual protests were going to start. Other meeting points were announced as ‘camouflage’ with the purpose of creating ‘imaginary revolutions’ on social media in order to confuse the security forces. One activist from Alexandria remembers: I updated my Facebook status that there was a gathering of over hundred protestors in [the Alexandrian neighbourhood of] Muharram Bey . . . . Many journalists commented and tried to reach me to verify this fact. I did not respond. Half an hour before going out, I deleted my [Facebook] status, and then made another [status] update: ‘I’m sorry, that was not a protest, it was just a school trip.’ When I left my house, I discovered that Muharram Bey was completely blocked by police officers. They’ve all come! The Central Security Forces, the ordinary officers of the police stations – all the branches [of the security apparatus] had come to Muharram Bey!16

The mobilization of average Egyptians was planned to begin on Tuesday at 2 p.m. Again, the ring leaders followed a well-defined script, whereby a small 13

14 15

16

Through these surveys, the activists learned that whereas before the departure of Ben Ali only three out of ten people had responded favourably to joining the protests, this number jumped to 70 per cent after 14 February. See ‘Amr (revolutionary activist). Interview with author. Cairo, 25 December 2012. Ibid. ‘I’tilāf Shabāb al-Thawra (Revolutionary Youth Coalition)’ Facebook group. www .facebook.com/Revolution.coalition/ (accessed 3 September 2017). Gamal (revolutionary activist). Interview with author. Cairo, 12 January 2013.

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group of activists would gather at one of the pre-defined meeting points and start shouting revolutionary slogans: We would never start the revolution with [slogans like] ‘Down, down with Mubarak’, because we wanted to attract as many people as we could. Thus, we would start with social demands: ‘we want bread, we want freedom, we want dignity, we want social justice’.17

This tactic allowed them to incite politically uninvolved Egyptians, many of whom considered calls for the removal of Mubarak to be a taboo and who would have been unlikely to join the marches if the activists would have called for this from the get-go. The geography of the uprising followed a well-defined plan as well: We would start protests in narrow alleys . . . and then, after mobilizing certain numbers of protestors, we would branch out into one of the main squares, or the main roundabouts. Thus, this technique of starting with social demands and mobilizing people in poor neighbourhoods, and then moving to the bigger squares – these two techniques were used during 25 January.18

Whereas protest actions would begin with some fifty or one-hundred activists, the numbers typically spiked up into the thousands in less than an hour. It was only once the marches had attracted massive numbers of people that the slogans were changed from Aysh, hurriyya, ‘adala ijtima‘iyya! – Bread, freedom, social justice!

to Yasqut, yasqut Hosni Mubarak! – Down, down with Hosni Mubarak!

Thus, in the late afternoon of 25 January, as most Cairenes went about their daily business, a dozen marches, each numbering several thousands, set off from different locations in Cairo in order to converge towards Tahrir Square.

The Brotherhood and the Revolution As the activists prepared for the uprising, the Brotherhood leadership was undecided on what position it should adopt vis-à-vis the protests. During a Guidance Office meeting on 22 January, concerns were raised over the consequences the Brotherhood would face if it dared to mobilize its rank-and-file supporters.19 As the pressure from the street intensified, the Brotherhood’s 17 18 19

Ibid. ‘Amr (revolutionary activist). Interview with author. Cairo, 25 December 2012. Al-Hurriyya wa-l-‘Adala, 17 November 2011. Quoted in Ketchley. Egypt in a Time of Revolution, p. 107.

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youth members eagerly tried to convince their leaders of the importance of becoming part of the street action. Many youth activists had a palpable sense that something big was about to transpire and they were convinced that the Brotherhood could not afford to take a back seat.20 Being met with obstructionism and denial on the part of their leaders, all the youth activists were able to obtain was a parsimonious televised statement by ‘Issam al-‘Arian, who declared that the Brotherhood would let its members protest, but only ‘on an individual basis’.21 This was far less than what they had hoped for. Instead of an ‘organizational assignment’, the decision on whether or not to participate was left to the discretion of individuals, which made a low turnout all but certain.22 When, in the morning of 25 January, a heterogeneous crowd of activists, movie actors, television figures, literati and a small group of Brotherhood youth members gathered in front of the Doctors’ Union in Garden City and the High Court in Downtown Cairo, it was not lost to anyone that ‘Issam al-‘Arian’s half-hearted speech merely served publicity purposes.23 While this gathering took place, Hani Mahmud and some hundred activists had already set off marching from Nahiya, a suburb located some 15 kilometres west of Cairo, through the popular neighbourhoods of Bulaq al-Daqrur and al-Duqqi towards Tahrir Square. As they marched, hundreds of civilians were joining [us] – normal people who were just joining from work and home. Those who weren’t joining were throwing flags at us, as well as water to drink. So even those who weren’t joining were approving [of the protests] and engaged with us. I had never seen this before! Earlier, we would usually go to protests and get beaten up and arrested. No one would interfere, and some people even disliked the fact we were protesting. But this time was different.24

After having overcome various security checkpoints, the march reached Tahrir Square in the late afternoon. Hani Mahmud rang up ‘Issam al-‘Arian, enthusiastically informing him about the developments on the ground and eagerly awaiting instructions on how to proceed. He could not believe hearing his superior saying that the demonstrations were ‘not a big deal’. Others similarly reported the extent to which the members of the Guidance Office were out of 20

21

22 23

24

Mahmud, Hani. Interview with author. Doha, 18 April 2017; ‘Affan, Mohammed. Interview with author. Istanbul. 20 March 2017. ‘Bayān D. ‘Issām al-‘Ariān hawla Mawqif al-Ikhhān al-Muslimīn min al-Musharaka fī Thawra 25 Yanāīr (Statement by Dr ‘Issam al-‘Arian regarding the Position of the Muslim Brotherhood on participating in the 25 January Revolution).’ YouTube, 25 January 2011. www .youtube.com/watch?v=ToR2CLHsANk&feature=youtu.be (accessed 3 September 2017). Mahmud, Hani. Interview with author. Doha, 18 April 2017. ‘Bidāya Thawra Yanāīr min amām Dār al-Qadā’ Al-‘ālī (The Beginning of the January ˙ Revolution in front of the High Court).’ YouTube, 25 January 2011. www.youtube.com /watch?v=NXIIuwk4T_8 (accessed 5 September 2017). Mahmud, Hani. Interview with author. Doha, 18 April 2017.

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touch with reality. A letter written by an unknown Brotherhood youth member, which was published by Wikileaks in June 2015 as part of the so-called Saudi Leaks, describes the repeated attempts by activists to get in touch with their superiors, trying to impress upon them the urgency of playing an active role in what promised to become massive demonstrations.25 But once they understood Mahmud ‘Izzat’s unequivocal refusal to support the protests, Hani Mahmud decided to take things into his own hands. Standing at Tahrir Square in the midst of a swelling crowd, he called a fellow activist in Alexandria and urged him to organize a sit-in, only to learn that the Brothers in Alexandria, upon orders from above, had already ended the demonstration and were on their way back home. As expected, each administrative office had interpreted ‘Issam al-‘Arian’s statement in a different way. That’s why the Brotherhood’s numbers in the streets were relatively small compared to [its total membership]. If [‘Issam al-‘Arian’s] statement had been an organizational assignment, hundreds of thousands would have been in the streets.26

That night, Islam Lotfy and Hani Mahmud made another attempt to intervene with their leaders, urging them to disseminate organizational directives to the rank and file, and reminding them that several martyrs had already been sacrificed. The regime, they argued, had already blamed the Brotherhood of fomenting the uprising, so whether or not they effectively joined did not matter anymore. Mahmud ‘Izzat’s response was that, ‘since this movement started from the people, he prefers it to be completed by [the people] and that we shouldn’t interfere’.27 At the same time, the following message was percolated down the Brotherhood’s chain of command: ‘Very important – must reach all Brothers and Sisters at all levels: It is forbidden to contact anyone of the members of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition.’28 At a Sisters’ meeting in Alexandria the next day, Mahmud Ghozlan, the brother-in-law of Khairat alShatir, publicly derided the insubordinate youth leaders for having dared to defy the orders of the senior command.29 Meanwhile at Tahrir Square, the Brotherhood’s youth activists fought sideby-side with the rest of the revolutionaries to defend the Square against invading police forces. Skirmishes continued until around 5 a.m., with other 25

26 27 28

29

The letter was part of 60,000 diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks in January 2015, detailing Saudi diplomatic communications. ‘WikiLeaks Publishes the Saudi Cables.’ Wikileaks: The Saudi Cables, 19 June 2015. https://wikileaks.org/saudi-cables/press (accessed 3 September 2017). Mahmud, Hani. Interview with author. Doha, 18 April 2017. Ibid. Anonymous. ‘Letter.’ Wikileaks: The Saudi Cables, date unknown. https://wikileaks.org /saudi-cables/doc54578.html (accessed 27 January 2017). Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 10 October 2012.

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stand-offs taking place in the morning of the 26th. At that point, the revolutionary zeal had already spread across the country. The news that hundreds of Bedouins had exchanged gunfire with the police in the Sinai had made it clear that this was not simply an urban uprising anymore, but that the entire country had been captured by the revolutionary wave.30 The activists now started to direct their resources towards the organization of the ‘Friday of Anger’ (Jum‘at al-Ghadab) protests, planned for 28 January. The Brotherhood’s youth activists by now organized themselves independently from the Guidance Office, coordinating with the ringleaders from the secular, liberal and socialist camps, as well as from Baradei’s National Association for Change. Planning committees were created to define crowd mobilization strategies, marching routes and protest chants. The Brotherhood’s youth leaders contributed in vital ways to the organization by means of their detailed knowledge of the urban topography in certain areas of Cairo.31 As previously, ‘twenty false meeting points’ were announced on social media to confuse the security forces.32 The actual protest marches started in Cairo’s most densely populated areas and press towards Tahrir Square as the symbolic centre of the revolution. In the early-morning hours of 28 January, the regime cut off telephone and internet lines, leaving hundreds and thousands of Egyptians without communication. This decision infuriated citizens across the country and decisively contributed to the spread of the revolutionary momentum on a nationwide scale. By now, the Brotherhood had reached a point of no return. Faced with an accelerating momentum on the street, the vanguard leaders still hesitated, fearing that, were they to mobilize their ground troops while the revolution failed to drive the regime out of power, the security forces would crack down fiercely once they had retrieved their energy.33 It was only after the arrests of several high-ranking leaders in the evening of 27 January, including Mohammed Morsi, ‘Issam al-‘Arian and Sa‘d al-Katatni, that the Guidance Office agreed to support the demonstrations planned for the following day.34 However, rather than marching side-by-side with the youth activists, administrative offices were instructed to organize ‘standing protests’ in front of each city’s main mosque. This half-hearted decision infuriated youth activists like Hani Mahmud: ‘We were just to go to some important monument or site, stand there for a couple of hours, say some words, and then leave? The decision

30

31 32 33 34

‘Egypt Burning.’ Al Jazeera, 5 February 2011. www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2WeW_CRXxE (accessed 3 September 2017). Mahmud, Hani. Interview with author. Doha, 18 April 2017. Anonymous. ‘Letter.’ Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 20 November 2012. There is a debate as to the exact day when the leadership gave the order for the Brotherhood to join the revolution. Ahmed Ban was adamant that the date of the endorsement was 29 January 2011, and not on 27 January in the evening.

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was catastrophic for us, since all our plans were designed for marching.’ In a desperate attempt not to lose the momentum, we started calling everyone we knew in the leadership. We wanted to tell them that [the leaders in the Guidance Office] were destroying the country, and that the people [who would protest] tomorrow will be massacred. We had been saying before the 28th that the only way [the revolution] would succeed was if a large number of people would go down into the streets, which is how they would be protected from State Security. The only way to overcome the heavy violence of [the] State Security [Apparatus] was through large numbers. We told them that what we’ve been doing for the last three days was essentially planning an uprising, and if this didn’t happen, we would all be arrested and tried.35

After the noon prayers on 28 January, MCs at different locations started to rile up the masses by singing revolutionary chants. One of the marches that set off the Istiqama Mosque in Giza had swelled into tens of thousands of people within half an hour and steadily increased in size and ferocity as it moved north towards Tahrir Square. Another protest march set off from the Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya Mosque in Nasser City. As the poorly equipped troopers from the Central Security Forces realized that they were unable to withstand such massive numbers, they fell back and reassembled at locations around Tahrir Square, near the Egyptian Museum at the northern perimeter. As the masses descended towards Tahrir Square, news emerged that clashes had erupted in Alexandria, al-Mahalla al-Kubra, Mansura, Damietta, Port Said, Ismailiyya, Suez and Luxor. At around 4 p.m., a now-famous battle unfolded on the Qasr al-Nile Bridge, which lead towards Tahrir Square from the west. After a pitched standoff with the security forces, the revolutionary crowds finally pushed through the barricades to reach the Square at around 7 p.m. Tens of thousands of people now streamed towards the epicentre of the revolution, their roaring chants thundering: Al-sha‘b – yurid – isqat al-nizam! – The people want to bring down the regime! Al-sha‘b – yurid – isqat al-nizam! – The people want to bring down the regime! Al-sha‘b – yurid – isqat al-nizam! – The people want to bring down the regime!

In the night, a group of protesters stormed to the headquarters of the NDP, the symbolic seat of Mubarak’s power, ransacking the building and pillaging its documents before setting it ablaze.36

35 36

Mahmud, Hani. Interview with author. Doha, 18 April 2017. ‘Egypt Burning.’ Al Jazeera, 5 February 2011. www.youtube.com/watch? v=q2WeW_CRXxE (accessed 3 September 2017).

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The next morning, Mubarak announced the formation of a new government and appointed the head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Directorate, ‘Omar Sulayman, as his vice president. But governing authority on the streets had already started to dissipate. The Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey tweeted: ‘there’s no state at the moment, we’re governing ourselves #Jan25’.37 A funeral procession held in honour of Mustafa alSawi – the revolution’s youngest martyr so far – was attacked by security forces, causing the death of another eight people.38 News emerged that the president had dissimulated directives to the senior military command to shoot with live ammunition at the roughly three thousand protesters who held out at Tahrir Square, but that officers on the ground had defied the order. In the evening, fighter jets of the Air Force roared through the sky while military manoeuvres continued throughout the capital. Angered by the police force’s savagery, the protesters’ revolutionary chants took on a more sinister tone: Al-sha‘b – yurid – i‘dam al-saffah! – The people want the execution of the mass murderer!

On 30 January, an awkward interaction occurred between the Brotherhood’s youth activists and Ayman ‘Abd al-Ghany, who presented them with a paper outlining the Guidance Office’s negotiation strategy with the regime. According to the document, the Brotherhood had demanded that the regime should cancel next September’s presidential elections, implement political and legal reforms, and annul the Emergency Laws of 1981. Coming at the heels of the savage attack on Mustafa al-Sawi’s funeral procession, the youth activists were flabbergasted by the degree of disconnectedness exhibited by the leadership: We took the papers and threw them in the garbage. I and a few other [Brothers] went to the Guidance Office to meet Mahmud ‘Izzat. We had a fight with him . . . . How could they be prepared to negotiate with this regime that is killing people? If the protesters would see the Brotherhood’s demands, it would mean that the Brotherhood was selling the revolution out. The protesters would start to worry and leave the squares!39

As the situation on the street deteriorated the following day, the regime ordered that the gates of various prisons housing senior Brotherhood members, radical Islamist militants and ordinary criminals should be opened, 37

38

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Sandmonkey Twitter account @Sandmonkey, 29 January 2011. https://twitter.com /Sandmonkey (accessed 15 April 2018). See the essay by Armbrust, Walter. ‘The Iconic Stage: Martyrologies and Performance Frames in the 25 January Revolution’ in Abou-El-Fadl, Reem. Revolutionary Egypt: Connecting Domestic and International Struggles. London: Routledge, 2015, pp. 83–111. Mahmud, Hani. Interview with author. Doha, 18 April 2017.

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including the prison of Wadi al-Natrun.40 In the night of 31 January an excitable Morsi detailed the prison run in a frantic telephone conversation that was broadcast live on Al Jazeera. ‘I speak to you now! I speak to the world. We didn’t flee! . . . We are here! I am here! The telephone is here!’ Morsi yelled in sheer excitement. When the anchor asked him to describe who else had escaped with him, he replied: We are thirty-four members of the Brotherhood [including] Mohammed Morsi, ‘Issam al-‘Arian, Sa‘d al-Katatni, Muhi Hamid, Mahmud Abu Zayd, Mustafa al-Ghonaymi and Sa‘d al-Hosseini. Those seven members are from the Guidance Office.41

Four years later, the events of that night would form the centrepiece in the state prosecution’s case to demand the death penalty for Mohammed Morsi.

Nascent Relations with the Army On 2 February, an armada of regime-hired thugs on horses and camels launched a ferocious attack against the activists in Tahrir Square.42 The ‘Battle of the Camel’ was one of the most iconic moments of this uprising and contributed in decisive ways to the delegitimization of Hosni Mubarak’s regime. As the images of chaotic scenes were streamed around the world, officials in the Obama administration engaged in a series of heated debates about how the United States should respond to the enfolding drama in Egypt. Susan Rice, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, argued that America could not afford to be seen as standing on ‘the wrong side of history’. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, were desperate to convince the president that turning his back on one of America’s oldest strategic allies would have unpredictable consequences for US national security interests in the Middle East.43 As Barrack Obama weighed the advantages of each response, the situation in Tahrir Square developed a dynamic of its own. Many rank-and-file members of the Muslim Brotherhood had fought bravely alongside the revolutionary activists to defend the Square from Mubarak’s invading thugs. However, they had done so largely on their own and in opposition to their leaders’ official 40

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Wilson, Michael. ‘Analysis for Comment – Egypt – Jailbreak.’ Wikileaks: The Global Intelligence Files, 1 February 2011. https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/11/1112772_reanalysis-for-comment-egypt-jail-break-.html (accessed 3 September 2017). ‘Mukāmila Mursī li-qanāa al-Jazīra (Morsi’s Call to Al Jazeera).’ Al Jazeera, 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8EydtBnxE&feature=youtube_gdata_player (accessed 3 September 2017). ‘Egypt Revolution 2011: Demonstrators vs Police.’ YouTube, 28 January 2011. www .youtube.com/watch?v=dBtYLBQPRGQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player (accessed 17 April 2017). Mitchell, Paul (director). ‘Inside Obama’s White House, Part 3: don’t screw it up.’ BBC Two. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0760yhq (accessed 17 April 2017).

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command. As revealed in a leaked letter by the Saudi Embassy in Cairo, the youth activists learned at the height of the escalation ‘from one of the Brothers in Downtown that [the Guidance Office] had issued an order to withdraw from Tahrir’. Calling their leaders from within the midst of the battle, one of the youth activists told them that a withdrawal at this critical juncture would mean the certain ‘death of the revolution’. During a subsequent sit-in in front of the People’s Assembly, Ahmed ‘Abd alGawwad again urged the Guidance Office to support the sit-in, only to be turned down once more by Mahmud ‘Izzat.44 Mohammed al-Qassas then took the unusual measure of calling Yusuf al-Qaradawi in Doha. In a dramatic appearance on Al Jazeera later that day, the venerated Sheikh threw his full weight behind the revolution, praying live on television while accusing the viciousness of the regime in a litany of religiously charged condemnations.45 As these events unfolded (and unbeknownst to the revolutionaries fighting in the streets of Cairo), the vanguard leaders entered into negotiations with the regime. The Guidance Office instructed Morsi and Katatni to negotiate with ‘Omar Sulayman as part of a delegation of opposition leaders and business figures. They met for the first time on 1 February.46 According to the emerging deal, the Brotherhood would instruct its members to pull out of the Square. The two sides further agreed that any future government would guarantee the preservation of the army’s economic prerogatives and that no member of the SCAF would be charged for acts related to the killing or torturing of protesters. In return, Khairat al-Shatir would be released from prison while the SCAF would commit itself to ‘cement the road’ for the Brotherhood to attain power ‘democratically’.47 That night, Barack Obama went on air to give the United States’ blessing to the agreement. In an unmistakeable sign that the administration’s thinking had shifted, Obama declared that ‘an orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now’.48

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Anonymous. ‘Letter.’ ‘Du‘ā’ al-Shaykh Yūsif al-Qaradāwi ‘alā Hosnī Mubārak (Appeal of Sheikh Yusuf alQaradawi to Hosni Mubarak).’ ˙Al Jazeera˙ Arabic, 2 February 2011. www.youtube.com /watch?v=pPavvDJqXwU (accessed 17 April 2017). Wickham dates the meeting between Sulayman and the representatives of the Brotherhood to 6 February. It seems, however, that the negotiations had already started on 1 February, and perhaps even on 31 January; 6 February was the date when the Brotherhood went public with the meeting. See Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 169; also, Kandil. Inside the Brotherhood, p. 137. Al-Shuruq, 12 October 2012. ‘Remarks by the President on the Situation in Egypt.’, 1 February 2011. https://obama whitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/02/01/remarks-president-situation-egypt (accessed 17 April 2017).

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The parameters of the negotiations made obvious each side’s political priorities. The generals were determined not to relinquish the economic and political privileges they had amassed since the days of Nasser, and which had been gradually diminished since the days of Anwar al-Sadat.49 Knowing that the Guidance Office lacked an adequate grasp of politics, they had become convinced that the Brotherhood would be an easily controllable junior partner.50 The circumstance that the Brothers were widely mistrusted by international actors further played into the generals’ hands, for even in the case that they would come to control the government, the army would continue to act as the guarantor of regional stability and maintain Egypt’s trade and security relations with Israel. The vanguard leaders, on the other hand, were determined to translate the revolution into tangible political gains. Khairat al-Shatir seems to have been the first to have grasped the opportunity that the revolution offered to the Brotherhood. He also understood that it would be unwise to openly threaten the army’s supra-constitutional role at this stage. For this reason, the Guidance Office opted for an intermediary position whereby the revolution’s demands for a drastic and fundamental transformation of Egypt’s social contract were weighed against the military’s desire to maintain the status quo. While the Brotherhood was willing to press for limited reforms, a serious challenge to the existing distribution of power within the Egyptian state system was never envisioned. Although the vanguard leaders in various statements and symbolic gestures stylized themselves as representing the demands of the revolution, they in reality sided with the interests of the SCAF from the very beginning.51 On 4 February, as rumours spread that negotiations between the army and the opposition were taking place, there was a fierce backlash among the activists of the revolutionary youth wing. Trying to deflect the youth’s anger, Mohammed Morsi invited the activists of the Student Committee to attend a meeting with the SCAF. Lotfy, Qassas and ‘Abd al-Gawwad refused, determined to remain faithful to the principle ‘no dialogue until after [Mubarak’s] departure’, which the members of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition had previously agreed upon.52 Although Mohammed Badi‘ publicly claimed that the Brotherhood would refuse 49

50

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Kandil showed how the army had been gradually marginalized since the height of its power in 1952. See Kandil. Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen. Habib, Mohammed. Al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn bayna al-Suʻūd wa-l-Riʼāsa wa-Taʼākul alSharʻiyya (The Muslim Brotherhood: Between the Rise, ˙the Presidency and the Erosion of Legitimacy). Cairo: Sama li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawziʻ, 2013, pp. 28–30; Abu Khalil, Haytham. Interview with author. Alexandria, 17 December 2012. ‘Bayān min al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn: al-Jaysh wa-l-Sha‘b Īd wāhda (Statement of the ˙ Ikhwanonline.com, Muslim Brotherhood: the Army and the People are one Hand).’ 9 April 2011. www.ikhwanonline.com/official_statements/82216/Default.aspx (accessed 15 April 2018). Mahmud, Hani. Interview with author. Doha, 18 April 2017.

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any negotiations with the regime until the Emergency Laws were lifted,53 a conflicting response came from Sa‘d al-Katatni, who stressed that the ‘delicate national security situation’ required the Emergency Laws to momentarily stay in place.54 These confusing and contradictory rhetorical gestures were mere ex post facto measures intended to win the youth’s support for an agreement that had already been negotiated behind closed doors. To prevent a further escalation of the internal conflict, those who were familiar with the details of the negotiations were asked to swear ‘on the Quran that not a single word about the agreement will be leaked’.55 On 6 February, in a bizarre interview with ABC News’ Christiane Amanpour, ‘Omar Sulayman similarly contradicted the Brotherhood’s official narrative. Sitting awkwardly on a golden-rimmed Louis XVI rococo chair, the cryptic vice president affirmed that it had been the ‘Brother Muslimhood [sic]’ who had asked the government to engage in a dialogue, rather than the other way around.56 A few hours later, Mohammed Morsi gave a press conference where he attempted to present the Brotherhood as the legitimate leader of the revolution. Presumibly speaking on behalf of the activists in the Square, Morsi professed that the revolution’s demands had not been met, all the while selling the Brotherhood’s participation in the negotiations as a ‘beginning to set foot on a path to make the necessary change according to the will of the people’. He announced that the different parties had already reached consensus to form a special committee whose task was to prepare constitutional amendments within the period of one month.57 This only emboldened the youth activists, who saw these manoeuvres as yet another slap in their face. The now rejected any form of negotiations until the revolution’s demands were fully met.58 Ironically, the strengthening of the revolution’s steam in the streets strengthened the vanguard’s negotiating position vis-à-vis the SCAF, thereby preventing the Brotherhood from signing the ‘worst agreement of its history’.59

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55 56

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Tadros, Mariz. The Muslim Brotherhood in Contemporary Egypt: Democracy Redefined or Confined? London: Routledge, 2012, p. 36. ‘Al-Katātnī wa-l-Tawāfiq ma‘ ‘Omr Sulaymān 4 Fibrāīr (Al-Katatni and the Agreements with Omar Sulayman of 4 February).’ YouTube, 9 February 2011. www.youtube.com /watch?v=V3xkA_-642w (accessed 1 September 2017). Habib, Mohammed. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 28. Amanpour, Christiane. ‘Egypt’s Vice President Omar Suleiman: “The Islamic Current has pushed these People”.’ ABC News, 6 February 2011. www.youtube.com/watch? v=HxXnMDngyCE (accessed 17 April 2017). ‘Al-Ikhwān ba‘d Liqā’ Sulaymān: Muqtarahāt al-Islah ghayr kāfiyya (Brotherhood after ˙ ˙ BBC Arabic, 6 February 2011. Meeting Sulayman: Reform Proposals are ˙insufficient).’ www.bbc.com/arabic/middleeast/2011/02/110206_suleiman_meeting_opposition (accessed 17 April 2017). Anonymous. ‘Letter.’ Abu Khalil, Haytham. Interview with author. Alexandria, 17 December 2012.

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Events reached a new climax when large masses of workers started to join the protests during the coming days. Up until that point, labour action had been largely localized, uncoordinated and focused on workplace-related grievances, including below-standard working conditions and low salaries. While workers had participated in the ‘Friday of Anger’, they had done so largely in an individual capacity. This changed when factories and businesses reopened on 6 February and hundreds of strikes, sit-ins and demonstrations took place across the country.60 Employees in strategically vital sectors such as the Cairo Public Transport Authority, the Egyptian State Railways, the Suez Canal Authority and Telecom Egypt joined the revolutionary movement in large numbers. As workplace grievances became increasingly linked with the revolution’s political demands, the country gradually edged towards the brink of an economic standstill. With global trading lines threatened to be affected by the protests, Obama was under growing pressure to define his administration’s position.61 On 10 February, he urged his counterpart again to ‘step down and provide for an orderly transition’, warning that Egypt risked permanently jeopardizing its relationship with the United States should the revolution’s demands not be honoured.62 The next evening, as US decision-makers tuned into CNN, they saw a defiant Mubarak repeating the same old concessions he had made before.63 At this point, Obama and his national security team understood that the Egyptian dictator had no intention to leave office, giving a green light to the military command in Cairo to get ready to take control of Egypt’s political institutions. Meanwhile, in Tahrir Square, the thundering chants of hundreds and thousands of Egyptians roared across the roofs of Cairo to repeat the revolution’s core demand: Irhal! Irhal! Irhal! Irhal! Irhal! – Leave! Leave! Leave! Leave! Leave! Batil! Batil! Batil! Batil! – Invalid! Invalid! Invalid! Invalid! Ma‘ al-salama ma‘ al-salama, ya ibn al-sharmouta! – Goodbye, Goodbye, you son of a bitch!

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Duboc, Marie. ‘Reluctant Revolutionaries? The Dynamics of Labour Protests in Egypt, 2006–13’ in Abou-El-Fadl, Reem. Revolutionary Egypt: Connecting Domestic and International Struggles. London: Routledge, 2015, pp. 37–8. Also see Alexander, Anne. Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: Workers and the Egyptian Revolution. London: Zed Books, 2014. Kurzman, Charles. ‘The Arab Spring Uncoiled.’ Mobilization: An International Quarterly 17, no. 4 (December 2012), pp. 377–90. Kirkpatrick, David D. Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East. London: Bloomsbury Circus, 2018. Mitchell. ‘Inside Obama’s White House. BBC Two, March 2016. ‘Hosni Mubarak’s Speech on 10 February.’ YouTube, 10 February 2011. www.youtube.com/ watch?v=l931zZcUbWU (accessed 17 April 2017).

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On 11 February, the revolutionaries decided to march towards the Ittihadiyya Presidential Palace in Heliopolis and the state-run broadcasting organization in Maspiro, the symbol for regime-sponsored propaganda Mai Sirry, a situated at the northern perimeter of Tahrir Square. While the Guidance Office hesitated to take bold action, Hani Mahmud and Mohammed al-Qassas informed their superiors that ‘the people will not wait for us . . . . The Brotherhood youth is already moving towards Maspiro and the Presidential Palace in Heliopolis, without any coordination or decisions. We are really extremely late to express the real ambitions of the people!’64 But the vanguard leaders remained unimpressed. When Mahmud Abu Zayd, the head of the Student Section, warned Hani Mahmud during a heated telephone conversation that a march towards the Presidential Palace would lead to an ‘unnecessary escalation’, Mahmud impatiently rebuked him, saying that things had escalated already weeks ago. Just as the crowds marched off, ‘Omar Sulayman appeared on television to declare with a stern voice: ‘President Hosni Mubarak has decided to step down from the position of the President of the Republic, ordering the SCAF to manage the affairs of the state’.65 The news quickly made the rounds among the activists in Tahrir Square. The protesters’ first reaction was a sense of disbelief, but this quickly turned into overwhelming triumph. young woman standing in the midst of the raucous crowds later remembered: ‘It was that strange euphoria where you can’t believe what happened yet, while at the same time you are celebrating it.’66 With the revolution’s key demand – the departure of Hosni Mubarak – met, the people returned home, exhausted from eighteen historic days of sit-ins, marches and street battles, and filled with a sense of accomplishment for having ousted the dictator. The Guidance Office similarly ordered its rank and file to disband and return home. Except for a small group of activists who urged citizens to continue to revolt, Egyptians were largely united in their belief that a better future was on the horizon. But in light of the military’s grip on the country’s political institutions, and absent a revolutionary leader for the masses to rally around, even those among 64 65

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Anonymous. ‘Letter.’ ‘‘Omr Sulaymān ya‘lan Tanhī Mubārak ‘an Mansibihi (Omar Sulayman announces the ˙ ˙ Resignation of Hosni Mubarak).’ YouTube, 11 February 2011. www.youtube.com/watch? v=feF8DGk_O-I (accessed 10 August 2015). On 17 July, Sulayman checked into the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, where he died two days later. An earlier report, which had been circulated by the government-owned newspaper al-Watan, claimed that Sulayman had died in Syria during an explosion having occurred on 18 July. The conflicting reports about Sulayman’s death, as well as his close relationship with the Americans, gave rise to speculations that he had been assassinated by the CIA. This had apparently been confirmed to an anonymous intelligence source by ‘Ali Atta, who was a close confidant of Sulayman. Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 13 January 2013. Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 19 September 2013.

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the revolutionary activists who wanted to press on had no other option than to hope that their demands would be achieved at the negotiation table. Some among the Brotherhood’s youths saw an opportunity for such a scenario to when ‘the military intelligence contacted some of the youths of the coalition, asking them to meet with the SCAF’.67 Shortly after Mubarak’s departure, the disputes and disagreements that had defined the Brotherhood’s pre-revolutionary politics started to resurface. A scandal erupted during a Shura Council meeting in mid February, when it became apparent that Morsi and Katatni had negotiated with the SCAF since the early days of the uprising. Haytham Abu Khalil, who participated in that meeting, remembers the following scene: [At the meeting] something absolutely unexpected happened. When the members of the Shura Council demanded to know what had happened . . . during the meeting on 6 February, the tongue of Dr. Mohammed Morsi slipped. Morsi said ‘we didn’t touch on what we concluded during the first meeting’.68

Morsi’s implicit admittance that a meeting had taken place before negotiations had been officially announced angered some among Tilmisani’s followers, who felt that their leaders had betrayed the revolution. Rising up in the middle of the session, an infuriated Abu al-Futuh reprimanded the General Guide: ‘There was a first meeting, Badi? Have you ever heard something like this in the history of this Society? Shame on you!’69 Abu alFutuh’s public outburst, and the insubordinate manner by which he lambasted the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader in front of the assembled Shura Council, illustrated the depth of the internal divisions at the Brotherhood’s top levels of decision-making. During a subsequent meeting in Giza, another confrontation erupted between the members of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition on the one hand, and Mohammed Morsi and Mahmud Abu Zayd on the other. when the latter two reprimanded the youth activists for having defied the orders of the leadership at the height of the revolution. When an irritated Morsi provocatively asked whether the youth activists were planning to form a political party, Mohammed ‘Affan, who was among the attendants, could not hold himself back any more: ‘I feel that you think this is your organization and [that] all of us work for you, not the organization for all of us’, he retorted.70 In another heated exchange between Hani Mahmud and ‘Issam al-‘Arian, the former was reminded that the time for revolutionary action was over. The Muslim Brotherhood, ‘Arian said, ‘is now entering into political work [and this kind of activism] has a different 67 68 69 70

Anonymous. ‘Letter.’ Abu Khalil. The Reformist Brotherhood, p. 231. Ibid. ‘Affan, Mohammed. Interview with author. Istanbul. 20 March 2017.

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organizational framework’. Shocked by this statement, Mahmud replied that it was ‘way too early to talk about political work, such as [competing in] elections. This is the time to see how we can collaborate with other political forces so that we can achieve the rest of the revolution’s demands and fully get rid of the old regime.’71 ‘Arian’s talk of electoral politics made it obvious to Hani Mahmud that the leadership’s interpretation of the revolution was diametrically opposed to that of the youth activists. Having fought at the forefront of the uprising, the activists were convinced that it was only due to their audacity that the Brotherhood was now able to claim the mantle of the revolution. Not only did their courage remain unrecognized but, adding insult to injury, they were even castigated for their alleged insubordination. Egypt now paddled into an uncertain transition, the main plot points of which were aptly captured by Egyptian graffiti artists at a famous street corner situated at the south-eastern periphery of Tahrir Square, leading into Mohammed Mahmud Street. Following Mubarak’s ouster, the SCAF suspended the constitution and announced the formation of a special committee to manage the transfer of power to an elected civilian government. Martial law was declared until the upcoming parliamentary elections, planned for September 2011. As the military took control of state institutions, a small group of activists announced another ‘million men’s march’ to keep the revolutionary momentum alive. They had no illusions that the SCAF intended to retain its economic and constitutional privileges, and so they were determined to keep up the pressure on the military. During the ‘Friday of Purging and Solidarity’ (Jum‘at al-Tathir wa-l-Tadamun) of 25 February, the revolutionary activists demanded the cleansing of state institutions from old-regime holdovers, all the while showing solidarity with the revolutionaries in Bahrain and Libya, who had started to rise against their rulers on 14 and 17 February respectively. As the low turnout at Tahrir Square illustrated, the revolutionary energy had already dissipated. For a majority of citizens, the demise of Mubarak had signified the revolution’s success. It was now the task of the SCAF to guarantee stability, and so the continued insubordination of some youth activists against the military was seen as a disturbance of public order and morality. Ironically, the fact that Mubarak’s departure was seen as equalling the success of the revolution was the very reason why the uprising failed to develop a truly revolutionary character. In an 18 March national referendum Egyptians were asked whether they agreed that nine articles of the Constitution of 1971 should be amended. The Guidance Office campaigned for a ‘yes’ vote, arguing for the necessity of a fixed schedule towards an orderly transfer of power in order to guarantee future elections. They were opposed by the youth members of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition, who argued that the constitution needed to be codified after 71

Mahmud, Hani. Interview with author. Doha, 18 April 2017.

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elections had taken place. It was obvious to them that ‘the position of supporting the constitutional amendments is a big mistake’. They reproached the vanguard leadership of inconsistency whereby, on the one hand, the Brotherhood tried to portray itself as the leader of the revolution, while on the other it had already started to distance itself from the demands of the revolution. They pointed to the imperative of ‘securing’ the upcoming elections and ‘protecting the gains’ of the revolution, and feared a scenario where the Brotherhood would end up as the ‘victorious victor’, winning the referendum but losing the support of the revolutionized youths.72 The youth activists were vindicated when, ten days after the referendum’s acceptance by 77 per cent of the vote, the SCAF issued a second ‘constitutional declaration’ to unilaterally amend another 63 articles of the constitution.73 The Guidance Office condoned this move by arguing that a continuation of protests was meaningless and that all energies should now be directed towards the upcoming elections. ‘Tahrir alone did [not] have sufficient legitimacy to dictate the country’s will’, a mid-ranking Brotherhood member later argued.74 No matter how much the generals diverged from the revolution’s demands, the Brotherhood would not allow itself to be perceived as opposed to the SCAF. They would not even change their position in the wake of the military’s systematic attack on the dignity of Egyptian women, exemplified in the so-called virginity tests, whereby an army doctor inserted his finger into women’s vaginas to make sure that their hymens were intact.75 The humiliating nature of this procedure outraged Egyptians across the political spectrum.76 The Guidance Office’s silence in this matter made it obvious that the Brotherhood prioritized its alliance with the SCAF over the moral imperative to speak out against such obviously sexist assaults against women.

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Fathi, Yasser. ‘Shabāb al-Ikhwān: al-Tarīq nahwa Intikhābāt 2012 (The Brotherhood’s ˙ ˙ Youth: the Path towards the 2012 Elections).’ Egyptian Institute for Studies, 18 April 2018. http://goo.gl/yD2xD6 (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 17 April 2018). Brown, Nathan. ‘Can Egypt’s democratic Uprising be redeemed?’ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 24 December 2012. http://carnegieendowment.org/2012/12/24/ can%C2%ACegypt%C2%ACs%C2%ACdemocratic%C2%ACuprising%C2%ACbe%C2% ACredeemed/ewbv (accessed 17 April 2017). al-Haddad, Abdullah. Interview. London, 20 February 2014. Also see Ketchley. Egypt in a Time of Revolution, p. 118. For an account of a woman who underwent such tests, see Shafy, Samiha. ‘“Horribly humiliating”: Egyptian Woman tells of “Virginity Tests”.’ Spiegel Online, 10 June 2011. www.spiegel.de/international/world/horribly-humiliating-egyptian-woman-tells-ofvirginity-tests-a-767365.html (accessed 17 April 2017). Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 12 October 2012.

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The Founding of the Freedom and Justice Party In early April 2011, the Brotherhood relocated its headquarters from an unpretentious apartment block in al-Manyal, where it had been situated until that point, to a prestigious five-storey high building in Moqattam, an affluent neighbourhood located on Cairo’s eastern fringes situated on top of a rugged hilltop, overlooking the dusty metropolis. Along with this symbolic move, the Brotherhood announced the creation of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) as its vehicle to compete in the upcoming parliamentary elections. ‘Eleven individuals known for their religious commitment and discipline’ were handpicked to form the party’s executive board.77 Mohammed Morsi was nominated as president while the post of the administratively influential Secretary General was accorded to Sa‘d al-Katatni. The two ceremonial positions of vice chairmen were fobbed off to ‘Issam al-‘Arian and Rafiq Habib. The fact that the latter was a Protestant Christian was endlessly emphasized by senior Brotherhood leaders, who used him as a token to parade the FJP’s alleged inclusiveness. According to its own figures, only 35 per cent of the party’s 500,000 members came from the Muslim Brotherhood, while one-third was less than thirty years of age.78 The creation of the FJP opened the door for a new class of technocratic cadres to assume a more prominent role in Egypt’s national politics. Two of the party’s key players were ‘Amr Darrag and Hussein al-Qazzaz – both professionals with academic credentials who would come to play important roles in Morsi’s two governments. They conceived of themselves as academicians and intellectuals situated at the periphery of the Brotherhood proper, but who nevertheless contributed towards the implementation of the Islamic project. While Darrag and Qazzaz were part of the same generation as the religious student activists inspired by ‘Omar al-Tilmisani, they differed from their peers in that they had been uninvolved in the Brotherhood’s internal power struggles. Both were welltravelled and fluent English speakers. The fact that they had familiarized themselves with Hasan al-Banna’s teachings while completing their PhDs at universities in the United States gave them a perspective that was somewhat at odds with those who had been part of Egypt’s Islamic cultural milieu during most of their lives. ‘Amr Darrag was born in Dokki in 1958. A socialite with a fondness for Swiss chocolate, Darrag had remained disengaged from the social and religious identity politics of the Jama‘a Islamiyya and instead counted ‘Islamists, Christians, and seculars’ among his circle of friends.79 In 1984, he moved to 77

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Mahmud, ‘Abd al-Mun‘im. Interview. Quoted in Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, pp. 175–6. Darrag, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2017. Ibid. al-Qazzaz, Hussein. Interview with author. Istanbul, 28 March 2018.

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Indiana to complete his doctorate at Purdue University and then worked for an engineering company in Orlando. Living far away from home, Darrag often felt nostalgic and uprooted. It was in this state of mind that he began frequenting a local mosque, in search of community and connection. One day, as he waded through the mosque’s bookshelves, Darrag was drawn to Zaynab alGhazali’s famous text Days in my Life (Ayyam min Hayati), where the iconic female Brotherhood figure recounted the ordeals of prison and torture she had suffered at the hands of Nasser’s regime. The steadfastness with which Ghazali had endured such immense pain and hardship had a profound impact on Darrag: ‘How can one be loyal like that to a set of principles? What kinds of principles are these?’, he later remembered having asked himself. As he delved deeper into the subject of Islamic activism, he came across the letters of Hasan al-Banna and was impressed by the assertion that, ‘in order to be a good Muslim, [one had] to apply the principles of Islam to all aspects of life’. He came to understand that Islam was more than simply about ‘implementing the Sharia’. Rather, it was about political engagement and activism for the purpose of changing the world. Intellectually enriched by these new insights, Darrag considered himself ‘ready [to] belong to this kind of thought’ as he returned to Egypt in November 1988.80 During the 1990s, Darrag became the vice chairman of the Association of University Professors – a position he used to organize seminars, lectures and workshops on topics ranging from democratization and healthcare to infrastructure and economic development. Although his involvement in the Brotherhood’s organizational activities was marginal, he consulted different General Guides on matters of public relations. Only after the uprising of 2011 was he drawn more closely into the orbit of Egyptian politics. Once the FJP was established in April 2011, he became Secretary General of the Giza governorate and in this function established the party’s operations in Giza. Shortly thereafter, he became a member of the FJP’s eleven-men strong executive board. Besides defining its relationship to the Muslim Brotherhood and the composition of its membership, one of the first tasks of the FJP was to lay out its political programme, known as the ‘Renaissance Project’ (Mashru‘ alNahda). In April 2011, Khairat al-Shatir gave a lecture in Alexandria, where he tried to sketch out what the Egyptian uprising of the previous January meant in terms of the implementation of the Nahda Project. He urged the assembled Brothers to take advantage of this revolution, which took place in Egypt and continues in the countries surrounding us, and which undoubtedly represents a historical moment and a major new transformative stage . . . . The obstacle has now been removed, so we must return to the beginning of the matter, which we were supposed to have undertaken since the 80

Darrag, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2017.

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nineties. We are expanding [the Islamic project] now, opening up towards society to a great extent, enlightening the entire umma, and summoning its strength so that it contributes to the realization of its renaissance on the basis of an Islamic reference.

In terms of the Nahda Project’s objectives, Shatir explained: We need to have a number of tracks in social, economic, health, education and moral development . . . . Each of these tracks comprises sub-tracks and these sub-tracks comprise projects. Who will execute the projects? The people will. The private sector has a role. Civil society associations have a role. All Islamic and non-Islamic institutions have a role. The state also has a role in order to develop the umma’s renaissance. It is up to us, as a people and as a Brotherhood, to contribute to defining what ‘renaissance’ means, and we invite people to take part in the implementation of this renaissance.81

In an attempt to give these abstract ideas a more concrete form, Shatir turned to his friend Hussein al-Qazzaz. By now a consultant specialized in organizational behaviour, Qazzaz had been interested in Islam’s ‘civilizational approach’ since his early student years. Like Darrag, Qazzaz hailed from ‘the outskirts’ of the Muslim Brotherhood and had never been part of its proper organizational hierarchy. He had been educated in a French missionary school and had sympathized with the leftist movement during the 1970s – to the degree that he had developed an antipathy against the Brotherhood’s selfcontained and introverted organizational culture. His views changed after his move to the United States to complete a PhD in the mid 1980s. There, he got to know ‘another face of the Brotherhood’: a Society that was diverse, appealing and open to an outsider such as himself. Over the coming years, he interacted more frequently with Brotherhood members and formally joined the organization in 1981.82 When Qazzaz returned to Egypt in 1988, he took up a teaching job at the University of Alexandria. After the government of Egypt had concluded the ‘Economic Reform and Structural Adjustment Programme’ with the IMF in 1989, Qazzaz started to lament the societal effects of economic liberalization with its influx of Western consumer goods and the corrosive effect this had on Egyptian society, culture and values. He pointed to the rise in divorce rates among Egyptian families, which he believed was a consequence of the kind of globalism and liberal cosmopolitanism brought about by Egypt’s interaction with Western civilization. He was further disturbed by the deterioration in the quality of education in Egypt. He saw this trend reflected in the Brotherhood’s educational programmes, whose previously extensive and 81 82

al-Shatir. ‘The Project of Islamic Renaissance.’ al-Qazzaz, Hussein. Interview with author. Istanbul, 28 March 2018.

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thorough syllabi were gradually replaced by a bullet-point-like ‘thin curriculum’. Determined to fight these corrosive effects, Qazzaz offered his service and expertise as a scholar of organizational theory to Khairat alShatir, who in July 1995 became the deputy to the General Guide, and based on whose request he later headed various working committees related to the ‘renaissance’ of the Islamic world.83 Once the FJP was created, the basic question occupying the mind of Qazzaz was: ‘If the Brotherhood was to present anything really new and different to this world, what would it be?’ In an effort to articulate the Brotherhood’s ‘civilizational approach’, he and Shatir adopted an intellectual paradigm whereby Western and Islamic civilization was perceived not in terms of opposition, but in terms of a synthesis: the idea was to pick ‘the best from this mass of Western civilization’, see how Islamic civilization could ‘add to it’, and then ‘marry the two’. While earlier stages of the Nahda Project used to have a speculative character, the Islamic renaissance now entered into its ‘second stage’, as it became more concretely attached to the specific needs of ordinary citizens. Qazzaz significantly reduced his international travel to work on the concretization of this momentous task. Reporting to Shatir and collaborating with a small team of advisors, his work became more ‘operational’ and focused on ‘concrete economic and social aspects of change’, with the objective to ‘define specific projects through which Egypt would be transformed into a modern and prosperous state’.84 In order to achieve the objectives of the Nahda Project, Shatir conceived of the FJP not as a ‘means of expanding the Islamic reform project’, but as an ‘instrument for [engaging in] the [political] conflict’. He made a somewhat academic distinction between the Brotherhood as a political party and the Brotherhood as a movement for societal, religious and moral reform. The FJP’s role was simply that of a conduit to facilitate the Brotherhood’s rise to power, while the role of the Brotherhood proper was to envision ‘the greater Nahda Project’, which encompassed all areas of human life, including ‘politics, economy, society, education, morals, values, behaviour, children, women, the elderly and the young’. While the party would limit itself to questions of politics, the Brotherhood would act as a larger umbrella movement to ‘integrate and rally the entire umma in order to build its renaissance on the basis of Islam’ and thereby create the conditions for ‘an entire life of the umma on the basis of Islamic reference [and] the Islamic method’.85 Shatir’s conceptualization of the party as a mere appendix of the Brotherhood further implied that its members were to engage in the political 83 84 85

Ibid. Ibid. al-Shatir. ‘The Project of Islamic Renaissance.’

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field exclusively through the FJP.86 This idea was opposed by the remaining followers of Tilmisani and their partisans among the Brotherhood youth wing, who wanted the freedom to join any party of their choice. Activists such as Hani Mahmud, who as part of his activities in the Student Committee had invested countless hours in designing the party’s governance structure, suggested that in terms of membership and decisionmaking the party should be independent from the Guidance Office.87 The vanguard leadership, on the other hand, was opposed to this concept. Given their strong penchant for command and control, the party was to be subordinated to the Guidance Office in all its aspects, akin to one of the Brotherhood’s technical committees.88 There was also a strong backlash against the way in which the FJP was created. For decades, the followers of ‘Omar al-Tilmisani had advocated for the formation of a political platform. Now that the opportunity finally presented itself, the party was created by Khairat al-Shatir and his associates without the involvement of those having broad political experience. Some angrily broke ranks with the Brotherhood to create separate political platforms, like Ibrahim al-Za‘farani who founded the ‘Renaissance Party’ (Hizb al-Nahda) in March 2011. Two months later, ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh announced his intention to run for the presidency as an independent candidate.89 This blatant act of rebellion prompted Shatir to launch an orchestrated campaign of ‘moral assassination’ whereby Abu al-Futuh was ostracized as an ‘American spy’.90 The personal animosity between Abu al-Futuh and Shatir reached a symbolic peak when the former suffered a concussion as a result of an attack after a campaign rally. Shatir apparently did not even give him a call to wish him well.91 The vanguard leaders now seized the opportunity to expel the obstreperous Abu al-Futuh once and for all from the Brotherhood’s womb. Thus, the man whose pact with Tilmisani in 1974 had laid the conditions for the Brotherhood’s ‘second founding’, and who saw himself as the rightful heir to Tilmisani’s legacy, was humiliated and deposed. Even ‘Issam al-‘Arian, by now fully co-opted into the Guidance Office, forswore his long-time comrade-inarms. In a statement reminiscent of Michael Corleone’s disavowal of his older brother Fredo in The Godfather II, ‘Arian said that Abu al-Futuh ‘has nothing to do with us now’. He added that the Society could not ‘support anyone 86

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‘Tahdiyyāt āniyya amām al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn fī Masr (Present Challenges to the Muslim ˙ ˙ Brotherhood in Egypt).’ Al Jazeera Studies Center, 24 August 2011. http://studies.aljazeera.net /ar/positionestimate/2011/07/20117209575994682.html (accessed 10 May 2018). Mahmud, Hani. Interview with author. Doha, 18 April 2017. Shalash, Magdi. Interview with author. Istanbul, 20 March 2017. Abu Khalil. The Reformist Brotherhood, p. 19. Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 22 September 2013. Dawud, Khalid. Interview with author. Alexandria, 29 March 2013.

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violating our decisions’.92 Many wondered why ‘Arian, given his impressive career and popularity, had pulled the rug under Abu al-Futuh. The final answer only ‘Arian can provide, but it is not inconceivable that he had seen Abu al-Futuh as a competitor whose eviction would be an opportunity for him to revive his stalled political career.93 Having removed his biggest rival, Khairat al-Shatir now proceeded to purge the Brotherhood from the remaining individuals who had defied the orders of the vanguard leadership during the revolution. In a systematic campaign, the leaders of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition were summoned by their superiors to be interrogated and scolded for having failed to obey the orders of the Guidance Office. Obviously, the activists were enormously frustrated by these manoeuvres and concluded that the time was ripe to part ways with the Society. When Mohammed al-Qassas, Ahmed ‘Abd al-Gawwad and Islam Lotfy announced the creation of the ‘Egyptian Current Party’ (Hizb alTayyar al-Masry) on 21 June, this was the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’. During a night of long knives, the Guidance Office expelled all those who, in one form or another, had put their names behind the Revolutionary Youth Coalition.94 Some were even fired without investigation and learned of this decision on social media. Having rid itself of the centrifugal tendencies among its rebellious youth cadres, the Brotherhood was ready to direct its energies towards strengthening its organizational capabilities ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections.

The Turkish Model In conceptualizing the Freedom and Justice Party, its architects found inspiration in Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, known as ‘AK Parti’), which had spearheaded a new model of Islamic democratic governance. The fact that the Egyptian Brothers looked towards the AK Parti as a model they sought to emulate was welcomed by the political elite in Ankara, whose members had envisioned the prospect of a Turkish– Egyptian entente as a means to enhance Turkey’s strategic role in the Middle East. The AK Parti had come to power in 2002 on a broad popular mandate, with the charismatic and politically astute party leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan having emerged as prime minister one year later. The populist leader departed from secular Kemalist ideology in that he challenged the traditional ruling elite’s quasi-autocratic tendencies. Pursuing a socially conservative agenda, he 92 93

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Quoted in Wickham. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 180. Zollner, Barbara. ‘The Brotherhood in Transition: an Analysis of the Organisation’s Mobilising Capacity.’ Unpublished working paper. Academia.edu, date unknown. www .academia.edu/8616839/The_Brotherhood_in_Transition_An_analysis_of_the_organisa tion_s_mobilising_capacity (accessed 17 April 2017). Mahmud, Hani. Interview with author. Doha, 18 April 2017.

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lifted the ban on headscarves at universities while curbing the power of the military and the judiciary, thus overturning decades of military dominance. He also forged an alliance with the Gülen movement, as well as with the business community, conservatives and democrats. Erdoğan’s popular mandate was boosted by the steady growth of Turkey’s export-driven economy, as business leaders forming the ranks of the newly empowered AK Parti pursued new markets in the southern industrial cities, known as the ‘Anatolian Tigers’. Erdoğan’s rise to power had reconfigured Turkey’s geostrategic outlook. Before the US invasion of Iraq, Turkish foreign policy had been directed largely by the ‘high priests of Kemalism’, who had favoured economic integration with the European Union over Turkey’s relations with the Arab countries.95 But the security environment of the post-2003 Middle East, with its rise of militant Islamism, sectarianism and Kurdish separatism, had led Turkish policy-makers to reformulate their approach towards the region. The sidelining of the Kemalist deep state, furthermore, had weakened the independence of Turkey’s institutions and foreign policy became more personalized around Erdoğan and his inner circle. The architect behind Turkey’s foreign policy was Ahmet Davutoğlu, who had become Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2009. A political scientist who had graduated from the International Islamic University of Malaysia and a former career diplomat, Davutoğlu had written a doctoral dissertation that focused on the question of Turkey’s ‘strategic depth’. In his thesis, he had argued for the creation of an expanded zone of influence.96 He was sceptical of the inherent Westernization that had underpinned the Kemalist project and argued for the ‘irreconcilability’ between Western and Islamic cultures.97 Turkey was not supposed to act as a ‘bridge’ between East and West, but rather as a central power that could project influence across Europe and Asia. In an effort to rehabilitate the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, economic relations with Egypt, Syria, Iran, Libya and the Gulf were improved while military cooperation with Israel was expanded. The Arab uprisings of 2011 fit neatly into this pattern of Turkish expansionism. The ideological leadership of the AK Parti was convinced that the Arab revolts would hasten the disintegration of the prevailing US-dominated regional order, whose support for ‘oppressive political tendencies in Muslim countries’ was designed to preserve Western interests.98 Given the stalled 95

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Robins, Philip. Suits and Uniforms: Turkish Foreign Policy Since the Cold War. London: Hurst & Company, 2002, p. 69. Stein, Aaron III. ‘The End of “Zero Problems,” 2010–13.’ Whitehall Papers 83, no. 1 (3 July 2014), pp. 34–58. Davutoğlu, Ahmet. Alternative Paradigms: the Impact of Islamic and Western Weltanschauungs on Political Theory. Lanham: University Press of America, 1993, p. 5. Davutoğlu, Ahmet. Interview published in AUC Cairo Review, 12 March 2012. www .mfa.gov.tr/interview-by-mr_-ahmet-davuto%C4%9Flu-published-in-auc-cairo-review -_egypt_-on-12-march-2012.en.mfa (accessed 17 April 2017).

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accession talks for Turkish membership in the EU, the Arab Spring was interpreted as the beginning of a broader regional transition away from the ‘Camp David order’ and towards the emergence of a ‘new Middle East’. The much-anticipated victory of the FJP during the upcoming parliamentary elections was regarded as an opportunity for Turkey to fill the newly emergent political space. Egypt had figured centrally in Erdoğan’s neo-Ottoman schemes, guided by the notion of an ‘Ankara–Cairo axis’ whereby Turkish– Egyptian bilateral trade and security relations would allow Turkey to expand her sphere of influence along the southern periphery of the Mediterranean basin. Accordingly, Erdoğan had been one of the first statesmen calling for Mubarak’s resignation while President Abdullah Gül in March 2011 was the first foreign dignitary to visit Egypt after Mubarak’s demise. After the AK Parti’s third consecutive electoral victory in June 2011, Ankara’s elites were convinced that they had potentially much to gain if the Brotherhood was to win the majority of seats in the upcoming elections. Underlying these geostrategic considerations was a strong ideological component, rooted in the belief that the Arab Spring exemplified the inevitable triumph of the masses in their struggle against military autocrats. Turkish attitudes towards the FJP were anchored in common ideational references of the Islamic idiom. The mutual transfer of knowledge and ideas between Egyptian and Turkish Islamic intellectuals dated back to the mid 1970s, when the architects of the Brotherhood’s International Organization, led by Mahdi ‘Akif, cultivated relations with Necmettin Erbakan, who was Turkey’s prime minister from 1996 to 1997. Starting in March 1974, annual meetings were held during the anniversary of the fall of the historical Caliphate, where the future of the Islamic state was discussed.99 In the late 1970s, Islamist and liberal students fought side-by-side at university campuses, provoking the military coup of 1980, after which Turkey’s left joined ranks with Erbakan’s Millî Görüş movement. The acceleration of the Kemalist state’s transformation into a multiparty system led to the subsequent prospering of the Turkish Islamic scene. By the mid 1980s, under the impression of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, religious activists in Turkey were in a position to both benefit from, and contribute to, the region-wide Islamic revival.100 While during most of Mubarak’s reign Islamist Turkish–Egyptian ties occurred on 99

100

This influence of late Ottoman thinkers on Egypt’s intellectual history, and their engagement across national–linguistic boundaries with the evolving discourses of modernism and Salafism in Egypt, is analysed in a doctoral dissertation by Hammond, Andrew. Interactions between Turkish and Egyptian Islamic Thinkers From 1908 to 1952. University of Oxford. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, 2020. Some of the standard works covering Islamic politics in Turkey include Yavuz, M. Hakan. Islamic Political Identity in Turkey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003; Yavuz, M. Hakan. Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

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a reduced level, they were invigorated once the revolts of the Arab Spring started to empower Islamist parties across the region.101 Turkey’s ambitions for regional hegemony collided with an Egyptian nationalism that had been re-energized by the 2011 uprising in Egypt. While Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was hailed as the ‘saviour of Islam’ by ecstatic crowds of Brotherhood members and other Islamist activists when he visited Cairo in September 2011, the FJP’s functionaries privately scoffed at the idea that the Brotherhood was to ‘emulate’ the experience of the Islamist activists in Turkey, instead wishing for Egypt to assume a hegemonic role in the emerging postArab Spring regional order. When the Turks provided the Brotherhood with intelligence assessments on the Egyptian army, FJP party leaders reacted dismissively to such unsolicited advice by ‘foreigners’. They bluntly rejected a white paper outlining a possibility for Egypt’s path forward and remained sceptical with respect to efforts by outsiders offering their expertise. Despite the historical ties between the Brotherhood and the Millî Görüş movement, the AK Parti’s efforts to help their Islamist Brothers in Egypt was hindered by the historical legacy of Ottoman colonialism.102

Maspiro, Mohammed Mahmud and the Blue Bra Girl During the second half of 2011, the confrontation between the revolutionary youth camp and the security forces escalated in dramatic ways. As an opaque and slow-moving judicial process trotted ahead during the months of May and June, the families of the ‘martyrs of 25 January’ organized a sit-in at Tahrir Square to demand justice for their fallen sons and daughters. On 28 and 29 June, a series of pitched battles ensued between stone-throwing demonstrators and troopers from the riot police, who assaulted the activists with tear gas, rubber bullets and armoured vehicles. The brutality of the police’s response, as well as the continued administration of ‘virginity tests’ to female protesters, caused the opposition to announce another miliuniyya and occupy Tahrir Square during the three following weeks. As these events unfolded, the Brotherhood repeatedly refused to speak out against the army, blaming instead the fulul for the bloodshed at Tahrir Square.103 101

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On the history of the AKP see for instance Cizre, Ümit. Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: the Making of the Justice and Development Party. London: Routledge, 2008; Hale, William M. Islamism, Democracy, and Liberalism in Turkey: the Case of the AKP. Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2010; Kuru, Ahmet T. and Alfred C. Stepan. Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey. New York; Chichester: Columbia University Press, 2012. Younis, Mohammed. ‘Turkish Delight? The Feasibility of the “Turkish Model” for Egypt.’ Turkish Policy Quarterly, Winter 2012. http://turkishpolicy.com/pdf/vol_10no_4-younis.pdf (accessed 17 April 2017). Habib. The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 30.

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The Guidance Office regularly scolded the revolutionaries for public disturbances, accusing them of being responsible for a variety of social ills, such as growing imbalances of payment, lacking investors’ confidence, failing tourism rates and rising inflation.104 They bolstered their pro-military position through a range of alliances. The Brotherhood’s significance seemed to receive a boost after the US government had indicated its readiness to deepen its engagement with the Brotherhood. When Hillary Clinton announced on 30 June that Washington would initiate ‘limited contacts’ with Brotherhood members directly, irrespective of whether they were elected parliamentarians or not, Mahmud Ghozlan quickly declared that the Brotherhood was ‘ready for dialogue’.105 Aware of the potential backlash among its critics within the Brotherhood’s rank and file, Ghozlan placed a caveat on his offer, calling upon the United States ‘to stop supporting corrupt and tyrannical regimes, backing the Zionist occupation and using double standards’.106 Nationally, the position of the Guidance Office was strengthened by its courting of a number of parties and associations who stood in close proximity to the Da‘wa Salafiyya, including the ‘Nur (Light) Party’ (Hizb al-Nur), the ‘Islamic Law Association of the Practitioners of the Book and the Sunnah’ (Jama‘iyya al-Shari‘a al-Islamiyya li-Mu‘arasin al-Kitab wal-Sunna), and the ‘Islamic Legitimate Body of Rights and Reformation’ (alHay’a al-Shar‘iyya li-l-Huquq wa-l-Islah), which had been established by Ansar al-Sunna in July 2011 and of which Khairat al-Shatir was a board member.107 The Brotherhood’s elevated sense of self-confidence became evident on 29 July during the so-called Friday of the Sharia (Jum‘at alShari‘a), when the Brotherhood mobilized tens of thousands of rank-andfile members in its first public rally after the uprising of January 2011. Trying to present a united Islamist front against the liberal and secular activists who were also protesting at the Square, the Brotherhood invited the ultra-conservative right-wing Islamist group, the Jama‘a Islamiyya, to join the demonstrations.108 The ‘Friday of the Sharia’ showed the extent to

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Al-Hurriyya wa-l-‘Adala, 9 November 2011. Quoted in Ketchley, Neil. Egypt in a Time of Revolution. Cambridge, p. 120. Mohammed, Arshad. ‘U.S. Shifts to closer Contact with Egypt Islamists.’ Reuters, 30 June 2011. www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-egypt-brotherhood-idustre75t0gd20110630 (accessed 17 April 2017). ‘Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood will talk to U.S.; demands “mutual Respect”.’ Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, 4 July 2011. www.globalmbwatch.com/2011/07/04/egyptianmuslim-brotherhood-will-talk-to-u-s-deands-mutual-respect/ (accessed 17 April 2017). Brown, Nathan. ‘Islam and Politics in the New Egypt.’ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 2013. http://carnegieendowment.org/files/islam_politics.pdf (accessed 17 April 2017). The ‘Friday of the Sharia’ was dismissively called ‘Kandahar protests’ by anti-Islamists. See for instance ‘Arif, Jalal. ‘‘Jum‘at Kandahār’ wa Qadāyā al-Amn al-Qawmī fī Misr (The ˙ ˙

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which hard-line and extremist tendencies had started to take root among parts of the Brotherhood’s social base. Tahrir Square was filled with chants supporting the ‘Blind Sheikh’, ‘Omar ‘Abd al-Rahman, who had masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as well as Osama bin Laden.109 The images of the Muslim Brotherhood sharing the same public space with its historic Salafi rival forged a perception that various ‘Islamist’ groups had merged into one massive conglomerate. As it would be seen later, the alliance was of a tactical nature rather than the result of a broad ideological convergence.110 The politically laden climate of the autumn of 2011 reinvigorated dormant forces of a crude and vicious sectarianism. On 30 September, after the conclusion of Friday prayers, a mob of rioting thugs who had been riled up by rightwing Salafi preachers vandalized St George’s Church in Edfu in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Aswan, torching its altar and demolishing its newly renovated dome. Upon hearing the news of this savage attack, activists mobilized a crowd of some three thousand Coptic Christians in the working-class neighbourhood of Shubra to march towards Maspiro, where they were to unite with another crowd of several hundred demonstrators.111 As the procession passed under an overpass west of the Ramsis train station, wielding crosses and singing hymns, a group of thugs suddenly assailed them from above, throwing bottles and rocks at them and intermittently firing gunshots.112 Panic broke out and within minutes the agitation had started to contaminate the

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Kandahar Friday and the Issue of national Security in Egypt).’ Al-Bayan, 11 August 2011. www.albayan.ae/opinions/articles/2011-08-21-1.1491005 (accessed 15 October 2017). Mohammed ‘Affan. Facebook chat with the author. Geneva–Istanbul, 9 September 2017. See Deschamps-Laporte, Laurence. New Forms of Islamic Authority in Egypt: Examining the Da‘wa Salafiyya’s Contentious Religious Politics. University of Oxford. Unpublished doctoral thesis, submitted in 2018. Deschamps-Laporte argues that leaders of the Da‘wa Salafiyya and the Brotherhood had traditionally operated in a spirit of competition. During the transition of 2011 and 2012, this rivalry had given way to moments of tactical collaboration, especially once the Nur Party had been formed. The fact that the Salafis and the Brotherhood were not a single block is supported by the presidential elections of 2012, where the Nur Party supported Abu al-Futuh rather than Mohammed Morsi after Hazim Salah Abu Isma‘il, the Salafis’ preferred candidate, had been disqualified due to his mother’s US citizenship. Nevertheless, the Brotherhood needed the support of the Salafis, which is why ‘Imad Ghafur, the president of the Nur Party, was nominated as an advisor of Mohammed Morsi once the latter had become president in June 2012. Gaber, Yasin. ‘Reconstructing Maspero’s bloody Sunday: an Ahram Online Investigation.’ Al-Ahram Online, 1 November 2011. http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/ 25521/Egypt/Politics-/Reconstructing-Masperos-Bloody-Sunday-Ahram-Online.aspx (accessed 13 September 2017). ‘Mashhad Khatīr lam yatamm nashrahu min qabla Bidāya Muzāhara Māsbīrū (Previously ˙ of Danger at the Beginning of the Masprio ˙ Protests).’ YouTube, 9 unheard Scenes November 2011. www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXW1Rjdcmko&feature=share (accessed 13 September 2017).

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demonstrators in Maspiro, who called for the fall of the SCAF and its Field Marshall, General Tantawi.113 The situation escalated when Armed Personnel Carriers ploughed through the masses and soldiers from the military police on top of the vehicles randomly shot live bullets into the crowds. The carnage continued for thirty minutes and ended with a death toll of twenty-eight citizens, including several women and children.114 The Brotherhood adopted a duplicitous argument with respect to the ‘Maspiro massacre’. Although there was no doubt that the military had been responsible for this bloodshed, the vanguard leaders blamed the ‘remnants of the National Democratic Party’.115 Several commentators writing on Ikhwanonline.com propagated overtly sectarian narratives, relishing in a sense of schadenfreude for the victims while accusing an ‘extremist Christian clergy’ and ‘corrupt Coptic businessmen’ for having caused the flare-up in religious tensions.116 Years later, a younger member sanctimoniously justified the Brotherhood’s avoidance of blaming the military by pointing to the necessity of ensuring that the upcoming parliamentary elections could take their course. It had been for this reason, he claimed, that the Guidance Office had instructed its members

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‘Bidāya Hujūm al-Jaysh ‘alā al-Mutazāhirīn al-Masīhīn al-Silmiyīn (Beginning of the Attack ˙ of the Army against the peaceful ˙Christian Protesters).’ YouTube, 10 November 2017. www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQzObqvg8k&feature=player_embedded#at=309 (accessed 13 September 2017). Carr, Sarah. ‘A First-hand Account: Marching from Shubra to Deaths at Maspero.’ Egypt Independent, 10 October 2011. www.egyptindependent.com/firsthand-account-marchingshubra-deaths-maspero/ (accessed 30 September 2017); ‘Dābit yutliq al-Nār ‘alā al˙ ˙– Maspiro).’ YouTube, Mutazāhirīn – Māsbīrū (A Soldier Fires on the Protesters ˙ 9 October 2011. www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbUInFMZLNg&feature=player_embedded (accessed 13 September 2017); ‘Ishtibākāt bayna al-Jaysh wa al-Mutazāhrīn amām Māsbīrū ˙ Al-Masry al-Youm, (Clashes between the Army and the Protesters in front of Maspero).’ 9 October 2011. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzRpdcqV0gU;%20www.youtube.com/watch? v=Rbfsl5b0o8E (accessed 30 September 2017). ‘Murshid al-Ikhwān: Ahdāth ‘Māspīrū’ sanī’ū Fulūl al-Watanī wa lā Harb ahlī fī Masr ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ (The Guide of the Brotherhood: The ˙Events of “Maspero” were fabricated by the national Fulul and do not constitute a Civil War in Egypt).’ Al-Riyad, 13 October 2011. www.alriyadh.com/675146 (accessed 30 September 2017). The article mentioned here had been posted on Ikhwanonline.com, but the website was remade in 2015 (see Chapter 7). The freelance journalist Basil al-Dabh had previously translated the article and provided me with a summary. The official statement of the Brotherhood can be found here: ‘Nidā’ Min al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn li-l-‘Uqalā’ min ‘Azma Ahdāth Māsbīrū (Statement of the Muslim Brotherhood to the Understanding of ˙ of the Maspero Crisis).’ Islamsstory, 10 October 2011. http://islamstory.com/the Events Maspiro_Eventsindex.php?lang=en (accessed 5 September 2015). In a later Facebook chat, Abdullah al-Haddad explained that articles published on Ikhwanonline.com did not constitute the Brotherhood’s official position. See al-Haddad, Abdullah. Facebook chat with the author. Geneva-Istanbul, 4 September 2015.

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to ‘cease all unnecessary protests and strikes that can create the conditions for a counter-revolution’.117 Despite the Brotherhood’s endeavours to avoid an open confrontation with the military, the tactical alliance of convenience between the two rivals began to flounder in mid November. The likelihood of a Brotherhood victory at the polls magnified the determination of the generals to derail the democratic process by all means. Being aware of this circumstance, the Brotherhood’s parliamentary strategy started to coalesce around three pillars: first, the Guidance Office was to introduce certain limited constitutional and political reforms without, however, challenging the army’s overall supremacy. Second, the vanguard leaders were to introduce massive and rapid improvements to the standards of living of Egyptians, hoping that such disruptive measures would guarantee the people’s ongoing support and thereby bolster the Brotherhood’s legitimacy. And third, popular pressure on the street was to be maintained – a measure that required the Brotherhood to strategically side with the revolutionaries at various junctures in order to resist countervailing manoeuvres by the military.118 When the SCAF unilaterally issued a set of ‘supra-constitutional principles’ to tighten its grip over the civilian space and further delay the elections, the Brotherhood pragmatically entered into a temporary coalition with the youth activists of the 6th of April Movement and the Revolutionary Youth Coalition. On 18 November, the Guidance Office mobilized tens of thousands of rank-and-file members at Tahrir Square in what became the most momentous demonstrations since Mubarak’s departure. Brotherhoodaffiliated media outlets later claimed that liberal and secular groups had turned out only in small numbers – a narrative that was uncritically replicated by the global media.119 In reality, the Guidance Office ordered its rank and file to withdraw from the Square in the late afternoon while the revolutionary activists pressed on with their protests. As the Brotherhood removed itself, the activists sourly joked: Thawra, thawra, hatta-l-‘asr! – Revolution, revolution, till the afternoon [prayers]!

As soon as the Brotherhood had pulled out, the security forces moved in, forcibly and violently dispersing the activists and the martyrs’ families.

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Al-Hurriyya wa-l-‘Adala. 30 October 2011, quoted in Ketchley. Egypt in a Time of Revolution, p. 120. al-Qazzaz, Hussein. Interview with author. Istanbul, 28 March 2018. See for example Reuters, who wrote ‘50,000 mainly Islamist protesters flocked to Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday’ in ‘Thousands Protest in Egypt’s Tahrir against Army Rule.’ Reuters, 18 November 2011 www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-protest-armyidUSTRE7AH0WX20111118 (accessed 13 September 2017).

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The situation escalated the next morning, when the youth activists attempted to regain ground and push towards the Ministry of Interior via Mohammed Mahmud Street. During three chaotic days of bloody street clashes, the Central Security Forces and troopers from the military police assaulted the protesters with tear gas and live ammunition.120 For its part, the Guidance Office issued strict orders that explicitly forbade its members to participate in the demonstrations.121 Having only recently purged its ranks of rebellious elements, the vanguard leaders perceived the pluralism of opinions among its mid-level cadres as a threat to the Brotherhood’s organizational cohesion.122 But many mid-ranking commanders in various governorates were unconvinced of their leaders’ arguments of a ‘plot’ that had allegedly been instigated by the military in an effort to derail the democratic process. A student activist of al-Azhar University later described the ‘state of extreme tension’ that characterized the atmosphere among the Brotherhood’s youth members: We were in a fierce struggle between the importance and necessity of supporting the activists against the practices of the Ministry of Interior and the military police, and the need to confront the repression and the killing in the streets [on the one hand], and the commitment to the decision of the Brotherhood [on the other]. We at [al-Azhar] University felt responsible to absorb this decision and [we did] not inform the young people across the Brotherhood that they were forbidden to participate.123

When some mid-ranking cadres simply avoided passing the Guidance Office’s decision down the chain of command, this was ‘the first time [where] multiple student leaders of different provinces [acted] contrary to a clear instruction of the group’.124 Although the Guidance Office later blamed the military for the violence,125 the Mohammed Mahmud Street clashes showed the extent to which the Guidance Office was prepared to reject the revolution’s ‘extremist 120

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‘Ahdāth Mohammed Mahmūd (The Events of Mohammed Mahmud).’ YouTube, 19 ˙ ˙ www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LA7Zog3NlU ˙ November 2011. (accessed 13 September 2017). ‘Irtifā‘ Wafayāt Ahdāth al-Tahrīr ilā 38 ba‘d Wafāa Musābīn bi-Qasr al-‘Aynī al-yawm (The Death Toll of˙ the Events˙at Tahrir Square increases˙ to 38 after˙the Deaths of those wounded in Qasr al-Aini today).’ Al-Ahram Online, 24 November 2011. http://gate .ahram.org.eg/News/141141.aspx (accessed 13 September 2017). Fathi, Yasser. Interview with author. Istanbul, 26 March 2018. Officer for public work of the Brotherhood youth, al-Azhar University. Interview by Yasser Fathi. Mansura, June 2017, quoted in Fathi. ‘The Brotherhood’s Youth.’ An educational supervisor for Brotherhood students of the Faculty of Engineering, Mansoura University. Interview by Yasser Fathi. Mansura, June 2017, quoted in ibid. ‘Bayān min al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn hawla Ahdāth al-Ahad wa-l-Ithnayn 20, 21 ˙ Brotherhood ˙ ˙ Nūfimbir 2011 (Statement by the Muslim regarding the Events of Sunday and Monday, 20 and 21 November 2011).’ Ikhwanonline.com, 21 November 2011. www.ikhwanonline.com/official_statements/95554/Default.aspx (17 April 2018).

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ideas’ in favour of maintaining good relations with the military.126 When, during a meeting at the University of Alexandria, student activists reproached their leaders for having avoided a confrontation with the military, they were told that ‘the revolution did not understand the scene’ on the ground.127 During the following weeks, street clashes erupted in various cities across Egypt. Despite the fact that on 3 December the SCAF had appointed Kamal Ganzouri as prime minister and tasked him with the formation of a coalition government, the activists’ anger against the security state did not abate. After a week-long sit-in in front of the Council of Ministers, black-helmeted troopers from the Central Security Forces attacked the sit-in on 16 December. A widely shared video showed a group of State Security officers in riot gear dragging a woman through the street while one trooper kicked her ruthlessly in her face and stomach, leaving her blue bra exposed.128 Known as the ‘Blue Bra Girl incident’, the scene became a symbol for the brutality of the Central Security Forces.129 As sexual mob assaults intensified, it seemed obvious that the systematic targeting and beating of female activists had become an officially sanctioned strategy of the security state.130 For its part, the Guidance Office offered only diplomatically jargoned lip service. The vanguard leaders seemed more concerned with abstaining from criticizing the SCAF rather than condemning such blatant and perverted acts of aggression. Thus, those who had regularly preached of the need to ‘protect’ the ‘sanctity of women’ looked in the other direction as a young woman was senselessly beaten and publicly humiliated. To many Egyptian women, the failure of the Brotherhood’s leaders to intervene on this occasion only confirmed the depth of their hypocrisy. It was within this atmosphere that the first round of the People’s Assembly elections took place on 29 November. The Guidance Office had set a benchmark whereby each member was asked to mobilize a minimum of 100 relatives or friends to vote. Tents were set up in the country’s poorest cities, villages and neighbourhoods, from where Brotherhood members and 126 127 128

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al-Qazzaz, Hussein. Interview with author. Istanbul, 28 March 2018. Fathi. ‘The Brotherhood’s Youth.’ ‘Shocking Video: “Blue Bra” Girl brutally beaten by Egypt Military.’ Russia TV, 18 December 2011. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnFVYewkWEY&bpctr=1505367318 (accessed 13 September 2017). ‘Intihākāt al-Gaysh fī Ahdāth Majlis al-Wuzarā’ (Violations of the Army in the Events of ˙ the Council of Ministers).’ YouTube, 16 December 2011. www.youtube.com/watch? v=KjHO3CjBsgs (accessed 17 April 2017). ‘Circles of Hell: domestic, public and State Violence against Women in Egypt.’ Amnesty International Publications, 21 January 2015, p. 10. www.amnesty.org/download/ Documents/212000/mde120042015en.pdf (accessed 7 June 2018).

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supporters distributed sugar, olive oil and ghee. On the morning of the election, a senior Guidance Office member percolated the following message down the ranks of the organization: Brothers and sisters, you who continue in your bond. The hours are few, many and mighty in the balance [of life]. The one who is aware doesn’t know any laxity. Instead, he will always be active and increase his activity in order to accomplish his marvellous task and the weight of [his] responsibility. We need to call for striving and work to elevate and increase the prayer of the people so that God opens your hearts. X.Y., 29.11.2011 – 9:07 a.m.131

When the votes were counted in mid-January 2012 following the two remaining electoral rounds, the FJP emerged victorious with 47.2 per cent of seats, while the Salafi Nur Party captured 24.3 per cent of the vote. On 23 January 2012 the newly appointed parliamentary speaker, Sa‘d Katatni, chaired the first session of the new People’s Assembly, trying in vain to bring order to an unruly chamber where Salafi MPs randomly interrupted the deliberations with calls to prayer. As the demonstrations continued on the streets of Egypt, the Ministry of Interior exploited the opportunity to take revenge on the Ultras soccer fans, who had played a prominent role during the 2011 uprising. On 1 February 2012, following a chaotic derby in Port Said between the local al-Masry club and the al-Ahly club from Cairo, scores of Ahlawys were shot, strangled and randomly stabbed by regime-hired thugs. An ensuing stampede resulted in the death of seventy-four Ahlawy Ultras. State Security forces later blamed fans of the rivalling al-Masry club for the bloodshed.132 Unconcerned by these events, the Guidance Office turned its eyes towards the crown jewel of its Islamic project: the adoption of a new constitution. Within days, the Brotherhood-controlled parliament formed a 100-member Constitutional Assembly, comprising fifty parliamentarians and fifty trade unionists and members of civil society, whose task was to draft the outlines of a new constitutional document.133 Of the fifty legislators, twenty-five came from the FJP, eleven from the Salafi Nur Party, and only fourteen from nonIslamist groups. When the Constitutional Assembly called for the abolition of

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Abu Khalil, Haytham. Interview with author. Alexandria, 17 December 2012. See the dissertation by Rommel, Carl. Revolution, Play and Feeling. Assembling Emotionality, National Subjectivity and Football in Cairo, 1990–2013. SOAS, University of London. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, submitted in 2015, pp. 158 ff. The Consultative Council (Majlis al-Shura) designates the Upper House of the Egyptian parliament. It was created by Sadat during the constitutional reform of 1980 and its members were appointed by the president. It is not to be confused with the Shura Council (Majlis al-Shura al-‘Amm) of the Muslim Brotherhood.

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the SCAF’s March 2011 constitutional declaration, the stage was set for the ensuing turf war between the new parliament and the judiciary over each side’s legal prerogatives.134 The opening gambit came from the Supreme Administrative Court when it struck down the legality of the Constitutional Assembly ten days after its announcement, arguing that the body’s formation was invalid under a 1994 Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) ruling.135 In February 2012, the Brotherhood leadership held a series of conversations with Kamal Ganzouri regarding the formation of a new government. Khairat al-Shatir, who led the negotiations on behalf of the Guidance Office, was told in no uncertain terms that he should not expect the Brotherhood to play a major role in a future government. As it became clear that the Brotherhood would be offered at best four ministerial portfolios of secondary importance, and that the key ministries of defence, interior, finance and economy would remain in the hands of figures close to the military, Shatir for the first time considered a presidential run.136 While previously the Brotherhood had affirmed that they were ‘not students of authority, nor of any offices or ranks, and therefore will not nominate any of [their members] to the presidency’, the SCAF’s assurance that the Brotherhood was to remain an insignificant political player despite having won a substantial parliamentary victory changed the strategic calculus in the Guidance Office.137 It was in these circumstances that Khairat al-Shatir on 2 April declared himself as the presidential candidate on behalf of the FJP.138 A campaign committee was hurriedly put together, headed by ‘Issam al-Haddad, who oversaw a budget of E£650 million ($91 million).139 A few days after Shatir’s 134

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For an overview of Egypt’s judiciary, see the articles by Nathan Brown, for instance: ‘Egypt’s Judges in a Revolutionary Age.’ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 22 February 2012. http://carnegieendowment.org/2012/02/22/egypt-s-judges-inrevolutionary-age/hdmk# (accessed 3 September 2017). ‘Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court suspends embattled Constituent Assembly.’ AlAhram Online, 10 April 2012. http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/38936/ Egypt/Politics-/Egypts-High-Administrative-Court-suspends-embattle.aspx (accessed 3 September 2017). al-Qazzaz, Hussein. Interview with author. Istanbul, 28 March 2018. ‘Bayān min al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn hawla al-Ahdāth al-Jum‘a al-‘Azima, 4/2/2011 ˙ ˙ 4. 2. 2011).’ (Statement by the Muslim Brotherhood˙ on the Events of the Great Friday, Ikhwanonline.com, 5 February 2011. www.ikhwanonline.com/official_statements/ 78735/Default.aspx (accessed 20 April 2018); ‘Al-Duktūr Muhammad Badī’ fī ˙ in the Egyptian Birnāmaj Ittajāhat ‘alā al-Tilifizīūn al-Masrī (Dr. Mohammed Badi’ Ittajahat Programme).’ Al-Wafd News, ˙29 May 2011. www.youtube.com/watch? v=svprMpBkLd8&feature=player_embedded (accessed 3 September 2017); al-Shatir. ‘The Project of Islamic Renaissance.’ ‘Liqā’ al-Muhandis Khairat al-Shātir ma‘ ‘Amrū al-Līthī (Meeting of Engineer Khairat al˙ Shatir with ‘Amr al-Lithi).’ YouTube, 9 April 2012. www.youtube.com/watch? v=rNCRK_BLV50 (accessed 3 September 2017). Abu Khalili, Haytham. Interview with author. Alexandria, 17 December 2012.

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announcement, a delegation of Brotherhood members travelled to Washington to launch a charm offensive at the White House. During a panel discussion hosted at the Georgetown University, Hussein al-Qazzaz reassured a sceptical American audience that the Brotherhood did not intend to run Egypt alone, but that the revolution had nevertheless brought to the forefront ‘a certain set of values, a certain model and a certain dynamic’. Dovetailing on the discourse of the AK Parti in Turkey, Qazzaz elaborated on the FJP’s intention to launch a ‘very aggressive small and medium enterprise campaign’ that would use ‘the grassroots of our party’ in order to translate the ‘ideas of equality, freedom, justice, and so on [sic] into economic and social realities’.140 Shatir’s presidential bid was enthusiastically embraced by rank-and-file members, who saw in him a capable leader and the ‘strategic man’ with the capacity to make Egypt great again. Shatir, who was known to be a ‘shy and introverted man’, was even rumoured to have been nominated against his will. Apparently, faced with the prospect of this burden, he had even shed some tears.141 However, the Brotherhood’s revolutionary youth members as well as a majority of the Shura Council opposed Shatir’s plans.142 During an extraordinary session held in March 2012, Shura Council members explicitly voted against nominating a presidential candidate. It was only after ‘Izzat and Morsi had instigated a second round of voting that Shatir emerged as the Brotherhood’s officially sanctioned candidate. Kamal al-Helbawy, who since his return from London had played a marginal role in the Brotherhood’s internal politics, resigned as a consequence.143 The Al Jazeera journalist Jamal Elshayyal later remembered how Mohammed al-Beltagi, upon learning of Shatir’s nomination, had suffered a cardiac attack and needed to be transferred to the Qasr al-‘Aini Hospital. Mohammed ‘Ali Bishr, who visited his comrade the next day, expressed his fear that the Brotherhood was about to ‘jump into the fire’.144 As it turned out, Shatir’s campaign was short-lived. Only two weeks after submitting his candidature he was disqualified by the electoral commission on the grounds that he had been imprisoned until recently and therefore was not

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‘Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian Politics.’ C-SPAN, 4 April 2012. www.c-span.org /video/?305314-1/muslim-brotherhood-egyptian-politics (accessed 3 September 2017). Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 10 October 2012. A survey conducted in April 2012 showed that 78 per cent of youth members were against proposing a presidential candidate, while only 14 per cent were in favour. See Fathi, Yasser. ‘Shabāb al-Ikhwān: al-Tanawwu‘ hadī’ wa mākīna muwahhada (The ˙ Brotherhood’s Youth: a Quiet Diversity and a Unified Machine).’ Egyptian ˙Institute for Studies, 18 March 2018. https://goo.gl/26W1Zy (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 17 April 2018). al-Helbawy, Kamal. Interview with author. Cairo, 10 March 2013. Elshayyal, Jamal. Interview with author. Berlin, 4 October 2015.

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eligible to run for president. This decision opened the door for the protagonist of this drama’s next act to step onto the stage of history.

Enter Mohammed Morsi After Shatir’s rejection by the electoral commission, the FJP advanced Mohammed Morsi, who was immediately mocked as the ‘spare tyre’ by opposition activists. During the first round of the presidential elections on 23 May, Morsi came in first with 24.8 per cent of the vote, followed by the oldregime figure and former Commander of the Air Force, Ahmed Shafiq, who won 23.6 per cent. The Nasserist Hamdin Sabahi was third with 20.7 per cent, followed by Abu al-Futuh with a disappointing 17.5 per cent. As none of the candidates had won an absolute majority, Morsi and Shafiq advanced into the runoff.145 With a Morsi presidency becoming a real possibility, the debates among the activists in the Revolutionary Youth Coalition became increasingly polarized. Some were ready to support Morsi on the condition that power would be shared, while others threatened to boycott the elections altogether. The outlook of both parliament and the presidency being dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood also irked Egypt’s judges, who had been traditionally eager to preserve their autonomy vis-à-vis the executive and were determined to limit the Brotherhood’s power by all means. On 14 June the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC), after having retroactively declared as null and void the law having governed the 2011 parliamentary elections, dissolved the People’s Assembly that had been elected six months before. Three days later, the SCAF unilaterally amended the constitutional declaration it had issued in March 2011, thereby limiting the powers of the future president by granting itself a supra-constitutional position.146 It was within this climate that the second round of the presidential elections took place on 16 and 17 June. Once the voting offices had closed, the announcement of the results were delayed for an entire week, fuelling rumours that the election’s outcome was the result of a deal between the military and the United States, and that the SCAF purposefully installed Morsi as president in the certainty that the Brotherhood was bound to fail.147 With the Brotherhood fearing that they might be excluded from governance all together, there was 145

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‘Final Results of the first Round.’ Official Site for the Presidential Elections 2012. http:// presidential2012.elections.eg/index.php/round1-results (accessed 19 July 2015). ‘SCAF expands its Power with Constitutional Amendments.’ Egypt Independent, 17 June 2012. www.egyptindependent.com/scaf-expands-its-power-constitutionalamendments/ (accessed 3 September 2017). Several individuals ascertained to have heard directly from high-ranking generals that the army would let the Brotherhood rule for a maximum of one year before taking back power. See author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 20 June 2012.

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a widespread consensus among average citizens that the only way for Egypt to regain stability was if the presidency was awarded to Mohammed Morsi. In an effort to secure his bid, Morsi on 21 June invited the representatives of the opposition for national reconciliation talks. During a press conference at the Fairmont Hotel the next day, he called on the SCAF to cede power to an elected civilian government. He promised that, if he would win the presidency, he would form a national unity government that would include women and Coptic Christians and appoint an independent figure as prime minister. In a Facebook post Wael Ghonim summarized the dilemma of those among the secular and liberal camps who cast their vote for Morsi: ‘Our support is not to the Brotherhood, but to legitimacy and democracy against any attempts by anyone – either those with guns or those waging misleading media campaigns.’148 After further pressure from the Obama administration, the election commission on 24 June finally announced that Morsi had won with 51.73 per cent. The rank-and-file membership of the Brotherhood was in a state of triumph. Few were able to grasp the enormity of what just had transpired and what this would mean for the future of their Society.149 With the Brotherhood in charge of both the legislative and the executive branches of government, Morsi renounced his chairmanship of the FJP. Sa‘d al-Katatni, who already occupied the post of speaker of parliament, was rotated into the position of party president while Hussein Ibrahim, formerly the head of the Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc, became the FJP’s secretary general. Rafiq Habib and ‘Issam al-‘Arian remained in their posts as vice chairmen. The fact that ‘Arian, together with other seasoned politicians of the Tilmisanian school of thought such as Sayyid ‘Abd al-Sattar al-Meligui, Helmi Gazzar and Gamal Heshmat, was bypassed once again showed the extent to which the vanguard leaders trusted only their own kind. Since their numbers were small, this implied that ‘each one had [to work in] two, three or four [different posts]’ simultaneously. Mokhtar Nuh later explained: Why did [the vanguard leaders] drop [‘Issam al-‘Arian]? Because he was part of the outer circle. ‘Issam tried to get closer to the inner circle by insulting others, such as ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh. But the secret organization always stays secret. One will never enter the secret organization by insulting others. [The vanguard leaders] will only use you to insult other people, but they will never put you in the secret organization because you are insulting others.150 148

149 150

‘Morsi Campaign Press Conference at Fairmont Hotel to discuss latest Developments.’ Ikhwanweb, 22 June 2012. www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=30125 (accessed 3 September 2017). Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 4 July 2012. Nuh, Mokhtar. Interview with author. Cairo, 11 March 2013.

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On 24 June the new president appeared on television to address the Egyptian people for the first time: ‘My beloved ones, my family and tribe, my brethren and my sons, who are looking forward to the future, you who want the good, rebirth, development, stability, safety, and security for our country . . . ’ the president began his address.151 Having uttered only a few sentences, Morsi had not only offended the country’s women who felt overlooked by the expression ‘my brethren and my sons’, but also all those who did not see themselves as belonging to Morsi’s ‘family and tribe’. Five days later, the Brotherhood organized a gigantic public event where tens of thousands of Egyptians streamed to Tahrir Square to greet the ‘first democratically elected president in Egypt’s history’.152 After much anticipation, Morsi emerged on the stage in front of a cheering crowd, appealing to his ‘brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, Egyptian Muslims and Christians, all citizens wherever you are, inside Egypt and abroad’. In an attempt to make up for his previous gaffe, Morsi clumsily added: ‘you are all my family, all my friends!’ He further insisted that that he had no rights, only duties, and reassured the people that, should he ‘not adhere to what I promised, you are not obliged to obey me’.153 At one point, he ripped open his shirt in a dramatic gesture to show that he was not wearing a bulletproof vest. The humoresque Egyptian youth quickly adopted this motif into the meme ‘Super Morsi’, a graffiti of which was sprayed on a street corner near Mohammed Mahmud Street. Morsi’s first task was to staff his cabinet. Contrary to the promise made at the Fairmont meeting a few days ago, he opted for Hisham Kandil as prime minister, who was widely seen as a ‘Brother in disguise’.154 To the dismay of Egypt’s corps of seasoned diplomats, the businessman ‘Issam al-Haddad was appointed as Morsi’s foreign policy advisor. Ayman Hudhud, who had never served in any security-related post, became national security advisor while Yassir ‘Ali, a dermatologist with a diploma in communication, became the president’s spokesperson. While technocrats were assigned to peripheral ministries, such as the Ministry for Environmental Affairs, those posts carrying the most influence, including the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry for Youth, the Ministry of Media, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and the Ministry of Higher Education, were filled with Brotherhood loyalists. Among Morsi’s detractors, there was a widely shared feeling that the new president had chosen only yea-sayers for his advisory 151

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‘Awwal Khitāb li-l-Ra’īs al-Masrī al-muntakhib Muhammad Mursī (First Speech of ˙ Mohammed Morsi).’ ˙ the elected˙ Egyptian President Al-Arabiya, 24 June 2012. www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzs7R3lUeUQ (accessed 3 September 2017). Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 24 July 2012. ‘Khitāb al-Ra’īs Muhammad Mursī fī Mīdān al-Tahrīr (Speech by Mohammed Morsi at ˙ Square).’ YouTube, ˙ ˙ Tahrir 29 June 2012. www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWPVCUtpNWw& feature=youtube_gdata_player (accessed 3 September 2017). Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 22 September 2013.

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council, according to criteria of personal loyalty rather than technical competency – a practice that became known as the ‘Ikhwanization’ of the state.155 It was further rumoured that he ‘heeded no one’s advice but that of the Brotherhood’s inner circle’ and that the final decision always rested with Khairat al-Shatir, who was said to have a private office in the Presidential Palace with direct access to the president.156 In reality, while Morsi had indeed asked for Shatir’s input on some major decisions, the notion that he had been ‘controlled’ by the latter needs to be relativized. Whatever existed in terms of a consulting mechanism between the Guidance Office and the presidency was unstructured and irregular, consisting mainly of Shatir, Morsi and Katatni informally ‘chatting’ over dinner without following a specific protocol.157 The image of a sheep-like president simply executing the instructions of the Guidance Office, like a ‘marionette’ dancing to the tunes of a puppet master, as the anti-Brotherhood press sought to portray it, ignored the fact that Morsi was a ‘product of the political system’ he now presided over. According to Hussein al-Qazzaz, who had been close to the president during these days, Morsi in fact seems to have tried to maintain a formal separation of power between the presidency on the one hand, and the Guidance Office and the FJP’s executive board on the other. He seems to have been an independent-minded and hard-working individual who was eager to set an example for his entourage, coming into the office in the early morning hours and leaving late at night. One of Morsi’s most memorable political experiences had been his role as the Brotherhood’s parliamentary spokesperson after the elections of 2000 – a period he revisited repeatedly in private conversations. Having risen to the presidency ‘from the trenches of the Egyptian state’, he actually seems to have often been at odds with his nonpolitical colleagues in the Guidance Office.158 Morsi faced a number of immediate challenges, the most urgent of which was Egypt’s escalating budget deficit and rapidly depleting foreign currency reserves. While the FJP’s electoral platform had promised to alleviate the hardship faced by Egypt’s marginalized masses by introducing a sweeping social welfare agenda, the Brotherhood’s notion of economic development had remained vague and abstract. Overwhelmed first by the Egyptian uprising, and then by their parliamentary and presidential victories, the Guidance Office had failed to allocate sufficient recourses towards translating the aspirations expressed in the Nahda Project into concrete social and economic programmes. This task was left to Hussein al-Qazzaz, who was mandated by 155

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Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 12 August 2012; Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 22 September 2013. Ayyash, Abdelrahman. Interview with author. Berlin, 2 October 2015. al-Qazzaz, Hussein. Interview with author. Istanbul, 28 March 2018. Ibid.

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Khairat al-Shatir to develop ‘phase three’ of the Nahda Project. Qazzaz hurriedly recruited a team of some one-hundred activists with the view of presenting the president with a full-fledged implementation plan of the Nahda Project by January 2013.159 In the meantime, Morsi’s government was under pressure to balance the country’s household budget. Once again, the president relied on Qazzaz, who was put at the helm of an advisory board made up of economists and businessmen with the mission of restructuring Egypt’s public finances. As Qazzaz and his team of accountants went over the numbers, they were surprised to discover that more than 40 per cent of the budget was spent on the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation, which was responsible for exporting Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and which until recently had been controlled by Samih Fahmy, the brother of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s daughter-in-law.160 Despite their best effort to understand the origins of what the Central Bank governor referred to as the ‘black hole’, Qazzaz and his team eventually had to concede. Morsi was forced to continue the previous regime’s policy of neoliberal restructuring, requesting an additional $1.6 billion to the $3.2 billion loan package that had already been negotiated between Mubarak and the IMF. This led to significant disagreements between the government and the FJP’s executive board, whose members worried about the impact the IMF’s austerity policies would have on people’s living standards and how this would affect the FJP’s public opinion polls.161 Egypt’s need for foreign investment also determined the government’s foreign policy, which was shaped by a small circle of presidential envoys. Rather than introducing a revolutionary change, as some analysts and policymakers had feared, Morsi’s foreign policy remained passive and conservative. The government’s prime concern was to preserve US support, which alone could protect the Brotherhood against the security state and its regional allies. The fact that Egypt depended on ‘Washington consensus’ institutions obliged Morsi to maintain amicable relations with Israel.162 The government thus guaranteed the uninterrupted functioning of the Qualifying Industrialized Zones (QIZ), which allowed companies located within the zone to access US markets without paying import taxes.163 Morsi proved his submissiveness to US priorities when his office sent a typo-riddled letter to ‘H.E. Mr. Shimon Perez [sic]’, expressing the president’s commitment to ‘get the Middle east [sic] 159 160 161 162

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Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. ‘Q.I.Z – Qualifying Industrial Zones.’ Ministry of Economy of Israel. http://archive.is /fqci (accessed 20 September 2017). ‘Protocol between the Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Government of the State of Israel on Qualifying Industrial Zones,’ 14 December 2004. www .qizegypt.gov.eg/About_Textprotocol.aspx (accessed 30 April 2017).

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Peace Process back to its right track in order to achieve security and stability for all peoples of the region, including that [sic] Israeli people’.164 When the Israeli government released Morsi’s letter a few days later, Brotherhood spokespeople immediately denied having sent it in the first place.165 Another example of the conservative nature of Morsi’s foreign policy was the government’s stance towards Iran. Since the empowerment of the IRGC’s radical wing in 2005, the Islamic Republic had suffered from the effects of a crippling international sanctions regime. As the Iranian economy had contracted by 6 per cent over the course of the previous decade, strategists in Tehran saw the Arab uprisings as the harbinger of a new regional order, conceptualizing the revolts through an Islamist and anti-imperialist lens.166 In the words of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah ‘Ali Khamenei, the Arab Spring was ‘a cry of protest against Western domination’ that inaugurated ‘a significant transformation and the rule of Islam’. The fact that the region’s Muslim populations had empowered new political actors led to the adoption of foreign policies that sought to erode the legitimacy of the House of Sa‘ud and allow Iran to expand its regional position in the Arab Sunni heartland.167 Accordingly, the office of the Iranian presidency in 2011 had prepared a series of infrastructure and military manufacturing projects, which Iranian diplomats now presented to the incoming Morsi administration. The Islamic Republic welcomed the rise to power of the Brotherhood, as this allowed Iran to engage Arab Sunni groups and thereby influence Arab politics across the Middle East. A few weeks after Morsi had taken office, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad invited his colleague to attend the Non-Aligned Movement summit that was to take place in Tehran in August 2012.168 The disappointment was great in Teheran when it became evident that Morsi reacted hesitantly, if not lukewarmly, to prospects of a normalization 164

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Zion, Ilan Ben and Elhanan Miller. ‘Morsi denies sending friendly Letter to Peres.’ The Times of Israel, 31 July 2012. www.timesofisrael.com/morsis-office-denies-egyptianpresident-sent-letter-to-peres/ (accessed 13 September 2017). ‘Confusion over “fake” Egyptian Letter to Israel.’ The Guardian, 1 August 2012. www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/01/israel-egypt-letter-mixup (accessed 13 September 2017). Monshipouri, Mahmood and Manochehr Dorraj. ‘Iran’s Foreign Policy: a Shifting Strategic Landscape.’ Middle East Policy 20, no. 4 (December 2013), pp. 133–47. al-Smadi, Fatima. ‘Iran and the Arab Revolutions: Narratives establishing Iran’s Monopolism.’ Al Jazeera Center for Studies, 18 March 2017. http://studies.aljazeera.net /en/reports/2017/03/iran-arab-revolutions-narratives-establishing-irans-monopolism -170318050125225.html (accessed 13 September 2017). Badawi, Tamer and Osama al-Sayyad. ‘Iran and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: Heading towards Development or simply Repair?’ Al-Sharq Forum Paper Series, September 2018, p. 35. www.sharqforum.org/2018/09/07/iran-and-the-egyptian-muslimbrotherhood-heading-towards-development-or-simply-repair/ (accessed 17 November 2018).

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of the Egyptian–Iranian relationship. Well aware of Saudi Arabia’s regional weight, Morsi understood that the relationship with the conservative monarchies in the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf needed to be prioritized over any kind of adventurism towards the Islamic Republic. Whereas some in the Guidance Office favoured a closer engagement with Iran, its robust support of the Asad regime in Syria had caused anger among lower ranking members. Anti-Iranian attitudes were further fomented through Saudi-financed propaganda, whose sectarian narratives criticized the tendency of some national Brotherhood chapters, such as Hamas, to entertain close political relations with Iran. These media campaigns were echoed among Islamist activists who supported the FJP. Furthermore, the fact that Saudi Arabia was home to the largest proportion of expatriate Brotherhood members, and therefore the biggest contributor to its treasury, tilted the Morsi administration against engagement with Iran. Finally, the fact that Iran regularly ridiculed the Saudi monarchical system of governance as a symbol of Muslim backwardness did not help the cause either. While most Saudi leaders perceived Iran as being the most vigorous ideological danger to the Kingdom, a minority believed that the Brotherhood was an even bigger danger than Iran, as Qatari officials privately related to the Brotherhood. It was out of these considerations that Morsi preferred to maintain Egypt’s relations with Iran at a minimal level, leaving the ‘Iranian file’ in the hands of the London-based International Organization, which focused on projects of intra-doctrinal dialogue, rather than dealing with the matter through the presidential office.169 It is against this background that Morsi’s visit to Tehran in August 2012 to attend the Non-Aligned Movement summit must be seen. While the international press ominously announced a ‘major foreign policy shift for the Arab world’s most populous nation’, the fact that Morsi was the first Egyptian leader to visit Iran since 1979 was insignificant beyond the symbolical level.170 In reality, Morsi had accepted Ahmadinejad’s invitation only once he had personally visited Riyadh, where he had assured the King that the Brotherhood did not intend a radical change of Egyptian foreign policy. Once in Iran, Morsi twice embarrassed his hosts: first by stating his adversity to Tehran’s ally Bashar al-Asad, and then by refusing to meet with the Supreme Leader in person.171 The fact that Ahmadinejad, despite these insulting gestures, praised the new Egyptian leader and responded favourably to the latter’s invitation to visit Cairo showed the degree to which the Iranian leadership was eager to break out of its international isolation. 169 170

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Badawi and al-Sayyad. ‘Iran and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood,’ p. 31. ‘Visit by Egypt’s Morsi to Iran reflects foreign Policy Shift.’ Washington Post, 27 August 2012. www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/visit-by-egypts-morsito-iran-reflects-foreign-policy-shift/2012/08/27/4baf4b3a-f060-11e1-b74c -84ed55e0300b_story.html (accessed 9 April 2018). Badawi and al-Sayyad. ‘Iran and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood,’ p. 57, footnote 64.

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While Morsi’s government undertook certain attempts to chart a new foreign policy, none of them seemed to have been particularly well thoughtthrough. Morsi used his speech in Tehran to announce a new initiative aimed at addressing the deteriorating conditions in Syria and implementing a political process. This initiative consisted of the formation of an ‘Islamic Quartet’ that would include Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran, with the objective to stop the war in Syria.172 The attempt was immediately boycotted by the Saudis, whose leaders were fearful of ‘encirclement’, with the Arabian Peninsula being pinched by Egyptian and Iranian supremacy in the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz respectively.173 Another badly formulated plan came out of a speech on 30 January 2013 at the Köber Stiftung in Berlin where the president, speaking in broken English, promoted the concept of ‘one civilization versus another one, not against another one’. To the astonishment of a bewildered German audience, a mischievous-looking Morsi explained the disadvantages of drinking and driving by declaring that ‘Benzin and alcohol don’t mix’. Despite his perhaps well-meant intentions, the theatrics of Morsi’s foreign visits exposed him to ridicule at home. The TV celebrity Bassam Youssef pored fun over the president in his popular talk show Al Bernameg.174

The Qatar–Al Jazeera Connection One of Egypt’s most consequential relationships with a foreign power during Morsi’s tenure was that with the State of Qatar. As some of the Arab world’s most entrenched dictators fell in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, and with the future of the Asad regime in Syria seemingly following a similar trajectory, a belief started to take hold among the ruling elite in Doha that the Arab Spring heralded the inevitable resurgence of populist political Islam in the region. For more than a decade, Qatar’s leaders had pursued avenues to play a more prominent role in the wider Middle East region. After 2011, as the country’s foreign policy became increasingly focused on changing the political status quo, the Muslim Brotherhood figured as a crucial player in furthering this development. The relationship between Qatar and the Brotherhood had originated in the late 1960s, when Qatar started its transformation from a ‘miserable little 172

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‘Kalima al-Ra’īs Muhammad Mursī li-l-Jama‘iyya al-‘āmma li-l-Umam al-Muttahida ˙ (Speech of President˙ Mohammed Morsi to the General Assembly of the United Nations).’ YouTube, 26 September 2012. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaTgOPPniHU (accessed 15 September 2017). Badawi and al-Sayyad. ‘Iran and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood,’ p. 57, footnote 69. ‘Mohamed Mursi redet in Berlin (Mohammed Morsi talks in Berlin).’ Koeber Stiftung, 6 February 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_HvswVMeLU (accessed 15 September 2017); Yousef, Bassem. ‘Morsī yatahadath al-Inglīzī – Halaqa 28 (Morsi speaks English – Episode ˙ 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jgVtQTOO74 ˙ 28).’ Al Bernameg, 10 February (accessed 15 September 2017).

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fishing village’, as the Political Resident of the British Empire had called the island in 1940, to a sophisticated modern welfare state.175 Following the announcement in 1968 that Britain would end its protection of the Persian Gulf, Sheikh Ahmed bin ‘Ali Al Thani became aware of the urgency to supply Qatar’s nascent institutions with public servants, teachers and administrators. Over the coming decades, he granted refuge to a diverse range of political émigrés who were persecuted in their own countries. These included Brotherhood figures such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi and ‘Abd al-Mo‘az al-Sattar, who was Hasan al-Banna’s personal emissary to Palestine, as well as a range of secular figures from the Palestinian intelligentsia such as Mahmud ‘Abbas. Despite the presence of prominent members of the Islamist milieu, the Brotherhood was unable to meaningfully influence Qatar’s educational curriculum or social values. For one, Qatar’s legal system was firmly rooted within Hanbali law, whereby legalist disputes prevailed over the universal outlook propagated by the Muslim Brotherhood.176 Secondly, Qatar’s invitation of Brotherhood figures was based on the agreement that they would not attempt to intervene in, or comment on, domestic issues. Although Qatari policymakers nurtured relations with the Brotherhood’s various national chapters, they closely controlled its activities at home.177 In terms of its foreign and security policy, Qatar had stood in a subordinated position vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia during most of the twentieth century.178 It was only after having formally declared independence in September 1971 that Qatar’s leaders considered pursuing a greater degree of autonomy from the Gulf region’s historical hegemon. Relying on Qatar’s strategically advantageous location in the Persian Gulf, the Al Thani clan, which had only recently prevailed in a historical dispute over its more liberal rivals from the al-Missnad clan, profiled itself first to the Ottomans, then to the British, as the peninsula’s effective leader. It was against this backdrop that the Al Thanis, during the last

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As quoted in Crystal, Jill. Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 117. For Qatar’s early history, see Zahlan, Rosemarie Said. The Creation of Qatar. London: Routledge, 1989, pp. 96 ff. On the differences in terms of state–religion relations between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, see Baskan, Birol and Steven Wright. ‘Seeds of Change: Comparing State–Religion Relations in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.’ Arab Studies Quarterly 33, no. 2 (2011), pp. 96–111. For a database of Islamic publications from Qatar, see the Waqfiyya al-Shaykh ‘Alī bin ‘Abd Allah Āl Thānī li-l-Ma‘lūmāt wa-l-Dirāsāt (Sheikh ‘Ali bin Abdallah alThani Endowment for Information and Studies). http://sheikhali-waqfia.org.qa/SF/AR/ Megala/MegalaTree.aspx?MegalaId=1 (accessed 15 September 2017). Haykel, Bernard. ‘Qatar and Islamism.’ Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (Policy Brief), February 2013, p. 2. https://noref.no/Publications/Regions/The-Gulf/Qatar-andIslamism (accessed 15 September 2017). Roberts, David. ‘Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood: Pragmatism or Preference?’ Middle East Policy 21, no. 3 (2014), pp. 84–94.

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quarter of the twentieth century, managed to insulate Qatar from the dominance of its hegemonic Western neighbour. Qatar’s thirst for independence was pursued to a much greater degree after the first Gulf War, when King Fahd bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz broke off Saudi Arabia’s relations with the Muslim Brotherhood, causing Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani to consider refashioning the group into a potential ally through which Qatar could achieve a greater degree of autonomy from the Kingdom. In the wake of US troop deployment on Saudi soil and the ensuing social disturbances caused by the ‘Islamic Awakening’ in the Saudi Kingdom, Qatar concluded a defence agreement with the United States. By 1996, US troops had been relocated to a military base at Camp al-Sayliyya, located some 20 kilometres outside of Doha. In 2002, al-‘Udayd Airbase became the home of the headquarters of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), America’s principal forward base in the region, housing over 11,000 military personnel and hundreds of combat aircraft.179 Qatar’s regional ambitions were further boosted in 1995, after Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani had ousted his father Khalifa bin Hamad in a bloodless palace revolt.180 While the Saudi royal family regarded the political patricide of the Emir by his refractory son with great disfavour, the latter’s accession to the throne initiated an eccentric foreign policy that was increasingly concentrated around the Emir, his second wife Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, and the Foreign Minister, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani.181 During the first decade of the twenty-first century this leadership trio expanded Qatar’s influence in the wider Middle East through a mix of financial and cultural investments and soft power diplomacy. Commercial relations with Turkey were stepped up, while the country diversified its energy mix towards the production of liquefied natural gas (LNG).182 In the context of the exploration of the North Dome/South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf, Qatar developed closer commercial ties with Iran. This move was contrary to the 179

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Gordon, Michael R. and Eric Schmitt. ‘Move to Gulf by key Unit could set Staff for Iraq War.’ New York Times, 12 September 2002. www.nytimes.com/2002/09/12/us/vigilancememory-military-move-gulf-key-unit-could-set-staff-for-iraq-war.html (accessed 8 July 2017). ‘Emir of Qatar deposed by his Son.’ The Independent, 28 June 1995. www .independent.co.uk/news/world/emir-of-qatar-deposed-by-his-son-1588698.html (accessed 8 July 2017). Kamrava, Mehran. Qatar: Small State, Big Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013. In the first quarter of 2017 Qatari investment flows into Turkey ranked seventh highest after countries such as Spain, Germany and Japan. See ‘International Direct Investment Relations Report.’ Uluslararası Yatırımcılar Derneği (International Investors Association), First Quarter 2017, p. 4. www.yased.org.tr/ReportFiles/2017/YASED_FDI %20in%20Turkey_Q1_Evaluation%20Report_2017.pdf (accessed 15 October 2017). For a study on the historical ties between Qatar and Turkey, see Anscombe, Frederick F. The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

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strategic interests of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi and Emirati leaders complained that Qatari policies contradicted the spirit of the 1981 GCC security alliance, specifically formed to counter Iranian hegemonic ambitions. By means of its ‘eccentric’ sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the Gulf state bought shares in prestigious multinational companies such as Barclays Bank, the Volkswagen Group, the Knightsbridge department stores, the Sainsbury’s supermarket chain and the Swiss Credit Suisse Group. In 2012, Qatar Sports Investments bought out the French football club Paris Saint-Germain and in 2010 was awarded the FIFA World Cup for 2022. The QIA further invested heavily in East African economies, pouring more than $1.5 billion in development and acquisition projects into the Sudanese banking, mining, real estate and agricultural sectors, including the leasing of 20,000 acres of farmland for agricultural development in northern Sudan to guarantee its food security needs.183 In Somalia, Qatar spent billions of dollars in order to buy the loyalty of President Hassan Sheikh Mahmud, who was close to the Somali branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.184 The Emir’s influential wife Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, who chaired the Qatar Foundation, played a prominent role in developing the UN Millennium Development Goals. She contributed significant resources to major global initiatives, such as the ‘Educate a Child’ campaign, whose aim was to ‘significantly reduce the numbers [sic] of children worldwide who are missing out on their right to education’.185 In 2009 the Qatar Foundation endowed the chair of Islamic studies at the University of Oxford, whose first holder, the charismatic Swiss intellectual Tariq Ramadan, caused speculations in the British tabloid press that even this most venerated British institution of higher learning had been infiltrated by a nefarious pro-Islamist agenda.186 Qatar further expanded its regional profile when it mediated in a number of regional conflicts in the Middle East and East Africa. In 1999, Qatar brokered a – largely failed – peace agreement between Eritrea and Sudan in what constituted one of its first foreign mediation attempts.187 In the context of 183

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al-Jaali, ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Waqi’ Mohammed. ‘Economic Cooperation between Sudan and Qatar.’ Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (Doha Institute), January 2012. www .dohainstitute.org/en/lists/ACRPS-PDFDocumentLibrary/Economic_cooperation_between _Sudan_and_Qatar.pdf (accessed 30 April 2017). Mesfin, Berouk. ‘Qatar’s Diplomatic Incursions into the Horn of Africa.’ Institute for Security Studies, Issue no. 8, November 2016. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/ uploads/ear8.pdf (accessed 30 April 2017). ‘Educate a Child: a Programme of Education above all.’ https://educateachild.org/ (accessed 30 April 2017). ‘New Islamic Chair for Oxford.’ The Foundation (issue no. 2), February 2009, p. 2. Mesfin. ‘Qatar’s Diplomatic Incursions.’

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the Yemeni conflict between President ‘Ali ‘Abdullah Saleh’s armed forces and the Houthis, Qatar in 2007 granted exile to the leader of the Yemeni rebel movement ‘Abd al-Malik al-Houthi.188 By means of the 2008 ‘Doha Agreement’, Qatar further helped to consolidate Hezbollah’s and Iran’s hold on Lebanon. Around the same time, Qatar mediated successfully in a border conflict between Djibouti and Eritrea and in June 2010 brokered a peace agreement that prevented a military confrontation by deploying a contingent of peacekeepers at the border region around Ras Doumeira.189 In 2009, Doha sponsored peace talks in Gaza and in 2012 the Emir was the first head of state to visit the Hamas-controlled enclave since 2006. Having cultivated Hamas’ political leader Khalid Mash‘al for some time, Qatar granted him a home in Doha, thereby inserting itself into a ‘resistance front’ consisting of Iran, Hezbollah, Turkey, Hamas and various Sunni and Shia Islamist groups sprinkled across the Middle East.190 Qatar’s boldest move, however, was the foundation of the global satellite television network Al Jazeera.191 Having thwarted a coup attempt in early 1996 by Saudi, Emirati, Bahraini and Egyptian intelligence,192 Hamad bin Khalifa took the opportunity of an editorial conflict between the BBC Arabic and its Saudi parent company to hire the entire seventy-strong crew of reporters, cameramen and producers, mandating them to set up a brand-new broadcasting network.193 Al Jazeera pioneered a unique and progressive editorial line that distinguished itself not only from other Arabic television channels, but also from US satellite networks. The Qatari government used this platform to systematically undermine the legitimacy of the Saudi government. In a conversation between Emir Hamad bin Khalifa and Mu‘ammar al-Qadhafi, believed to have taken place in 2003, the two autocrats conspired to support Saudi opposition movements, including the anti-royalist leader of the Zubayr Brotherhood Sa‘d al-Faqih, who currently lives in exile in London. During the call, Hamad bin Khalifa lambasted the Saudis as corrupt 188

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‘Yemen: defusing the Saada Time Bomb.’ International Crisis Group (Report no. 86), 27 May 2009. www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabianpeninsula/yemen/yemen-defusing-saada-time-bomb (accessed 30 April 2017). ‘Qatar to mediate between Djibouti and Eritrea on Border Dispute.’ Sudan Tribune, 8 June 2010. www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article35327 (27 July 2018). ‘Qatari Emir in historic Gaza Visit.’ Al Jazeera, 23 October 2012. www.aljazeera.com /news/middleeast/2012/10/2012102353137370247.html (accessed 30 April 2017). Zednik, Rick. ‘Inside Al Jazeera.’ Alternet, 4 April 2022. www.alternet.org/story/12793/ inside_al_jazeera (accessed 30 April 2017). ‘New Details revealed on 1996 Coup Attempt against Qatar.’ Al Jazeera, 4 May 2018. www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/03/al-jazeera-reveals-details-1996-coup-attempt-qatar -180304200532130.html (accessed 30 November 2018). Sadek, Said. ‘Cairo as Global/Regional Cultural Capital?’ in Singerman, Diane (ed.), Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, Culture, and Urban Space in the New Middle East. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2009, p. 165.

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backstabbers and accused them of having brought ‘nothing but disgrace’ to the Arab peoples. He ominously assured Qadhafi that it was only a matter of time until the House of Sa‘ud would disintegrate: ‘if we live for twelve more years, I highly, highly, highly doubt that the [Saudi royal family] will [still] be in power’.194 Al Jazeera’s breakthrough moment came in 2003 in the context of its coverage of the US invasion of Iraq. Now led by the former Baghdad correspondent Wadah Khanfar, Al Jazeera emerged as a powerful public diplomacy tool whose editorial independence and bold reporting from the frontlines came to symbolize freedom of expression in a media landscape saturated by state-controlled propaganda. The network broke a number of taboos by hosting a number of ostracized Islamist figures such as the Ennahda leader Rashid al-Ghanoushi or a delegation of Israeli businessmen. Al Jazeera also provided the Brotherhood with a platform to disseminate its teachings across the region. Programmes such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s ‘Sharia and Life’ (alShari‘a wa-l-Haya) or Ahmed Mansur’s ‘Without Borders’ (Bi-la Hudud) openly criticized the region’s authoritarian dictators. This earned the channel the hostility of the ruling elites as well as the admiration of young Arabs across the region.195 Gradually, Al Jazeera assumed the role of shaping Arab political culture – a function that had previously been assumed by Egyptian television.196 It was, therefore, not surprising that Hosni Mubarak reacted jealously to Al Jazeera’s ‘vitriolic broadcasts’. The Egyptian president became ‘determined to thwart every single initiative’ proposed by this ‘small and upstart country’ that pretended to take the place of the ‘great and noble Egypt’.197 When the Arab revolts broke out in late 2010 and early 2011, Al Jazeera’s editorials took an increasingly assertive tone. By consistently exaggerating the 194

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‘Leaked Recording between Qaddafi and Hamad Al Thani, Qatar’s former Emir.’ AlArabiya English, 7 June 2017. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoHHvhs6nm8 (accessed 8 July 2017). Khatib, Lina. ‘Qatar’s Foreign Policy: the Limits of Pragmatism.’ International Affairs Vol. 89 (March 2013), pp. 417–31. The impact of neoliberal policies on the country’s music and film industries can be gauged in the decline of Egypt’s cultural production after its public-sector film industry was defunded in the wake of Sadat’s privatization programme of 1974. Whereas Egypt during the 1950s had produced an average of 56 movies per year, this number declined to 24 in 1996. Similarly, musical production declined during the 1970s after the death of Umm Kulthum, Egypt’s most celebrated cultural icon, and ‘Abd al-Halim Hafez, the legendary star of romantic songs and musical cinema. See Sadek, Said. ‘Cairo as Global/ Regional Cultural Capital?’ in Singerman, Diane and Paul Amar (eds.). Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, Culture, and Urban Space in the New Globalized Middle East. Cairo; New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2006, pp. 153–90. Nantongo (U.S. Embassy of Qatar in Doha) to Secretary of State. ‘Egyptian DCM: Cairo to thwart any Qatari Initiative.’ Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, 28 January 2010. www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/10DOHA39_a.html (accessed 20 September 2017).

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number of protesters, Al Jazeera was instrumental in spreading the revolutionary fervour across the region. At the same time, Qatari foreign policy became more overtly interventionist. After the formation of the National Transitional Council (NTC) in Libya on 27 February, Qatar exploited its presidency of the UN General Assembly to push for the NTC’s recognition as the legitimate government of Libya, and press for the imposition of a non-fly zone. By April, Qatar had exceeded its traditional role as a mediator, instead advocating for a strategy of direct intervention in Libya. Exploiting its international networks of Islamist activists, consisting of the likes of ‘Abd al-Hakim Belhaj and the al-Salibi brothers, the Emir approved an airlifting operation of large quantities of weapons, ammunition and communication equipment to rebel groups favoured by Qatar.198 In August 2011, Qatari Special Forces assisted local militias in storming Qadhafi’s compound in Tripoli.199 Throughout this phase Al Jazeera, in tandem with the Doha-based Libya TV station, openly supported the rebellion, making it obvious that the channel’s editors had been co-opted by the ruling elite to support Qatar’s geopolitical priorities.200 On 24 September 2011, Al Jazeera’s director general Wadah Khanfar resigned following an internal power struggle with his rival, the Palestinian public intellectual Azmi Bishara.201 He was succeeded by Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani, a former gas executive and a member of the royal family.202 198

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‘Holding Libya together: Security Challenges after Qadhafi.’ International Crisis Group (Report no. 115), 14 December 2011. www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa /north-africa/libya/holding-libya-together-security-challenges-after-qadhafi (accessed 20 September 2017). For the support of the Tripoli brigades by Qatari Special Forces, see Coker, Margaret and Charles Levinson. ‘Length of Libya’s Standoff hinges on Leader’s Militia.’ Wall Street Journal, 14 August 2011. www.wsj.com/articles/ SB10001424053111903327904576526642369893206 (accessed 30 April 2017). Black, Ian. ‘Qatar admits sending hundreds of Troops to support Libya Rebels.’ The Guardian, 26 October 2011. www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/26/qatar-troops-libyarebels-support (accessed 10 May 2018); Dagher, Sam, Charles Levinson and Margaret Coker. ‘Tiny Kingdom’s huge Role in Libya draws Concern.’ Wall Street Journal, 17 October 2011. www.wsj.com/articles/SB1000142405297020400230457662700092276465 0 (accessed 10 May 2018). A recently released Saudi cable elucidates some important aspects in the relationship between Al Jazeera’s Arabic service and the political elite: Saudi Embassy (Doha) to Unknown. ‘Saudi Cables: No. 49165220-ee6a-4fb6-a500-7a735c919589.’ Wikileaks: The Saudi Cables, date unknown. https://wikileaks.org/saudi-cables/doc32707.html (accessed 30 April 2017). Bishara is involved in a number of media ventures and think tanks, including the London-based pan-Arab bilingual media outlet The New Arab/Al-‘Arabi Al-Jadeed and the Qatar-based Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, a think tank attached to the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. Al Jazeera journalists complained about government interference in their reporting. See Sabbagh, Dan. ‘Al-Jazeera’s political Independence questioned amid Qatar Intervention. The Guardian, 30 September 2012. www.theguardian.com/media/2012/sep/30/aljazeera-independence-questioned-qatar (accessed 30 April 2017).

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Buoyed by its apparent success in Libya, Qatar also started intervening in the escalating civil conflict in Syria. Qadhafi’s brutal death in October 2011 had entailed a certain triumphalism among Doha’s ruling elite, which enhanced their desire to assume greater regional influence.203 As the first Arab leader who supported dispatching foreign troops to Syria, Hamad bin Khalifa in November 2011 facilitated secret talks between the Syrian rebels and Libya’s transitional government. Driven by a sense of overconfidence that the US military would ultimately topple Asad, by January 2012 Qatar began arming the rebels in Syria directly.204 But this sort of interventionism proved to be highly reckless. Due to the personalized nature of its foreign policy, as well as the absence of any proper intelligence infrastructure, Qatari decision-makers largely depended on the advice of personal contacts within the Syrian Brotherhood.205 Because of Qatar’s support for various rebel groups the ability of the Syrian opposition to mount a united front against the Asad regime was debilitated in important ways, thereby causing a prolongation of the civil war in Syria. In general, Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood was driven by a good deal of opportunism, political expediency and a pragmatic desire to inflate its role and status in the region, rather than of any broader ideological convergence with the Islamist agenda. This was made evident when Qatar changed its foreign policy in September 2014, at a time when the new Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, pressured by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain, expelled key Brotherhood leaders living in Doha.206 For the time being, however, the Guidance Office could count on the political support of its ally, all the more as it provided the Brotherhood with the much-needed financial clout to move ahead with its project of drafting an Islamist constitution.

Towards an Islamist Constitution Following Morsi’s election in June 2012, the Brotherhood had become entangled in a deepening triangular power struggle with the military on the one hand, and Egypt’s judiciary establishment on the other. The judges making up 203

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Phillips, Christopher. The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018, p. 135. Sherlock, Ruth. ‘Libya’s new Rulers offer Weapons to Syrian Rebels,’ The Telegraph, 25 November 2011. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/8917265/ Libyas-new-rulers-offer-weapons-to-Syrian-rebels.html (accessed 14 May 2018). Hamid, Shadi. ‘Why we have a Responsibility to protect Syria.’ The Atlantic, 26 January 2012. www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/why-we-have-a-responsibil ity-to-protect-syria/251908/ (accessed 14 May 2018). ‘Al-‘Atiyya li-l-Hayāt: lā nad‘am al-Ikhwān (Al-‘Atiyya to al-Hayat: we do not support ˙ ˙ the Muslim Brotherhood).’ Al-Hayat, 19 February 2015. www.alhayat.com/Articles/ 7516062 (accessed 30 April 2017).

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the latter institution were determined to preserve their autonomy vis-à-vis an increasingly assertive presidency. National politics in Egypt had traditionally been characterized by a heavy dose of legalism, as average citizens placed a high level of trust in the validity of constitutional–legal principles. The professional ethos of Egypt’s judicial guild had made the courts into historical guardians of the public interest, while the judges were seen as neutral arbiters standing above the idiosyncrasies of everyday politics. This was evidenced by the fact that one of the two public protests on 25 January 2011 had started in front of the High Court. Most Egyptians expected judicial authority to be quickly restored following Morsi’s election in June 2012 and for this reason accepted the SCAF’s designation of the SCC as ‘the guardian, final arbiter and effective definer’ of the principles to be enshrined in the new constitution.207 The generals, for their part, saw the SCC as the power broker that could guarantee the military’s autonomy from civilian oversight.208 It was against this backdrop that the Brotherhood sought to press ahead with its constitutional project. As the SCC had previously declared the People’s Assembly of 2011 to be null and void, Mohammed Morsi in early July issued a presidential decree that conferred the right of electing the members of a new Constitutional Assembly to the Upper House of parliament. As this move went against the spirit of its 14 June decision, the SCC struck down Morsi’s edict, thereby reaffirming the binding nature of its previous verdict. According to the SCC’s reasoning, the second Constitutional Assembly had been elected by an Upper House that had previously been declared unconstitutional and, as a consequence, was itself void of any legitimacy. With the constitution drafting process hanging in the balance, Morsi on 12 August issued another presidential decree to abrogate the SCAF’s constitutional addendum of 17 June. By making the drafting process the prerogative of the presidency, Morsi granted himself wide-ranging executive and legislative powers.209 Morsi also used the presidential decree to send two powerful generals, Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein al-Tantawi and Chief of Staff Sami Anan, into early retirement. Tantawi was replaced by ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, an obscure army bureaucrat in his mid fifties who had previously served as the head of the Military Intelligence. While international news outlets portrayed Morsi’s decision as a bold move designed to ‘wrest power from the Armed Forces’, in reality 207

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Brown, Nathan. ‘The Egyptian political System in Disarray.’ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 9 June 2012. http://carnegieendowment.org/2012/06/19/egyptianpolitical-system-in-disarray-pub-48587 (accessed 20 September 2017). Ibid. ‘Nass Qarār al-Ra’īs Mursī al-yawm: min Ilghā’ ‘al-Dustūr al-mukammil’ hatta Ta‘yīn al˙ ˙ Sīsī˙(The Text of the Decisions of President Morsi today: from the Abolition of the “constitutional Amendments” to the Appointment of Sisi).’ Al-Ahram Online, 12 August 2012. http://gate.ahram.org.eg/News/240337.aspx (accessed 26 May 2018).

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Sisi had been groomed by the ailing General Tantawi for many years.210 Having graduated from the Military Academy in 1977, Sisi had commanded an infantry mechanized division before serving in various intelligence-related roles, including as an information security chief at the Ministry of Defence and as a military attaché in Saudi Arabia. Since the days when he had served under Tantawi, the latter had regarded the young upstart as a ‘clever student’,with the psychological acumen and political willpower to control the senior military command. In the years leading up to the 2011 uprising, Sisi had made himself useful to the senior generals by convincing them to investigate the Minister of Interior, Habib al‘Adly, who was said to spy on the generals. On 28 January 2011, as the uprising in Egypt was in full swing, Sisi paved the way for the revolutionary activists at Tahrir Square to ransack the offices of the NDP and obliterate Mubarak’s power structure. After having pushed out Mubarak, the SCAF proceeded to divide the General Intelligence Directorate’s dossiers among its own members to assure that the army could contain the authority of any future president. General Mohammed Sa‘id al-‘Asar, the former head of the Armament Authority, was put in charge of overseeing the secular and liberal parties; General Mahmud Hajazi, who would later replace Sisi as Director of Military Intelligence, was handed the dossier of the revolutionaries; Tantawi and Sisi, for their part, rewarded themselves with the ‘Brotherhood file’. The generals agreed that, depending on the group from which Egypt’s future president would arise, the general responsible for the respective file would become Tantawi’s successor as Minister of Defence. As the probability increased that the Brotherhood would play an influential role in post-revolutionary Egypt, Sisi met with ‘Issam al-‘Arian and Sa‘d al-Katatni in the Hotel Triumph in Heliopolis to discuss the shape of a future Brotherhood-led presidency. During subsequent meetings with Mohammed Morsi, Sisi managed to develop a close relationship with the future president. As Tantawi’s handpicked successor, Morsi had essentially prepared this transition, closely consulting with the army’s senior command and thus initiating the rise of a new generation of army officers who would engineer his own overthrow in July 2013.211 It was no surprise, therefore, that when Tantawi was sent into retirement, he maintained many of his former privileges, including a permanent detachment of bodyguards and a monthly pension of E£30’000.212 210

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‘Egypt’s Morsi replaces Military Chiefs in Bid to consolidate Power.’ Washington Post, 12 August 2012. www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/egypts-morsi-ordersretirement-of-defense-minister-chief-of-staff-names-vp/2012/08/12/a5b26402-e497 -11e1-8f62-58260e3940a0_story.html (accessed 20 September 2017). ‘Egypt’s new top General has U.S. Ties.’ Wall Street Journal, 14 August 2012. www.wsj.com /articles/SB10000872396390444184704577587422651692212 (accessed 30 April 2017). This account is based on an article by Faiq, Ahmed. ‘Al-Sīsī al-Malaf al-sirrī li-akhtar ˙ Rajul fī Misr (The Sisi Secret File: the most dangerous Man in Egypt).’ El-Fagr, ˙ 14 May 2013. www.elfagr.org/341757 (accessed 30 April 2017).

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Emboldened by their apparent ability to strong-arm the army’s most powerful generals into submission, the Brotherhood undertook the next step in implementing its constitutional project. A chaotic drafting process during the months of September and October brought forward an incoherent text that was riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions. For instance, while the principle of freedom of religion was guaranteed, this right’s exercise was limited to the ‘approved’ Abrahamic religions. Another discrepancy was the provision to establish a ‘council of religious scholars’, whose members needed to be consulted on all matters relating to the Sharia. This effectively turned al-Azhar into a ‘political football’, as it allowed the representatives of various religious tendencies to strategically place their protégés in this council and thereby pull the Islamic world’s oldest and most prestigious institution of religious learning into their direction.213 Another paradox was the obscurantist article 221, which was added as a concession to the Salafis in the very last minute. It stipulated that the ‘principles of the Islamic Sharia’ included ‘general evidence, foundational rules, rules of jurisprudence, and credible sources accepted in Sunni doctrines and by the larger community’.214 Perhaps the most anti-democratic element, however, was that the proposed text preserved the military’s supra-constitutional role by keeping the army budget beyond parliamentary oversight, assuring that the minister of defence would be appointed by the SCAF while declaring that an ‘independent’ military judiciary would be designated to adjudicate over crimes committed by army personnel. This obvious favouritism of the army’s role, as well as the document’s exclusivist nature and the rushed manner of the drafting process gave way to a burgeoning sense of frustration and anger within the ranks of the opposition. During the autumn of 2012, the streets of Cairo became engulfed by a new wave of protests and demonstrations. As activists representing various ideological inclinations tried to occupy Tahrir Square, the release of a YouTube trailer further stirred up religious sensibilities.215 The amateurish movie, innocuously called The 213

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Brown, Nathan. ‘Egypt’s Constitution: Islamists prepare for a long political Battle.’ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 23 October 2012. http://carnegieendow ment.org/2012/10/23/egypt-s-constitution-islamists-prepare-for-long-political-battle (accessed 30 April 2017). For the Arabic text of the constitution, see ‘Dustūr Jumhūriyyat Misr al-‘Arabiyya li˙ Sana 2012.’ Dostour Egypt, 30 November 2012. http://egelections-2011.appspot.com /Dostour/Dostour2012.pdf (accessed 30 April 2017). The trailer was the result of an ambiguous plot involving an Egyptian-born American Coptic real estate developer called Nakoula Basseley Nakoula and the anti-Muslim activist Steve Klein, whose weekly video updates, titled ‘What did Mohammed do?’, can be found on www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHPoTQteWVo (accessed 17 April 2017). The trailer was uploaded in July 2012 and subsequently marketed online. On 9 September, an Arabic-subtitled version was shown by the Salafi televangelist Khaled Abdulla on al-Nas TV, resulting in a number of protests in different Muslim capitals against what was widely perceived as an insult on Islam. During the ensuing protests in

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Innocence of Muslims, ridiculed the Prophet Mohammed as a paedophile buffoon and a bloodthirsty womanizer, making obvious its intent to insult the religious feelings of the Muslims. On 11 September, several thousand protesters gathered at Tahrir Square to demonstrate against this insult. Some carried the ‘Black Standard’, the portentous flag on which in white letters is emblazed the shahada and the seal of the Prophet, while a group of protesters tried to approach the wellprotected US Embassy in Garden City.216 In an attempt to exploit this chaotic situation, Morsi took another stab at the judiciary. On 11 October, he sacked the prosecutor general, ‘Abd al-Meguid Mahmud, a Mubarak-era holdover, who had acquitted several police officers having been accused of killing protesters during the Battle of the Camel.217 Egypt’s judges saw this as yet another attempt by Morsi to undermine their independence and swiftly rejected the president’s decision. They were supported by opposition activists who mobilized their supporters to Tahrir Square to call for an immediate halt to the military trials and the rescinding of a March 2012 law criminalizing labour strikes. Chanting against the Brotherhood’s ‘Islamist constitution’, they accused Morsi of having failed to deliver tangible progress in terms of economic and social justice.218 For its part, the Guidance Office mobilized its own supporters the next day and announced a campaign of civil disobedience until its demands for the ‘implementation of the Sharia’ were met. In one of the bloodiest confrontations between the Brotherhood and the opposition since the toppling of Mubarak, more than one-hundred people were injured.219

From the November Decree to the Ittihadiyya Clashes In early November 2011, following a series of rocket attacks by Hamas militants and the assassination by Israel of a high-level military commander

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Libya, the American Embassy in Benghazi was attacked, leading to the death of US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens on 11 September 2011. ‘The Innocence of Muslims.’ The Fourth Ordeal Online Archive, 14 September 2012. www .thefourthordeal.com/home/protest-scenes/tahrir-square/the-innocence-of-muslims/ (accessed 30 April 2017). Brown, Nathan. ‘The Battle over Egypt’s Judiciary.’ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 8 May 2013. http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/?fa=51734 (accessed 22 September 2017). The website Morsi Meter, set up by the non-profit organization Zabatak during the presidential campaign, calculated that 84 per cent of the promises he had made remained unfulfilled. See http://morsimeter.com/ (accessed 22 September 2017). ‘Anti-Brotherhood Demonstrations.’ The Fourth Ordeal Online Archive, 11 October 2012. www.thefourthordeal.com/home/protest-scenes/tahrir-square /anti-brotherhood-demonstrations/ (accessed 22 September 2017). ‘Ishtibakāt bayna al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn wa Mu‘āridīn Mursī (Clashes between the ˙ Brotherhood and Morsi’s Opponents).’ YouTube, 12 October 2012. www.youtube.com /watch?v=Hglo8K-iGLk (accessed 8 May 2017).

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in Gaza, the IDF mobilized 75,000 army reservists to launch a ground invasion into the Gaza Strip. On 20 November, as Israeli troops amassed at the border, news suddenly broke that the Morsi government had brokered a ceasefire. This unexpected foreign policy coup was hailed as a great achievement by the international community and earned the president the adulation of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who praised Morsi for having shown the ‘leadership that has long made [Egypt] a cornerstone of regional stability and peace’.220 In its December issue, the front cover of Time Magazine prominently portrayed Morsi’s face along with the tagline: ‘the most important man in the Middle East’.221 The unprecedented surge in international prestige provided Morsi with the confidence to decisively alter the balance of forces between Egypt’s competing centres of power. Two days after the announcement of the ceasefire, Morsi issued another presidential decree. Under the pretext of ‘protect[ing] the country and the goals of the revolution’, the decree immunized all presidential decisions from legal appeal until the passing of a new constitution and the appointment of a new prosecutor general. Most importantly, the decree prevented the Constitutional Assembly from dissolution.222 Morsi’s power grab was the starting point for a new round of confrontations between the presidency and various rivalling state actors. The November decree deeply antagonized the judges of the SCC, who interpreted this act as yet another assault on Egypt’s cherished constitutionalist principles. From the court’s point of view, it was the SCAF’s ‘revolutionary legitimacy’ that had made the March 2011 constitutional declaration the authoritative document – not a Constitutional Assembly having been nominated by a parliament that had previously been declared unconstitutional.223 The decree also outraged ordinary Egyptians across a wide socio-political spectrum Many were angered by what they perceived as a dictatorial arrogation of presidential power. When, in the midst of the escalating situation, the Constitutional Assembly on 29 November approved the final draft of a new constitution, the two camps confronted each other in a series of rallies, 220

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Clinton, Hillary. ‘U.S. welcomes Israeli–Palestinian Cease-Fire.’ US Embassy in London, 21 November 2012. http://london.usembassy.gov/midest240.html (accessed 8 October 2015). ‘The most important Man in the Middle East.’ Time Magazine, 10 December 2012. http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20121210,00.html (accessed 22 September 2017). For a translation of the November decrees, see ‘English Text of Morsi’s Constitutional Declaration.’ Al-Ahram Online, 22 November 2012. http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/ 58947.aspx (accessed 22 September 2017). Brown, Nathan. ‘The Revolution in Crisis.’ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 27 November 2012. http://carnegieendowment.org/2012/11/27/revolution-in-crisis (accessed 22 September 2017).

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marches and protests. A few days later, Morsi announced the constitutional referendum to be held at the end of December. The Guidance Office nowmobilized a ‘million’s march’ in front of Cairo University in order to give weight to this decision.224 Conceiving of themselves as the ‘defenders of the revolution’, the Brotherhood’s supporters argued that Morsi was endowed with ‘legal constitutional legitimacy’. On the east bank of the Nile, secular and liberal opposition activists called for a sit-in at Tahrir Square and in front of the ‘Omar Ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Mosque on Merghany Street in Heliopolis, situated just opposite Morsi’s seat of power, the iconic Ittihadiyya Presidential Palace.225 In the afternoon of 5 December, as a small crowd of about three-hundred activists assembled in front of the ‘Omar Ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Mosque, news spread that several thousand Brotherhood members had gathered at Rab‘a al‘Adawiyya in Nasser City and were about to approach the sit-in via Salah Salem Street. Before long, a zealous mob, armed with bricks and sticks, roamed through the protesters’ tent villages, chanting ‘peaceful! peaceful!’ while tearing down shelters and violently harassing their opponents.226 At around 6.30 p.m., additional reinforcements arrived, equipped with Molotov cocktails and khartush guns. The Brothers now erected barricades in front of Costa Café at Marghany Street to fend off the reinforcements of the opposition, who marched in from Downtown Cairo, equally armed with sticks, Molotov cocktails and khartush guns.227 Some Brotherhood members broke out stones of street pavements and stormed up the stairways of nearby houses to attack their approaching enemies from above. The two camps clashed at around 7.30 p.m. and wrangled for about half an hour. After the anti-Morsi protesters had gained some ground, squads of police forces suddenly stormed out from behind the cordon of Brothers who were defending the Presidential Palace, 224

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‘In Million-Man Marches Saturday, Rallies from Alex and Cairo to Assiut, People’s Revolutionary Will shines on.’ Ikhwanweb, 5 December 2012. www.ikhwanweb.com /article.php?id=30448 (accessed 22 September 2017). ‘100,000 Protest at Egypt’s presidential Palace.’ Yahoo News, 4 December 2012. http:// news.yahoo.com/100-000-protest-egypts-presidential-palace-232530692.html (accessed 22 September 2017). Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 5 December 2012. ‘Lahza Dukhūl al-Ikhwān ilā Qasr al˙ at Ittihadiyya wa Takhlīʻ al-Khiyām (The Moment˙ ˙of Entry of the Brotherhood ˙ Ittihadiyya Palace and the tearing-down of the Tents).’ YouTube, 6 December 2012. www .youtube.com/watch?v=JEBDAPer324&feature=youtube_gdata_player (accessed 22 September 2017); ‘Lahza Hujūm al-Ikhwān ‘alā I‘tisām al-Ittihadiyya (The Moment ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ of the Attack of the Brotherhood on the Sit-in in Ittihadiyya).’ YouTube, 6 December 2012. www.youtube.com/watch?v=77H-Kr225h0&feature=youtube_gdata_ player (accessed 22 September 2017). This narrative of events is based on my fieldnotes and the account of an eyewitness who observed these events from her balcony. Zaki, Sue. Interview with author. Cairo, 1 August 2015.

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pushing back their ‘secular enemies’. In the ensuing chaos ten people died, including the photojournalist al-Hosseiny Abu Deif, who was shot in the face point-blank.228 From the Brotherhood’s point of view, the clashes at Ittihadiyya were the result of a ‘major plot’ whereby ‘professional violent criminals’ who were ‘paid by former regime figures’ had infiltrated the opposition.229 ‘Thugs and criminals’ had used ‘bladed weapons, firearms, tear gas bombs and Molotov cocktails as they attacked completely unarmed pro-president peaceful demonstrators’.230 The police, for their part, had refused to ‘protect’ the Presidential Palace while the SCAF had ‘conspired with the deep state and Mubarak to take power back’. Apparently, they had delivered ‘fake reports’ to the presidency according to which the Ministry of Interior had planned an imminent assassination of the president. As neither the police, nor the army, nor the Republican Guard would have prevented this ‘coup attempt’, the Guidance Office had no other option than to mobilize its own rank and file to form a ‘human shield’ that could protect the president from an imminent attack on his life.231 In the eyes of a majority of Egyptians, however, the Guidance Office had coordinated its assault on the protesters with the presidency while giving the security forces a carte blanche to take revenge on the revolutionaries. By calling on its rank and file to attack a crowd of peacefully assembled activists, the Brotherhood was seen as having meddled in the political process in an unprecedented manner.232 The popular outrage mounted when Morsi insisted that the protesters were ‘hired thugs’ who had ‘received money to attack the Presidential Palace’.233 Despite President Obama’s personal intervention, Morsi refused to

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‘Egypt: Trial of Mohammed Morsi: Questions and Answers.’ Amnesty International Publications, 3 November 2013. www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/16000/ mde120642013en.pdf (accessed 22 September 2017); ‘Egypt: Investigate Brotherhood’s Abuse of Protesters.’ Human Rights Watch, 12 December 2012. www.hrw.org/news/2012/ 12/12/egypt-investigate-brotherhoods-abuse-protesters (accessed 22 September 2017). Abu Daif was remembered in graffito on Mohammed Mahmud Street: ‘Martyrs of the Revolution.’ The Fourth Ordeal Online Archive, 10 March 2013.’ www.thefourthordeal.com /home/graffiti-and-street-art/martyrs-of-the-revolution/ (accessed 22 September 2017). ‘Egypt’s Revolution is a People’s Revolution with no Islamic Agenda.’ Ikhwanweb, 5 February 2011. www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=27963 (accessed 22 September 2017). ‘Camel Battle 2 targets Muslim Brotherhood outside Itehadia Presidential Palace.’ Ikhwanweb, 10 December 2012. www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=30479 (accessed 22 September 2017). Sudan, Mohammed. Interview with author. London, 7 November 2016. Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 7 December 2012. ‘Khitāb al-Ra’īs Muhammad Mursī (Speech of the President Mohammed Morsi).’ YouTube, ˙ ˙ 6 December 2012. www.youtube.com/watch?v=jScbDgnZBxQ&feature=youtube_gdata_pl ayer (accessed 22 September 2017).

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rescind the 21 November decrees, reiterating instead in a televised address that the constitutional referendum was to go ahead as planned.234 The next day, during a religious ceremony at al-Azhar Mosque, the Brotherhood bid ‘farewell to [its] martyrs’.235 In an emotionally highly charged speech that was loaded with powerful religious imagery and symbolism, a tearful Mohammed Badi‘ evoked the early battles between the Prophet and his enemies, revoking verse 52 of the Quranic sura al-Tawba (the Repentance): ‘Nothing shall ever happen to us except what God has ordained for us!’ In a dramatic dialogue with the assembled crowd, the Murshid shouted from the minbar: ‘Our dead are in heaven, yours are in hell.’ The electrified crowds chanted emphatically: al-hamdu li-Allah! – al-hamdu li-Allah! – al-hamdu li-Allah! – al-hamdu li-Allah!236

Faced with an unprecedented popular backlash, Morsi accepted a flurry of resignations by his advisors and cabinet ministers. Under mounting US pressure, the president issued another constitutional declaration to revoke parts of the previous one. Although some of the restrictions placed on the judiciary were rescinded, the Constitutional Assembly remained immune from dissolution. The referendum was pushed through against all odds and on Christmas Eve 2012, the electoral commission announced that the new constitution had been endorsed by 63.8 per cent. The fact that not even 33 per cent of registered voters participated in the referendum provided this document with a dim margin of legitimacy. In a televised address, Morsi announced a cabinet reshuffle ahead of the forthcoming negotiations with the IMF over a desperately needed $4.8 billion financial injection. By now, the trust between Morsi and the Egyptian people was broken. In hindsight, the events of Ittihadiyya were the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’.237 From this moment onwards, Morsi’s presidency was not much more than a race to the bottom.

The Counter-Revolution Strikes Back The political storm unleashed by Morsi’s November decree coincided with a severe deterioration of Egypt’s economic situation. During the six months 234

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Kirkpatrick, David and Mayy el-Sheikh. ‘Morsi spurned Deals, seeing Military as tamed.’ New York Times, 6 July 2013. www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/world/ middleeast/morsi-spurned-deals-to-the-end-seeing-the-military-as-tamed.html (accessed 22 September 2017). Al-Hurriyya wa-l-‘Adala, 7 December 2012. Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 7 December 2012; Badi‘, Mohammed, ‘Khitāb Muhammad ˙ University).’ ˙ Badī‘ min al-Jāmi‘at al-Azhar (Speech of Mohammed Badi‘ from al-Azhar YouTube, 7 December 2012. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL35xaQO0jQ (accessed 22 September 2017). Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 18 December 2012.

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since he had assumed the presidency, ordinary citizens had witnessed a decline in their living standards while 3.5 million people were unemployed since 2010. Skyrocketing inflation had caused a three-fold rise in monthly internet roaming fees since September 2012 (from E£60 to E£200), while the price of electricity had quadrupled during the same period.238 Food and beverage prices had also increased by 8.9 per cent since May 2012 so that average families now spent approximately 40 per cent of their income on basic food supplies.239 While part of this inflation had been caused by the incompetence of Morsi’s government, various Egyptian state institutions and agencies meddled in the economy in a concentrated effort to withhold security, transportation and garbage-collection services. With crime rates tripling, Cairo was clogged with endless traffic lanes, as piles of rubbish amassed on the capital’s streets and angry drivers engaged in prolonged honking tantrums at congested intersections. Perhaps the ugliest phenomenon was the spike in sexual harassment cases against young women.240 By January 2013, Morsi’s approval ratings had hit a low point. Only 32 per cent of the people still approved of the president’s performance, down from 78 per cent six months before.241 As Morsi’s government came under growing pressure, all eyes turned towards Hussein al-Qazzaz, whose Nahda Project was to provide the president with a way out of the conundrum he had manoeuvred himself into. As agreed half a year ago, in mid January Qazzaz gathered his team of about one-hundred advisors and consultants in the large assembly halls of the Ittihadiyya Presidential Palace. The president similarly assembled his team of advisors, including several top ministers, all of whom eagerly expected Qazzaz to deliver the silver lining for Morsi to navigate the wrecked Egyptian economy out of its predicament. Over the course of several hours, Qazzaz’s teams presented the fruits of their labour, presenting new models in the areas of economy, state, urban development and human development. But as the presentation went on, Qazzaz became aware that the entire experience was a ‘huge disappointment’ for Morsi. Qazzaz’s work largely focused on theoretical models, while the president, who was ‘under extreme pressure to deliver results’, had hoped for ‘concrete projects – something to work on immediately’. As Qazzaz told Morsi later that day, it was impossible to meet the president’s expectations without first engaging in ‘longer term transformational thinking’. Otherwise, Morsi would merely provide ‘some minor improvements of a machine . . . that is 238 239 240

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Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 13 December 2012. Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 20 January 2013. ‘99.3% of Egyptian Women experienced sexual Harassment: Report.’ Daily News Egypt, 28 April 2013. www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/04/28/99-3-of-egyptian-womenexperienced-sexual-harassment-report (accessed 22 September 2017). Osman, Magued. ‘The President’s Approval Rating after one Year in Office.’ Baseera, June 2013. http://baseera.com.eg/EN/PressPoll-Ar/24_En.pdf (accessed 22 September 2017).

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broken from the inside’. Qazzaz promised that, if given another six months, he would be able to provide the president with the ‘immediate projects’ he desired. The two men agreed that this should happen on the occasion of Morsi’s one-year anniversary – on 30 June 2013.242 But Egyptians were unwilling to wait another six months for their living standards to finally improve. As the country edged towards the second anniversary of the revolution, a new wave of protests flared up, led by the Ahlawy Ultras, who awaited the verdict of the Port Said massacres that had caused the death of dozens of their friends a year ago. On 25 and 26 January, the violence escalated and more than seventy people were killed by the security forces. Morsi reacted by imposing a night-time curfew but the measure was brazenly defied by everybody. Over the coming weeks, nightlife in Cairo took off at an exponential pace, with falukas endlessly cruising on the Nile, blasting their sha‘bi tunes into the early morning hours to the annoyance of Cairo’s residents. Several initiatives to engage in a national dialogue were boycotted by the opposition. Even the Brotherhood’s Salafi allies from the Nur Party turned against the president, accusing the Brotherhood of monopolizing state institutions. A proposal for holding parliamentary elections in April was overturned by the Supreme Administrative Court, leading to the resignation of the Minister of Justice, Ahmed Mekki, and the advisor for legal affairs, Mohammed Fu‘ad Gadallah. By March 2013, as scores of opposition activists besieged regional and local offices of the FJP, the protests started to turn into open acts of vandalism against Brotherhood-owned property. One Brotherhood spokesperson later insisted that the protesters were supported by an armada of ‘350,000 thugs’ who were ‘on the payroll of the military intelligence’, as well as the ‘Black Block’ group that ‘belonged to the churches’.243 The Guidance Office responded by ordering the formation of Protection and Insurance Committees, whose task was to safeguard the Brotherhood’s real estate. On 22 March, as a rioting mob besieged the Brotherhood’s headquarters in Moqattam, thousands of rank-and-file members were bussed in from Cairo’s outskirts. A small group assembled in the Hani al-Ithi Mosque, located about a kilometre away from the headquarters. A tense atmosphere dominated the gathering, as rank-and-file members prepared to defend their leadership at any moment should they receive the order.244 Over the following two months, the situation became chaotic to such a degree that the country’s overall stability was at risk. Cairo’s residents suffered from constant electricity cuts, fuel shortages and traffic bottlenecks, engulfing large sections of the capital into a cacophony of intermittent honking 242 243

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al-Qazzaz, Hussein. Interview with author. Istanbul, 28 March 2018. Senior Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. London, January 2018. Group interview with author. Hani al-Ithi Mosque, Cairo, 22 March 2013.

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and raising the irritation of taxi drivers to dangerously high levels.245 In early May, flyers with the title ‘Tamarrud’ (the Arabic word for ‘rebel’) started to appear at every street corner in Cairo. Tamarrud presented itself as a grassroots campaign launched in early May. it’s objective was to collect more signatures than the numbers of votes Morsi had earned in the June 2012 election.246 The text of the petition read: I, the undersigned, of my own free will and as a member of the general assembly of the Egyptian people, have no confidence in the President of the Republic, Dr. Mohammed Morsi, and call for early presidential elections. I pledge to uphold the aims of the revolution and commit to disseminate the Tamarrud petition among the masses, so that together we can realize a society based on the principles of dignity, freedom and justice.

The text of the campaign ominously warned that, should the president not abide by the ‘will of the people’, mass protests would be organized on 30 June to force him out of office. Morsi quickly dismissed these demands as ‘farcical and illegitimate’.247 During a cabinet meeting in March, he accused foreign powers of financing the opposition and threatened to ‘cut off’ the fingers of any foreign ‘hand meddling in Egypt’.248 This metaphor was mirrored on the level of the Brotherhood’s rank and file, whose members affirmed that Tamarrud enjoyed high-level support ‘from behind the curtain’.249 While the Brotherhood’s enemies rejected the Tamarrud statement as mere subterfuge, the links between the grassroots activists having launched the campaign and national, as well as regional, players were indeed real. Probably as early as December 2012 a group of Egyptian businessmen had allied themselves with members of the military establishment in a scheme to aggravate the economic hardship of Egypt’s citizens and amplify the popular pressure against Morsi. Mubarak-era elite figures colluded with officials from the Egyptian Ministry of Defence to support the campaign financially 245

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‘Morsi Meter: 9,427 Protests and counting one Year later.’ Wilson Center, 23 June 2013. www.wilsoncenter.org/islamists/article/morsi-meter-9427-protests-and-counting-oneyear-later (accessed 22 September 2017). ‘Ā‘dā’ Tamarrud hanajma‘ 15 Milyūn Tawqī‘ li-Sahb al-Thiqa min Mursī wa kifāya ˙ Sana (The Members of Tamarrud collect 15 Million ˙ ‘alayhi Signatures to withdraw the Confidence of Morsi and end his Year).’ Rassd, 1 May 2013. www.youtube.com/watch? v=SR5xg6JYuIM (accessed 22 September 2017). Al-Ahram, 6 June 2013. ‘Mursī: fīh Sabā‘īn thalātha fī Masr haqata‘hum (Morsi: we will cut off the three Fingers ˙ ˙ 13 March 2013. www.youtube.com/watch? meddling ˙in Egypt).’ Sawt al-Aqbat, v=LcRFsdGll98 (accessed 22 September 2017). Tariq*, Interview. Cairo, 15 September 2013. Also see Ikhwanonline.com, which claimed that Tamarrud had received $125,000 from Saudi-owned al-Arabiya news channel: ‘Haqīqa Tamarrud (The Truth of Tamarrud).’ Ikhwanonline.com, 8 February 2014. www ˙ .ikhwanonline.com/Section/176654/Default.aspx (accessed 30 September 2017).

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and logistically,250 while a number of small-scale political entrepreneurs on the payroll of the Ministry of Interior had printed the Tamarrud petition on government-owned photocopy machines.251 Several key activists later admitted to having received direct orders from the General Intelligence Directorate in return for logistical and financial favours for their campaign.252 They were propagandistically supported by state media outlets, who ran concentrated defamation campaigns aimed at badmouthing the Morsi government.253 It was here where the tragic marriage of convenience between some of the formerly revolutionary activists and the forces of the counter-revolution started to take shape. This internal network of plotters around Tamarrud were partly financed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who had emerged as the Brotherhood’s fiercest rivals since the Arab uprisings of 2011.254 The main driver behind this effort was Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, the Crown Prince of the UAE. Highly apprehensive of the Brotherhood’s transnational connections, the Muslim Brotherhood to the Crown Prince constituted a threat akin to Hezbollah and Hamas. Sheikh Mohammed was particularly troubled by Iranian attempts to use the Brotherhood as a Trojan horse through which the Arab populace could be agitated. According to the Crown Prince, Iran and Qatar were both ‘part of the Muslim Brotherhood’ and therefore constituted a vital link in the geopolitical chain of Iranian expansionism.255 Mohammed bin Zayed further accused the Brotherhood of plotting to fracture the fragile socio-political arrangement between the UAE’s seven very diverse emirates. Since the UAE had declared independence in 1971, the Brotherhood’s Emirati chapter, the Jam‘iat al-Islah, had established itself as an influential societal force with significant cultural leverage on key state 250

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‘Tasrīb Jadīd Min Maktab ’Abās Kāmil (New Leak from the Office of ‘Abas Kamil).’ Al Jazeera Arabic, 1 March 2015. www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1vWU_XpXec (accessed 6 September 2017). For a detailed analysis, see Kingsley, Patrick. ‘Will #SisiLeaks be Egypt’s Watergate for Abdel Fatah al-Sisi?’ The Guardian, 5 March 2015. www .theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/05/sisileaks-egypt-watergate-abdel-fatah-al-sisi (accessed 10 May 2018). The case for the kind of elite-facilitated contestation that occurred in June and July 2013 is well documented in Ketchley. Egypt in a Time of Revolution, pp. 143 ff. ‘How Egypt’s Rebel Movement helped pave the Way for a Sisi Presidency.’ BuzzFeed, 15 April 2014. www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/how-egypts-rebel-movement-helpedpave-the-way-for-a-sisi-pre?utm_term=.iiMVxxrpaZ#.ttZ3ee92yv (accessed 10 June 2017). Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 4 January 2017. ‘Tasrībāt Maktab al-Sīsī bi-Khusūs Mohammed Morsī kāmilahu (The full Leaks of Sisi’s ˙ ˙ ˙ Office regarding Mohammed Morsi).’ YouTube, 14 December 2014. www.youtube.com /watch?v=K3nLKjuTzps (accessed 10 May 2018). ‘Strong Words in private from MBZ at IDEX – bashes Iran, Qatar, Russia.’ Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, 25 February 2009. https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/ 09ABUDHABI193_a.html (accessed 20 April 2018).

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institutions. The Emirati polity was structurally vulnerable to the Brotherhood’s oppositional and moralistic discourse, as it lacked an institutionalized religious establishment that could legitimize the state’s authority in front of the populace.256 The attacks of 11 September 2001 provided the Emirati leadership with an opportunity to systematically crack down on the Brotherhood’s political activities. After 2003 Mohammed Bin Zayed, who at the time was the Deputy Crown Prince, had attempted to persuade the leadership of the Jam‘iat al-Islah to cut its ties with all international Brotherhood chapters and instead subordinate itself entirely under the governing framework of the Emirati national state. The Jam‘iat al-Islah’s refusal to discontinue its transnational activities ultimately convinced Mohammed Bin Zayed that in the final analysis, the Brotherhood’s loyalty belonged to the Murshid alone, and that their objective was to export their ideology to other Gulf monarchies.257 Having realized this, Mohammed bin Zayed nurtured a deep-seated suspicion against the Brotherhood and its activities. When, in the wake of the Arab uprisings of 2011, a coalition of university professors, intellectuals, journalists and civil servants submitted a letter to Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the President of the UAE, to demand constitutional reforms, Emirati security forces launched a fierce crackdown against all Brotherhood-affiliated individuals, entities and activities.258 The authorities dissolved the boards of Brotherhood-dominated jurists’ and teachers’ associations, blocked the assets of various Islamic charities and stripped a number of naturalized Emirati citizens from their nationalities. Those who had been caught publicly celebrating the Arab uprisings were given forty-eight hours to leave the country.259 Morsi’s ascendency to the presidency in June 2012 had caused a drastic deterioration in the relationship between Egypt and the UAE. After Foreign Minister ‘Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan during a press conference in October accused the Brotherhood of plotting the overthrow of the UAE government, Khairat al-Shatir hurriedly travelled to Abu Dhabi to calm the irascible spirits of the Emirati leaders. The fact that he was refused a meeting with the government despite the personal intervention of the General Guide showed the high levels of distrust the Emirati political class harboured against the 256

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al-Zo’by, Mazhar and Birol Başkan. ‘Discourse and Oppositionality in the Arab Spring: the Case of the Muslim Brotherhood in the UAE.’ International Sociology 30, no. 4 (1 July 2015), pp. 401–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580914554664 (accessed 23 February 2018). al-Nuqdian, Mansur. ‘Al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn fī-l-Imārāt: al-Tamaddud wa-l-Inhisār ˙ (The Muslim Brotherhood in the Emirates: Extension and Regression).’ Al-Mesbar Studies and Research Centre, 2012, pp. 55–105. ‘Imārātyūn yarfa‘ūn Risāla li-Hukm al-Imārāt tatālib bi-Islāh kullī li-l-Nizām al˙ ˙ ˙ demanding˙ a total barlamānī (Emiratis raise a Message to the UAE˙ Government Reform of the parliamentary System).’ www.ipetitions.com/petition/uaepetition71 (accessed 25 February 2018). Antar, Ghandi. Interview with author. Istanbul, 10 February 2018.

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Brotherhood.260 In December 2012 the General Observer in the UAE, Saleh Faraj, and six other leading figures of the Jam‘iat al-Islah, were sentenced to five-year prison terms, bringing the number of detained Brotherhood members to seventy-two. It was, therefore, no surprise that, once the political climate in Egypt started to turn against the Brotherhood, Mohammed bin Zayed seized the opportunity to deliver a deadly blow to his long-standing ‘mortal enemy’.261 In the wake of growing international pressure, Morsi in May 2013 nominated a new cabinet to finalize the negotiations with the IMF. Yahia Hamid, a thirty-four-year-old former marketing manager from Vodafone, became the new Minister of Investment while ‘Amr Darrag became Minister of Planning and International Cooperation. At the end of that month, the two dignitaries showed up at a World Economic Forum conference at the Dead Sea in Jordan, where they insisted that Egypt was close to securing a deal with the IMF, suggesting that tourism would be ‘the black horse’ to ‘pull the wagon of the Egyptian economy out of the slump’. Darrag lamented the obsession of the international media with ‘one square kilometre in Egypt’ and encouraged his hardly impressed audience of business executives to pay attention to the government’s ‘success stories’. During an off-the-record private event, the Egyptian ministers were grilled by an impatient Emirati investor, who complained about the lack of electricity and the difficulty in obtaining building licences. They were told by Darrag to be ‘patient’ as the government tried to ‘solve long-term issues’.262 Desperate for a political victory, Morsi’s cabinet undertook a few other illfated attempts to secure the waning support of the Egyptian people. In early June, the government attempted to leverage the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project to chart a new diplomatic overture.263 But the initiative quickly turned into a diplomatic nightmare. During a preparatory meeting ahead of 260

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‘Masādir bi-l-Ikhwān: al-Shātir yukarrir ziyāratihi bi-l-Imārāt li-Ihtawa’ Azma tasrīhāt ˙ (Brotherhood Source:˙ Shatir decides to travel to the Emirates ˙ ˙ ˙to Zāyid in order contain the Crisis of Zayid’s Statements).’ Al-Masry al-Youm, 27 October 2012. www.almasryalyoum.com/news/details/230053 (accessed 25 February 2018). ‘Strong Words in private from MBZ at IDEX.’ Dubai’s Chief of Police, LieutenantGeneral Dhahi Khalfan, said in January 2011 during a security conference that ‘the Muslim Brotherhood [was] one of the [main] security threats in the Gulf, and they are no less dangerous than Iran’. See ‘al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn fi-l-Imārāt: al-Qissa al-kāmila ˙˙ al-Awsat, (The Muslim Brotherhood in the Emirates: the whole Story).’ Al-Sharq 1 February 2013. http://archive.aawsat.com/details.asp?article=715512&issue no=12484§ion=4#.WtA78NNubUK (accessed 20 April 2018). Author’s fieldnotes. Dead Sea, Jordan, 25 May 2013; Willi, Victor J. ‘Egypt’s Economic Outlook: Session Summary.’ World Economic Forum, 25 May 2013. ‘Kalima al-Ra’īs Mursī li-l-Ijtimā‘ al-watanī (Speech of President Morsi in the national ˙ Meeting).’ YouTube, 3 June 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9NOWtisT1k (accessed 10 August 2015).

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the negotiations with the Ethiopians, a Salafi cabinet member, unaware that the session was being aired live on television, proposed to use Egyptian intelligence assets for covert operations within Ethiopia.264 Two weeks later, in an attempt to placate the Salafis ahead of the 30 June protests, Morsi appointed ‘Adel alKhairat as the new governor of Luxor. Khairat was a senior member of the Jama‘a Islamiyya – the very same group that, back in 1997, had executed the terrorist attack at the temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, which had caused the death of sixty-two tourists. Morsi’s biggest blunder was with respect to Syria. After an international conference on 13 June bringing together more than seventy Sunni clerics, a statement was issued to the extent that waging jihad against the Syrian regime was ‘a religious duty’. The next day, the Saudi Wahhabi cleric Mohammed al‘Arify gave a stinging Friday sermon at the al-Azhar mosque, where he besmirched the Shiites as ‘heretics’ and ‘infidels’.265 On 24 June, a group of fanatic Salafi clerics propagated anti-Shia sentiments, causing an angry mob to lynch four Egyptian Shia Muslims in Abu Musalam in the Giza governorate. This brutal scene was followed by a crowd of more than three-thousand Salafis torching Shia houses at a nearby place where worshippers had gathered for a ritualistic festival.266 At the same time, the Brotherhood organized a massive rally in the Cairo International Stadium in support of the Syrian revolution, with Salafi sheikhs pouring spite and vitriol on Shia Muslims, accusing them of defaming Islam through their ‘heretic’ rituals.267 When Morsi entered the venue, surrounded by a detachment of bodyguards, a rancorous and ecstatic crowd of more than twenty-thousand supporters greeted the president, who shrouded himself in a Syrian and Egyptian flag while relishing this massive populist celebration. Foolishly, the president used this speech to call for a nofly zone over Syria and announce the end of Egypt’s diplomatic relations with that country. He even seemed to insinuate that the Egyptian army should enter Syria.268 The idea that Egypt should become the epicentre of the Syrian jihad, and his outrageous call to intervene in Syria militarily, alarmed the senior 264

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‘Egypt: President Politicians plotting against Ethiopia’s Dam.’ The Middle East Media Research Institute TV, 3 June 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-gyeLkTb3Q (accessed 6 September 2017). ‘Khutba al-Jum‘a li-l-Shaykh Muhammad al-‘Arīfī fī Masr ‘an Sūrīā (Friday Sermon by ˙ Mohammed al-‘Arifi in˙ Egypt on Syria).’ YouTube, ˙ Sheikh 14 June 2013. www .youtube.com/watch?v=DSy4z4R7oGE (accessed 10 August 2015). el-Gundy Zeinab. ‘Angry Mob kills at least 4 Shias in Giza Village including Leader.’ AlAhram, 24 June 2013. http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/74773/Egypt/ Politics-/-Angry-mob-kills-at-least–Shias-in-Giza-village-i.aspx (accessed 4 August 2016). Miller, Elissa. ‘Five Years on: Egypt’s Minorities.’ Atlantic Council, 29 January 2016. www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/five-years-on-egypt-s-minorities/ (accessed 4 August 2016). ‘Khitāb al-Ra’īs Mursī fī Mu’tamar al-Umma al-Masriyya li-Da‘m al-Thawra al-Sūriyya ˙ (Speech by President Morsi at the Conference of˙ the Egyptian Community for the

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command of the Egyptian Armed Forces. It convinced whatever sceptics there remained within the army command that the Brotherhood had definitively crossed a red line.269 On 18 June, as the grassroots activism intensified on the streets of Egypt, the military command circulated a secret memo, ordering its units to ‘take all necessary procedures and preparations [in order to] present the Armed Forces to civil society in the best image during the upcoming period’. The people should feel the strength of the Armed Forces ‘so that no one may dare attack or disobey the Armed Forces’, and assure that ‘every member of the Armed Forces . . . has absolute confidence in the General Command and its ability to take appropriate decisions’.270 Three days later, General ‘Abd al-Fattah alSisi publicly announced that the military would intervene should the different parties not succeed in resolving the political deadlock within the next nine days. Sisi’s warning led some among the vanguard leaders to contemplate the possibility that ‘the coup would come soon’ and that appropriate steps needed to be taken in order to prevent this scenario.271 Sisi’s statement was unable to shake Morsi’s unwavering faith in the softspoken general. Surely, the former spy must have played his game with great aptitude, having convinced the president that he would not turn against him as long the military’s autonomy would be respected. The support Morsi received from the US Ambassador to Egypt, Anne Patterson, seems to have further nurtured Morsi’s illusion of being in control. When the Saudi-backed Nur Party offered to mediate between the Brotherhood and the opposition, the president refused and instead preferred to consult with the military on how to handle the upcoming 30 June protests.272 The tense state of affairs between the president and the Minister of Defence was visible during a speech the former gave on 26 June at the Cairo International Conference Centre. As Morsi rambled in front of an audience of high-level dignitaries, causing one of his closest advisors to walk out of the room, a stonefaced Sisi could be seen in the first row, crouched uncomfortably between Hisham Khandil and ‘Issam al-Haddad, while the president promised to form ‘an independent committee to review the proposed constitutional changes, formed of all parties and political powers’. At one point, Morsi confidently exclaimed: ‘Those who are plotting against Egypt and its safety and its leaders,

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Support of the Syrian Revolution).’ YouTube, 15 June 2013. www.youtube.com/watch? v=9WS52JBnqSE (accessed 10 August 2015). Shahine, Gihan. ‘Morsi ups the Ante.’ Al-Ahram Weekly Online, 20–6 June 2013 (issue 1153). http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/News/3069.aspx (accessed 10 August 2015). al-Shayyal, Jamal. ‘Egypt’s Morsi: the final Hours.’ Al Jazeera World. www.youtube.com /watch?v=BIlbZO2Gu9U (accessed 1 April 2019). Sudan, Mohammed. Interview with author. London, 27 January 2018. al-Shayyal. ‘Egypt’s Morsi.’

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trying to drag the army into a struggle, I say to them: they will never succeed. It’s impossible!’ Pointing towards Sisi, he continued: ‘We have men of gold in the armed forces. Men of gold!’ before the audience erupted into excited chanting: Al-gaysh, wa-l-sha‘b, eed wahda! – The people and the army are one hand!273

Endgame Events now geared up for their final showdown. Throughout the second half of June, the Guidance Office started to prepare for two massive demonstrations, which were to take place on 28 June at the Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya mosque in Nasr City and at the Nahda Square in front of Cairo University. Youth members from the Protection and Insurance Committees were reorganized under socalled ‘Deterrence Committees’. Its members were equipped with wooden sticks and wore yellow, white, orange or blue protective helmets. Their task was to safeguard the perimeters leading to the protest sites and check the IDs of visitors, journalists and researchers.274 On 26 June, as the military deployed its units at strategically sensitive locations around Cairo, the Guidance Office mobilized its foot soldiers on an unprecedented scale. Tens of thousands of members and supporters were bussed in from Cairo’s outskirts and from various cities, towns and villages in Upper Egypt and the Delta, turning the intersection in front of the Rab‘a mosque into an Islamic rally of massive proportions. In the midst of the kerfuffle, some enthusiastic supporters initiated a campaign called ‘Tagarrud’ (the Arabic term for ‘impartiality’ or ‘resoluteness’) in order to ‘counter’ the effect of Tamarrud. As one activist jubilantly exclaimed, they had gathered ‘over 30 million signatures’ within only a few days.275 As the Brotherhood’s rank and file gathered for the inevitable standoff, the Guidance Office ordered a number of key figures, including Gum‘a Amin, Mahmud Ghozlan, Mahmud Hussein, Ibrahim Munir, Gamal Heshmat and Gehad al-Haddad to leave the country.276 The president’s advisory council was relocated to al-Qubba Palace, where it formed a crisis chamber to prepare for an eventual military intervention. The president, on the other hand, maintained an unyielding faith in his Minister of Defence. Although the general had warned him during an emergency National Security Council meeting on 27 June that the opposition was likely to see the Brotherhood’s mobilization 273

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Morsi, Mohammed. ‘Khitāb al-Ra’īs Mursī fī al-Markaz al-Qāhira al-Dawlī li-l-Mu’tamarāt ˙ (Speech by President Morsi at the Cairo International Conference Centre).’ YouTube, 26 June 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIlbZO2Gu9U (accessed 20 June 2017). Senior Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. London, January 2018; al-Sayyad, Osama. Interview with author. Istanbul, 7 October 2017. Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 29 June 2013. Sudan, Mohammed. Interview with author. London, 27 January 2018.

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as a ‘declaration of war against the other side and a sure sign that [the Brotherhood] will initiate violence’, Morsi remained steadfast.277 In the evening of 29 June, the Brotherhood’s headquarters in Moqattam was attacked by a mob of angry activists with the support of thugs on the payroll of the Ministry of Interior.278 Armed with petrol bombs and shotguns, a rioting throng of people stormed the building where some two-dozen Brotherhood members shot back at the attacking mob, most likely with live weapons. Both proBrotherhood and state-sponsored TV channels called upon Egyptians to join the demonstrations. During a late-night phone call, Obama once again tried to urge Morsi to be ‘constructive’ in the face of an unprecedented popular backlash. But the latter had no intention of giving up and instead reaffirmed his unwavering confidence in the military.279 The next morning, an eerie atmosphere descended on the streets of Cairo. The Downtown area, typically filled with the bustling street life of honking cars and shouting voices, was wiped empty. At around 10 a.m. marches from different areas of town headed towards Tahrir Square and the Presidential Palace in Ittihadiyya. Within hours, the Square had amassed several hundred thousand people.280 These crowds starkly contrasted with those that had conquered Tahrir Square during the famous ‘Friday of Anger’ on 28 January 2011. Whereas the latter had been raw and authentic, the former resembled a gigantic popular carnival rather than a ‘second revolution’, as the 30 June protests were dubbed by the anti-Brotherhood press.281 The widespread 277

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Eleiba, Ahmed. ‘With 30 June Rallies around Corner, all Eyes turn to Egypt Armed Forces.’ Al-Ahram Online, 27 June 2013. http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/ 64/75116/Egypt/Politics-/With–June-rallies-around-corner,-all-eyes-turn-to.aspx (accessed 6 September 2017). Ketchley. Egypt in a Time of Revolution, p. 147. ‘Mohamed Morsi’s last Interview as Egypt’s President.’ The Guardian, 29 June 2013. www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/jul/04/mohammed-morsi-last-interviewegypt-president-video (accessed 6 September 2017); Darrag, ‘Amr. Interview with Mohammed al-Shayyal, quoted in ‘Egypt’s Morsi.’ The question of the size of these protests has been fiercely contested among sympathizers and opponents of Morsi, with each side either grossly downplaying or grossly overstating the number of protesters. Speaking on CNN on 3 July 2013, Major General Sameh Seif elYezel claimed that 33 million Egyptians had protested on 30 June. Neil Ketchley compared national turnouts in the 30 June demonstrations using event data and found significant disparities in reporting of the overall size of the demonstrations. See Ketchley. Egypt in a Time of Revolution, chapter 5. The global media uncritically adopted the overstated accounts, for example in ‘Millions flood Egypt’s Streets to demand Mursi quit.’ Reuters, 30 June 2013. www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-protestsidUSBRE95Q0NO20130630 (accessed 31 December 2016); Kirkpatrick, David D., Kareem Fahim and Ben Hubbard. ‘By the Millions, Egyptians seek Morsi’s Ouster.’ New York Times, 20 June 2013. www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/world/middleeast/egypt .html (accessed 30 April 2017). Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 30 June 2013.

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availability of Egyptian flags, vuvuzelas, pro-army and anti-Brotherhood leaflets, flyers, posters and various other nationalist memorabilia made clear the extent to which the event was organized and financed by powerful institutions in the background. Clearly, the aim was to create a public stunt that would justify a subsequent intervention by the military. In hindsight, ‘Issam al-‘Arian’s comment of a ‘Photoshop revolution’ did not seem as outlandish as it had appeared at the time.282 Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood gathered its own supporters in front of the Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya Mosque and at Nahda Square. Under the motto ‘legitimacy is a red line’, some one hundred thousand Egyptians gathered in one of the most dramatic spectacles of Islamist contestation yet. In the late afternoon, the central command of the Egyptian Armed Forces presented the president with a fortyeight-hour ultimatum to respond to the people’s demands. Ten cabinet ministers submitted their resignation shortly thereafter.283 Staffers of the presidential team, which had once again relocated to the Republican Guards Palace at Salah Salem Street, frantically telephoned the ambassadors of Western capitals, imploring them to pressure their governments to refuse support for the military.284 ‘The conviction within the presidency was that [the coup] won’t be able to move forward without American approval’, a presidential aide later affirmed.285 But the curtain had already started to fall. As the protests in Cairo were still unfolding, the army began taking over government headquarters in the provinces. Meetings were initiated between the representatives of Tamarrud, military generals, officers of the various intelligence services, officials from the Ministry of Interior, members of the judiciary, as well as representatives of the various clerical institutions to prepare for a post-Morsi scenario. Western governments were assured that the army would respect the ‘principles of democracy and the will of the nation as a source of power’. The Brotherhood was warned that it would face a bloody confrontation should it not comply with the people’s demands. During his final meeting with Sisi in the night of 2 July, the president agreed that new elections should take place as soon as a new parliament was elected. He offered Sisi the post of prime minister, but was rebuffed. Egyptian state media reported that Sisi had advised Morsi to ‘leave with your dignity and tell those whom you call supporters to go back to their homes in order to prevent bloodshed’. When 282

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‘Hiwār ma’ ‘Issām al-‘Ariān (Interview with ‘Issam al-‘Arian).’ MBC, 2 July 2013. www ˙ .youtube.com/watch?v=EkmY7FnYL7I (accessed 30 April 2017). ‘Statement of the General Command of the Armed Forces.’ SCAF Facebook page, 1 July 2013. www.facebook.com/Egyptian.Armed.Forces.Admins?hc_location=timeline (accessed 3 September 2017). Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 4 January 2017. ‘Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court suspends embattled Constituent Assembly.’ AlAhram Online, 10 April 2012. http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/38936/ Egypt/Politics-/Egypts-High-Administrative-Court-suspends-embattle.aspx (accessed 3 September 2017).

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Morsi replied that such a military coup would not be approved by the Americans, Sisi answered that it was ‘the people who concern us, not America’. Morsi had apparently ominously threatened: ‘Don’t think the Brotherhood is going to stand by if I leave office. They will set everything on fire.’286 In the early-morning hours of the next day, Morsi made his last public appearance as president of Egypt. Watching the speech on television, Egyptians saw a defiant and confused president who, like a caged animal, pontificated about democracy and legitimacy.287 The speech was an impressive testimony of a man who knew that his time was over, but who still desperately clung to power like a drowning man clutching on a straw. As he appealed to the common sense of his ‘children of Egypt’, Morsi vowed to defend ‘legitimacy’ with his blood.288 In a final, sentimental appeal, he beseeched his countrymen and women: Keep protecting Egypt. Keep protecting the revolution, which we gained, with our sweat, and the blood of our martyrs in two and a half years. Keep it safe, all of you. O you who are with me, O you who are against me, don’t let the revolution be stolen from you.289

In the morning of 3 July, ‘Issam al-Haddad informed Morsi that a military coup was underway. With the president still refusing to believe him, Haddad reverted to social media to inform the public of the military takeover. In a chilling statement that dangles in the virtual universe of Facebook to this day, he wrote: ‘As I write these lines I am fully aware that these may be the last lines I get to post on this page. For the sake of Egypt and for historical accuracy, let’s call what is happening by its real name: a military coup.’290 Moments later, a detachment of Republican Guard officers entered Morsi’s office and forced him to abdicate. When the latter refused, the Commander of the National Guard, Major General Hamid Zaki, appeared in person to arrest the president.291 286

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‘Al-Watan tanfarid bi-ākhir Hiwār bayna Wazīr al-Difā wa-l-Ra’īs al-ma‘zūl (al-Watan ˙ the last Interview between ˙ possesses the Minister of Defense and the deposed President).’ Al-Watan, 5 July 2013. www.elwatannews.com/news/details/219627 (accessed 3 September 2017). Egypt’s famed political humour was immortalized in this ‘carnival’ video: DJ Ahmed No’man. ‘Mahrajān al-Shara‘iyya Dī Jay Muhammad Mursī (Legitimacy Festival with DJ ˙ 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch? Mohammed Morsi).’ YouTube, 6 September v=_MgsHxwUWqY&ab_channel=AhmedAAzmi (accessed 3 September 2017). ‘Murāfa’a al-Ra’īs al-Ma’zūl Muhammad Morsī ’an Nafsuhu (The Pledge of the deposed ˙ Himself).’ Egyptoon, 9 July 2013. www.youtube.com President Mohammed Morsi on /watch?v=elnW_XG1bUk (accessed 3 September 2017). ‘Kalima al-Ra’īs Mursī li-l-Sha‘b al-Masrī 2 Jūlī (Speech of President Morsi to the ˙ 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0UqapEgyptian People on 2 July).’ ON TV, 2 July cX8Y (accessed 3 September 2017). al-Haddad, ‘Issam. ‘Office of Assistant to President of Egypt on Foreign Relations.’ ‘Issam al-Haddad Facebook page, 3 July 2013. www.facebook.com/Foreign .Relations.President.Asst.Egy/posts/618096101548151:0 (accessed 3 September 2017). Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 4 January 2017.

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The following day, the SCAF suspended the constitution and appointed an interim president to call for new elections. State agencies proceeded to dismantle any vestiges of the Brotherhood’s public presence, taking pro-Brotherhood media channels off the air and issuing arrest warrants and travel bans for hundreds of top lieutenants.292 Sa‘d al-Katatni was apprehended on 4 July and so was Khairat al-Shatir the following day. Ikhwanonline.com posted: ‘We categorically reject the military coup that took place against the elected president and the will of the nation. We reject participation in any action with the usurping power, and the violence used against peaceful demonstrators.’293 On 5 July in the early afternoon, as tanks besieged the Islamist encampments in Northern Giza and Nasr City, a squadron of military airplanes whizzed above the heads of the crowds at Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya. At 2 p.m. the Brotherhood’s General Guide, Mohammed Badi‘, stepped on the stage. In an impassioned speech, he shouted: Oh men, women and young people of Egypt. You were with each other in one revolution. You lived side by side with each other. And you defeated the British occupation and the Zionists together. And your Brothers, your Muslim Brothers, spent decades in jails and prisons. You Egyptian people are the ones who defeated the unjust ruler. You are a very powerful people. You must keep holding on to your revolution. Don’t let your revolution be wasted. No right will be lost for him who demands [this right]. I am not a guilty man, this was a fake accusation. I am from the revolution. We’re free, we’re revolutionaries, and we will keep up our march.294

Thousands of voices chanted emphatically: Thuwwar! Ahrar! Hankammil al-mishwar! – Revolutionaries! Free men! Let’s continue our march! Thuwwar! Ahrar! Hankammil al-mishwar! – Revolutionaries! Free men! Let’s continue our march! Thuwwar! Ahrar! Hankammil al-mishwar! – Revolutionaries! Free men! Let’s continue our march!295 292

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‘Arrest of Muslim Brotherhood Members and Supporters.’ Amnesty International Publications, July 2013. www.amnesty.nl/content/uploads/2016/11/briefing_2013_-_07__arrests_of_muslim_brotherhood_english.pdf?x23787 (accessed 3 September 2017). The Arabic version of the text was originally published on www.ikhwanonline.com/ (accessed 3 September 2017). A copy of the statement can found here: www .facebook.com/permalink.php?id=111940752227390&story_fbid=484431168311678 (accessed 3 September 2017). Badi‘, Mohammed. ‘Kalimat al-Murshid al-‘āmm li-Jamā‘at al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn Muhammad Badī‘ min Manassat Rāb‘a al-‘Adawiyya (Speech of the General Guide of the ˙ ˙˙ Mohammed Badi‘ from the Stage of Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya).’ Brotherhood of Muslim Brothers YouTube, 5 July 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dFarB0CGRo&feature=youtube_gdata _player (accessed 3 September 2017). Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 5 July 2013.

7 The Beginning of the Fourth Ordeal (2013–2018)

We are no fools . . . . We see what is happening around us and what happens to the military coup, which does not find any ground to stand on and will collapse over time . . . . The Society will remain strong inside and outside Egypt, no matter the amount of pressure. Ibrahim Munir, Interview with ‘Araby 21 (August 2015)

The military coup of July 2013 was the starting point of the greatest crisis the Muslim Brotherhood had witnessed so far. On 14 and 15 August 2013 troopers from the Ministry of Interior and the Egyptian Armed Forces killed hundreds of Morsi’s supporters, including women and children. The ‘clearing of Rab‘a’ was followed by a wave of repression Egypt had not seen since the days of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Initially focused on members and supporters of the Brotherhood, the military regime capitalized on a resurgent nationalist momentum to clamp down on tens of thousands of activists, leftists, liberals, intellectuals, journalists, researchers, human rights defenders, NGO workers and homosexuals.1 In the years that followed, the Brotherhood became increasingly split along ideological, geographical and organizational lines. As numerous senior leaders were imprisoned or exiled, a group of younger individuals from the organization’s second rank was called upon to take charge of the Brotherhood’s activities in Egypt. In early 2014, this local leadership announced a committee whose task was to manage the Society’s affairs in Egypt. One year later, another committee was formed in Istanbul to represent the Society abroad. Before long, the representatives of these committees were locked in a bitter dispute with the exiled vanguard elite of the historical Guidance Office, who refused to give up their organizational prerogatives. What initially was a leadership contest centred around electoral procedures, finances and the distribution of resources, soon transformed into a vicious quarrel around the question of who was to blame for the Brotherhood’s performance during Morsi’s tenure, how the events of January 2011 should 1

‘Circles of Hell: domestic, public and state Violence against Women in Egypt.’ Amnesty International Publications. London, 21 January 2015. www.amnesty.org/download/ Documents/212000/mde120042015en.pdf (accessed 7 June 2018).

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be interpreted, and what strategy should be adopted in confronting the military regime. These questions were debated in the context of a rapidly changing regional and international context. As the counter-revolutionary forces were vindicated after the July 2013 coup, the region’s geopolitics became increasingly divided between the US-backed status-quo powers, represented by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and contestants such as Iran, Qatar and, increasingly, Turkey. During 2016 and 2017 the Guidance Office’s absence of leadership, or even the ability to formulate a strategic vision, started to fragment the Brotherhood while rendering parts of the rank and file vulnerable to the appeal of radical jihadi ideologies and networks. When the Muslim Brotherhood celebrated its ninetieth anniversary in 2018 the organization, marred by internal squabbles and facing growing external political pressure, had descended into irrelevance. Representative of the deflated state of the Brotherhood was Morsi’s death after a court appearance on 17 June 2019, which was barely acknowledged by the local press and led to an at best disheartened response among the Brotherhood’s members. This chapter looks at the Brotherhood’s post-2013 history up until 2018 – a period that saw a growing confrontation between a new class of second-rank apparatchiks in Egypt and the traditional leaders abroad. It highlights the key debates that shaped the Society’s internal political climate during that time, and how geopolitical events occurring in the larger Middle East region affected the Brotherhood’s organizational evolution. The chapter further reveals how, within the context of an aggravating security crackdown in Egypt, the leaders of the respective coalitions set up different committees and offices, which led to growing organizational splits that further weakened an already subdued Society. This chapter is based on more than forty Oral History interviews with Brotherhood leaders, rank-and-file and youth members, conducted during a combined six months of fieldwork in Istanbul, Doha, London, Berlin and Geneva between 2015 and 2019, a close reading of the narratives propagated on different Brotherhood-affiliated websites, and an overview of relevant policy analyses and legal documents. It shows how the leadership struggles having marred the Brotherhood’s internal political life before the Egyptian uprising of 2011 exacerbated the organization’s gradual fragmentation in the post-2013 period. ***

Towards the Clearing of Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya As the fortunes of the Brotherhood were turned upside down, the rank and file struggled to defend the Society against the onslaught of a reawakened security regime. In a series of violent confrontations, which unfolded on the streets of

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Cairo, Alexandria and other cities during the summer of that year, the supporters and opponents of the Brotherhood clashed on various occasions.2 Both sides were armed with Molotov cocktails, khartush guns, and in some cases live weapons, while both leveraged their respective propaganda apparatus to camouflage violent acts by their own supporters while indignantly pointing out similar acts by their opponents.3 A major confrontation took place in the early-morning hours of 8 July 2013, when the security forces killed fifty-one protesting Morsi supporters in front of the Republican Guards Club in Salah Salem Street, where the deposed president was suspected of being held.4 Confronted with this kind of bloodshed, the European Union dispatched a high-profile mediation team, headed by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the Baroness Catherine Ashton, and the Special Representative for the Southern Mediterranean Region, Bernardino León. The task of this duo was to find a compromise between two irreconcilable positions: that of the new government, led ad interim by Hazim al-Beblawy; and that of the opposition. The two former ministers, Mohammed ‘Ali Bishr and ‘Amr Darrag, insisted that Morsi needed to be freed before negotiations could take place, while the Beblawy government was eager to permanently shut the Brotherhood down. The fact that the Obama administration refused to label the events of 3 July 2013 a ‘coup’ signalled to the government that the

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‘Al-Ikhwān yustakhdimūn al-Khartūsh wa-l-Aslaha al-nāriyya fī Ishtibākāt Sīdī Jābir (The ˙ live Weapons˙ in Sidi Gaber Clashes).’ YouTube, 28 June Brotherhood uses Khartosh Guns and 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ko3ovWp37ws&feature=youtube_gdata_player (accessed 20 September 2014); ‘al-Islāmiyīn yarmūn bi-l-Atfāl min al-Irtifā‘ Tābiqīn (Islamists throw ˙ ˙ Opponents off Building Roof in Alexandria, Egypt, 2013).’ YouTube, 6 July 2013. www .youtube.com/watch?v=dMcl_tlVqjE (accessed 3 September 2017). On 5 July, in a widely shared YouTube video, a group of young men can be seen standing on a rooftop tank in the Alexandrian neighbourhood of Sidi Gaber, besieged by protesters below. At one point, two youngsters fall down, although it cannot be established from the video why they fell. State-owned media outlets immediatley blamed the Brotherhood for having killed ‘four children’; ‘Qatala al-Ikhwān li-4 Atfāl bi-Ilqā’ihim min fawq Khazān ˙ Sath ahad al-‘Umārāt (The Brotherhood killed four Children by throwing them from a ˙ ˙ ˙ Tank of one of the Buildings).’ YouTube, 5 July 2013. www.youtube.com/watch? Rooftop v=stlvuwPUspY (accessed 3 September 2017). Owen, Paul and Tom McCarthy. ‘Egypt: 51 Morsi Supporters killed in Shooting at Republican Guard Compound – as it Happened.’ The Guardian, 8 July 2013. www.theguardian.com/ world/middle-east-live/2013/jul/08/egypt-34-killed-in-shooting-at-compound-where-morsiis-being-held-live-coverage (accessed 3 September 2017); ‘Bidāya Majzara al-Haras al-Jumhūrī ˙ www.youtube (Beginning of the Massacre at the Republican Guards).’ YouTube, 8 July 2013. .com/watch?v=lYrWldXY3BU&feature=youtube_gdata_player (accessed 3 September 2017); Mirna el-Helbawi Twitter account @Mirna_elhelbawi, 8 July 2013. https://twitter.com/ Mirna_elhelbawi (accessed 3 September 2017); ‘Arrest of Muslim Brotherhood Members and Supporters.’ Amnesty International Publications, 17 July 2013. www.amnesty.nl/content/ uploads/2016/11/briefing_2013_-_07_-_arrests_of_muslim_brotherhood_english.pdf?x66178 (accessed 3 September 2017).

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international community prioritized its national security priorities over any professed values around democracy and human rights.5 Bolstered by this tacit US support, as well as by a $12 billion aid package delivered by the governments of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait, the members of the Egyptian negotiating team were confident to have gained the upper hand early on.6 Their sense of supremacy was confirmed on 24 July, when ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi gave a rabble-rousing speech at the Airforce and Naval Defence College, whose intention was to marshal tens of thousands of Egyptians into the streets and secure a ‘mandate to confront possible violence and terrorism’.7 After Egyptians staged another, highly mediatized, mass rally in Tahrir Square on 26 July, the army took this as a green light to clamp down on a sit-in by Morsi’s supporters in front of the Munassa memorial, killing some seventy individuals and wounding dozens more.8 Catherine Ashton hurriedly returned to Cairo, and then flew by helicopter to the Burj al-‘Arab prison in Alexandria to meet the deposed president. Returning to the capital in the evening, the Baroness assured ‘Amr Darrag that Morsi was ‘in good health’ while informing the former minister that she had impressed upon the president the importance of accepting the ‘new reality’ in order to avoid further bloodshed.9 Morsi’s supporters, however, were not willing to acknowledge any ‘new reality’. As they were holding their ground at Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya and Nahda Square, the Brotherhood’s press organ al-Hurriyya wa-l-‘Adala jubilantly triumphed on 1 August: ‘30 million Egyptians gathering at the [Rab‘a al‘Adawiyya] Mosque against the coup.’10 The fact that a small number of the roughly hundred-thousand participants at the sit-ins were non-Islamists, including liberals, Ultras soccer fans, and some Christians from the progressive ‘Copts against the Coup’ group bolstered the Brotherhood’s claim

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Darrag, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Istanbul, 11 February 2018. ‘UAE transferred $3 Billion in Aid to Egypt, Saudi to follow shortly.’ Reuters, 18 July 2013. www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/18/us-egypt-gulf-aid-idUSBRE96H0ZE20130718 (accessed 3 September 2017). For Saudi Arabia’s involvement, see Hearst, David. ‘Saudi’s internal Power Struggle sends Ripples across international Borders.’ The Guardian, 21 November 2013. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/21/saudi-power-strug gles-egypt (accessed 3 September 2017). ‘Kalima al-Farīq al-Sīsī amām Tullāb Kullīatī al-Difā‘ al-Jawī wa-l-Baharī (Speech of Abdel ˙ YouTube, 26 July Fatah al-Sisi before Students at˙the Airforce and Naval Defence College).’ 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnWxUpycQTc (accessed 3 September 2017). Kingsley, Patrick and Peter Beaumont. ‘Egypt: Scores killed as Army launches Offensive against Muslim Brotherhood.’ The Guardian, 27 July 2013. www.theguardian.com/world/ 2013/jul/27/egypt-muslim-brotherhood-morsi-supporters-killed (accessed 24 March 2018). Darrag, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Istanbul, 11 February 2018. Al-Hurriyya wa-l-‘Adala, 1 August 2013.

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that the protesters represented the voice of the revolution. Rank-and-file members later drew an idealized picture of the sit-in at Rab‘a: In these forty-eight days (from 3 July to 14 August 2013), we lived in a society we have never witnessed. About a million or two million [people] were standing together in a very tight chunk of land where you cannot find any bathrooms . . . . There was not even one theft incident, not a single mobile [phone] was stolen, no man was harassed or girl was raped. We were living in a very peaceful environment.11

As the notion of ‘peacefulness’ proliferated in the Brotherhood’s public discourse, a radicalization of attitudes had nevertheless started to take hold among parts of the rank and file. During nightly raids, detachments of the Deterrence Committees fanned out to disrupt transportation lines and launch frisking attacks on police officers. Rumours of Brotherhood-operated ‘torture chambers’ at Rab‘a emerged, where regime-collaborators were ‘punished’.12 According to a leaked conversation between senior generals of the Ministry of Interior, ‘any person [the Brotherhood] suspected of being a cop, even if he was a civilian, would be taken into the sit in, where he’d be brutally assaulted. Some had their lives taken, some had their fingers cut, some were beaten badly.’13 When Ramadan drew to a close, new talks were initiated with Brotherhood representatives. This time they also included the US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, as well as the Qatari and the Emirati Ministers of Foreign Affairs – Khalid bin Mohammed al-‘Atiyya and ‘Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Darrag insisted that certain ‘confidence building measures’ needed to be in place before negotiations could begin. These included the reopening of pro-Brotherhood TV channels, the release of political prisoners, and the provision of assurances that the Brotherhood’s sit-ins would not be attacked.14 By now, Darrag became convinced that a forceful dispersal of the sit-ins had already been decided. His theory seemed to be corroborated as soon as the US and European diplomats had left Egypt under the impression that talks would resume after ‘Eid. It was at this point that pro-state TV channels announced ‘that the negotiations with the Muslim Brotherhood had failed’. By accusing the Brotherhood of being stubborn and careless ‘about the interest of the country’ they prepared the ground for what was to follow.15 It was thus that the conditions were set for the army and the Central Security Forces to launch their final assault on the Brotherhood on 14 August 2013. During thirty-six hours, the tent villages at Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya and Nahda 11 12 13

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Ahmed, Samir Hussein*. Interview with author. Istanbul, 8 February 2018. Author’s fieldnotes. Cairo, 1 July 2013. Senior Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. London, January 2018. The voice memo is in the possession of the author. Darrag, ‘Amr. WhatsApp voice message to the author. Geneva-Istanbul, 6 June 2018. Ibid.

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Square were bulldozed to the ground by Armoured Personnel Carriers, while snipers positioned on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings targeted protesters with head shots.16 One survivor remembered the scene as follows: They were throwing benzine from the helicopters to burn the tents and whatever was inside it. [The army] was removing the charred bodies with bulldozers. The bullets were not wisely used. There was no difference between adults or children . . . . The first to die was a kid whose father took him to the wooden stage, a kid whose age was one or two months old. A lot of people died . . . among them people we still don’t know where they are buried until this moment. Some people died and we could get their corpses back, while others were buried . . . . They drilled [holes] into the ground, threw the corpses in, and poured cement on them. This was the Rab‘a incident.17

The ‘great massacre’, as it was remembered among the members of the Brotherhood, left a body count of between six hundred and one-thousand people.18 Public debates subsequently became more antagonistic. One side supported the clearing of the sit-in, while the other defended the legitimacy of the deposed president. The polarization of opinions quickly seeped down to the micro-level of society, affecting families and friendships and even alienating romantic partners. In an effort to counter the negative publicity, the office of the new interim president organized a press conference aimed at justifying the military intervention.19 A few days later, Bernardino León said during an 16

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‘Massacre in Rabaa.’ Al Jazeera, 17 August 2017. www.aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeera world/2016/08/massacre-rabaa-160816085846897.html (accessed 3 September 2017). Ahmed, Samir Hussein*. Interview with author. Istanbul, 8 February 2018. The number of those who were killed varies according to different sources. Amnesty International puts the figure at 550 people: Amnesty International Oral Statement to the 25th Session of the UN Human Rights Council (3–28 March 2014), 18 March 2014. www .amnesty.org/download/Documents/8000/mde120172014en.pdf (accessed 30 September 2017); the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, in accordance with the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, counted ‘between 499 and 932’ deaths: ‘Weeks of Killing: state Violence, communal Fighting & sectarian Attacks in the Summer of 2013.’ Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, 18 June 2014, p. 6. https://eipr.org/en/publications/weekskilling (accessed 30 September 2017); Human Rights Watch talks of ‘at least 817 and likely more than 1,000’ in Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya and ‘at least 87 people’ in Nahda Square: ‘All according to Plan: the Rab’a Massacre and Mass Killings of Protesters in Egypt.’ Human Rights Watch, 12 August 2014. www.hrw.org/report/2014/08/12/all-according-plan/ raba-massacre-and-mass-killings-protesters-egypt (accessed 30 September 2017); finally the Muslim Brotherhood puts the number at ‘over 2,000’ and even ‘3,000’: ‘Bayān 63 bi-lMadhbaha al-Kubrā ithnā‘ Fadd al-I‘tisāmīn al-Rāb‘al-‘Adawiyya wa-l-Nahda (Statement ˙ the Great Massacre ˙ ˙ during ˙ the Dispersal of the Sit-ins of Rab‘a˙and Nahda).’ 63 regarding Ikhwanonline.com, 14 August 2013. www.ikhwanonline.com/Section/159747/Default .aspx (accessed 30 September 2017). ‘Egyptian Presidency Press Conference.’ YouTube, 17 August 2013. www.youtube.com/ watch?v=K02xEy6loPo&app=desktop (accessed 3 September 2017).

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interview that ‘there are democratic forces left’ in Egypt and that ‘a political solution is [still] possible’.20 The priority of the Europeans was to disentangle themselves from the fiasco with which they threatened to become associated. This only strengthened the Brotherhood members’ belief that the Europeans and the Americans had deliberately nudged the negotiation process towards failure in order to create the context allowing the army to disperse the sit-ins. ‘Amr Darrag was convinced that León’s evasive demeanour mirrored the Europeans’ wish to ‘end the sit-in and fix the rule of Sisi’.21 Following the EU’s disengagement from the negotiation process, the security regime proceeded to arrest Mohammed Badi‘. It was the first time in more than thirty years that a sitting General Guide had been arrested. On 27 August, the International Organization convened key players of the global Islamic scene for an emergency meeting in Istanbul. While delegates agreed that Morsi’s ouster constituted an unprecedented setback for the Islamic project, some openly criticized the members of the Guidance Office for having ‘failed to control all the institutions of the state . . . keeping away from the pulse of the street and the concerns of the people, and failing to maintain a strong alliance with other Islamic forces’.22 This sentiment was echoed among elements of the organization’s base in Egypt. The brutality of the onslaught had altered the outlook of many youth members, who were left in a state of disbelief and anger, seeing the only solution in a violent approach against Egypt’s new regime.23 Over the coming weeks, Egypt witnessed a rise in violent attacks, which were largely concentrated on state installations and personnel. On 5 September the Minister of Interior, Mohammed Ibrahim, was almost killed during a car bomb attack in Nasr City. After a series of further militant attacks in the same month, the Cairo Court for Urgent Matters on 23 September ordered the confiscation of the Brotherhood’s money, assets and real estate. On 9 October, the organization was permanently dissolved by the Ministry of Social Affairs.24 20

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‘Statement by Bernardino León – Part 2 (Q&A).’ EU Council Newsroom. Brussels, 19 August 2013. https://tvnewsroom.consilium.europa.eu/event/eu-egypt-3b6a/statementby-bernardino-leon-part-2-qa (accessed 20 February 2018). Darrag, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2018. ‘Mū’tamar ‘al-Jamā‘a’ fī Turkīā yuqirr bi-‘azla al-Ikhwān wa Inhiyār sha‘biyyatihim fī Masr (Conference of “the Society” in Turkey decides to isolate the Brotherhood; its ˙ Popularity in Egypt collapses).’ Al-Riyadh, 27 August 2013. www.alriyadh.com/862752 (accessed 1 March 2018). ‘“How long are we going to live in this Injustice?” Egypt’s Christians caught between sectarian Attacks and state Inaction.’ Amnesty International Publications, 8 October 2013. www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/16000/mde120582013en.pdf (accessed 1 March 2018). Kirkpatrick, David D. ‘Egyptian Court shuts down the Muslim Brotherhood and seizes its Assets.’ New York Times, 23 September 2013. www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/world/mid dleeast/egyptian-court-bans-muslim-brotherhood.html (accessed 1 March 2018).

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Three months later, a suicide attack on the police headquarters in Mansura killed a dozen people and injured over one-hundred more. The next day, the government designated the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

Sent Behind the Sun Egypt’s new rulers now proceeded to implement a campaign of systematic repression against civil society. While the clampdown was initially concentrated on the Muslim Brotherhood, the regime progressively started targeting anyone who was deemed a ‘threat to security and peace’. Terms such as ‘the Muslim Brotherhood’ and ‘Al Jazeera’ became stooges that were invoked ad nauseam by pro-regime outlets in order to legitimize a public susceptible to state-directed defamation and misinformation campaigns. Self-censorship became widespread, while as vigilante committees and ‘concerned citizens’ reported anyone they deemed suspect of sympathizing with the Brotherhood.25 The emerging officers’ republic backed these measures by a series of newly introduced legislations.26 Law no. 107 on Freedom of Assembly and Association, adopted in November 2013, curtailed protests by granting the Ministry of Interior discretionary powers to use lethal force against demonstrators.27 ‘Ala’ ‘Abd al-Fattah, Ahmed Maher and Ahmed Duma, three of the foremost icons of the 2011 uprising, were among the law’s earliest victims.28 During the weeks leading up to the national referendum of January 2014, the security state widened its repressive campaign against journalists and media professionals. In a famous incident on 29 December 2013 the three Al Jazeera journalists Mohammed Fahmy, Peter Greste and Baher Mohammed were apprehended in the Marriott Hotel, accused of spreading ‘false news’ and 25

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I became myself the target of this kind of unwarranted surveillance while filming a documentary in Cairo for Swiss national television. See Weber, Pascal. ‘Im Bann der Muslimbrüder.’ SRF: Reporter, 20 September 2013. www.youtube.com/watch? v=Ryp5AlOBsD0&feature=youtube_gdata_player (accessed 25 March 2018). ‘The Officers’ Republic: the Egyptian Military and Abuse of Power.’ Transparency International, March 2018. http://ti-defence.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ The_Officers_Republic_TIDS_WEB2.pdf (accessed 25 March 2018). ‘Egypt: new Protest Law gives Security Forces free Rein.’ Amnesty International Publications, 25 November 2013. www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2013/11/egypt-newprotest-law-gives-security-forces-free-rein/ (accessed 7 June 2018). The text of the law can be found on ‘Law No. 107 of 2013 for Organizing the Right to Peaceful Public Meetings, Processions and Protests.’ Refworld (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). www.refworld.org/docid/551a5f2a4.html (accessed 12 June 2018). ‘Ala’ ‘Abd al-Fattah was sentenced to fifteen years’ hard labour on 11 June 2014. Ahmed Maher was convicted on 22 December to three years’ hard labour. Ahmed Duma was sentenced to life in prison on 4 February 2015, serving most of his time in solitary confinement.

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‘belonging to or assisting the Muslim Brotherhood movement’.29 The regime also clamped down on human rights defenders and NGO workers. In July 2014, the Ministry of Social Solidarity issued an ultimatum for NGOs to register under Law no. 84 of 2002 on Non-governmental Organizations and threatened penalties for any organization who failed to do so.30 Further legislation was prepared to subjugate civil society advocates to an onerous and bureaucratic process monitored by security agencies. Most consequentially, at the end of 2013 the regime institutionalized specialized chambers within criminal courts to try individuals who were accused of charges related to ‘terrorism’. In March 2014, a court in Minya issued death sentences for 528 individuals, followed by another 720 in April. Among the defendants was Mohammed Badi‘, who was accused of ‘incitement of violence’ during the clearing of the Rab‘a sit-in. In August 2014, another court in Cairo tried another 494 people. These verdicts were later backed by Law no. 94 on Combatting Terrorism, which was adopted by presidential decree in August 2015. The law imposed unprecedented restrictions on the freedom of speech, expression and assembly.31 One of the law’s victims was the journalist and Sinai expert Ismail al-Iskanderani, who was arrested at Hurghada Airport in November 2015 after having attended a conference in Berlin.32 Later, in April 2017, Law no. 13 on Judicial Bodies further weakened legal guarantees for fair trials while handing broad authority to the president to appoint the heads of major judicial bodies, including the Court of Cassation and the State Council.33 Around the same time, the adoption of Law no. 70 on Associations imposed heavy restrictions on the exercise of the rights for freedom of expression and association.34 29

30

31

32

33

34

They were sentenced to multi-year prison sentences on 23 June 2014. Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohammed were released on 29 September 2015 per presidential pardon, while Peter Greste was deported to Australia on 1 February 2015. ‘Law No. 84 of 2002 on Non-governmental Organizations.’ Refworld (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). www.refworld.org/docid/5491907d4.html (accessed 12 June 2018). Buchanan, Kelly. ‘Egypt’s new Antiterrorism Law.’ Custodia Legis: Library of Congress, 8 September 2015. https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2015/09/falqs-egypts-new-antiterrorism-law/ (accessed 7 June 2018). The text of the law can be found on ‘Egypt’s anti-Terror Law: a Translation.’ Atlantic Council, 3 September 2015. www.atlanticcouncil.org/images/ EgyptSource/Egypt_Anti-Terror_Law_Translation.pdf (accessed 7 June 2018). ‘Egypt: release Journalist who has spent two Years behind Bars without Charge or Trial.’ Amnesty International Publications, 29 November 2017. www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ news/2017/11/egypt-release-journalist-who-has-spent-two-years-behind-bars-withoutcharge-or-trial/ (accessed 25 March 2018). ‘New Legislation threatens judicial Independence in Egypt.’ Amnesty International Publications, 27 April 2017. www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/04/new-legislationthreatens-judicial-independence-in-egypt/ (accessed 25 March 2018). ‘Law No. 70 of 2017 Law of Associations and other Foundations Working in the Field of Civil Work.’ Refworld (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). www.refworld .org/docid/5a4cbae14.html (accessed 12 June 2018).

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In parallel to this officially sanctioned crackdown, Egypt became subject to a shadowy culture of ‘enforced disappearance’ and ‘arbitrary detention’ – a development that seems to have been linked to the appointment of Magdi ‘Abd al-Ghaffar as Minister of Interior in March 2015. Under ‘Abd alGhaffar’s supervision, thousands of individuals were abducted and detained in police stations, Central Security Forces camps, and on the premises of the National Security Agency (NSA), which functioned as Egypt’s domestic intelligence agency since the abolishment of the State Security Investigations Service (SSIS) in March 2011.35 As these facilities were not formally recognized as detention sites under Egyptian law, they did not fall under any judicial oversight. When brought to such a facility a suspect would enter a dark world where one ceased to officially exist, as a chilling Amnesty International report documented.36 The prosecutors based in these detention centres were not publicly recognized by formal courts, but they had the power to issue detention orders.37 This system allowed for arbitrarily detained individuals to remain unacknowledged, sometimes for months and even years. Another practice instigated by the NSA was the application of repeated and prolonged periods of solitary confinement, whereby prisoners were locked in their cells for weeks and in some cases even months without any human contact. Although the overwhelming majority of prisoners were Egyptians, the most widely publicized case was that of Giulio Regeni, an Italian doctoral student from Cambridge University, who disappeared on 25 January 2016 in Downtown Cairo and whose mutilated body was found nine days later at a desert road in Cairo.38 Within this system, torture became rampant, widespread and systematic. State Security officers were given free rein to extract ‘confessions’ through a variety of practices. These included beatings, electrocutions, denailings, impalements, prolonged strappados and a variety of other techniques such as ‘the grill’, whereby a victim’s hands and feet were tied together and then 35

36

37

38

Guerin, Orla. ‘The Shadow over Egypt.’ BBC News, 23 February 2018. www.bbc.co.uk/ news/resources/idt-sh/shadow_over_egypt (accessed 7 June 2018); ‘Crushing Dissent in Egypt.’ BBC Newsnight, 22 February 2018. www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_GZ8EtOyh4 (accessed 7 June 2018). ‘Egypt: Officially you don’t exist. Disappeared and tortured in the Name of CounterTerrorism.’ Amnesty International Publications, July 2016, pp. 18–19. www.amnesty .org/download/Documents/MDE1243682016ENGLISH.PDF (accessed 7 June 2018). ‘Egypt: Roadmap to Repression. No End in Sight to Human Rights Violations.’ Amnesty International Publications, 23 January 2014. www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/ 8000/mde120052014en.pdf (accessed 7 June 2018). Tondo, Lorenzo and Ruth Michaelson. ‘Giulio Regeni: Italy names Egyptian Agents as Murder Suspects.’ The Guardian, 29 November 2018. www.theguardian.com/world/ 2018/nov/29/giulio-regeni-murder-italy-names-egyptian-national-security-agents-sus pects (accessed 7 June 2018).

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suspended on a wooden stick.39 In some cases, the goal of these practices was to force victims to admit that they belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood.40 For the victims, even more macabre than the physical pain was the mental trauma caused during the sometimes-lengthy periods of arbitrary detention. One of the victims of these practices was the American–Egyptian journalist Mohammed Soltan, whose father had served as an advisor in Morsi’s government and who had arrived in Egypt shortly after the 2013 coup. Having participated in the protests at Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya, Soltan on 27 August was taken to Wadi al-Natrun prison, then transferred to the Istiqbal prison in the Tora complex and later to al-Aqrab maximum security prison. According to his account, he remained in custody for 22 months and during this time was regularly beaten. In March 2015, he was locked in a cell together with another Egyptian co-prisoner. With his father being held in an adjacent cell, Soltan was reported to have been encouraged to kill himself with a razor blade that was slipped to him under the prison door.41 It was only after a sustained social media campaign led to the personal intervention of Barack Obama that Soltan was released. Another participant of the Rab‘a sit-in and also a victim of ‘Abd alGhaffar’s arbitrary detention system, was Samir Ahmed. A twenty-year-old student of the University of Alexandria’s Engineering Faculty and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Samir was arrested in the morning of 6 February 2014 and then taken to the Alexandria security directorate in New Samuha – a building infamous for the ‘slaughter house’, which was situated on the building’s fourth floor. There, he was blindfolded and subjected to a variety of torture methods, including electric shocks applied to his genitals.42 After seven days, he was brought in front of a prosecutor, who sent him back to the security directorate building after refusing to record the bruises and blue spots that marked Samir’s body. After another fifteen days of solitary confinement, Samir was ‘sent behind the sun’, as per the Egyptian saying. 39

40

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42

‘“We do unreasonable Things here”: Torture and national Security in al-Sisi’s Egypt.’ Human Rights Watch, 5 September 2017. www.hrw.org/report/2017/09/05/we-do-unrea sonable-things-here/torture-and-national-security-al-sisis-egypt (accessed 7 June 2018). ‘Al-Mutahaddith al-‘Askarī yanshur Fīdīū li-l-Qabd ‘alā ahad akhtar al-Khalāīā al˙ ˙ publishes ˙ Video capturirhābiyya˙allatī tuhaddid al-Amn al-qawmī (Military Spokesman ing one of the most dangerous terrorist Cells threatening national Security).’ Al-Watan News, 11 July 2015. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj7PlhC7s7o (accessed 7 June 2018). Sultan, Mohammed. ‘Egypt: “Facilitating Radicalization”: the Implications of unfair Elections and Human Rights Violations on Security and Stability.’ Presented at the 37th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Author’s fieldnotes. Geneva, 9 March 2018. Ahmed, Samir Hussein*. Interview with author. Istanbul, 8 February 2018.

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Samir’s two-year-long journey in the captivity of Egypt’s prison system began at the Burj al-‘Arab prison, located in the desert about 60 kilometres west of Alexandria. With tens of thousands of newly declared political prisoners, the Prison Administration operating the jail system under the Ministry of Interior had embarked on an unprecedented construction spree. After 2013, sixteen new facilities were built, bringing the number of Egyptian prisons to forty-six. By September 2016, Egypt counted a prison population of 106,000 – roughly half political prisoners and a quarter Brotherhood members.43 With a capacity for approximately 11,000 prisoners, the Burj al-‘Arab was divided into twenty-five blocks, each containing eighteen cells. The members of the Muslim Brotherhood were distributed across five blocks and in accordance to the colour of their overalls: white overalls were worn by those who were not yet convicted, blue by convicts, and red by those who had received a death sentence. Samir was assigned to cell number 17 in block 22. Sharing the twenty-five square metre space with twenty-eight fellow inmates, the cell had only one narrow window and a single sewer hole covered with a piece of cloth. Cockroaches and insects made any sort of personal hygiene impossible.44 The only light source was a badly functioning bulb on the ceiling. Prisoners were undernourished and whatever nutrition they did receive lacked basic vitamins. They relied on food brought to them by their family members, whose visits were coordinated in order to maximize supply. The inmates also entertained a system of social organization, with each day featuring a specific programme that included physical exercise in the morning and lectures in the afternoon: We would explain something to each other every day. For example, I knew [something] about engineering, so I would explain it to the other prisoners. Someone else was a doctor and could explain something about [a certain] medical issue. Someone else knew how to read Quran, so he would teach all of us.45

In March 2016, after having lived in such conditions for two years, Samir was ordered to appear in front of a court and released on bail of E£25,000, since the state was unable to produce any evidence for his alleged crime. Three days later, he received word that State Security was going to re-arrest him. It was at this point that he decided to go underground, spending the following eight 43

44

45

‘Hunāk Mutassi‘a li-l-Jamī‘a: Sujūn Masr qabla wa ba‘d Thawra Yanāīr (There is Room ˙ after the January 25 Revolution).’ The Arabic for Everyone: Egypt’s Prisons before and Network for Human Rights Information, 5 September 2016. http://goo.gl/Cy7DfH (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 1 June 2018). Middle East Watch and Prison Project Report. Prison Conditions in Egypt: a filthy System. Human Rights Watch, February 1992. Ahmed, Samir Hussein*. Interview with author. Istanbul, 8 February 2018.

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months at different hideouts, ‘isolated from everybody, in a very faraway place where I did not talk to anyone’.46 As this lifestyle became increasingly difficult to maintain, Samir decided to take journey to Sudan. After having paid an Aswan-based human trafficking ring, he arrived in Khartum in February 2017 and a few weeks later boarded a plane to Istanbul. As his passport did not have an exit stamp from Egypt, Samir, at the time of writing in his early thirties, became one of thousands of exiled Egyptians who were stuck in Turkey.47

Rise of the Second Rank With a majority of Guidance Office members imprisoned, displaced or in hiding, the task of leading the Brotherhood fell upon a group of younger individuals who were born during the mid to late 1950s and had, until recently, held positions at the second rank of organizational leadership. Suddenly thrust into the top ranks of decision-making, these individuals were confronted with the task of managing an old and complex organization in the midst of the greatest crisis of its history. Absent any strategic vision of how the situation should be managed, it did not take long for them to be chastised by the vanguard leaders, who accused them of arrogating a greater share of power than what they were permitted according to the Brotherhood’s Statutes. Before long, the two competing factions found themselves locked in a legalistic– organizational struggle over who was to rightfully represent the Brotherhood in Egypt. The nucleus of this new leadership had originated in the aftermath of the July 2013 coup, when the Brotherhood sought to reorganize its operations.48 Initially, their efforts were driven by two men: the first was Mohammed Taha Wahdan, a fifty-two-year-old medical doctor from Ismailiyya and the head of the Section for Upbringing, who had become a Guidance Office member in 2012. A sophisticated man with broad knowledge of Islamic law and theology who was sometimes referred to as Imam or Mufti by his fellow Brothers, Wahdan was a well-known and respected figure among the rank and file. Some even rumoured that he would become the next General Guide.49 The second man was Mohammed Sa‘d ‘Aliwa, who was born in 1955 in the Daqahliyya governorate. ‘Aliwa had been nominated to the Guidance Office only in January 2013 and had previously served as the head of the Youth Section. Acting in a personal capacity, these two individuals formed a 46

47 48 49

‘Crushing Humanity: the Abuse of solitary Confinement in Egypt’s Prisons.’ Amnesty International Publications, 7 May 2018. www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/ 212000/mde120042015en.pdf. Ahmed, Samir Hussein*. Interview with author. Istanbul, 8 February 2018. al-Sayyad, Osama. Interview with author. Istanbul, 16 August 2018. Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 15 August 2018.

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Committee for Activities, which coordinated various efforts across the organization in terms of organizing demonstrations and protest marches. Once the security situation had stabilized in early 2014, formal reorganization efforts were initiated. During a meeting in February, those Guidance Office members who were both still in Egypt and free created a new executive committee whose task was to lead the Brotherhood through the current crisis. In addition to Wahdan and ‘Aliwa, the committee consisted of Mohammed Kamal, a fifty-eight-year-old agriculturalist who specialized in ‘orchards and fruits’ and had previously headed the Administrative Office of Asyut; ‘Abd al‘Azim al-Sharqawi, the former Secretary General of the Hizb al-‘Amal al-Islami in Beni Sweif and a close confidant of Khairat al-Shatir; ‘Abd al-Rahman alBarr from Daqahliyya, who headed the Da‘wa Section; and Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Morsi, a sixty-two-year-old cardiologist from Mansura who had been a member of the Guidance Office since 2008. Although he and Mahmud Ghozlan, who acted as an informal advisor to the executive committee, were in hiding, they were in regular contact with Mahmud ‘Izzat and Mahmud Hussein.50 Besides these seven Guidance Office members, three other individuals became part of the committee. These had not previously held any prominent leadership roles, but were now elevated to the executive body because of their skills and their experience in the political field.51 They included ‘Ali Batikh, a fifty-eightyear-old medical doctor from Awsim, who had a secondary education in Islamic Law and headed the Administrative Office in Giza; Hussein Ibrahim, the previous Secretary General of the FJP; and ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, a member of the Section for Upbringing and ‘one of the very good Brothers’.52 Given the state of the country’s security situation, these nominations caused little controversy, since whoever was chosen [for a formal organizational role] faced the likelihood of assassination and [therefore] carried a tough responsibility. A lot of people disappeared and let go of their responsibility. Thus, members did not think about why, for instance, one was chosen over the other. Quite to the contrary – they would say: ‘God be with you. I wish you success, as you might get killed tomorrow.’53 50

51

52 53

Sharaf, ‘Ammar. ‘Azma al-Qiyāda dākhil al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn: Wajhāt Nazr ˙ mutabāyana wa Wathqa mafqūda (The Crisis of the Muslim Brotherhood Leadership: different Viewpoints and lost Confidence).’ Masr al-‘Arabiyya, 27 September 2015. https://goo.gl/MzPnxK (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 18 June 2018). ‘Wathīqa li-l-Ikhwān: lam najar Intikhābāt li-l-Irshād wa lā Mutahaddith bi-Ismanā (A ˙ Guidance [Office] Document of the Brotherhood: we did not conduct Elections for the nor [for] our Spokesperson).’ Masr al-‘Arabiyya, 14 June 2015. https://goo.gl/wkMbyf (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 18 June 2018). Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2018. Batikh, ‘Ali. Interview with author. Istanbul, 23 March 2018.

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In late February 2014, under tight security conditions, this technical committee organized the sixty-eight Shura Council members to meet in three separate gatherings. They formally approved the creation of the ‘High Administrative Committee’ (al-Lajna al-Idariyya al-‘Uliya), which became the Brotherhood’s new official executive body in Egypt.54 The High Administrative Committee was composed of the three Guidance Office members Mohammed Kamal, Taha Wahdan and Sa‘d ‘Aliwa, as well as non-Guidance Office members ‘Ali Batikh, Hussein Ibrahim and ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi. Further added to the board were Mohammed Sa‘d al-Sayyid, Mohammed Abu Nass, and another individual from Sharqiyya whose name is unknown.55 Although the latter six were apparently confirmed by the Shura Council, their names were not publicly announced. The fact that ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi was nominated to the post of Secretary General put him into direct competition with the Brotherhood’s official Secretary General, Mahmud Hussein, who in July 2013 had escaped to Doha at the behest of the Guidance Office.56 While the creation of the High Administrative Committee carried the seal of approval of the vanguard leadership, disagreements emerged early on, pertaining mostly to the committee’s precise tasks, as well as to the question of who was supposed to be in charge of these tasks. Mohammed Kamal and a majority of the non-Guidance Office members argued that the Brotherhood needed an entirely new national leadership, rather than simply a committee that was accountable to the Guidance Office. While nobody challenged the authority of the Mohammed Badi‘, the fact that he was incarcerated brought forward the question of who should be entitled to make organizational decisions on a dayto-day basis. Although, according to the Brotherhood’s Statutes, it was up to one of the Murshid’s deputies to assume the role of ‘acting General Guide’, the first deputy, Mahmud ‘Izzat, was in hiding, while the remaining three, Khairat al-Shatir, Gum‘a Amin and Rashid al-Bayumi, were either in exile or in prison. Effective control over the Brotherhood’s activities thus passed to Mohammed Kamal as the head of the High Administrative Committee. Although Kamal was not well known among the rank and file due to his upbringing in Upper Egypt, his engaging personality, his management skills, and the sense of mission that he brought to the task of organizational reconstruction assured that he would shape the Brotherhood in consequential ways.57 For many, ‘it was as if he was the Murshid, but because we respected the Murshid in prison, we did not call him thus’.58 Another person who had an important role was Mohammed Taha Wahdan. Less adventurous in his thinking and 54 55 56 57 58

Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2018. al-Sayyad, Osama. Interview with author. Istanbul, 16 August 2018. Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2018. al-Sayyad, Osama. Interview with author. Istanbul, 16 August 2018. Batikh, ‘Ali. Interview with author. Istanbul, 23 March 2018.

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Table 2 Leadership Overview

rise of the second rank Table 2 (Cont.)

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more inclined towards the ‘peaceful’ approach that was advocated by the exiled vanguard leaders, Wahdan had the religious erudition and the sophistication that was needed to lead the Society alongside Mohammed Kamal. The new leadership team faced a number of immediate challenges. During the first months of 2014 the wave of assassinations and bombing campaigns, which had multiplied since the fall of Mohammed Morsi, increasingly started to concentrate on the capital. Three senior generals were assassinated in April alone, including Brigadier General Ahmed Zaki, who was killed by an explosive device targeting his car in 6th of October City.59 The changing nature of the attacks pointed to a pattern whereby militant groups increasingly targeted upper levels of the security and military chains of command, rather than inflicting random mass casualties among soldiers and recruits. This led the regime to clamp down with growing vindictiveness on the Islamist scene as a whole. The crackdown intensified considerably after Sisi’s overwhelming victory in the presidential elections of May 2014. Besides the external challenges they faced due to an increasingly tense security situation, the Brotherhood remained divided internally. A main point of contestation concerned the performance of the Guidance Office during the Brotherhood’s year in power, as a growing number of youth cadres openly accused the vanguard leaders of having failed to capitalize on the opportunity that had been handed to them by Morsi’s victory. One of the most outspoken individuals was ‘Ali Batikh, who advocated for a ‘complete revision of what had happened’.60 When Mahmud Hussein and Ibrahim Munir informed him that the time was not opportune for such a revision, Batikh accused them of being afraid to review what happened because they don’t want to get punished for their mistakes, which [would] imply that they have to leave their position . . . since some of these mistakes led to massacres and imprisonments. [Any form of critique to them meant] that they were bad leaders and had to leave their positions.61

Batikh’s comment disguised deeper questions around the issue of the High Administrative Committee’s legitimacy. Since, at the time of its foundation, the security environment had not allowed for committee members to be formally elected by the Shura Council, the organization of such elections now became a priority. This raised the question of who was authorized to organize such elections in the first place: the members of the High Administrative Committee in their capacity as temporarily substituting for 59

60 61

‘Two Policemen, Militant killed in Egypt.’ Reuters, 23 April 2014. https://uk.reuters.com/ article/uk-egypt-violence/two-policemen-militant-killed-in-egypt-idINKBN0D91232 0140423 (accessed 1 March 2018). Batikh, ‘Ali. Interview with author. Istanbul, 23 March 2018. Telima, ‘Issam. Interview with author. Istanbul, 29 March 2018.

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the Guidance Office, as Kamal and his partisans believed, or the members of the Guidance Office themselves? The resolution of this debate was of cardinal importance, for if the High Administrative Committee should indeed be regarded as a substitute for the Guidance Office, it would, ipso facto, also have the authority to decide on the ‘methods’ that were permissible in confronting the military regime, namely ‘whether we should [confront the regime together] with the armed groups, or whether [we should] be patient and go with negotiations’.62

The Brotherhood in Exile The escalating feud between the second-rank leadership in Egypt and the exiled vanguard elite occurred against the backdrop of an accelerating polarization of the Middle East’s regional order. The central dynamic driving the ‘new Middle East cold war’, as F. Gregory Gause had called it, was the intensifying power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia. This development was paralleled by an aggravating feud between the smaller states of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, both of whom tried to either defend, assert or expand their respective spheres of influence at the expense of the other.63 While this confrontation, in a first instance, was mainly of a geopolitical nature, the rhetoric employed by the different sides significantly contributed to its sectarianization. This was particularly true with respect to Syria, whose ongoing war had allowed Iran to consolidate its alliance with the Asad regime and, through its massive military, logistical and moral support to Hamas and Hezbollah, stirred Saudi anxieties of being encroached by a ‘Shia crescent’. Tehran’s political leaders, for their part, feared that they would become encircled by US military bases, which had proliferated in Afghanistan, Iraq, as well as the Gulf following the 2003 military invasion of Iraq. These fears remained unmitigated after Hassan Rouhani’s election in June 2013, when the negotiation process for a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, the P5+1, awakened hopes that the Islamic Republic might be soon readmitted into the womb of the international community.64 62 63

64

Ibid. See F. Gregory Gause in his much-cited article ‘Beyond Sectarianism: the new Middle East Cold War.’ Brookings, 22 July 2014. www.brookings.edu/research/beyond-sectarianismthe-new-middle-east-cold-war/ (accessed 10 April 2018). For a timeline on the negotiations, see ‘Iran’s nuclear Program Timeline and History.’ Nuclear Threat Initiative. www.nti.org/learn/countries/iran/nuclear/ (accessed 27 March 2018).

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Iran’s improved geopolitical position was viewed with great disapprobation by the ruling elites in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Not only did Iranian expansionism challenge the traditional power status of the conservative Gulf monarchies, but the promotion of Islamic republicanism as a viable alternative to Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi doctrine with its emphasis on autocratic governance was viewed as a possible ‘fifth column’ in terms of Iranian foreign policy. It threatened the Kingdom’s hegemonic position in the contested Persian (or Arab) Gulf. Already in 2011, Saudi and Emirati rulers had been concerned by Tehran’s triumphalist attitude towards the ‘Islamic uprisings’ – which is how Iranian officials typically framed the Arab Spring.65 Once anti-regime (and Iran-backed) demonstrations broke out in Bahrain on 14 February, the rulers of Saudi Arabia feared that the uprising could spread to the 1.5 million Shia citizens living in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province. Employing sectarian identity politics propagandistically, Saudi Arabia and the UAE dispatched a 1,500 troops-strong ‘Peninsula Shield Force’ to support Hamad bin ‘Isa Al Khalifa’s regime in order to crush the unrest.66 After the arrest of 160 dissidents and the killing of dozens of protesters by the security forces, Saudi Arabia allocated a $130 billion package to Bahrain in order to pay for subsidies, higher salaries of public sector workers, and new low-income housing units. Members of the Brotherhood interpreted this policy as a sign of the fear of Gulf monarchs that the Arab Spring could encourage democratic movements in their countries: [Saudi Arabia and the UAE] are afraid that a democracy in Egypt would facilitate a revolution [in their countries]. Having a democratic system in a country close to Saudi Arabia is worrying them, since this experiment could transfer to their country. This is why [the] Saudi and Emirati [regimes] fought the Arab Spring . . . . They are scared of democracy, since democracy would mean that they would have to give up power.67

The Arab uprisings of 2011 highlighted the extent to which the regional architecture of the GCC, which had guaranteed the security of the Persian Gulf region since 1981, had ossified. Saudi Arabia and the UAE were particularly dismayed by Qatar’s overtly pro-Islamist policies, and its gradual diplomatic and commercial rapprochement to Iran – visible in the two countries’ mutual management of the North Dome/South Pars natural gas field. From the Saudi– Emirati point of view, Qatar’s policies ran counter to both the letter and the 65

66

67

See for instance ‘Pāsokh-e Rahbar-e Enqelāb be bist porsesh darbāreh-ye “bidāri-ye Eslāmi” (The Leader of the Revolution responds to 20 Questions about the “Islamic Awakening”).’ Khamenei.ir, 29 April 2013. http://farsi.khamenei.ir/speech-content? id=22406 (accessed 27 March 2018). This figure can be found in Matthiesen, Toby. The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 6. ‘Abd al-Ghany, Ayman. Interview with author. Istanbul, 1 April 2018.

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spirit of the GCC charter.68 While the interests of the three regional powers had overlapped for a short period during the Libyan uprising, Qadhafi’s fall in October 2011 brought the tripartite alliance of convenience to its end. Conflicting positions in Syria caused Qatar to drift further away from the Saudi and Emirati position, whose leaders accused the ‘brotherly nation’ of supporting radical Islamist groups such as al-Qaida’s Syrian wing, Jabhat al-Nusra. This geopolitical constellation constituted the backdrop for the widening Saudi–Emirati campaign against the Brotherhood and its international backers. In January 2014, the Federal Supreme Court in Abu Dhabi sentenced thirty Egyptian and UAE nationals belonging to the Brotherhood’s ‘EgyptianEmirati cell’.69 In March, Saudi Arabia went one step further when it declared the Brotherhood a ‘terrorist organization’, provoked by Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s accusation that the two Gulf governments were ‘un-Islamic’.70 Simultaneously, the UAE expanded its anti-Brotherhood campaign through a number of softpower diplomacy campaigns, such as by announcing the formation of a ‘Muslim Council of Elders’ (Majlis al-Hukama’ al-Muslimin) whose task was to ‘promote peace in the Muslim communities’.71 Headed by the Mauritanian Sheikh ‘Abdallah bin Bayyah and counting the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayeb, among its board members, the Council positioned itself as an apolitical and neo-Sufist counterweight to Qaradawi’s ‘International Union of Muslim Scholars’ (al-Ittihad al-‘Alami li-l-‘Ulama’ al-Muslimin).72 The UAE also pressured the British government of David Cameron to declare the Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Faced with the threat of a withholding of Emirati investments, the British government commissioned its former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Sir John Jenkins, to evaluate the extent to which the Brotherhood posed a risk to the country’s national security. In November, the Saudi and the Emirati governments recalled their ambassadors from Doha after Qatar had refused to succumb to their demands. This was

68

69

70

71

72

‘Charter of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).’ 25 May 1981. www.files.ethz.ch/isn/ 125347/1426_GCC.pdf (accessed 25 February 2018). ‘Ahkām Nihā’iyya fī Qadiyya al-Ikhwān al-Imārāt (Final Rulings in the Case of “Emirati ˙ Brothers”).’ Noon Post, ˙21 January 2014. www.noonpost.org/content/1613 (accessed 25 February 2018). Hammond, Andrew. ‘Gulf Rift: uneasy Dynasties in a changing World.’ European Council on Foreign Relations, 7 March 2014. www.ecfr.eu/blog/entry/gulf_rift_uneasy_dynastie s_in_a_changing_world (accessed 10 April 2018). Kirkpatrick, David D. ‘Saudis put terrorist Label on Muslim Brotherhood.’ New York Times, 7 March 2014. www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/world/middleeast/saudis-put-ter rorist-label-on-muslim-brotherhood.html (accessed 10 April 2018). Bin Bayyah, Abdullah. ‘Majlis al-Hukumā’ al-Muslimīm – Bayyān al-Ta’ssīs (Council of ˙ Muslim Sages – Founding Statement).’ Binbayyah, 11 March 2014. http://binbayyah.net/ arabic/archives/1495 (accessed 26 October 2017).

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followed the same month by the Emirati decision to list the Jam‘iat al-Islah as a terrorist organization.73 As a result of growing international pressure, several high-ranking Brotherhood and FJP figures were forced to leave Qatar in September 2014.74 These included Secretary General Mahmud Hussein, Ayman ‘Abd alGhany, the former deputy head of the Student Section, as well as ‘Amr Darrag who, after his arrival in Turkey, set up the Egyptian Institute for Studies, located in one of the Vizion Park buildings in Istanbul’s Yeni Bosna district. Hungry for political activism after the implosion of his short-lived ministerial career, Darrag became busy in the activities of the Egyptian Revolutionary Council, which had been founded in August 2014 by a group of opposition figures led by Chatham House’s Maha Azzam. Branding itself as Egypt’s ‘parliament in exile’, the Egyptian Revolutionary Council was made up of about sixty members from across the political spectrum, including the liberal politician Mohammed Sharif Kamil and the Brotherhood members Gamal Heshmat and ‘Abd al-Mawgud al-Dardary.75 But before long, the council disintegrated after its members had started to accuse one another of pursuing ‘personal agendas’.76 Around that time, Darrag involved himself more deeply in the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. In the wake of the repression of early 2014, the number and intensity of anti-regime demonstrations had sharply dropped. As a consequence, Brotherhood youth cadres pressured the High Administrative Committee to develop an action plan to counter the regime’s crackdown by means of ‘more confrontational’ tactics. During the summer of 2014 the Committee formulated a plan made of three constitutive elements: the ‘exhaustion and confusion’ of the security forces; the regime’s ‘failure’ to contain the revolutionary pressure on the street; and the sustention of those with the greatest ‘resolve’ among the Brotherhood’s rank and file. In September 2014, the heads of the twentysix administrative offices and seven sectors, as well as six out of eight members, approved this plan.77 As the successful execution of this strategy required the operational, and particularly the financial, support of the Guidance Office, the second-rank leadership in Egypt began to openly collide with Mahmud Hussein and 73

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‘List of Groups designated terrorist Organisations by the UAE.’ The National, 16 November 2014. www.thenational.ae/uae/government/list-of-groups-designated-terror ist-organisations-by-the-uae-1.270037 (accessed 10 April 2018). Darrag, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2018. Yezdani, İpek. ‘Egyptian Opposition establishes “Revolutionary Council” in Istanbul.’ Hürriyet Daily News, 9 August 2014. www.hurriyetdailynews.com/egyptian-oppositionestablishes-revolutionary-council-in-istanbul-70196 (accessed 27 March 2018). Fathi, Yasser. Interview with author. Istanbul, 26 March 2018. Sharaf. ‘The Crisis of the Muslim Brotherhood Leadership.’

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Ibrahim Munir. The vanguard leaders believed that Kamal’s ‘revolutionary’ efforts were futile, if not outright dangerous. Since they controlled the Brotherhood’s finances, they had an advantageous position in terms of organizational distribution of power. Especially irksome to the second-rank leaders was Ibrahim Munir who, having lived abroad for most of his life, did not command much respect on the ground.78 But as the Secretary General of the International Organization, Munir administered the revenues stemming from the membership contributions paid by national Brotherhood chapters in the Gulf, as well as other franchises in the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the United States.79 Thanks to his connections to members of the British parliament, Munir also controlled the file of the Brotherhood’s international relations. With their room for manoeuvrability restricted, in the autumn of 2014 the leaders of the second rank initiated efforts to create a new office in Istanbul that was to act as a separate and independent entity from the International Organization, and which was to represent the High Administrative Committee abroad. Recognizing the need for the Brotherhood’s international activities to become more institutionalized, the vanguard leaders initially endorsed this project, at least on a symbolic level.80 Until now, the Society’s affairs in Istanbul had been managed through the ‘Liaison Office of the Brotherhood Abroad’ – an informal ad hoc body headed by Mahmud Hussein. Having emerged organically in response to the needs of a growing number of exiled members, the Liaison Office did not have a clearly assigned mandate and was not part of the Brotherhood’s formal structure.81 For this reason, the suggestion by Kamal, Batikh and Darrag to establish a new coordinating body was at first welcomed by Hussein and Munir. In November and December 2014, Brotherhood members living in those countries with ‘the largest number of Egyptians who left Egypt after the coup’ – Turkey, Qatar, Malaysia and Sudan – were instructed to elect the members of this newly envisioned body.82 The ‘Crisis Management Committee’ (Lajna Idariyya al-Azma) was formally announced on 19 January 2015. Its composition represented a compromise between the revolutionary-minded second-rank leadership around Mohammed Kamal, and the vanguard leaders around Mahmud Hussein in Istanbul, Ibrahim Munir in London and Mahmud ‘Izzat in Cairo. The committee included Hussein al-Qazzaz, Gamal Heshmat and 78

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Al-Talawi. ‘The International Organization and the hidden Doors of the Brotherhood’s Crisis in Egypt.’ See article 32 of ‘al-Lāʼiha al-‘ālamiyya li-Jamā‘a al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn [1994 M] (The International By-laws of˙ the Muslim Brotherhood [AD 1994])’ in Statutes and By-laws, pp. 273–87. Sudan, Mohammed. Interview with author. London, 27 January 2018. Fathi, Yasser. WhatsApp chats to the author. Geneva-Istanbul, 18 June 2018. Batikh, ‘Ali. Interview with author. Istanbul, 23 March 2018.

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Yehia Hamid, who were all based in Istanbul; Ayman ‘Abd al-Ghany, Taher ‘Abd al-Mohsin and Mohammed al-Beshlawi, who operated out of Qatar; Hafiz al-Sawi in Malaysia; and Osama Sulayman in Sudan. In addition to these eight elected members, three other individuals were directly appointed by the High Administrative Committee: ‘Amr Darrag, who took charge of the ‘political file’; Ahmed al-Watidy, a heart surgeon who was responsible for the committee’s coordination with the London-based International Organization; and the Istanbul-based Ahmed ‘Abd al-Rahman, a fifty-five-year-old medical doctor from Fayum who had been a member of the Brotherhood since his early twenties and now became the formal head of the Crisis Management Committee.83 Shortly after the new body had been established, the brewing internal discord between the second-rank leadership and the vanguard elite was inflamed once again. One point of contention was of a semantic nature. ‘Amr Darrag and Ahmed ‘Abd al-Rahman preferred the new body to be called ‘office’ – a terminology they believed carried a greater symbolic significance than ‘committee’, which implied a subordinate position under the Guidance Office.84 Behind the debate over nomenclature stood the aspirations of the second-rank leaders to substitute Hussein’s ‘one-man show’ with proper institutional mechanisms and expand the body’s radius of activities beyond the confines of ‘human rights, media and legal work’. The ambitious Darrag in particular was eager for the Crisis Management Committee to articulate ‘a new methodology’, arguing for its positions to be assigned according to meritocratic principles. His idea was that ‘specialized people do what they did best’, and that Hussein should not be ‘the political, international relations and legal guy, so that [the committee’s tasks] could be subdivided’.85 This aspiration echoed the organizational vision of the Tilmisanian school of thought, as reflected in the debate over the responsibilities of ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi.86 Having acted as the Secretary General of the High Administrative Committee since February 2014, Sisi’s tasks increasingly cannibalized those of Mahmud Hussein as the organization’s formal Secretary General.87 Darrag now started to publicly contest the latter’s authority on the grounds of article 33 of the General By-laws of 1990, which stipulated that if the Secretary General continued to be away from Egypt for longer than six months,

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Fathi, Yasser. Interview with author. Istanbul, 26 March 2018. Farhat, Nidal and Jaber al-Masri. ‘Al-Ikhwān yustaqbil 2015 bi-l-Intikhāb Maktab Idāra Azma khārij Masr (The Brotherhood starts 2015 by electing a Crisis Management Office ˙ Al-Mesryoon, 1 January 2015. https://goo.gl/BgWGoYcontent (link outside of Egypt).’ shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 1 March 2018). Darrag, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2018. Not to be confused with the current President of Egypt with the same name. Fathi, Yasser. Interview with author. Istanbul, 26 March 2018.

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‘members of the governing body appoint from among its members a candidate to temporarily replace him’.88 Whereas the emerging leaders wanted the Crisis Management Committee to take a greater share of responsibility, the vanguard elite wanted its activities to be limited to the management of public relations with political parties outside of Egypt. Neither Munir nor Hussein intended to share their administrative powers with a new assembly of younger and, in their view, inexperienced renegades. Thus, when ‘Abd al-Rahman and Darrag requested that Hussein should hand over the various files to them so that they would be able to start their work, the latter refused.89 The two contestants were frustrated by this paternalistic and ‘arrogant’ attitude. Hussein’s unwillingness to assist the new representatives of the Crisis Management Committee corroborated Darrag’s presumption that the ailing Secretary General was a stubborn autocrat who preferred to ‘run things individually’. If he needed anyone’s advice he would listen, but then would go on to do whatever he wanted anyway. His attitude was not very nice for people who came to Doha or Istanbul, and who felt that they wanted to do something for the country. His standard answer was that there was nothing to do, [that] it was just a matter of a few months and [the military coup] was going to be over . . . . He kept telling people: why did you come out of Egypt? His role was [supposed] to make life easy for people who were coming, but then they had to see for themselves to find work.90

Hussein’s attitude made it evident to the upward-pressing second-rank leaders that the vanguard elite was unable to articulate a vision for how the Brotherhood should adapt itself to the post-coup situation in Egypt. They were equally incapable of offering a perspective of hope to the families of the tens of thousands of Brothers and Sisters who lingered in Egypt’s prison cells. Rather than enacting deep organizational reforms, it seemed more opportune to them to build the moral and spiritual foundations among the rank and file and thus preserve the Society in its ‘pure and original’ form. This strategy not only seemed to testify to their lack of imagination, but was outright foolish. For it was precisely now, the second-rank leaders around Kamal believed, that fundamental organizational changes needed to be implemented. The Brotherhood’s objectives and priorities needed to be rethought, its strategy redesigned and its organization rebuilt – otherwise the Society risked descending into irrelevance. The increasingly personal nature of these debates made

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‘The General By-laws of the Society of the Muslim Brothers of the Year AD 1990 and the Amendments of the Year AD 2009’ in Statutes and By-laws, pp. 288–301. Sharaf. ‘The Crisis of the Muslim Brotherhood Leadership.’ Darrag, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2018.

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evident that the Society of the Muslim Brothers, by early 2015, was marred by deep-seated internal disagreements.

The Crisis Deepens These questions acquired an even greater urgency in the context of an aggravating security situation in the Sinai – a geographically diverse region consisting of rugged mountains, deep valleys and vast deserts, which had been historically neglected by the central government and which after 2013 had become an epicentre of militant and extremist activities. Starting in January 2015, Wilayat Sina’ – a jihadi Salafi terrorist group previously known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which had pledged allegiance to ISIL in November 2014 – unleashed a wave of bloody attacks against police and military installations in the northern Sinai enclave of al-‘Arish. The growing radicalization of the Islamist scene was reflected among the Brotherhood’s lower ranks, whose members demanded a restructuration of the organization with the purpose of staging ‘qualitative operations’.91 Some youth members who were sympathetic to Mohammed Kamal managed to appropriate the domain Ikhwanonline.com, which implied that calls for ‘revolutionary work’ could now be openly advertised on the Brotherhood’s official Arabic online channel. On 24 January, a new Facebook account with the name ‘Mohammed Muntassir’ went live, where an alleged ‘new spokesman’ of the Muslim Brotherhood ominously announced: ‘We are at the beginning of a new phase where we summon our strength and evoke the meaning of jihad. [We] prepare ourselves, our wives, our sons and daughters, and whoever follows our path for relentless jihad, as we ask for martyrdom’.92 Calls of that kind proliferated after 28 February, when the Cairo Court for Urgent Matters opened a trial against Mohammed Morsi and ten other defendants, charging them with murder and terrorism, and accusing them of having leaked classified information to Qatar. Confronted with what was from a public relations viewpoint a highly damaging approach, the vanguard leadership initiated procedures to invoke a Shura Council meeting in order to assess the performance of the Brotherhood’s local administration in Egypt, and elect a new High 91

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Senior Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. London, January 2018. M.B.Spokesman1 Facebook account. www.facebook.com/M.B.SPOKESMAN1/ (accessed 18 February 2018). The official Facebook account associated with Ikhwanonline.com is www.facebook.com/ikhwanonline. It has over 1 million likes and a similar number of followers. The associated Twitter account is @ikhwanonlinecom, which features 77,900 tweets and has a little under 124,000 followers. The quote is also mentioned by Ayyash, Abderrahman. ‘The Brotherhood’s post-pacifist Approach.’ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 29 December 2015. http://carnegieendow ment.org/sada/60665 (accessed 31 March 2018).

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Administrative Committee. In a memorandum drafted in early April 2015, Hussein proposed to amend the regulations to the effect that current members of the High Administrative Committee would be prohibited from holding management positions in any newly constituted executive body.93 In order for the Shura Council to pass such amendments, those who sympathized with Kamal’s ‘revolutionary option’ were to be stripped of their membership and replaced with pro-Guidance Office loyalists.94 Kamal pre-empted this hostile takeover by invoking article 39 of the regulations, according to which eight Shura Council members were entitled to propose amendments to the Statutes.95 He suggested electing not only the members of the General Shura Council, but also those of the Shura Councils that were attached to the administrative offices in the governorates, the regions and the branches. His willingness to hold comprehensive elections across all hierarchical levels reflected his preference to transform a centrally and top-down run organization into a more federalist structure, thereby giving his leadership some form of ‘democratic legitimacy’. The fact that Kamal was eager to go ahead with this plan may also be interpreted as a testimony to his certainty that his allies would carry away a victory in case such elections were held. According to his own account, his proposal was approved by more than half of the members of the sitting Shura Council.96 On 22 April, the simmering legalistic conflict over electoral rules and regulations broke into an open confrontation when Ahmed ‘Abd al-Rahman appeared on Al Jazeera’s Bila Hudud programme. Mahmud Hussein and Ibrahim Munir watched in disbelief as the doctor from Fayum (he was not even a member of the Guidance Office!) announced that the Brotherhood had ‘expanded’ its portfolio. Elections had been held ‘with participation and knowledge of all members of the Guidance Office and the Shura Council, and in compliance with the regulations governing the Society’s work and decision-making institution’. Key administrative positions had been reassigned to a generation of younger leaders in order to ‘keep pace with the revolutionary spirit’.97 Henceforward, the ‘Crisis Management Office for Egyptians Abroad’ (he now referred to the Crisis Management Committee as 93 94 95

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Fathi, Yasser. Interview with author. Istanbul, 26 March 2018. ‘A Document of the Brotherhood.’ Masr al-‘Arabiyya, 14 June 2015. ‘Al-Lāʼiha al-‘ālamiyya li-Jamā‘a al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn [1994 M] (The International By˙ Muslim Brotherhood [AD 1994])’ in Statutes and By-laws, pp. 283–4. laws of the Sharaf. ‘The Crisis of the Muslim Brotherhood Leadership.’ ‘Mādhā yuhaddith dākhil al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn: Muqarribūn wa A‘dā’ yajībūn (What ˙ ˙ answer).’ Mada happens within the Muslim Brotherhood: close Associates and Members Masr, 8 June 2015. https://goo.gl/838a3L (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 27 March 2018). The statement can be found on ‘Mutahadith al-Ikhwān: intakhabnā Amīnān ‘āmmān wa Maktabān Idariyyān fī Fibrāīr 2014˙ (The Spokesman of the Brotherhood: we have elected a Secretary General and an Administrative Office in

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an office) would gather ‘the efforts of all leaders and individuals outside the country in one office’, which would be alone responsible for ‘communicating with the countries and parliaments of the world’. Furthermore, a ‘series of changes and revisions to the thought and strategies of the framework and the structures’ had been enacted, which affected ‘over 65 per cent of the rank and file’. Lastly, the Brotherhood had abandoned its peaceful strategy and had entered into a period of ‘open confrontation’ with the regime. No political solution would be considered unless the demands of the ‘rebels on the ground’ had been met: We have acknowledged the mistake of the reform track after the revolution. We are not a group of angels, but we are human beings who make mistakes . . . . But we have the courage to admit mistakes and apologize . . . . We want to restore legitimacy and [instigate] a radical change in Egypt. We want a comprehensive revolution, uprooting the corruption that has been entrenched for decades.98

As was to be expected, Hussein, Munir and ‘Izzat objected to ‘Abd alRahman’s manoeuvres in the strongest terms. First, the so-called elections that had apparently been organized by the High Administrative Committee had been conducted without their knowledge or consent.99 Second, ‘Abd al-Rahman pretentiously and falsely claimed that he represented ‘the Guidance Office outside Egypt’, while the High Administrative Committee behaved as if it was the actual Guidance Office. In the wake of this flagrant breach of the regulations, a missive was hurriedly penned and sent to Shura Council members across the country in order to clarify that the High Administrative Committee was in a subordinate position to the Guidance Office. The fact that ‘certain committee members’ had surreptitiously excluded them amounted to a blatant rebellion. The missive indignantly concluded that all of the above had happened while the vanguard leaders had endeavoured in good faith to organize legitimate elections, which however had been postponed multiple times by the partisans around Kamal due to alleged ‘security considerations’.100 In the midst of this public relations disaster, the Brotherhood was struck by a series of further calamities. After a criminal court in Cairo had sentenced Mohammed Morsi to death on 15 May, the boiling anger that was harboured by rank-and-file members in Egypt erupted. Mahmud Ghozlan tried to quell February 2014).’ Masr al-‘Arabiyya, 28 May 2015. https://goo.gl/77wJyV (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 1 March 2018). 98 ‘Qiyādī bi-l-Ikhwān: Taghaiyyarāt jadhariyya tan‘akis ‘alā al-‘Ard qarībān (Brotherhood Leader: radical Changes are closely reflected on the Ground).’ Al˙ Jazeera, 22 April 2015. www.aljazeera.net/home/Getpage/0353e88a-286d-4266-82c6-6094179ea26d/ab191568c4eb-4552-b034-24e2ff2cdac6 (accessed 1 March 2018). 99 Senior Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. London, January 2018. 100 ‘A Document of the Brotherhood.’ Masr al-‘Arabiyya, 14 June 2015.

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the burgeoning outrage by reminding his fellow Brothers that ‘our peace is stronger than bullets’. While the circumstances were admittedly difficult and the regime was indeed tyrannical, ‘peacefulness’ had been ‘the reason for our survival and strength for nearly ninety years’. Violence, on the other hand, would surely lead to defeat and demise.101 On 24 May, only two days after having published his statement, Ghozlan was arrested.102 So was Taha Wahdan three days later, followed by ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Barr and ‘Abd al‘Azim al-Sharqawi in early June. With four Guidance Office members who had advocated for a ‘peaceful’ approach behind bars, those favouring the ‘revolutionary’ approach were on the rise.103 On 27 May, more than one hundred and fifty scholars from twenty countries issued a fatwa to provide legal backing to the revolutionaries in the High Administrative Committee. As they stated in the so-called Egypt Call (Nida’ al-Kinana), it was an ‘Islamic duty’ to resist the ‘murderous criminal regime’. The fatwa ominously continued that ‘all [Islamic] rulings related to the crime of murder are applicable’.104 Mohammed Kamal and Ahmed ‘Abd al-Rahman thanked the clerics for ‘coming out against the crimes of the army of the coup regime’, while ‘Mohammed Muntassir’ triumphantly tweeted: ‘This is our religion and these are our clerics!’105 The fatwa had made the point that it was a ‘religious duty to oppose the coup by all means until it is toppled and the legitimate regime is restored’. It further argued that the Brotherhood was committed to the directives of the Sharia ‘no matter how much sacrifice’ this required. The ‘entire Egyptian people opposes the murderous and discriminatory military coup and 101

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Ghozlan, Mahmud. ‘Bi-munāsiba Murūr sab‘a wa thamānīn ‘āmān ‘alā Ta’sīs al-Jamā‘a Da‘watnā bāqiyya wa Thawratnā mustamirra (On the Occasion of the eighty-seventh Anniversary of the Founding of the Society, our Da‘wa persists and our Revolution continues).’ Egyptwindow, 22 May 2015. https://old.egyptwindow.net/Article_Details .aspx?News_ID=80417 (accessed 27 March 2018). al-Sayyad, Osama. Interview with author. Istanbul, 16 August 2018. ‘Layla al-Qabd ‘alā Mohammed Taha Wahdān (The Night of the Arrest of Mohammed ˙ Youm ˙7, 28 May˙2015. https://goo.gl/jahngW (link shortened with URL Taha Wahdan).’ link shortener, accessed 23 May 2018). ‘150 ‘Ālimān min 20 Dawla yusadirūn ‘Nidā’ al-Kināna’ (150 Scholars from 20 Countries ˙ issue the “Egypt Call”).’ Al-Khalij al-Jadid, 27 May 2015. www.thenewkhalij.org/ar/ node/14781 (accessed 23 February 2018). The justification for the ‘Egypt Call’ was based on the Quranic sura al-Ma’ida (the Feast), verse 32: ‘We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land – it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one – it is as if he had saved mankind entirely. And our messengers had certainly come to them with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors’, as well as sura al-Dhariyat (the Scatterers), verse 51: ‘whoever is an ally to them among you – then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people’. Mohammed Muntassir Twitter account @montaseregy, 25 May 2015. https://twitter .com/montaseregy/status/603624269134823425 (accessed 18 February 2018).

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refuses to recognize the arch-murderer’ Sisi. ‘Egypt’s revolutionaries’, for their part, should not stop rebelling against the ‘oppression and the oppressors’ and ‘liberate Egypt from the murderous military [leaders]’.106 One of the signatories of the ‘Egypt Call’ was the forty-one-year-old ‘Issam Telima, who had joined the Brotherhood when he had studied at al-Azhar University’s Faculty of the Islamic Da‘wa. Having become a member of the Shura Council only recently, Telima was a scholarly introvert from Awsim in Giza, who over the years had accumulated an impressive library of books and articles written by various Islamist luminaries. During the mid 1990s, Telima had been introduced to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, whose legal conclusions he had challenged by pointing to a number of logical ‘mistakes’ the latter had made in one of his treatises. This must have made an impression on Qaradawi, for soon thereafter the respected cleric offered Telima a job as his personal secretary. It was thus that the young Telima set out to Doha in June 1998, where he remained until being expelled by the Qatari government in September 2014.107 In contrast to the revolutionary-minded followers of Mohammed Kamal, the vanguard leaders considered the ‘Egypt Call’ as completely illegitimate. They pointed to the fact that all the scholars who had signed the statement were affiliated either with Qaradawi’s International Union of Muslim Scholars, or with one of the institutions under the umbrella of the Brotherhood’s ‘Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe’ (Ittihad al-Munazamat alIslamiyya fi Auruba), such as the Dublin-based ‘European Council for Fatwas and Research’ (al-Majlis al-Aurubi li-l-Ifta’ wa-l-Buhuth). The rest of the signatories were unknown clerics from Yemen, Sudan and Mauretania, plus a handful of academics from obscure universities in Asia and the Middle East.108 The vanguard leaders also stressed that the statement was outright reckless, for it played into the hands of those who wanted to brandish the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, while increasing the potential for a broader segment of the rank and file to become radicalized. To be clear, none of the Guidance Office members disputed the Brotherhood’s fundamental ‘right . . . to protect our women and girls and brothers’. But the kind of carte blanche suggested by this fatwa, where Brotherhood members were left ‘with 106

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These statements had apparently been posted on Ikhwanonline.com on 28 May and 8 June 2015, as reported in ‘Pro-Muslim Brotherhood Clerics call to overthrow al-Sisi Regime in Egypt, restore Mursi to Presidency.’ The Middle East Media Research Institute, 17 June 2015. www.memri.org/reports/pro-muslim-brotherhood-clerics-call-over throw-al-sisi-regime-egypt-restore-mursi-presidency (accessed 23 February 2018). The statement has since been removed. Telima, ‘Issam. Interview with author. Istanbul, 29 March 2018. A full list of signatories can be found under ‘Bayān “Nida’ al-Kināna”.’ ‘Shabaka Sadq alIkhbariyya (SNN News)’ Facebook account, 27 May 2015. www.facebook.com/ SedkNews/posts/1107808092569054 (accessed 23 February 2018).

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no control and responsibilities’, only seemed to increase the risk for them to embrace radical jihadi and, quite possibly, takfiri methods.109 The combined factors of a more constricted external security environment and a deepening internal animosity among different leadership contestants made it imperative for the Brotherhood to unify its ranks. In the summer of 2015, a series of meetings were called in Cairo and Istanbul, whose purpose was to overcome the present conflict. Although it is difficult to reconstruct what exactly had transpired during these months, it seems that the decisions taken by individuals on both sides of the aisle had the exact opposite effect, as they accelerated the process of further splitting the Brotherhood into two opposing apparatuses. Witnesses to these events were ‘Ali Batikh and Magdi Shalash, a fifty-year-old doctor from Qalyubiyya and a close confidant of Mohammed Kamal.110 Besides the narratives provided by these two men, as well as a number of journalistic accounts,111 the main available sources are two letters having been sent to the members of the Shura Council on 7 September 2015: one written by Mohammed Kamal, and the other one by Mohammed ‘Abd alRahman al-Morsi, the cardiologist from Mansura who had been in hiding since early 2014, but who now re-emerged to assume an important role on behalf of the vanguard leadership.112 Based on these sources, it seems that in June 2015 Shura Council members in Egypt and abroad were convoked to elect a ten-member ‘interim management committee’, which would be given ‘full authority’ in managing the Brotherhood’s affairs during the next six months. This committee was to be composed of seven individuals – one for each of the Brotherhood’s geographical sectors – as well as of the three Guidance Office members Mahmud ‘Izzat, 109

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Senior Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. London, January 2018. Shalash, Magdi. Interview with author. Istanbul, 20 March 2017; Batikh, ‘Ali. Interview with author. Istanbul, 23 March 2018. ‘Inqilāb al-Ikhwān . . . Sirā‘ al-Nufūdh yaghlib ‘al-Masar al-Thawrī’ (The Brotherhood ˙ Coup: the Struggle for Influence overrides the “Revolutionary Track”).’ Masr al-‘Arabiyya, 9 August 2015. http://goo.gl/tkagWN (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 18 June 2018); ‘I‘tiqāl ‘Adū Maktab al-Irshād Muhammad ‘Abd al-Rahman (Arrest of ˙ Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman).’ ˙ ˙ February 2017. Guidance Office Member ‘Araby 21, 23 https://goo.gl/Ge89NJ (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 18 June 2018); alTalawi. ‘The International Organization and the hidden Doors of the Brotherhood’s Crisis in Egypt.’ ‘Kamāl: Ghozlān a‘tamid Bayān al-Hay’a al-Shar‘iyya wa Adā’ al-Irshād ijtama‘ bi˙ I’ḍā’ihā (Kamal: Ghozlan supported the Statement of the Legitimacy Association and the Members of the Guidance [Office] met with its Members).’ Masr al-‘Arabiyya, 7 September 2015. https://goo.gl/n88qzF (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 18 June 2018); ‘‘Abd al-Rahmān: Lajna Kamāl ‘azalat Nā’ib al-Murshid bi˙ Da‘wā al-Ta’mīn (‘Abd al-Rahman: Kamal’s Committee dismissed the deputy Guide on the Pretext of Security [Reasons]).’ Masr al-‘Arabiyya, 7 September 2015. https://goo.gl/ smNrpk (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 18 June 2018).

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Mohammed Kamal and Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman.113 But the question of the committee’s composition provoked a series of immediate controversies: some reacted negatively to Mahmud ‘Izzat’s nomination, while others rejected Kamal’s presence, apparently due to the fact that he posed a security risk to the remaining members.114 It was agreed that Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman, as the second-longest serving Guidance Office member, should lead the committee’s work. Opinions were further divided over the question of who was to represent the geographical sectors. This was a point of crucial relevance, as certain sectors had adopted independent political strategies after the Brotherhood’s central decision-making structure had been disrupted following the 2013 coup. If organizational unity was to be maintained, it was crucial that the new sector representatives should answer to a single, unified leadership. The historically more combative members of the Southern Sa‘id and Northern Sa‘id sectors, as well as those of the Western Delta Sector (sometimes referred to as the ‘Alexandria sector’) gravitated towards Kamal’s revolutionary methods, while the Eastern Delta Sector opted for the vanguardist strategy of ‘peacefulness’. The Middle Delta Sector had remained undecided, while the Greater Cairo Sector, which comprised the two key governorates of Cairo and Giza, was internally divided. Regarding the Sinai & Canal Sector, the Brotherhood had shut down most of its activities as a consequence of the militant insurgency and subsequent military intervention. According to Kamal’s account, the Greater Cairo, Western Delta, Middle Delta, Northern Sa‘id and Southern Sa‘id sectors had elected their representatives by late June 2015. Kamal was informed that ‘the remaining two sectors’ would finalize their elections by Eid al-Fitr on 18 July. However, as Kamal writes in his letter, the deadline was postponed. The ‘Sharqiyya Sector’ promised that the procedures would be completed shortly after Eid, while the elections in the ‘Daqahliyya Sector’ were yet to begin. The fact that Kamal referred to ‘Sharqiyya’ and ‘Daqahliyya’ as sectors rather than governorates indicates that an internal reorganization had occurred whereby the Eastern Delta Sector was split into two: the newly created Sharqiyya Sector comprised the members of the Suez, Ismailiyya and North Sinai governorates, who had previously been managed via three administrative offices as part of the Sinai & Canal Sector, as well as the two administrative offices managing the members of the Sharqiyya governorate. The newly created Daqahliyya sector, on the other hand, was now in charge of the members in the Daqahliyya, Damietta and Port Said governorates.

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Shalash, Magdi. Interview with author. Istanbul, 20 March 2017. ‘Arrest of Guidance Office Member Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman.’ ‘Araby 21, 23 February 2017.

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The process of electing sector heads was thrown into confusion when, on 1 July, ten high-ranking Brotherhood officials were killed during a police raid on an apartment in 6th of October City. Among the victims were ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, the Secretary General of the High Administrative Committee; the former parliamentarian Nasser al-Hatti; and Hisham Khafaji, the head of the Middle Delta Sector.115 According to the Brotherhood’s account, their apartment had been raided as they met to discuss the distribution of funds to the families of detainees and martyrs. They were taken to a police station, where they were interrogated before being transported back to the same apartment to be summarily executed.116 The event indicated the extent to which the security situation had become unsustainable for the Brotherhood, imposing restrictions that increasingly hampered the Brothers’ freedom of movement. The 6th of October City assassination caused the departure of ‘Ali Batikh who, upon realizing that his murder was imminent, boarded a plane to Turkey. Batikh’s arrival in Istanbul occurred at a time of growing crisis between the leaders of the Crisis Management Committee and the historical Guidance Office.117 The more Darrag and Ahmed ‘Abd al-Rahman insisted on their right to assume responsibility for the Brotherhood’s Istanbul operations, the more Hussein and Munir ‘started to [create] problems, such as cutting off financial support and withholding human resources’.118 As the second-rank leaders lamented the vanguard elite’s ‘poor commitment to electoral rules and procedures’, the budgets having been earmarked for the Crisis Management Committee were reduced. With even greater vigour, they insisted that a ‘new method of thinking’ should be introduced, whereby people whose ‘wrong decisions’ had led to the current situation should no longer be allowed to ‘occupy their chairs until they were seventy or eighty years old’. If the Society was to remain under the current leadership, ‘we will go from one disaster to another’, Batikh believed.119 During an emergency meeting on 8 August, Hussein attempted to find a compromise by first assigning Ibrahim Munir to the newly created post of ‘Acting Chargé d’Affaires’ (equivalent to the role of a deputy General Guide), and then appointing Ahmed ‘Abd al-Rahman to the post of deputy Guide as well.120 Such cosmetic manoeuvres not only 115

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al-Talawi. ‘The International Organization and the hidden Doors of the Brotherhood’s Crisis in Egypt.’ Batikh, ‘Ali. Interview with author. Istanbul, 23 March 2018; Sudan, Mohammed. Interview with author. London, 27 January 2018. Batikh, ‘Ali. Interview with author. Istanbul, 23 March 2018. Darrag, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2018. Batikh, ‘Ali. Interview with author. Istanbul, 23 March 2018. ‘Al-Ikhwān tahull Azma Qiyādatihā bi-Ikhtiār Munīr wa ‘Abd al-Rahman Nā’ibayn li-l˙ Munir and ‘Abd Murshid (The˙Brotherhood resolves its Leadership Crisis by choosing al-Rahman as deputy Guides).’ Masr al-‘Arabiyya, 8 August 2015. https://goo.gl/b12FCA (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 1 March 2018).

Figure 7 The Brotherhood’s regional organization in 2015, showing governorates per sector, and with number of Administrative Offices.

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contradicted the Statutes (neither Munir nor ‘Abd al-Rahman were members of the Guidance Office), but also were unable to mask the profound personal animosities separating the representatives of the two rivalling factions. While the conflict in Istanbul was mainly centred on personalities, the debates in Egypt were more about institutional matters, and as such had a more lasting effect on the Brotherhood’s organizational outfit. On 8 August, the same day as the emergency meeting took place in Istanbul, the leaders of the two rivalling wings met in Cairo. Called for by the head of the Greater Cairo Sector, the gathering had been advertised as a ‘meeting of deliberation’. According to Kamal’s account, it was attended by the heads of five sectors: Greater Cairo, Western Delta, Middle Delta, Northern Sa‘id and Southern Sa‘id – essentially all those whose representatives had already been elected by late June. The representatives of the Daqahliyya and Sharqiyya sectors, who had been elected by now, remained absent ‘due to illness’. Accordingly, no decision was taken during that meeting and it was agreed that all seven sector representatives should meet again at a yet-to-be-announced date.121 A week later, on 14 August, Kamal was notified by a courier that the expected meeting was to take place the following day. As he reviewed the list of invitees, he was flabbergasted to find that the names of the representatives of the Greater Cairo, the Middle Delta and the Northern Sa‘id sectors were different from those who had been elected in June. Unable to understand ‘the nature of the meeting, who was invited anymore, and what the agenda was’, he declined his attendance. When he later read the minutes, he discovered that the representatives of the Southern Sa‘id, Daqahliyya, Sharqiyya and Alexandria (or Western Delta) sectors, as well as the heads of the Unity of Ranks and the Planning Committees (the latter was headed by Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman) had participated in this meeting. He further noticed that the procedures for selecting sector representatives had been modified. During a third meeting on 22 August, to which Kamal was not even invited, new representatives for the Greater Cairo, Middle Delta and Northern Sa‘id sectors were elected according to the recently revised procedures.122 It dawned on Kamal what he had feared all along: that the vanguard elite had no intention to share power and that they did not hesitate to bend the rules in order to have it their way.123 This was not how the vanguard leaders interpreted the situation. In his letter of 7 September, Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman claimed to lift the ‘fog of disagreements, quarrels and allegations’ that had plagued the Brotherhood since the coup. The conflict, he ascertained, was not of an ideological or personal nature, but concerned the group’s ‘management methodology’. He rejected the 121

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‘Kamal: Ghozlan supported the Statement of the Legitimacy Association.’ Masr al‘Arabiyya, 7 September 2015. Ibid. ‘The Brotherhood Coup.’ Masr al-‘Arabiyya, 9 August 2015.

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argument that the High Administrative Committee had the authority to hold elections. Its members had been only approved by the Shura Council, rather than having been elected, and thus had no authority to enact changes to the Statutes. Even if there had been elections, as Kamal claimed, the sixty-eight Shura Council members who had gathered in February 2014 had not reached the required quorum of 71 votes. Any appointment made by the High Administrative Committee, such as that of ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi as Secretary General, had been null and void. Furthermore, no written record of the February 2014 meeting had been produced, making it impossible to follow the decisions taken by the High Administrative Committee.124 In light of these procedural violations, the Guidance Office appointed an investigative commission whose findings amounted to a full-blown condemnation of Kamal and his associates. Not only had they failed to ‘perform the tasks they had been entrusted with’, but they had caused great damage to the Brotherhood’s reputation by ‘leaking some of its deliberations to the media, faking things that have not occurred’, and ‘issuing statements without any approval of their legal superiors’. Their most consequential error had been that they had deceived the youth. Instead of encouraging the rank and file to endure the current crisis patiently and peacefully, they had enticed them to take up arms against the regime. This had played into the hands of the military and its international backers, who tried to taint the Brotherhood’s reputation by associating them with the stigma of terrorism.125 The only solution was for Kamal to step down and for all activities that had previously been assigned to the High Administrative Committee to be halted. In light of these allegations, a new High Administrative Committee was announced in late August 2015. It was headed by Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Morsi and consisted of twelve members, including Mohammed Sa‘d al-Sayyed, ‘Abd al-Latif Ghallush and Magdi Shalash, who became the heads of the Daqahliyya, Sharqiyya and Middle Delta sectors respectively. Representatives for the Greater Cairo, Western Delta, Northern Sa‘id and Southern Sa‘id sectors were nominated as well, and so were four other individuals who headed the Unity of Ranks, Planning, Protest, and Students committees. Mohammed Kamal was relegated to an advisory position, allegedly due to a ‘health issue’.126 The ‘second High Administrative Committee’, as it became known, had a fundamental weakness. The problem was that the heads of the Southern Sa‘id, Northern Sa‘id and Western Delta sectors, and to a certain extent those 124

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‘‘Abd al-Rahman: Kamal’s Committee dismissed the deputy Guide.’ Masr al-‘Arabiyya, 7 September 2015. ‘Muhammad ‘Abd al-Rahman: al-Iltifāf hawla al-Qiyāda yamna‘tafakkuk “al-Ikhwān” ˙ ˙ ˙ (Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman: circumventing the Leadership prevents the Disintegration of the “Brotherhood”).’ ‘Araby 21, 16 December 2015. https://goo.gl/ PTjeeb (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 18 June 2018). Fathi, Yasser. WhatsApp chats to the author. Geneva-Istanbul, 18 June 2018.

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representing the Middle Delta and the Greater Cairo sectors, had been nominated from the top-down, rather than being elected from the bottom-up. From the perspective of the mid-ranking leaders who were in charge of the administrative offices, the regions and the branches, the new sector representatives lacked democratic legitimacy, which greatly inhibited the new High Administrative Committee’s operational effectiveness. This legitimacy gap was compounded by the fact that the social and religious attitudes of Brotherhood members in Middle and Upper Egypt had historically tended towards radicalism and sectarianism. It is worth remembering that Shukri Mustafa, the founder of the ‘Society of Muslims’, had been born in the Asyut governorate, while Karam Zuhdi, whose Jama‘a Islamiyya faction had later formed the core of the Islamic Jihad , had been born in Minya. As for the Western Delta Sector, the Alexandrian membership had historically resisted Cairo’s centralizing attempts. From the beginning, the sector heads of the new High Administrative Committee found it difficult to curtail these centrifugal forces. Seemingly oblivious to these realities, Mahmud Hussein on 12 December appeared on Al Jazeera Mubashir. His elaborately knotted pink tie and the handkerchief peeking out of the front pocket of his black silk suit could hardly hide the fact that the media-shy Secretary General felt visibly awkward throughout the interview. With the Brotherhood’s internal conflict having unfolded over the last months in the form of contradictory public statements and counterstatements, the apparent objective of this media stunt was to send a message to the rank and file in Egypt that the Guidance Office was still in charge. Responding to the questions of a bewildered interviewer, a shifty-eyed and mischievous Hussein assured his counterpart that Mohammed Kamal and the leadership of the High Administrative Committee had ‘exceeded [their] powers regarding the files of the Egyptian crisis’. Neither he nor anyone else in the Guidance Office would ever accept a deal with the military, as his detractors falsely claimed. ‘We accept only the will of the people. We accept only legitimacy. We do not accept that the military remains the dominant force on the Egyptian scene.’127 Hussein’s appearance was followed by a series of missives signed by the first deputy Guide Mahmud ‘Izzat, whereby the membership of Mohammed Kamal was suspended. ‘Mohammed Muntassir’ was similarly relieved of his position as spokesperson and replaced by the Hussein-loyalist Tal‘at Fahmy. The London-based liaison office sent an email to a number of journalists to confirm these measures. Since Ikhwanonline.com continued to be controlled by the second-rank leadership, a new ‘official website’ went live under the domain Ikhwan.site.128 127

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‘Mubāshir ma‘ al-Qiyādī al-bāriz fī Jamā‘a al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn al-Duktūr Muhammad Hussayn ([Al Jazeera] Mubashir with the Famous Leader of the Society of ˙ the ˙Muslim Brothers Doctor Mahmud Hussein).’ Al Jazeera Mubashir, 12 December 2015. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu1LRF6eAGo&t=18s (accessed 18 June 2018). ‘Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman: circumventing the Leadership prevents the Disintegration of the Brotherhood.’ ‘Araby 21, 16 December 2015.

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In a statement published the same day on Ikhwanonline.com, the secondrank leaders flatly rejected these decisions. The High Administrative Committee had met ‘with a quorum of seven members’ to confirm that a ‘new stage’ in the Brotherhood’s history was to be inaugurated. Shadowing the previous move of the vanguard leaders, a ‘fact-finding commission’ was appointed to investigate ‘procedural errors’ at home and abroad. The Brotherhood’s internal crisis was the result of the ‘ignorance of some’, who had ‘damaged the files of the Egyptian crisis’. As the present conditions of imprisonments and security constraints had made it impossible to uphold the Statutes, the entire organization would be prepared for comprehensive elections. Finally, the statement announced that Tal‘at Fahmy did not in any way represent the Brotherhood and that ‘Mohammed Muntassir’ continued in his role as the official spokesperson.129

Antagonisms over Yemen The Brotherhood’s deepening schism occurred in the context of an ongoing transformation of the geopolitical landscape in the Middle East. This process was hastened by the death of the Saudi King ‘Abdullah bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud in January 2015, which led to the succession of his half-brother Salman bin ‘Abd al‘Aziz. At first, the arrival of new king seemed to inaugurate an auspicious phase in the relationship between the Saudi Kingdom and the Brotherhood. Salman started his reign by extending a warm welcome to the Society, raising hopes in the Guidance Office that its relations with the Kingdom were to improve. This seemed to be corroborated when the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sa‘ud bin Faysal, declared that the Kingdom did not ‘have any problem with the Muslim Brotherhood’, and in fact only opposed a ‘small segment affiliated with the group’.130 In reality, however, the new political elite at the Kingdom’s Royal Court had an ambivalent attitude towards the Brotherhood. The Saudi leadership had not forgotten the Society’s opposition to the Kingdom’s involvement in the Gulf War of 1990, not to speak of its impact on the Sahwa Islamiyya, whose politically 129

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‘Bayān al-Lajna al-idāriyya al-‘Ulyā li-l-Ikhwān bi-Sha’n al-Azma al-dākhiliyya li-l-Jamā‘a (Statement of the High Administrative Committee regarding the internal Crisis of the Society).’ Mohammed Muntassir Facebook account @M.B.SPOKESMAN1, 18 December 2015. www.facebook.com/M.B.SPOKESMAN1/posts/1513943138899856 (accessed 2 April 2018). The Facebook post used to feature a link to http://ikhwanonline.com/ BrotherhoodStatements/103/Default.aspx, which is invalid today. It suggests that any proMuntassir statements had been deleted after the vanguard leadership had regained control over the domain. Trofimov, Yaroslav. ‘Saudis warm to Muslim Brotherhood, seeking Sunni Unity on Yemen.’ Wall Street Journal, 2 April 2015. www.wsj.com/articles/saudis-warm-to-mus lim-brotherhood-seeking-sunni-unity-on-yemen-1427967884 (accessed 10 April 2018). Also see ‘Saudi Arabia shift closer to Change in Policy toward Muslim Brotherhood.’ Middle East Eye, 13 February 2015. www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-arabia-shiftcloser-change-policy-toward-muslim-brotherhood-994741112 (accessed 10 April 2018).

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activist ideology had threatened social stability in the Kingdom. The Guidance Office’s anticipation of improved relations with Saudi Arabia was thrown into doubt when Salman replaced the Crown Prince with his nephew Mohammed bin Nayef Al Sa‘ud. This move made the King’s thirty-year-old son and chief of the Royal Court, the energetic Mohammed bin Salman, the Deputy Crown Prince. Now the third in line to the crown, the young prince’s position was bolstered after he was promoted to head the Ministry of Defence and the recently created Council for Economic and Development Affairs, whose task was to prepare the Saudi economy for the post-oil era. Mohammed bin Salman (ad nauseam referred to as ‘MBS’ by the acronymophile Western press) was a seemingly charming and talented, but apparently impatient young man. Having once delighted US Secretary of State John Kerry with an impromptu playing of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, Western opinion leaders would quickly embrace Mohammed bin Salman as a liberalizing ‘reformer’, hailing him as the silver lining who could substitute Saudi Arabia’s gerontocratic political elite with a more ‘liberal’ face.131 One of the most important geopolitical consequences of Mohammed bin Salman’s ascendency to the Saudi throne was that it led to a gradual rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Bilateral relations between the two neighbours had historically been characterized by long-standing conflicts. They opposed the Wahhabi tribes of the Najd region, who were followers of the Hanbali school, to the Bedouin merchants of the Trucial Coast, who adhered to the Maliki interpretation of Islam. When six emirates declared their independence in December 1971 (the seventh, Ras al-Khaimah, joined the federation a few months later), the originally tribal–religious–legal conflict assumed an increasingly political–dynastic character, with the Al Sa‘ud and the Al Nahyan clans feuding over a number of border disputes, mainly around the al-Shayba oil field and the Buraimi Oasis.132 As The UAE tried to escape the grip of Saudi regional hegemony in order to assert its unique identity, Emirati leaders regularly voiced frustration about the Kingdom’s ‘overbearing attitude’. Such contempt of the Saudi ruling elite became a defining characteristic of Emirati attitudes, as evidenced in Mohammed bin Zayed’s characterization of Saudi leaders as ‘cantankerous old men surrounded by advisors who believe the earth is flat’.133 As late as 2009, Mohammed bin Zayed had regarded Saudi 131

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Filkins, Dexter. ‘A Saudi Prince’s Quest to remake the Middle East.’ New Yorker, 9 April 2018. www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/09/a-saudi-princes-quest-to-remakethe-middle-east (accessed 10 April 2018). Eickelman, Dale F. ‘Tribes and Tribal Identity in the Arab Gulf States’ in John Peterson (ed.). The Emergence of the Gulf States: Studies in Modern History. New York; Oxford: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016, pp. 223–40. For an explanatory framework of this development, see Chokr, Mae Anna. Tribes, Memory and Politics in Mesopotamia. University of Westminster. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, submitted in winter 2020. Wahba, Marcelle M. ‘S/P Director Haass and Chief of Staff Muhammad Bin Zayid discuss Iraq, Iran and Saudi-U.S. Relations.’ Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy,

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Arabia, and not the Muslim Brotherhood, as the second-biggest threat to the UAE after the Islamic Republic of Iran.134 This changed when Mohamed bin Salman became the Deputy Crown Prince in 2015. The young man seems to have developed an admiration for the UAE, whose regional influence had grown considerably since the military coup in Egypt and the rise of General Khalifa al-Haftar in Libya. Not only had the counter-revolutionary push, which had been engineered out of Abu Dhabi’s Royal Court,135 sharply reversed the fortunes of the Libyan Brotherhood-affiliated Libya Dawn fighters, it also diminished Qatar’s regional hegemony while upgrading the UAE’s military influence. As a consequence, the UAE started to train the fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria, which were allied with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and played a major role in the fight against ISIL. By tacitly supporting the Asad regime, the UAE developed close relations with key figures within Asad’s inner circle – relations that were likely to translate into lucrative construction projects once the conflict in Syria would abate.136 By late 2014, the UAE had emerged as the Arab world’s second-largest importer of US-manufactured arms and the most trusted ally of the United States in the region, nicknamed ‘little Sparta’ by then-Commander of the US Central Command, General Jim Mattis.137 The assertiveness with which Mohammed bin Zayed had managed his country’s foreign policy seemed to have made an indelible impression on the young Mohammed bin Salman, who came to regard the Emirati Crown Prince as a mentor whose success he was eager to emulate. The latter’s acrimony of political Islamist activism had probably nudged the Saudi prince to conceptualize the Brotherhood as a radical and dangerous foe that needed to be eradicated by any means.138 It is for this reason that Mohammed bin Zayed had lobbied behind the scenes for him to become Saudi Arabia’s de facto decision-maker.139

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15 January 2003. https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/03ABUDHABI237_a.html (accessed 10 April 2018). Olson. ‘A long hot Summer for UAE–Saudi Relations.’ Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, 15 October 2009. https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09ABUDHABI981_a .html (accessed 5 July 2018). Senior advisor to Mohammed bin Zayed (anonymous). Interview with author. Abu Dhabi, October 2018. An example of these projects is Marota City. See Yahia, Maha. ‘The Politics of Dispossession.’ Carnegie Middle East Center, 9 May 2018. https://carnegie-mec.org/ diwan/76290 (accessed 3 July 2018). ‘In the UAE, the United States has a quiet, potent Ally nicknamed “Little Sparta”.’ Washington Post, 9 November 2014. https://goo.gl/GSeuFE (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 3 July 2018). The interaction was facilitated by Turki al-Dakhil, the General Manager of the Al Arabiya Television News Network, during a summit in Camp David hosted by President Obama in May 2015. See al-Sayyad, Osama. Interview with author. Istanbul, 7 October 2017. Kirkpatrick, David D. ‘The most powerful Arab Ruler isn’t M.B.S. it’s M.B.Z.’ New York Times, 2 June 2019. www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/world/middleeast/crown-princemohammed-bin-zayed.html (accessed 4 June 2019).

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While the members of the Brotherhood saw the relationship between the two Gulf potentates as evidence that the two countries’ foreign policies were inextricably linked, this was only partially the case.140 In reality, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE pursued their own national priorities, which were driven by the respective structural relations between state and society, as well as their unique political and socio-economic conditions. In 2015 the Saudi economy, pressured by rapidly falling production levels caused by growing US Shell oil production, recorded its lowest level of growth since 2009, threatening to push the Kingdom into a prolonged financial and budgetary crisis. This situation was exacerbated by the adoption of the JCPOA agreement in July 2015, which negatively affected the Kingdom’s oil rents by means of multiplying Iranian production.141 Saudi Arabia’s principal foreign threat, both economic and ideological, therefore continued to emanate from Iran rather than from the Muslim Brotherhood. The opposite was true in the case of the United Arab Emirates. Dubai, after all, was home to more than half-a-million Iranian expatriates while the UAE as a whole had historically been one of Iran’s largest non-oil trading partners. Despite long-standing territorial disputes, such as over the Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs islands located in the Strait of Hormuz, trade between the UAE and Iran had reached an annual average of $18.7 billion between 2010 and 2014. The easing of the international sanctions regime only deepened the economic interdependency between the two countries. The difference in Saudi and Emirati strategic priorities, as well as the divergent nature of their foreign policies, became evident in the context of Yemen, and specifically the ‘Yemeni Congregation for Reform’ (al-Tajammu‘ al-Yemeni li-l-Islah). The Yemeni chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood had been established in 1990 in the context of the unification of the northern Yemen Arab Republic and the southern People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. The Brotherhood had exercised significant influence on the educational curriculum of the Yemen Arab Republic, as Egyptian and Sudanese teachers had been absorbed into the state-building process, from where they spread the Brotherhood’s ideology through various networks of

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al-Sa‘id, Mohammed. ‘Muhibba al-Darā’ir: Judhūr al-A‘dā’ bayna al-Sa‘ūdiyya wa-l˙ ˙ [in a plural marriage]: the Roots of Hostility Imārāt (The Love of the second Wife between Saudi Arabia and the Emirates).’ Maydan, 5 July 2017. https://goo.gl/hfc9hE (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 18 June 2018). ‘Saudi Economic Perspectives 2014–2015: Growth Moderation on the Horizon.’ National Commercial Bank, June 2014. www.alahli.com/en-us/about-us/ncb_reports/ Documents/NCB%20Saudi%20Economic%20Perspectives%202014-2015.pdf (accessed 10 April 2018); Mason, Robert. ‘Back to Realism for an enduring U.S.–Saudi Relationship.’ Middle East Policy 21, no. 4 (December 2014), pp. 32–44. https://doi .org/10.1111/mepo.12093 (accessed 14 May 2018).

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mosques and ‘Scientific Institutes’, the Ma‘ahid ‘Ilmiyya. In contradistinction to other countries, the Yemeni Congregation for Reform was a cross-societal alliance comprising a variety of constituencies and social groups, including preachers, teachers and judges of the classical Brotherhood vintage. But the alliance also included the northern Hasid tribal federation and representatives of Yemen’s vibrant business elite, who entertained multiple personal and financial ties to Saudi Arabia. The composite character of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform, with its multiple cross-cutting tribal, ideological and economic allegiances, enabled the Yemeni Brotherhood to adopt a flexible political programme that was capable of accommodating a range of ideological viewpoints.142 As a result of the business ties between Saudi and Yemeni merchant elites, Saudi Arabian anxieties were stirred less by the Brotherhood than by the Islamic Republic of Iran – specifically in light of Iranian attempts to supply the Houthi rebels in Yemen with arms and ammunition. The Houthis were a revivalist Shia movement whose members adhered to the Zayidi interpretation of Islam. They had emerged in 1992 as a response to Saudi-financed Salafi evangelism in the northern Yemeni Sa‘ada province, the Houthi’s historical heartland. During a series of military campaigns during the first decade of the twenty-first century, they had united the grievances of a wide spectrum of Yemenis. Many had been marginalized economically for decades and were irritated by the corrupt practices and human rights violations of the ‘Ali ‘Abdullah Saleh regime.143 By 2010, the Houthis had asserted control over large sections of three northern Yemeni governorates, and during the following year launched a series of incursions into Saudi territory. Gradually, the delicate socio-cultural diversity of the border tribes, which had been established with of the Treaty of Ta’if in 1943, and which had ensured political stability at the Kingdom’s southern flank, was destabilized.144 In an effort to get 142

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For a detailed analysis on the Yemeni Congregation for Reform, see Bonnefoy, Laurent and Marine Poirier. ‘The Yemeni Congregation for Reform (al-Islâh): the Difficult Process of Building a Project for Change’ in Catusse, Myriam and Karam Karam (eds.). Returning to Political Parties? Partisan Logic and Political Transformations in the Arab World. Beirut: Presses de l’Ifpo, 2013, pp. 61–99. http://books.openedition.org/ ifpo/1075 (accessed 18 June 2018). Also, see Phillips, Sarah. Yemen’s Democracy Experiment in Regional Perspective: Patronage and Pluralized Authoritarianism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008; and Salisbury, Peter. ‘Yemen and the Saudi–Iranian “Cold War”.’ Chatham House, February 2015. www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/ files/field/field_document/20150218YemenIranSaudi.pdf (accessed 5 July 2018). al-Sa‘id, Mohammed. ‘Fawq Rū’ūs al-Afā‘īn: kayf assasa “Sālih” li-l-Harb bi-l-Yaman ˙ ˙for the˙War in Yemen).’ (Above the Heads of the Vipers: how Saleh laid the Foundations Maydan, 1 October 2017. https://goo.gl/ZpftoA (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 18 June 2018). For an in-depth ethnographic study on the Saudi–Yemeni border, see Brandt, Marieke. Tribes and Politics in Yemen: a History of the Houthi Conflict. London: Hurst & Company, 2017, pp. 75 ff.

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the Saudis to intervene, President Saleh repeatedly asserted that Iran and Qatar financed the Houthis – a claim that was treated with scepticism by US diplomats.145 In the midst of this tense situation came the Arab uprisings of 2011. As the masses protested against the regime, an unlikely alliance took shape that brought together the Huthis, the Yemeni Congregation for Reform, and the army units of the powerful General and internal rival of President Saleh, ‘Ali Mohsen. Under growing pressure from the street, Saleh was forced to transfer power to a transitional government that would steer the country through a delicate political transition.146 From the very beginning, the process was marred by the obstructionism of the various parties involved, while the living conditions of Yemen’s impoverished citizenry steadily deteriorated. As Saleh’s political base became increasingly fragile, the president entered into an alliance with the Huthis to pursue an aggressive military campaign against his rival, ‘Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. The latter allied himself with the Brotherhood and, thanks to Saudi and US support, in February 2012 became Yemen’s new president. As the warring factions participating in the National Dialogue Conference were unable to find a consensus on the governing structure of a future Yemen, the Houthis in early 2014 broke away from the transitional process.147 By now in control of large parts of the northern Amran governorate, Houthi fighters entered Yemen’s capital in June 2014. The beleaguered Hadi escaped to Riyadh six month later. It was in this situation that Mohammed bin Salman cobbled together an international coalition and unleashed a ferocious aerial bombing campaign that plunged Yemen’s citizens into an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe. The Saudi-led ‘Operation Decisive Storm’ constituted a rare moment of unity between the Brotherhood’s two feuding wings in Istanbul. Similar to the 145

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Seche, Steven. ‘Iran in Yemen: Tehran’s Shadow looms large, but Footprint is small.’ Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, 12 September 2009. https://wikileaks.org/ plusd/cables/09SANAA1662_a.html (accessed 5 July 2018). Neither did the Saudi government, as evidenced in Bryan, Angie. ‘Yemeni tribal Leader: for Saleh, Saudi Involvement in Sa‘ada comes not a Moment too soon.’ Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, 28 December 2009. https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09SANAA2279_a .html (accessed 18 June 2018). Regarding Qatari support for the Houthis, see the letter by Badr al-Huthi to Hamad bin Khalifa of March 2010: ‘Mufāja’a: Wathīqa takshaf Mubāya‘a Za‘īm al-Hūthiyīn li-Amīr Qatar ‘Amīrān li-l-Mū’minīn (Surprise: a ˙ Huthi Leader’s Allegiance ˙ Document reveals the to the Emir of Qatar, the Commander of the Faithful).’ Youm 7, 30 June 2017. https://goo.gl/2L5GjW (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 18 June 2018). ‘Agreement on the Implementation Mechanism for the Transition Process in Yemen in Accordance with the Initiative of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).’ UN Peacemaker, 5 December 2011. https://peacemaker.un.org/yemen-transition-mechan ism2011 (accessed 18 June 2018). Lackner, Helen. Yemen in Crisis: Autocracy, Neo-Liberalism and the Disintegration of a State. London: Saqi Books, 2017, pp. 37–50.

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Guidance Office, ‘Amr Darrag supported ‘any action that would restore democracy in Yemen and ensure [the GCC’s] security’, while at the same time condemning Egypt’s participation in the Saudi-led war coalition.148 Contradistinctively and paradoxically, the second-rank leadership in Egypt rejected the intervention, even organizing a demonstration in Cairo on 27 March.149 The case of Yemen showed the conflicting priorities between the revolutionary-minded Brotherhood members in Egypt and their representatives abroad who, just like their rivals among the vanguard leaders, prioritized political alliances with foreign governments over their professed revolutionary principles. It exemplified the extent to which the outlook of the Brotherhood’s foreign representatives, both among the vanguard leaders in the historical Guidance Office as well as among the younger leaders in the Crisis Management Committee, differed from that of the rank and file in Egypt, who rejected any action taken by the military regime as a matter of principle. The war in Yemen had a number of wide-ranging regional and international ramifications. For one, it affected the bilateral relations between the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Although both countries were aligned in their broader objective to curb Iranian influence in the Arabian Peninsula, the style and strategic objectives of their foreign policies diverged and, in some cases, contradicted one another. Saudi Arabia’s its decision-makers did not seem to have a vision about how victory should be defined or progress should be measured. Besides amorphous objectives such as the ‘defeat’ of the Houthis, Saudi foreign policy in Yemen was guided by the broadest ideas, such as to achieve ‘Islamic solidarity’ in order to unify the Sunni Arab world against Shia encroachment.150 Such an alliance was to include the various regional chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood, and it is probably out of this logic that King Salman, during a July 2015 meeting in Mecca, asked Khalid Mash‘al to dispatch Hamas fighters to Yemen in support of the Saudi war effort.151 This approach was anathema to Mohammed bin Zayed, for whom Hamas and the Yemeni Congregation for Reform constituted but different tentacles of a 148 149

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Trofimov. ‘Saudis warm to Muslim Brotherhood.’ Fouad, Ahmed. ‘Muslim Brotherhood split on Saudi Strikes in Yemen.’ Al-Monitor, 13 April 2015. The article can be found on www.elbalad.news/1485058 (accessed 18 January 2016). This objective was made evident in December 2015, when a 34-member ‘Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT)’ was announced, which included Qatar, Turkey and Sudan. See ‘Saudi Arabia announces 34-State Islamic Military Alliance against Terrorism.’ Reuters, 15 December 2015. www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-security/ saudi-arabia-announces-34-state-islamic-military-alliance-against-terrorismidUSKBN0TX2PG20151215 (accessed 10 April 2018). ‘Tafāsīal muthīra fī Wakāla Fārs ‘an Ziyāra Khālid Mash‘al li-l-Sa‘ūdiyya (Interesting ˙ in Fars Agency about the Visit of Khalid Mash‘al in Saudi).’ ‘Araby 21, 19 July Details 2015. https://goo.gl/KXUHPh (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 10 April 2018).

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globally operating Muslim Brotherhood. Different from Saudi Arabia, Emirati objectives in Yemen were limited, pragmatic and directed towards long-term goals.152 Rather than lofty idealistic aims, the UAE focused on stabilizing those parts of southern Yemen that could realistically be pacified. The UAE insisted that any Saudi-backed Brotherhood officials should be dismissed from those southern Yemeni areas that had been ‘liberated’ by the Emirati Armed Forces. Working through special Elite Forces such as the so-called Security Belts, the UAE preferred to collaborate with radical Salafi groups and even went as far as colluding with al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).153 Another important consequence of the war in Yemen was that it extended the logic of Middle East politics to the Red Sea region. For many years, Iran had tried to deepen its presence in Eastern Africa, leveraging Port Sudan, the Eritrean port city of Assab, as well as different locations in Puntland in order to supply Yemen-based Shia rebel groups with weapons and ammunition, including with rocket launchers and anti-tank guided weapons.154 Yemen and the countries of the Horn of Africa occupied vital strategic locations, flanking the Bab al-Mandab Strait through which 4.8 million barrels of crude oil (or 5 per cent of global production) passed on a daily basis.155 Security in the Strait assured the freedom of movement for cargo ships navigating the waters between Europe and East Asia. The geostrategic value of the Red Sea was magnified in April 2016, when Mohammed bin Salman announced the ‘Saudi Vision 2030’ – a multi-billion dollar economic plan whose purpose was to reduce the Kingdom’s dependency on oil through the diversification of its economy.156 The crown jewel of Vision 2030 was the futuristic tech city Neom, 152

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These objectives were largely defined by foreigners who acted as informal military advisors to Mohammed bin Zayed, such as the former Australian army officer and commander of the Emirati Presidential Guard Marc Hindmarsh, or the US Defense Attaché in Abu Dhabi, Brigadier General Joseph W. Rank. Michael, Maggie, Trish Wilson and Lee Keath. ‘AP Investigation: US Allies, al-Qaida battle Rebels in Yemen.’ Associated Press, 7 August 2018. https://apnews.com/ f38788a561d74ca78c77cb43612d50da (accessed 10 August 2018). ‘Maritime Interdictions of Weapon Supplies from Somalia to Yemen.’ Conflict Armament Research, November 2016. www.conflictarm.com/dispatches/maritime-inter dictions-of-weapon-supplies-to-somalia-and-yemen/ (accessed 1 July 2018). These figures refer to the year 2016. See ‘World Oil Transit Chokepoints.’ U.S. Energy Information Administration, 25 July 2017. www.eia.gov/beta/international/regionstopics.php?RegionTopicID=WOTC (accessed 1 July 2018). ‘Saudi Vision 2030.’ http://vision2030.gov.sa/en (accessed 15 July 2018). For an overview of how China, the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea is linked through an economic belt through Central Asia and West Asia, and how China and Europe are connected through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, see National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China. ‘Vision and Actions on jointly building Belt and Road.’ Xinhua, 28 March 2015. www.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2015-03/28/ c_134105858_4.htm (accessed 15 July 2018).

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which was announced as a ‘new kind of tomorrow’ that was to be built on ‘one of humanity’s greatest resources: imagination’.157 The project’s blueprint made obvious why the Egyptian government transferred its sovereignty of the two Red Sea islands Tiran and Sanafir to Saudi Arabia in June 2017. The strategic value of the Red Sea basin was further expanded through China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI), The BRI was the brainchild of the Secretary General of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping, which he had announced in 2013. It proposed a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure development plan that was to connect the European, African and Asian continents through an integrated scheme of land corridors and maritime sea lanes.158 As the BRI’s sea road depended on the stability in the Red Sea area, the region became increasingly important for strategic planners in Beijing.159 In November 2015, China announced the building of its first overseas military outpost in in Djibouti’s Gulf of Tadjoura – home to Camp Lemonier, the only permanent US base in Africa.160 Iran’s strategic position was upgraded as well, as the endpoint of one of the BRI’s land belts, the ‘China–Central Asia–West Asia Economic Corridor’, was located 70 kilometres east from the Iranian border at Gwadar Port. The combination of these factors entailed a growing competition between Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the one hand, and Turkey and Qatar on the other. Particularly the United Arab Emirates, with its long history as a trading power, looked for ways by which it could expand its reach to East Africa. The Emiratis had entertained commercial relations over many years with various Eastern African governments. In early 2015, Emirati forces deployed on the island of Socotra, located in the Gulf of Aden some 350 kilometres south of Yemen, 157 158

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‘NEOM.’ www.discoverneom.com/ (accessed 15 July 2018). Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, announced the multi-trillion ‘Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)’ during two separate speeches, one held in Kazakhstan on 7 September 2013, and the other in Indonesia on 3 October 2013. See ‘President Xi Jinping delivers Speech at Indonesia Parliament.’ CGTN, 3 October 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMj9EA5QLEY (accessed 1 July 2018) and ‘President Xi Jinping delivers Speech at Nazarbayev University.’ CCTV English, 7 September 2013. The GCC region accounted for more than 60 per cent of China’s total crude oil imports. See International Monetary Fund, Direction of Trade Statistics. http://data.imf.org/? sk=9D6028D4-F14A-464C-A2F2-59B2CD424B85 (accessed 22 July 2018); Lin, Christina. ‘The Belt and Road and China’s long-term Visions in the Middle East.’ Institut für Strategie- Politik- Sicherheits- und Wirtschaftsberatung, No. 512 (October 2017). www.css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-secur ities-studies/resources/docs/ISPSW-512%20Lin.pdf (accessed 1 July 2018). For China’s first policy paper on the Middle East region, see ‘China’s Arab Policy Paper.’ Central Government of the People’s Republic of China, 14 January 2016. www.china.org.cn/ world/2016-01/14/content_37573547.htm (accessed 1 July 2018). Calamur, Krishnadev. ‘China’s first overseas Military Base.’ The Atlantic, 12 July 2017. www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/07/china-djibouti/533385/ (accessed 10 April 2018).

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establishing a physical presence in the Horn of Africa.161 In the wake a commercial dispute between the government of Djibouti and the Dubai-based logistics conglomerate DP World, the UAE negotiated a thirty-year lease with Eritrea to build a military infrastructure in the coastal town of Assab, to be used as a logistical hub for its aircraft, vessels and ground forces to deploy military missions in Yemen.162 Operating out of the same port Iran had used to supply the Houthis, Emirati military missions sought to weaken the Houthi presence on Yemen’s west coast. Alongside Saudi Arabia, the UAE also invested billions of dollars in the agricultural and deep-sea mining sectors of Somalia. The two countries enjoyed a long history of diplomatic relations, with the Somali northern coast having become an Emirati priority in terms of guaranteeing the UAE’s maritime security. The UAE now began investing in a range of infrastructure development projects, including in the marine transport, shipping and energy sectors. In 2014, after a series of militant attacks perpetrated by pirates as well as the Qatar-allied Shabab militias, the UAE started to train thousands of troops of both the Somali National Army and local forces belonging to the semi-autonomous regions of Somaliland and Puntland.163 The size and quality of the Emirati military bases, as well as the systematic approach by which its expansion in the Horn of Africa progressed, made it obvious that the UAE did no longer simply pursue shortterm military objectives. The build-up of Emirati forces brought about an intensification of the competition with Turkey as the other major aspirant for hegemony in the Red Sea region. Since August 2014 Turkish foreign policy had been under the purview of Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who worked in close consultation with presidential advisers such as Ibrahim Kalin and Yasin Aktay.164 These individuals harboured a sense of nostalgia about the Ottoman legacy as a global maritime power, which they combined with Turkish interests to open new export markets for its produce, specifically in light of the stalling membership negotiations with the European Union. Turkish involvement in sub-Saharan Africa dated back to 2008, when the International Cooperation and Development Agency had invested in the East African agricultural and energy sectors, as well as in the building of hospitals and the sponsoring of hundreds of scholarships 161

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‘UAE confirms military Activities on Yemen’s Socotra Island.’ Al-Araby, 16 May 2017. www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2017/5/16/uae-confirms-military-activities-onyemens-socotra-island (accessed 10 April 2018). ‘The Emirati Navy arrives in Eritrea.’ Stratfor, 29 October 2015. https://worldview .stratfor.com/article/emirati-navy-arrives-eritrea (accessed 10 April 2018). ‘UN Report: UAE, Saudi using Eritrean Land, Sea, Airspace and, possibly, Eritrean Troops in Yemen Battle.’ UN Tribune Blog, 2 November 2015. http://untribune.com/ un-report-uae-saudi-leasing-eritean-port-using-eritrean-land-sea-airspace-and-pos sibly-troops-in-yemen-battle/ (accessed 10 April 2018). Aktay, Yasin. Interview with author. Ankara, 14 August 2018.

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for African students. In Somalia, Turkey spearheaded a veritable state-building process that combined humanitarian assistance and infrastructure investments with capacity building, including an $8.84 million investment to restructure the Somali army and police forces.165 Following Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s visit to Mogadishu in 2011, Turkey had opened the sub-region’s largest embassy and awarded the construction conglomerate Albayrak with a series of contracts whereby the Mogadishu port would be transformed into a major shipping hub.166 In Sudan, Turkish small and medium enterprises were involved in projects worth $2.2 billion in 2013, and plans were explored to restore the old town of the historic city of Suakin. Sailing in the tailwind of Turkish expansionism, Qatar had similarly embarked on a course of widening its commercial activities in East Africa. Since having become involved in brokering a number of border disputes fifteen years ago, the Emir of Qatar had managed to leverage his country’s experience as an international peace mediator in order to expand its commercial and geoeconomic activities in the Horn of Africa. In 2014, Qatar concluded a military cooperation agreement with Sudan and then signed a major deal to supply the Sudanese economy with electricity.167 The sheikhdom’s involvement in Somalia dated back even further, as Qatar had financed humanitarian aid programmes via organizations that were run by Somalia’s local Brotherhood chapter, including the ‘Union of Islamic Courts’ (Ittihad al-Muhakim al-Islamiyya). The growing commercial and security-based interdependency between Qatar and Turkey in East Africa was a natural development given the mutual ties between the two countries’ economies. Turkish businesses had invested over $17 billion in Qatari infrastructure development projects since 2002.168 This was

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Shinn, David. ‘Turkey’s Engagement in Sub-Saharan Africa: shifting Alliances and strategic Diversification.’ Chatham House, September 2015. www.chathamhouse.org/ sites/default/files/field/field_document/20150909TurkeySubSaharanAfricaShinn.pdf (accessed 5 July 2018). Özkan, Mehmet. ‘Turkey’s Involvement in Somalia: Assessment of a State-Building in Progress.’ Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research, 2014. http://file.setav .org/Files/Pdf/20141021155302_41_somali_eng-web.pdf (accessed 2 August 2018). ‘Sudan and Qatar sign Military Co-Operation Agreement.’ Economist Intelligence Unit, 21 November 2014. http://country.eiu.com/article.aspx?articleid=1342510318&Country =Sudan&topic=Politics&subtopic=Forecast&subsubtopic=International+relation s&u=1&pid=1261278910&oid=1261278910 (accessed 24 February 2019); ‘Sudan says Qatar to deposit $1 bn as Part of Aid Package.’ Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 3 April 2014. https:// eng-archive.aawsat.com/theaawsat/business/qatar-2013-gdp-beats-forecasts-growthslows-in-final-quarter (accessed 10 April 2018). The main driver of this commercial relationship was an LNG trade agreement between the oil giants Qatargas and Botaş: ‘International Direct Investment Relations Report.’ Uluslararası Yatırımcılar Derneği (International Investors Association), 1st Quarter 2017, p. 4. www.yased.org.tr/ReportFiles/2017/YASED_FDI%20in%20Turkey_Q1_Evaluation% 20Report_2017.pdf (accessed 15 October 2017).

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complemented by a defence agreement in June that enabled Turkey to establish its first foreign military base in Doha.169 The conflicting objectives of Qatar and Turkey in Eastern Africa on the one hand, and the UAE on the other, became evident after elements within the Turkish Armed Forces attempted to overthrow the government on 15 July 2016. While the Emir of Qatar supported Erdoğan, the Turkish Foreign Ministry accused the UAE of having financed the coup by ‘funnelling’ millions of dollars to the ‘plotters’ in Turkey – a narrative that was strongly contested by Emirati policy-makers.170 As Turkey was still among the largest export markets for Emirati goods and services, the UAE grudgingly announced its support for the government of Erdoğan.171

The Revolutionary Option As these geostrategic shifts transformed the larger region, the Brotherhood’s warring factions were unable to resolve their increasingly toxic internal conflict. A key issue dividing the ranks of the Brothers concerned the question over whether the Arab uprisings of 2011 could be seen as a ‘revolution’ or not. For many senior leaders, the eighteen days at Tahrir Square had been a singular event. This was evidenced in the fact that the coup showed itself to ‘fail day after day’ and that Egypt was soon, ‘perhaps only [in] a few months’, to see a new ‘popular uprising of the whole people’. They were confident that the future of the Brotherhood would be based on a ‘new vision in the new century’, aimed at the renewal of religion, and that they were soon to return to power. Some even went as far as contending that the 25 January 2011 uprising had been engineered by the long arm of the military as the first

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Bakeer, ‘Ali. ‘Making Sense of Qatar’s military Buildup.’ Gulf International Forum, 8 March 2018. http://gulfif.com/making-sense-of-qatars-military-buildup/ (accessed 16 May 2018). Klein, Aron. ‘Arab Intel Source: Turkey convinced Egypt, UAE behind Coup Attempt.’ Breitbart, 17 July 2016. www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2016/07/17/arab-intel-source-tur key-convinced-egypt-uae-behind-coup-attempt/. This piece was subsequently adopted by pro-Iranian and pro-Brotherhood news outlets and from there spread globally. See for example ‘Masdar Mukhbārātī yakshaf: al-Imārāt wa Masr wa Dahlān warā’ al-Inqilāb bi˙ and ˙Dahlan are behind the Turkiyā (An˙Intelligence Source reveals: the UAE, Egypt Coup in Turkey).’ Qanaa al-‘Alam, 18 July 2016. https://goo.gl/GGPJxW (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 1 June 2018); ‘UAE “funnelled Money to Turkish Coup Plotters”.’ Middle East Eye, 29 July 2016. www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusiveuae-funnelled-money-turkish-coup-plotters-21441671 (accessed 1 March 2018); Arango, Tim and Ceylan Yeginsu. ‘Turks can agree on one Thing: U.S. was behind failed Coup.’ New York Times, 2 August 2016. www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/world/europe/ turkey-coup-erdogan-fethullah-gulen-united-states.html (accessed 10 April 2018). Aktay, Yasin. Interview with author. Ankara, 14 August 2018.

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stage of a ‘slow coup’ allowing the army to reassert its dominance over the Ministry of Interior.172 Mohammed Kamal and his accomplices, on the other hand, dismissed such attitudes as a sign of cowardice. From their vantage point, Egypt was in the midst of an ongoing revolutionary transformation, which had started in January 2011. The Brotherhood should enact the necessary ideological and organizational changes and prepare the organization for the next popular uprising. They stated that, ‘since we have already participated in the revolution, have sacrificed blood, and have people in prison, we might as well continue even if it takes years’. A close associate of Kamal later explained: [The group around Kamal] felt that, if they pushed further to fulfil these specific aspects and [achieved a] full revolution, the Brotherhood would be accused of being a terrorist organization. They were afraid of this. They feared that, if the revolution was fulfilled, countries and institutions would view them [as a terrorist organization].173

The historicist debate around the proper interpretation of the events of 25 January was paralleled by another, far more contentious, issue: namely the question of when, how and by what means the use of violence against the regime should be considered permissible. Since the early days of the Rab‘a sitin, the vanguard leaders had consistently circulated the slogan ‘our peacefulness is stronger than your bullets’ in an effort to express their conviction that armed resistance against the regime was futile.174 But in the wake of such ‘unspeakable bloodshed and murder’ that had occurred during the clearing of the sit-in on 14 August 2013, this strategy was met with growing resistance by the hardliners around Kamal, who had witnessed their ‘friends [being] tortured and [their] sisters raped in front of their sons and husbands’.175 Many started to ridicule the notion of democratic change and questioned their leaders’ ability to adequately respond to the ongoing crisis. The absence of clear guidelines on how to respond to current events exacerbated a sense of discomposure that spread among the rank and file.176 Initially, it enabled agents provocateurs such as Safwat Hijazi to stir up belligerent religious sentiments by shouting slogans like ‘whoever sprays us with water, we’ll spray them with blood’.177 This atmosphere led many to believe that the only

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Sudan, Mohammed. Interview with author. London, 27 January 2018. Also, see Kandil. Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen, which makes a similar argument. Shalash, Magdi. Interview with author. Istanbul, 20 March 2017. Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 20 March 2017. Senior Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. London, January 2018. al-Sayyad, Osama. Interview with author. Istanbul, 7 October 2017. ‘Affan, Mohammed. Interview with author. Istanbul, 8 October 2017.

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way to stop the heinous crimes perpetrated by the regime was through a ‘zerosum confrontation’.178 This would include the use of violence against the officers who raped girls and women, and tortured their brothers and friends . . . . These young people were out of control . . . . It was very sensitive to deal with them, because they were angry, they wanted revenge. They had seen their friends being tortured, they had been tortured themselves.179

As the crackdown intensified, the vanguard leaders tried to counter such revenge-seeking tendencies. On 25 August 2015, Ibrahim Munir wrote a letter where he compared those who had violated the Brotherhood’s official policy of ‘peacefulness’ to the ‘Society of Our Master Muhammad’s Youth’ (Jam‘iyyat Shabab Sayyidna Muhammad) – a group of defectors who had challenged Hasan al-Banna’s leadership in 1939.180 Whereas Munir acknowledged that ‘some Brothers . . . are angry and repulsive because of the injustice they are subjected to’, he pointed to the futility of the ‘zero equation’ strategy. He reminded his followers that the Society had faced similar ordeals in the past and pointed out that strategic questions should be left to experienced senior commanders. If the Society’s organizational survival was to be guaranteed, the rank and file should embrace a ‘third solution’: entrusting matters into ‘the hands of God Almighty and the wise men’.181 Mohammed Kamal, ‘Abd al-Rahman and others rejected this kind of defeatism and instead started to press for what they called the ‘revolutionary option’. They argued that Banna’s political choices had been made in the context of British colonialism. This was not comparable to the present crisis, which could not be overcome unless ‘the depth of the new task and the requirements of real and radical change required by this stage’ would be realized. It was imperative that ‘the vision and the approach should change because the world has changed’.182 This approach was summarized in the concept of ‘creative non-

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al-Sayyad, Osama and Mahmoud al-‘Anani. ‘Fī al-Tarkīq min Rab‘a ilā Sūrīā: kayf ˙ from Rab‘a to Syria: how the Yadhhab Shabāb al-Ikhwān ilā ‘al-Jihād’ (On the Way Brotherhood Youth is attracted towards the Jihad).’ Idha’at, 1 October 2016. www.ida2at.com/on-the-way-from-fourth-to-syria-how-goes-the-brotherhood-youthjihad/ (accessed 1 March 2018). Senior Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. London, January 2018. Mitchell. The Society, p. 17. ‘Ibrāhīm Munīr: lā Khalāfāt bayna Qāda al-Ikhwān . . . wa sanazal silmiyyīn (Ibrahim ˙ Munir: there are no Differences between the Brotherhood Leaders – we will remain peaceful).’ ‘Araby 21, 25 August 2015. https://goo.gl/HXUa2V (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 27 March 2018). Telima, ‘Issam. Interview with author. Istanbul, 29 March 2018.

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violence’, whereby violence was permissible in such cases where it was directed at ‘targets without a soul’.183 In the early days after the coup, the Brotherhood’s ‘revolutionary option’ consisted of acts of vandalism, such as setting ablaze electricity generators and ATMs. Starting in mid 2015, the second-rank leadership enacted a number of organizational changes that saw the members of the Deterrence Committees enlisted into a newly created Committee for Qualitative Operations. This new committee consisted only of ‘trusted members of the Brotherhood [with] full loyalty to the organization’. It was divided into two sub-committees: one in charge of ‘public qualitative operations’, such as organizing marches and demonstrations, and another one responsible for so-called ‘special qualitative operations’.184 According to two well-informed Brotherhood sources, those making up the second group even used ‘live weapons’.185 Their main task was to launch arson attacks on police vehicles or punish army and police officers ‘by any means other than blood’, unless these officers had been ‘proven to be murderers’.186 Drawing on the Islamic doctrine of retribution punishments, known as qisas, the young people started to use violence against some particular officers or soldiers. They would select those officers [which had] tortured [Brotherhood members] or raped girls. They documented that eightyfive girls had been raped, some of them in front of their fathers, brothers or husbands. The plan was to kill these individuals.187

Despite the fact that parts of the organizational membership adopted violence as a tactic, the main radicalization occurred outside of the Brotherhood proper. Starting in the summer of 2014, a number of Brotherhood members splintered off from the main group to join the ranks of a number of paramilitary groups. The most important ones were the ‘Popular Resistance Movement’ (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Sha‘biyya), which was announced by three former Brotherhood members in August 2014, and which targeted security forces mainly in the Giza governorate, but also in Beni Sweif, Fayum, Alexandria, Kafr al-Shaykh and Sharqiyya. Another group, called the 183

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‘“Al-Rad‘ al-silmiyya” wa “Walla” wa “Mūlūtūf”, Harakāt munāhada li-l-Inqilāb fī Masr ˙ ˙ ˙ (“Peaceful Deterrence”, “setting ablaze” and “Molotov”: anti-Coup Movements in Egypt).’ Noon Post, 31 January 2014. www.noonpost.org/content/1705 (accessed 1 July 2018). ‘The hidden World of militant “Special Committees”.’ Mada Masr, 22 December 2015. www.madamasr.com/en/2015/12/22/feature/politics/the-hidden-world-of-militant-spe cial-committees/ (accessed 4 October 2017). Former Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. Istanbul, October 2017. Quoted in al-Sayyad and al-‘Anani. ‘On the Way from Rab‘a to Syria.’ Idha’at, 1 October 2016. Senior Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. London, January 2018.

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‘Revolutionary Punishment’ (al-‘Aqab al-Thawri), emerged in February 2015 with a wave of explosions targeting Vodafone shops in the Fayum governorate as retribution for the telecom provider’s decision to co-sponsor the Egypt Economic Development Conference.188 A wave of other operations using a variety of tactics, including explosive devices, car bombs and armed ambushes, targeted military installations and checkpoints. These acts were documented in sophisticated infographics on the group’s online portal.189 Later, these two groups merged under the umbrella of the ‘Popular Resistance Front’ (Jabhat alMuqawama al-Sha‘biyya).190 Members of this newly constituted entity were involved in the assassination of Egypt’s public prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, by car bomb in Heliopolis on 29 June 2015. Egypt’s Ministry of Interior accused Yehia Mussa, the previous spokesperson of the Ministry of Health in Morsi’s government, to have masterminded the attack – a fact that was corroborated by a well-informed former Brotherhood member.191 In early 2016, the Revolutionary Punishment adopted the name ‘Movement of Egypt’s Forearms’ (Harakat al-Sawa‘id Masr), which became known under its acronym ‘Hasm’.192 In August of that year, Hasm claimed responsibility for an assassination attempt on the life of the former Grand Mufti of al-Azhar, ‘Ali Gum‘a, and in September managed to kill the police chief of the Fayum governorate. A final group calling itself ‘Revolutionary Brigade’ (Liwa‘ alThawra) emerged in August 2016 through a series of attacks in Munufiyya, one of which killed a Brigadier General of the army. The ambit to which the Brotherhood leadership was implicated in facilitating, planning and executing such attacks is difficult to establish with certainty. While the involvement of the vanguard leadership is unlikely, the same cannot be said of Mohammed Kamal, who seems to have agreed with Yehia Mussa that the regime deserved to be violently confronted.193 But to what extent he had contributed in 188

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Awad, Mokhtar. ‘Egypt’s escalating Islamist Insurgency.’ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 2015. http://carnegieendowment.org/files/ CMEC_58_Egypt_Awad_Hashem_final.pdf (accessed 1 July 2018). The website of ‘Aqab al-Thawri is available here: https://el3qab.wordpress.com/ (accessed 27 March 2018). The additional three groups united in the ‘Popular Resistance Front’ were ‘the Movement for Determination’ (Haraka Israr), ‘the Execution’ (I‘dam) and ‘the Movement for the Revolution in Beni Suef’ (Haraka min ajl al-Thawra fi Beni Sweif). See ‘Hasm: Sādis Haraka musallha Masriyya ta‘ayyid Tasā’ūlā’t tahawwul al-Islāmiyīn li˙ ˙ l-‘Unf˙ (The sixth˙ armed Egyptian Movement raises Questions˙ about the Islamists’ Renunciation of Violence).’ Noon Post, 12 September 2016. www.noonpost.org/con tent/13884 (accessed 1 July 2018). Former Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. Istanbul, October 2017. Awad, Mokhtar. ‘What Egypt’s Assassination Attempts say about its Islamist Insurgency.’ Atlantic Council, 3 October 2016. www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/what-egypt-sassassination-attempts-say-about-its-islamist-insurgency (accessed 1 July 2018). Former Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. Istanbul, October 2017.

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planning the attack on, say, Hisham Barakat, or whether he had green-lighted it or simply knew that it was going to happen, is hard to say. There is scarce evidence of any formal organizational links in the sense of chains of command or financial and logistical transactions between the High Administrative Committee and one of the above-mentioned paramilitary groups. Overlaps in terms of membership certainly did exist, but these were likely concentrated on lower organizational levels.194 Generally, the Brotherhood’s rank and file had become more radicalized once the chain of command between the leadership and the base was interrupted, or as conflicts on the upper organizational levels had prevented the leaders from educating members about what was religiously permissible, which gave jihadi entrepreneurs an opportunity to fill the vacuum. As a result of such negligence, ‘some took [Kamal’s] discourse as meaning that the revolution equals clashes with the regime’.195 Despite the involvement of a number of Brotherhood members in violent activities, the label of the Muslim Brotherhood as ‘terrorist organization’ remains contentious. Only a small percentage of the total membership had received any military, combat or weapons training. Even the ranks of the Committee of Qualitative Operations consisted mostly of amateurs. Although some members of the High Administrative Committee’s senior command may have greenlighted a number of targeted assassinations on state officials and police officers, the Brotherhood as a whole seems to have been unable or unwilling to build a financial and operational infrastructure that would have been necessary in order to systematically plan and execute large-scale terrorist operations. On the ideological level, the ‘revolutionary option’ had emerged as a spontaneous reaction to the coup of 2013, rather than as the result of a fundamental transformation of the Brotherhood’s thinking that would have been able to provide the legal justification for such acts. The only reference in this respect was the manifesto Signposts on the Road by Sayyid Qutb, but as we have seen, Qutb’s arguments had been refuted by Hasan al-Hudaybi in his 1969 tract Preachers Not Judges. Having said that, Kamal and his associates had actively sought ‘alternative jurisprudential choices’ – particularly after Morsi had been sentenced to death in May 2015.196 Besides the ‘Egypt Call’ statement, at least two groups of scholars attempted to provide a religious legitimization for the Brotherhood’s ‘revolutionary path’. On 22 August, the so-called Legitimacy Association (al-Hay’a al194

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Yusuf, ‘Abd al-Rahman. ‘Khalāfāt al-Ikhwān al-Dākhiliyya wa Mustaqbal al-Jamā‘a (The internal Brotherhood Conflict and the Future of the Society).’ Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, 19 March 2016. https://drive.google.com/file/d/ 0B9mwL5_FZOYJX2JBQk9GRGlKVHM/view (accessed 1 July 2018). al-Sayyad, Osama. Interview with author. Istanbul, 7 October 2017. ‘Al-Ikhwān wa-l-Hāla al-Thawriyya (The Brotherhood and the revolutionary Option).’ ˙ 2015. https://goo.gl/ohur6u (link shortened with URL link short‘Araby 21, 16 August ener, accessed 27 March 2018).

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Shar‘iyya) characterized regime figures as ‘Kharijites, uglier than prostitutes’, against whom ‘resistance in all forms and types’ was obligatory.197 One day later, the ‘Committee of the Brotherhood Youth’ (Lajna Shabab al-Ikhwan) summoned the ‘militant, steadfast and revolutionary mujahedeen’ to take ‘bolder and more daring positions [in order] to make the revolution a success’. Brothers were called to ‘open the door to a true generation that believes in revolution, jihad and struggle . . . in the interest of religion and the homeland’.198 Despite these pronouncements, the Committee for Qualitative Operations seems to have followed a nationalist–secularist logic that conceptualized jihad as a struggle against the ‘coupist dogs and pigs’, rather than a religiously sanctioned holy war against ‘apostates’ or ‘rejectionists’.199 These pronouncements, in addition to the works of Ayman al-Zawahiri and ‘Abdullah ‘Azzam, motivated a number of youth members to leave the Brotherhood, following the jihadi call to wage an armed struggle against the regime. This was particularly the case in Sudan and in Turkey, where thousands of uprooted Brotherhood members lingered around after having been forced to flee their homeland. Exiled and deprived of their daily routine, many felt marginalized or sank into a state of depression. Their sense of alienation was exacerbated by their leaders’ failure to provide with a vision of how to move forward. They became frustrated by the ‘political hypocrisy of their procrastinating [leaders]’, who pontificated about peacefulness while selling out the ‘families of the martyrs, the injured, the detainees, the persecutors and the revolutionaries’.200 All the ‘da‘wa jurists’ had to offer, so it seemed to them, was ‘to sit around and wait until the next revolutionary wave would come’. Adding insult to injury, the efforts of the youth members to defend the Brotherhood against the onslaughts of the regime was met with recriminations

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‘Bayān min al-Hay’a al-Shar‘iyya ilā Jamī‘ al-Ikhwān (Statement of the Legitimacy Association to the entire Brotherhood).’ Qalyubiyya Gate, 22 August 2015. http://qalyubia gate.com/?p=46831 (accessed 27 March 2018). ‘Bayān Lajna Shabāb al-Ikhwān: ilā Ikhwānanā al-Ahbā’ Ibnā’ Da‘wa al-Ikhwān al˙ Muslimīn (Statement of the Committee of the Brotherhood Youth: to our beloved Brothers, Sons of the Da‘wa of the Muslim Brotherhood).’ Qaliyubiyya Gate, 23 August 2015. http://qalyubiagate.com/?p=46914 (accessed 27 March 2018). In an attack on 16 January 2016, executed by the Revolutionary Punishment and targeting police officers, a number of civilians were killed. The group subsequently regretted the deaths of civilians and promised to pay the martyrs’ families a ‘blood libel’ (diyya): ‘Al-Haram: Maqtal Dābit bi-Amn al-Dawla al-manhall wa ākhirīn fī ˙ ˙ ˙ mustahall ‘Amaliyyāt #Fadā‘iyyūn_qādimūn (The Pyramids: the Death of an Officer and others of the weak State Security is at the Onset of the upcoming Commando Operations).’ Al-‘Aqab al-Thawri, 22 January 2016. https://goo.gl/3HohQJ (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 27 March 2018). Statement of the Committee of the Brotherhood Youth.’ Qaliyubiyya Gate, 23 August 2015.

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and accusations on the part of the vanguard, who accused them of having ‘strayed beyond their mandate’.201 While some were prepared to sacrifice their lives, they also understood that the situation in Egypt was not suitable for an armed jihad. However, they were eager to gain the necessary training, both psychologically and militarily, in order to effectuate their ‘religious duty’ and be ready to wage ‘jihad against the tyrant’ once the situation would allow it. This intention was exploited by jihadi recruiters who targeted the most vulnerable elements in an attempt to attract them to the jihad in Syria. As early as 2012, a smuggler ring operating out of the Turkish border city of Gaziantep facilitated the passage of more than onethousand Brotherhood youth members into Syria. The majority of them were between seventeen and twenty years of age. Approximately two-thirds joined Jabhat al-Nusra, which became known as the Fatah al-Sham Front after July 2016, including the sons of two high-ranking members of the High Administrative Committee.202 In August 2015, seven sub-groups from the Committee for Qualitative Operations pledged allegiance to the ISIL-affiliate Wilayat Sina’ in Egypt.203 Whereas the number of members overtly embracing violent jihadi and takfiri methods was marginal compared to the whole membership of the Muslim Brotherhood, a far larger number became overtly sectarian. After the Palm Sunday attacks of 9 April 2017, when suicide bombers from Wilayat Sina’ killed more than forty Christian churchgoers in Tanta and Alexandria, the vanguard leadership condemned the ‘painful incident’ and, referencing verse 32 of the Quranic sura al-Ma’ida (the Table), accused the ‘fascist regime’ of having orchestrated the events through the creation of ‘an imaginary enemy called terrorism’.204 Meanwhile, the High Administrative Committee failed to mention the victims at all.205 In what was reminiscent of 201 202 203

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al-Sayyad and al-‘Anani. ‘On the Way from Rab‘a to Syria.’ Idha’at, 1 October 2016. Ibid. Sawt al-Ikhwan Twitter account @IkhwanVoice, 23 August 2015. https://twitter.com/ IkhwanVoice/status/635556288320118785 (accessed 15 April 2018). As a matter of fact, the ideology of ISIL and the Muslim Brotherhood are incompatible, and ISIL frequently referred to the Brotherhood as ‘rejectionists’ (murtaddin), brandishing them as a ‘cancer’ that had afflicted the Muslim umma. See for example al-Dabiq, Issue No. 14. www.clarionproject .org/docs/Dabiq-Issue-14.pdf (accessed 20 August 2017). ‘Tasrih Sahafī li-Jamā‘a al-Ikhwān Hawla Tafjīrāt al-Kanā’is (News Statement of the ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ Society regarding the ˙Church Bombings).’ Ikhwanonline.com, 9 April Brotherhood 2017. http://ikhwanonline.com/Statement/229532/Default.aspx (accessed 27 March 2018). ‘Al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn yadīnūn Tafjīrāt al-Kanā’is wa ‘amaliyyāt Qatl al-Mukhtafīn qasrīān wa yahmalūn “al-Inqilāb” mas’ūliyya damā’ al-Masriyyūn (The Muslim ˙ ˙ of the disappeared Brotherhood condemns the Church Bombings – and the Killing Forces).’ Ikhwanonline.info, 9 April 2017. https://goo.gl/PYz6mk (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 27 March 2018).

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the Maspiro clashes of October 2011, social media commentators even poked fun at the victims and stated that the alliance of the Coptic Pope with the regime had justified their slaughtering.

The Third Founding In the aftermath of the public clash of 2015, the conflict between the two rivalling factions started to gradually trickle down to lower organizational levels. Up until that point, the Brotherhood’s rank-and-file members had been largely unaware of the debates that had divided the leadership. But as the controversy was battled out on television and social media, the members of the various administrative offices started to pledge allegiance to different sides.206 Most administrative offices of the Northern Sa‘id, Southern Sa‘id and Western Delta sectors rejected the decision of Mahmud ‘Izzat to suspend the membership of Mohammed Kamal. The Alexandria Administrative Office even went so far as to freeze the membership of Tal‘at Fahmy, whom Mahmud ‘Izzat had previously appointed as the Brotherhood’s official spokesperson.207 On the other hand, the majority of administrative offices in the Eastern Delta Sector supported ‘Izzat’s decision. Those within the Greater Cairo Sector were divided, while some of those within the Middle Delta Sector remained neutral.208 These circumstances exacerbated the sense of confusion among the rank and file, leading to a situation where members who, for instance, were on a trip within Egypt followed the day-to-day orders of a leader supporting one side, while at home they were registered under an administrative office supporting the other side.209 In March 2016 Yusuf al-Qaradawi dispatched an envoy to Istanbul in an effort to urge the rivalling factions to come to Doha for reconciliation talks. Ahmed ‘Abd al-Rahman, ‘Ali Batikh and ‘Amr Darrag attended on behalf of the Crisis Management Committee, while the traditional Guidance Office was represented by Mahmud Hussein and Ibrahim Munir, as well as his influential personal secretary, Mahmud al-‘Abiary. After having evaluated the arguments of both sides, Qaradawi called for a transitional period of six months, at the end 206

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Hamama, Mohammed. ‘Al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn tasall Mahatta al-Inqisām (The Muslim ˙ Masr,˙ 26 ˙˙ May 2016. https://goo.gl/ Brotherhood Reaches the Point of Division).’ Mada x1rHNu (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 18 July 2018). Muslim Brotherhood Alexandria Administrative Office Facebook page @IkhwanOfAlex, 14 December 2015. www.facebook.com/IkhwanOfAlex/photos/ a.154632074575657.31577.154440661261465/989797201059136/?type=3 (accessed 30 January 2016). al-Sayyad, Osama. Interview with author. Istanbul, 16 August 2018. ‘Azma al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn fī Masr: Inshiqāq taqlīmī am Inhiyār murtaqib? (The Crisis of the Muslim Brotherhood ˙in Egypt: a traditional Split or a predictable Collapse?).’ Sasa Post, 21 December 2015. www.sasapost.com/do-collapse-of-the-mus lim-brotherhood/ (accessed 18 June 2018).

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of which general elections should be held. In the meantime, he recommended that new regulations should be drafted, so that the Brotherhood’s future vision could be formulated. According to Batikh’s account, the Crisis Management Committee accepted Qaradawi’s proposal while Hussein and Munir ‘dragged their feet for twenty-five days’ and then ‘claimed that they had to study the matter again’.210 The failure of Qaradawi’s mediation efforts came hardly as a surprise. Mahmud ‘Izzat had made it clear already ahead of the talks that the Guidance Office would reserve the right to refuse any outcome they considered to be unfavourable. Qaradawi’s suggestion for the new regulations to be approved by ‘the Brotherhood’s institutions’ followed a circular logic, for the decision which institution could rightfully claim to represent the Brotherhood was precisely the bone of contention over which the rivalling factions sparred so fervently. If it did anything, Qaradawi’s ill-fated reconciliation attempt accelerated an internal trend that by now seemed inevitable, as both sides proceeded to implement the sheikh’s recommendations independently: the vanguard leadership announced on Ikhwan.site that members should ‘send in their views and suggestions on [the Brotherhood’s] development’ on ‘how to overcome security and geographical obstacles’, so that it could ‘conduct elections consistent with [its] institutions and achieve the hope of the Society’s revival and development’.211 On the other hand, ‘Mohammed Muntassir’ announced on Facebook that ‘His Excellency’s statement’ had been presented to the base, where it had been met with broad support. The Brotherhood would continue to work through its ‘regulations and institutions’, specified as the ‘acting leader, the General Shura Council, the High Administrative Committee formed at home in October 2015, the Egyptian liaison [office] abroad, and the Brotherhood office abroad’.212 Hours later, he posted a link to an interactive online platform to encourage members to submit their suggested amendments to the regulations.213 As the bickering continued in the online sphere, both sides launched a concentrated effort to change the facts on the ground. Mahmud ‘Izzat and 210 211

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Batikh, ‘Ali. Interview with author. Istanbul, 23 March 2018. ‘Tarhīb ikhwānī bi-Mubādara al-Qaradāwī li-Inhā’ Azma al-Jamā‘a (Brotherhood wel˙ Crisis of the Society),’ ‘Araby 21, 26 January come˙ the Qaradawi Initiative to end the 2016. https://goo.gl/aZtxpE (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 18 July 2018). Mohammed Muntassir Facebook account @M.B.SPOKESMAN1, 26 January 2016. www.facebook.com/M.B.SPOKESMAN1/posts/1524174097876760 (accessed 5 July 2018). ‘Al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn tadashshan al-Marhala al-Ūlā li-Munassa Tafā’iliyya hawla ˙ Tatwīr li-Lā’ihatihā al-‘āmma (The Muslim Brotherhood launches˙˙the first Phase ˙of an ˙ ˙ interactive Platform on the Development of its General Regulations).’ Mohammed Muntassir Facebook account @M.B.SPOKESMAN1, 26 February 2016. www.facebook .com/M.B.SPOKESMAN1/posts/1532226050404898 (accessed 5 July 2018).

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Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman leveraged their networks in those governorates where they had strong social roots, mainly Cairo, Giza, Sharqiyya (where ‘Izzat and Mohammed Morsi were born) and Daqahliyya (where Khairat al-Shatir and Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman came from). Working through their loyalists, they contacted ‘every single level of the organization’, urging members to turn away from the kind of ‘deviance’ propagated by Kamal and his ilk. Their efforts were backed by Ibrahim Munir in London, who exerted ‘extreme financial pressure’ on administrative offices known to be disloyal to the vanguard.214 In early 2016, the Guidance Office managed to reappropriate control over the Ikhwanonline.com domain. Ikhwan.site was taken offline, while the group around Mohammed Kamal launched a new website under the domain Ikhwanonline.info.215 At this point, the insurgents around Kamal went into the offensive. On 7 May 2016, they published a roadmap to force the vanguard leaders to step down and allow for new elections to be held in the Shura Council, the geographical sectors, as well as the ‘management committee’.216 They demanded that the High Administrative Committee should hand over its dossiers immediately, including the files concerned with the drafting of the Brotherhood’s new vision.217 Mohammed Kamal ostentatiously relinquished his responsibilities and promised that he would not run for any future executive position. His move was mirrored by ‘Amr Darrag, Ahmed ‘Abd alRahman and ‘Ali Batikh in Istanbul, who resigned in order to ‘open the way for a new leadership outside of Egypt to be elected’.218 In a desperate attempt 214

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Senior Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. London, January 2018. The original version of Ikhwanonline.com had been removed in December 2015 and a new version had been made available in the spring of 2016. Sections of the original website have been archived by the American University in Cairo as part of the ‘Egypt Revolution and Politics’ collection: https://archive-it.org/explore?q=www.ikhwanon line.com (accessed 15 April 2017). As per 20 July 2018, two Facebook accounts were associated with Ikhwanonline.info. The first one, which was previously linked to Ikhwanonline.com, is under M.B.SPOKESMAN1 and has 109,317 likes. The second one under MBMediaCenter has over 26,424 likes and seems to have been created around the same time as its associated website domain, with its first post dating 24 January 2016. The Twitter account associated with Ikhwanonline.info is under the handle @MBMediaCenter. It was also launched on 24 January 2016 and features 130 tweets and 9,614 followers. ‘Al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn ya‘linūn Khārita Tarīq li-Inha’ al-Khilāf al-dākhilī (The ˙ to˙ end the internal Crisis).’ Ikhwanonline. Muslim Brotherhood publishes a Roadmap info, 7 May 2016. https://goo.gl/ngq8pS (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 18 July 2018). Hamama, Mohammed. ‘Al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn tasall Mahatta al-Inqisām (The Muslim ˙ Masr,˙ 26 ˙˙ May 2016. https://goo.gl/ Brotherhood reaches the Point of Division).’ Mada x1rHNu (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 18 July 2018). ‘Bayān Maktab Ikhwān al-khārij hawla Khārita Tarīq al-Azma al-dākhiliyya li-l-Jamā‘a ˙ Brotherhood Office Abroad regardwa Istiqāla D. Muhammad Kamāl˙(Statement ˙of the ˙ ing the Road Map of the Society’s internal Crisis and the Resignation of Dr. Mohammed

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not to appear to have lost control, Ibrahim Munir officially dissolved the Crisis Management Committee ex post facto. Kamal swiftly issued a statement to refute this move, denying that the Brotherhood had any representation in London and reiterating that the only legitimate authority outside Egypt was the Crisis Management Office for Egyptians Abroad.219 Darrag, upon receiving Munir’s letter that his membership had been ‘frozen’, posted a Tweet with the hashtag: ‘#IAmNotFrozen (#AnaLaTajammud)’.220 Despite the obstructionism of the vanguard leaders, Mohammed Kamal nominated a coordinator for a newly composed ‘road map secretariat’ that was equipped with the mandate to coordinate elections across all levels of the organization. During the next seven months twelve administrative offices conducted elections in eleven governorates: Alexandria, Buhayra, Fayum, Beni Sweif, Minya, Asyut, Qina, Aswan, New Valley and Sohag, as well as the administrative offices representing the southern and western regions of the Greater Cairo Sector. Eight administrative offices refused to implement Kamal’s decision, including one in Damietta, two in Daqahliyya, two in Sharqiyya, those two in the Cairo governorate representing the northern and central regions, as well as one in Giza. Five administrative offices were split at the sub-sectorial level, although the majority of its members leaned towards the Guidance Office: Qaliubiyya, Gharbiyya, Munifiyya, Kafr al-Sheikh as well as the one in Giza responsible for 6th of October City. The administrative offices of the Matruh, Suez, Northern Sinai, Southern Sinai and Ismailiyya, as well as Port Said governorates had little or no activities during the time of the election.221 Taking estimated membership figures calculated in Table 1 as a proxy, the Guidance Office controlled approximately 300,000 members, or 40 per cent of the total membership, while about 270,000, or slightly less than 40 per cent of the total, followed Mohammed Kamal’s directives. Around 200,000, or approximately one-quarter, remained undecided or neutral.222 These figures make it obvious that Kamal’s revolutionary message had captured the spirits of a substantial portion of the Brotherhood’s membership in Egypt. In a closed-door meeting in Istanbul during that summer, Mahmud Hussein grudgingly admitted that the Guidance Office was momentarily unable to present any solution to the current crisis, other than to advise

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Kamal).’ Ikhwanonline.info, 11 May 2016. https://goo.gl/3u5UAr (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 18 July 2018). Kamal, Mohammed. Voice Recording. Soundcloud, 7 May 2016. https://soundcloud .com/user-906787785/pbpabknglzoa (accessed 24 March 2018). Darrag, ‘Amr. Interview with author. Istanbul, 21 March 2018. al-Sayyad, Osama. Interview with author. Istanbul, 16 August 2018. These numbers have been corroborated by two well-informed individuals: Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 20 March 2017; al-Sayyad, Osama. Interview with author. Istanbul, 16 August 2018.

Figure 8 The Brotherhood’s regional organization in 2016, along with allegiances to the respective sides in the internal organizational conflict.

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members to wait patiently until the next revolutionary wave was to unfold.223 This non-strategy was complemented by the publication of a series of meaningless statements on Ikhwanonline.com, such as one in August 2016, where Hussein announced: ‘Thank God, things have to a large extent stabilized’, adding that ‘most of the outstanding issues having caused the crisis . . . had been resolved’.224 Nothing could be further from the truth. Although ‘Izzat and Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman may have indeed reasserted some degree of authority over parts of the membership, they knew that the electoral process having been set in motion by Kamal was about to yield a new, democratically elected leadership, and that a considerable portion of the Brotherhood’s ranks threatened to permanently escape their control.225 Such was the situation when, on 3 October, news suddenly broke that Mohammed Kamal had been killed. Since his appearance in early 2014, the agriculturalist from Asyut had become a hero for many among the rank and file – a man of strong principles who had possessed the aptitude to articulate the emotional state of the Brotherhood’s youth. Not only had he rejected the ‘peaceful slogans’ uttered by the traditional leadership, but he had also pioneered a new revolutionary strategy, which had consisted of mobilizing large parts of the base ‘into a final confrontation’ with the regime. The fact that the vanguard leaders in Istanbul tried to claim Kamal as their own martyr exemplified the influence he had accrued since having emerged at the helm of the first High Administrative Committee.226 Following his killing by the security forces, a vacuum emerged within the ranks of the revolutionary leaders, as there was no contender with the charisma, organizational skills or networks who would have been able to fill his shoes.227 The killing of Mohammed Kamal, however, could not extinguish the revolutionary fervour he had kindled among the Brotherhood’s rank and file. Two-and-a-half months later, ‘Mohammed Muntassir’ disclosed on Facebook that the members of the Shura Council were about to meet in Cairo. With the announcement of a new leadership imminent, the vanguard 223 224

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Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 8 October 2017. Hussein, Mahmud. ‘Al-Amīn al-‘āmm yaktab: ‘Awda hamīd li’Mawqa‘ “al-Ikhwān Awnlāyn” (The Secretary-General writes: benign ˙ Return of the Website “Ikhwanonline”).’ Ikhwanonline.com, 15 August 2016. www.ikhwanonline.com/ Section/228736/Default.aspx (accessed 23 February 2018). Batikh, ‘Ali. Interview with author. Istanbul, 23 March 2018. al-Talawi, Ahmed. ‘Iqhtiyāl Muhammad Kamāl yufāqam Khilāfāt al-Damm wa al˙ Assassination of Mohammed Kamal exacerbates Mumāna‘a dākhil al-Ikhwān! (The the Differences of Blood and Opposition within the Muslim Brotherhood!).’ Noon Post, 4 October 2016. www.noonpost.org/content/14301; Hamama, Mohammed. ‘Interior Ministry announces Death of influential Brotherhood Leader.’ Mada Masr, 6 October 2016. www.madamasr.com/sections/politics/interior-ministry-announcesdeath-influential-brotherhood-leader (accessed 23 February 2018). Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 15 August 2018.

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leaders hurriedly denied that any such meeting was about to take place.228 They reiterated that ‘Mohammed Muntassir’ had been relieved of his position of media spokesman more than a year ago.229 It further reported that three new committees had been created, whose task was to organize new elections, rewrite the Statutes and formulate a new vision.230 But they were unable to stop the process Kamal had set in motion. On 20 December 2016 the ‘Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt’ announced its ‘third founding’. The newly constituted Brotherhood explained how, over the course of the last eighteen months, elections had been organized across all organizational levels, affecting 65 per cent of the membership in Egypt. Rank-and-file members had elected their representatives on the branch, regional, governmental and national levels. A newly constituted General Shura Council had then elected a president, as well as ten individuals ‘within and outside of Egypt’, who together formed a newly created ‘General Office’ (al-Maktab al-‘Amm). While the office was fully functional, three seats still remained vacant: two for the representatives of the ‘sectors who had not yet completed the elections’ (Sharqiyya and Daqahliyya), as well as one for the ‘Brotherhood abroad’.231 In its first public statement, the General Office referred to the ‘striving brothers’ who ‘believe in the nobility of their call and the sanctity of their ideology’, as Hasan al-Banna had famously stated in his 1935 Letter on Teaching.232 Addressing the Brotherhood’s ‘mujahideen’, the General Office declared that it was committed to the ‘decision of the Rab‘a Shura [Council]’ and vowed that it would ‘continue the revolutionary path as the principal way to break the military coup’. The ‘tools of victory’ required to achieve this goal were clear: they consisted of a ‘new political system based on a common understanding with the revolutionary and youth forces’, and the adoption of new statutes that would ‘raise the efficiency of the educational system’.233 Two weeks later, the General Office disclosed that ‘a complete and comprehensive 228

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‘Muntassir ya‘lan Intikhāb Maktab Irshād li-l-Ikhwān . . . wa Fahmy yarudd: lā ˙˙ (Muntassir announced the Election of a Guidance Office . . . Fahmy yumathilnā responded: it does not represent us).’ ‘Araby 21, 19 December 2016. https://goo.gl/ JjyNvk (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 17 April 2018). ‘Istimrārān li-l-Sirā‘ dākhil al-Ikhwān . . . Jabhat al-Qiyādāt yakdhib ‘Ijtimā al-Shūrā’ biQiyāda Muntas˙sir (Continuing the Conflict within the Muslim Brotherhood . . . the ˙˙ denies the “Consultative Meeting” led by Muntassir).’ Al-Ahram, 19 Leadership Front December 2016. http://gate.ahram.org.eg/News/1362203.aspx (accessed 20 July 2018). Sudan, Mohammed. Interview with author. London, 27 January 2018. Mohammed Muntassir Facebook account @M.B.SPOKESMAN1, 20 December 2016. www.facebook.com/M.B.SPOKESMAN1/photos/a.1428928747401296.1073741828.1407 342656226572/1636181086676060/?type=3 (accessed 20 July 2018). al-Banna. ‘Letter on Teaching’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 207–48. ‘Al-Bayān al-Awwal li-l-Maktab al-‘Āmm li-l-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn (First Statement of the General Office of the Muslim Brotherhood).’ Ikhwanonline.info, 20 December 2016. https://goo.gl/qdwhZC (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 20 July 2018).

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evaluation of [the Brotherhood’s] performance during the past six years’ was to follow in a short while.234 This announcement was followed by another devastating blow to the vanguard leaders: the arrest on 23 February 2017 of the High Administrative Committee leader, Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman alMorsi. One month later, the General Office published ‘Vision 28’: a twenty-eightpage document that was the outcome of ‘dozens of workshops’ having taken place over the previous year. The document posited as its objective to assess ‘the Brotherhood’s failures of the past’, so that its members would be able to ‘learn how to improve their policies in the future’. Specifically, Vision 28 pointed out that the Brotherhood had failed to achieve a ‘balanced relationship with other societal entities’ and that this had negatively affected its performance during the Egyptian uprising. Secondly, the Brotherhood had missed the opportunity handed to them in the 2005 parliamentary elections to develop a proper intellectual understanding of the nation-state. The Guidance Office had neglected the importance of undertaking institutional efforts to ‘expand its political thinking’ and develop a ‘comprehensive political project’. The lack of ‘political ambition, scientifically or in the space of . . . learning and academic training’, and the absence of politically skilled individuals, had been the reason that the FJP’s ranks had been filled with ‘da‘wa figures who needed time to realize the experience and the skilfulness to perform their tasks’. Lastly, the Brotherhood had failed to create a proper political party. Since its second founding in the 1970s, little efforts had been undertaken to build a political structure. Instead, all attention had been directed towards rebuilding the Brotherhood’s hierarchy. Even after the Brotherhood had gained almost half of the seats in the People’s Assembly, it had done so ‘through the door of alliances’ rather than ‘through the door of a political party’. This resulted in a situation where the FJP had become a mere appendix to the Guidance Office, where ‘slaves to the Society and its structure’ merely ‘implemented the commands of the Muslim Brotherhood’.235 Although the statement did not

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‘Al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn ya‘lanūn Taqdīm Marāji‘āt wa Taqīymāt shāmila li-l-sitt Sanawāt al-mādiyya fī Dhikrā Thawra Yanāīr: ‘Bayān rasmī’ (The Muslim ˙ Brotherhood announces the Submission of Principles and comprehensive Reviews for the last six Years in remembering the January Revolution: official Statement).’ Ikhwanonline.info, 6 January 2017. https://goo.gl/6DeYVT (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 17 April 2018). ‘Al-Lā’iha al-‘āmma li-Jamā‘a al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn (The General Statutes of the Society ˙of the Muslim Brothers).’ Ikhwanonline.info, 22 March 2016. http://mbpolicy .ikhwanonline.info/ (accessed 25 June 2018). The document ‘Rū‘ya Jamā‘a al-Ikhwān alMuslimīn 28 (Vision of the Society of the Muslim Brothers 28)’ used to be available on https://vision-28.com/mb/ (accessed 12 December 2017) until December 2017, but in early 2018 was taken offline. A downloaded version of the document is in the possession of the author.

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mention any of the leaders by name, it was a damning critique of the Guidance Office’s performance before and during Morsi’s presidency. Having thus exposed the Guidance Office, the General Office launched a concentrated outreach campaign, contacting Brotherhood members in Turkey, Doha and Sudan as well as European capitals in an effort to establish a new organizational hierarchy abroad. In what amounted to a mutiny against Ibrahim Munir and his International Organization, the second-rank leaders promised to ‘support the Egyptian revolution politically and in terms of media and rights, and to achieve a permanent vision of the work and management of the Society abroad’. Their efforts were completed in early September 2017, as they announced the formation of the ‘Founding Body of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Abroad’ (al-Hai’a al-Ta’sisiyya li-l-Ikhwan al-Muslimin al-Masriyyin bi-lKharij).236 According to its new chairman ‘Ali Batikh, who also served as ‘executive official of the Administrative Office in Turkey’, the new office claimed to have representatives in Sudan, Malaysia and ‘in other countries, whom we do not mention here in order for them not to have legal problems’.237 The existence of the General Office in Egypt and the Founding Body of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Abroad created a situation that ‘was as if the Society of the Muslim Brothers had come back to its order’. The conflict that had erupted in the summer of 2015, Batikh claimed, had been contained ‘at the top’ and had not affected the organization in Egypt. The only issue still at stake was that ‘some prioritized the revolution’ while others preferred to ‘just go back to the political opposition’. These disagreements did not change the fact that the Brotherhood was ‘a complete and comprehensive social movement’ whose members were united by ‘one idea’, and whose mutual relationships were marked ‘only [by] love, respect, da‘wa, and the tanzim’.238 As soon as the leadership would resolve its differences, the rank and file could be reunited once again. In reality, Batikh’s statement could now hide the fact that by late 2017 a venomous climate of mutual recriminations and accusations had descended upon the Muslim Brotherhood. While the Guidance Office refused to accept the legitimacy of the General Office, the second-rank leaders rejected the authority of Ibrahim Munir and Mahmud Hussein.239 Each faction tried to push its specific ‘vision, membership and hierarchy, both inside and outside of Egypt’, while members on either side of the division were subordinated to different hierarchical chains of command, or remained disorganized and fragmented.240 The Brotherhood’s organizational design, and specifically its pyramid-shaped, centrally run and strictly hierarchical organization, actually 236 237 238 239

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Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 20 March 2017. Batikh, ‘Ali. Interview with author. Istanbul, 23 March 2018. Shalash, Magdi. Interview with author. Istanbul, 20 March 2017. Senior Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. London, January 2018. Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 10 October 2017.

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facilitated this drifting apart into a state of ‘deep separation’.241 This split affected not only the Brotherhood’s unity in Egypt, but also upset the integrity of its ranks abroad, with nearly half of the exiled members following the directives of the traditional Guidance Office, one-third leaning towards the General Office, and the rest being suspended in a state of indecision and confusion.242 Finally, the Brotherhood’s internal conflict impacted its regional chapters in other Arab countries, albeit more on the level of opinions and debates rather than in terms of actual organizational splits.243

Through the Lens of Geopolitics As the General Office in Cairo announced the establishment of the Founding Body, the Muslim Brotherhood became engulfed in an aggravating geopolitical crisis that threatened to unravel the GCC security arrangement of 1981. The opening salvo of the crisis was fired on 5 June 2017, when a series of proIranian statements, subsequently attributed to Sheikh Tamim of Qatar, appeared on the television newsfeed of the Qatar News Agency. Having been irritated with Qatar’s idiosyncratic policies for many years, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, in consortium with Bahrain and Egypt, took the extraordinary step to impose a comprehensive air, sea and land blockade on the State of Qatar.244 In a communiqué containing thirteen demands, the Qatari government was pressured to downsize its diplomatic ties with Iran, halt its support for terrorist organizations, shut down Al Jazeera, and dismantle the Turkish military airbase. Most importantly, Qatar was to end its support for the Muslim Brotherhood and expel all senior members still remaining in Doha from the country.245 The Gulf crisis of 2017 was caused by a complex set of factors that were both endogenous and exogenous to the region. The most prominent among the former was Qatar’s long-standing support for various Islamist movements. In April 2016, a New York Times article had revealed how the Qatari royal family 241 242 243

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Fathi, Yasser. WhatsApp chats to the author. Geneva-Istanbul, 18 June 2018. Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 10 October 2017. al-Talawi. ‘The International Organization and the hidden Doors of the Brotherhood’s Crisis in Egypt.’. As it became apparent later, Saudi Arabia was only days away from invading Qatar militarily in order to overthrow the Al Thani dynasty. This scenario was prevented thanks to the intervention of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whose subsequent engagement to end the blockade would contribute to his demise: Emmons, Alex. ‘Saudi Arabia planned to invade Qatar last Summer. Rex Tillerson’s Efforts to stop it may have cost him his Job.’ The Intercept, 1 August 2018. https://theintercept.com/2018/08/01/ rex-tillerson-qatar-saudi-uae/ (accessed 8 August 2018). ‘What are the 13 Demands given to Qatar?’ Gulf News, 10 June 2017. https://gulfnews .com/news/gulf/qatar/qatar-crisis/what-are-the-13-demands-given-to-qatar-1.2048118 (accessed 28 July 2018).

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had financed pro-Iranian Shia militias, which went a step further than Qatari support for Sunni Islamist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood. According to the article, Qatar had paid the exorbitant sum of between $800 million and $1 billion to Syrian rebels in an effort to secure the release of sixteen hostages, including several members of the royal family, who had been previously captured by Shia militias while on a hunting trip in Iraq. The payment of the ransom subsequently facilitated a complex land-swapping agreement involving massive population transfers. Known as the ‘four towns deal’, it enabled a permanent modification of Syria’s ethnic map in favour of Hezbollah and Iran. The recklessness of this decision infuriated policymakers in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and was a major factor in the subsequent decision to impose a blockade on Qatar.246 Besides Qatar’s renegade foreign policy, the decision by the Saudis and the Emiratis seems to have been crucially enabled by the style of US foreign policy, which had come about with the advent of Donald J. Trump on the world stage. It injected a degree of dangerous destabilization into the fragile balance of power of Middle East geopolitics. Along with the growing personalization of US policy, traditional diplomatic channels and institutions were increasingly marginalized in favour of a small group of advisors within Trump’s inner circle. Of paramount importance was the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who became senior advisor on the Middle East. Within a few months, the thirty-six-year-old former real estate developer from New York had forged a close relationship with Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi, and the energetic Emirati ambassador in Washington, DC, Yousef al-Otaiba.247 The importance of Kushner’s rapport 246

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According to the ‘four-towns deal’, proposed in September 2015 during a UN meeting in Istanbul by an envoy of Qasem Soleimani, Hezbollah would end its siege of two Sunni rebel strongholds in Madaya and Zabadani in exchange for Sunni rebels to end their siege of the two Shia towns al-Fu‘a and Kafraya. See Worth, Robert F. ‘Kidnapped Royalty become Pawns in Iran’s deadly Plot.’ New York Times, 14 March 2018. www.nytimes.com/2018/03/ 14/magazine/how-a-ransom-for-royal-falconers-reshaped-the-middle-east.html (accessed 23 February 2018). Leonnig, Carol D., Shane Harris, Josh Dawsey and Greg Jaffe. ‘How Jared Kushner forged a Bond with the Saudi Crown Prince.’ Washington Post, 19 March 2018. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-jared-kushner-forged-a-bond-with-thesaudi-crown-prince/2018/03/19/2f2ce398-2181-11e8-badd-7c9f29a55815_story.html (accessed 28 July 2018); Karni, Annie. ‘Inside Jared Kushner’s Circle of Trust.’ Politico, 29 June 2017. www.politico.com/story/2017/06/29/jared-kushner-inner-cir cle-confidants-240116 (accessed 1 July 2018). Also see Grim, Ryan. ‘Diplomatic Underground: the sordid double Life of Washington’s most powerful Ambassador.’ The Intercept, 30 August 2017. https://theintercept.com/2017/08/30/uae-ambassa dor-yousef-al-otaiba-double-life-prostitutes-sex-work/ (accessed 1 July 2018). The Saudi and Emirati princes seemed to have supported Trump’s campaign financially. This question had in early 2018 become part of the probe by the Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who had been appointed by the US Office of the Deputy

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with the Deputy Crown Prince was magnified after 21 June 2017, when the King replaced the current Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Nayef, with Mohammed bin Salman, making the latter the most powerful man in the Kingdom.248 This power transfer coincided with Trump’s first trip aboard – an event that was crowned by the president’s signature of a $350 billion arms deal with Riyadh. As Trump would later assert in one of his Tweets, his administration’s support for Mohammed bin Salman provided the Saudis and Emiratis with the necessary confidence to, shortly thereafter, escalate their long-standing feud with the pariah state Qatar.249 Whereas the Emirati–Saudi dispute with Qatar was mainly rooted in a geopolitical logic, the members of the Muslim Brotherhood interpreted the Gulf crisis as a failed attempt of the Saudi royal family to prolong its own life span. They somewhat dismissively explained the conflict’s origins in reference to the ‘Bedouin mentality’ of the Saudis and Emiratis. Jealous of Qatar’s regional diplomatic success stories, they ‘supported the dictators and the old guard’ out of fear that they would lose their regional leadership position. Some were even convinced that the Saudi royal family would soon fragment, enabling the Iranians to ‘move to any place in the Gulf area and take it over’.250 They further thought that the reason for the Saudis’ dread of an Islamist democracy was to be found in the Kingdom’s belief that democracy was possible only in a secular system. However, as the example of the Brotherhood in Egypt had shown, democracy could also be established by a non-secular party. Had the Brotherhood’s Islamist democratic project succeeded, according to the logic of the Brotherhood, the Saudi argument would have been invalidated.251

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Attorney General in May 2017 to investigate links between the Russian government and the campaign of Donald Trump. See Mazzetti, Mark, David D. Kirkpatrick and Maggie Haberman. ‘Mueller’s Focus on Adviser to Emirates suggests broader Investigation.’ New York Times, 13 July 2018. www.nytimes.com/2018/03/03/us/ politics/george-nader-mueller-investigation-united-arab-emirates.html (accessed 28 July 2018), and Mazzetti, Mark, Ronen Bergman and David D. Kirkpatrick. ‘Trump Jr. and other Aides met with Gulf Emissary offering Help to win Election.’ New York Times, 16 July 2018. www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/polit ics/trump-jr-saudi-uae-nader-prince-zamel.html (accessed 28 July 2018). This completed the power transfer that had been in the making since early 2015, whereby the principle of agnatic seniority was abolished, along with the horizontal diffusion of authority among the brothers and half-brothers of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Sa‘ud. Hubbard, Ben. ‘Saudi King rewrites Succession, replacing Heir with Son, 31.’ New York Times, 20 January 2018. www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-crownprince-mohammed-bin-salman.html (accessed 26 March 2018). Donald J. Trump Twitter account @realDonaldTrump, 6 June 2017. https://twitter.com/ realDonaldTrump/status/872062159789985792 (accessed 2 July 2018). Batikh, ‘Ali. Interview with author. Istanbul, 23 March 2018; ‘Abd al-Malek, Mohammed. Interview with author. Manchester, 12 August 2017. ‘Abd al-Malek, Mohammed. Interview with author. Manchester, 12 August 2017.

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Whatever the causes for the outbreak of the Gulf crisis, the event had a number of lasting repercussions. On the discursive level the crisis magnified the dissemination of two diametrically opposed representations of the Muslim Brotherhood – one of which painted the group as a terrorist organization, and the other portraying the Brotherhood as Egypt’s missed chance for a democratic transition. These narratives were essentially reproductions of classical Western interpretations of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ and were rooted in age-old Orientalist attitudes. After 2017, these attitudes were proliferated by means of the propagandistic efforts of the region’s competing geopolitical rivals, who poured massive sums of money into their journalistic and academic dissemination. Within the post-truth environment that became the epistemic hallmark of the early twenty-first century, the defenders and detractors of the Brotherhood sought to influence public opinion in their favour by recounting whatever version of ‘facts’ they wanted to believe.252 The former group was led by the State of Qatar, which had invested in mass media as a means of soft power since the establishment of Al Jazeera in 1996. Since the 2000s, Qatar had financed a number of English-speaking news outlets such as the ‘Middle East Monitor’ in 2009, Al Jazeera’s US franchise in 2013, the London-based ‘Middle East Eye’, headed by the former Guardian journalist David Hearst, and the bilingual website the ‘New Arab’ (or ‘Al-Araby Al-Jadeed’) in 2014. The latter outlet was established under the aegis of the Arab–Israeli ‘public intellectual, political philosopher and author’ Azmi Bishara, who also launched the ‘AlAraby Television Network’, which he positioned as an alternative to Al Jazeera.253 In early 2014, Qatar financed the TV channel ‘Mekameleen’ in Turkey, whose content was produced by the Doha-based production company Afnan Media.

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Oxford Dictionaries had selected the notion ‘post-truth’ as the word of the year 2016, defining it as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’. See ‘Word of the Year 2016 is . . . ‘ Oxford Dictionaries. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/ word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016 (accessed 5 August 2018). The expression ‘alternative facts’ had been famously uttered by Kellyanne Conway, Counselor to US President Donald Trump, in an NBC News ‘Meet the Press’ interview with Chuck Todd on 22 January 2017. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSrEEDQgFc8 (accessed 4 August 2018). An intelligent overview of ‘post-truth’ was published by McIntyre, Lee. PostTruth. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2018. The trend towards this kind of nihilistic relativism had been discerned already previously, for instance by Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Uncertainties of Knowledge. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004, pp. 7–15. ‘Muslim Brotherhood, its UK Connections and Media Attacks on the UAE.’ The National. 18 June 2014. www.thenational.ae/uae/government/muslim-brotherhood-itsuk-connections-and-media-attacks-on-the-uae-1.264699 (accessed 15 April 2017).

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These Qatari-sponsored media outlets were complemented by a number of Arabic-speaking websites that were either directly financed by the Brotherhood or by one of its members or sympathizers. The Brotherhood’s ‘official’ channel, ‘Watan’, was funded by the International Organization in London while a number of mid-level activists established grassroots ventures such as the website ‘Rassd’, which was set up in June 2010 on the occasion of the October parliamentary elections. The channel subsequently emerged as a veritable ‘icon of the revolution’.254 One of the main financial benefactors of these ventures was the former director general of Al Jazeera, Wadah Khanfar, who in 2015 and 2016 established ‘Huffington Post Arabic’ and ‘‘Araby Post’, which he funded through his production company Integral Media, as well as the website ‘Noon Post’. Another activist who produced pro-Brotherhood content was Ahmed ‘Abd alHamid, an Egyptian citizen living in Belgium, who launched the website ‘Sasa Post’ the same year.255 On the opposite pole of the ideological spectrum stood the United Arab Emirates, whose government invested significant monetary and diplomatic resources in order to brandish the Brotherhood with the stigma of ‘terrorism’. Already back in 2014 the UAE had started to exert significant diplomatic pressure on the British government, threatening to pull out of major arms agreements and export deals if the UK would not do more to delegitimize the Brotherhood. With the British economy exporting a total of £9.8 billion in goods and services to the UAE as its fourth-largest export market outside the EU, this was not a risk Prime Minister David Cameron was prepared to take.256 On 5 November 2015, during a press conference with ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, Cameron announced that the long-overdue results of the review having been undertaken by Sir John Jenkins and the FCO would be published ‘later this year’.257 In a subsequent statement to members of the House of Commons, Cameron pointed out that ‘parts of the Muslim Brotherhood’ had a ‘highly ambiguous relationship with violent extremism’. He further emphasized that ‘membership of, association with, or influence by the Muslim Brotherhood 254 255

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Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 15 August 2018. Former Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. Geneva, February 2019. ‘UAE told UK: crack down on Muslim Brotherhood or lose Arms Deals.’ The Guardian, 6 November 2015. www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/06/uae-told-uk-crackdown-on-muslim-brotherhood-or-lose-arms-deals (accessed 1 March 2018); ‘UK Intelligence had warned against ‘fruitless’ Probe of Muslim Brotherhood.’ Middle East Eye, 17 December 2015. www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-intelligence-had-warnedagainst-fruitless-probe-muslim-brotherhood-1121433450 (accessed 1 March 2018). Quilliam, Neil. ‘The shifting Power at the Heart of the UK’s “Spy” Row.’ BBC, 27 November 2018. www.bbc.com/news/uk-46322425 (accessed 30 November 2018). ‘Joint Press Conference: David Cameron and President Sisi.’ Government of the United Kingdom, 5 November 2015. www.gov.uk/government/speeches/joint-press-confer ence-david-cameron-and-president-sisi (accessed 1 March 2018).

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should be considered as a possible indicator of extremism’.258 When Jenkins finally published a summary of his findings, the conclusion was that the Brotherhood was ‘prepared to countenance violence – including, from time to time, terrorism – where gradualism [was] ineffective’.259 Weary of the bias inherent in Jenkins’ report, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee launched a counter-investigation. In November 2016, it published a new report that replace^ the metaphor of the Brotherhood as ‘rite of passage’ with that of a ‘firewall against extremism’.260 By March 2017 the FCO’s assessment had been contradicted by another agency within the British political system.261 In parallel to these attempts, the UAE’s Washington-based ambassador, Yousef al-Otaiba, attempted to lobby US lawmakers to turn against the Brotherhood.262 In February 2016, a group of conservative members in the House Judiciary Committee proposed a bill urging the Department of State to list the Brotherhood as a ‘foreign terrorist organization’; however, they failed to bring together the necessary number of senators and representatives for the bill to go forward.263 Emirati attempts at influencing US policy remained similarly unsuccessful after Donald Trump had become president of the United States. Although Rex Tillerson, during his Senate confirmation hearing in January 2017, had associated ISIL with ‘other agents of radical Islam such as al-Qaida, the Muslim Brotherhood, and certain elements within Iran’, the new 258

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Travis, Alan and Randeep Ramesh. ‘Muslim Brotherhood are possible Extremists, David Cameron says.’ The Guardian, 17 December 2015. www.theguardian.com/world/2015/ dec/17/uk-will-not-ban-muslim-brotherhood-david-cameron-says (accessed 1 March 2018). The full report remains embargoed due to concerns that it would trigger a court challenge, but the main findings are available at ‘Muslim Brotherhood Review: Main Findings,’ 17 December 2015. www.gov.uk/government/publications/muslim-brother hood-review-main-findings (accessed 20 August 2017). ‘“Political Islam”, and the Muslim Brotherhood Review.’ House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, 7 November 2016. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/ cmselect/cmfaff/118/118.pdf (accessed 25 March 2018). ‘“Political Islam”, and the Muslim Brotherhood Review: Government Response to the Committee’s sixth Report.’ House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, 6 March 2017, p. 11. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmfaff/967/967 .pdf (accessed 20 August 2017). Emmons, Alex, Ryan Grim and Clayton Swisher. ‘Saudi Crown Prince boasted that Jared Kushner was “in his Pocket”.’ The Intercept, 21 March 2018. https://theintercept.com/ 2018/03/21/jared-kushner-saudi-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salman/ (accessed 18 June 2018); Swisher, Clayton and Ryan Grim. ‘Jared Kushner’s Real-Estate Firm sought Money directly from Qatar Government Weeks before Blockade.’ The Intercept, 2 March 2018. https://theintercept.com/2018/03/02/jared-kushner-real-estate-qatar-blockade/ (accessed 18 June 2018). Diaz-Balart, Mario. ‘H.R.3892 – Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2015.’ United States Congress, 24 February 2016. www.congress.gov/bill/114th-con gress/house-bill/3892/text (accessed 20 August 2018).

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administration was unable to take the final step to declare the Brotherhood a ‘terror organization’.264 After the outbreak of the Gulf crisis in June 2017, further efforts were undertaken to influence the attitudes of US lawmakers against Qatar – either by paying public relations firms to ‘plant’ anti-Qatar stories in the US press or by directly sponsoring policy conferences focusing on Qatar’s ties to Islamic extremism. To date, none of these attempts seem to have been particularly successful.265 The mediatic and diplomatic propaganda battle increasingly sapped into the knowledge production about the Brotherhood. This was particularly the case within the oftentimes self-referential echo chamber of the Washington-based think-tank ecosystem. Not only were many of the ‘nonpartisan’ and ‘independent’ institutions directly or indirectly financed either by the UAE or Qatar, but they proclaimed to act as tools of geopolitical statecraft by providing their respective donors as access points to the US policy-making establishment.266 The main organizations promoting the anti-Brotherhood line concentrated on a number of right-of-centre or far-right conservative think tanks such as the Atlantic Council, the Center for New American Security, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Hudson Institute, the Middle East Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as well as the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.267 At the other side of the 264

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Tillerson, Rex. ‘Senate Confirmation Hearing, Opening Statement,’ 11 January 2017. www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/011117_Tillerson_Opening_Statement.pdf (accessed 20 August 2018). See Greenwald, Glenn. ‘How former Treasury Officials and the UAE are manipulating American Journalists.’ The Intercept, 25 September 2014. https://theintercept.com/2014/ 09/25/uae-qatar-camstoll-group/ (accessed 23 February 2018). In April 2017, George Nader, a political advisor to the UAE, paid $2.5 million to Elliott Broidy, who had previously worked for the Trump campaign, to host a conference in Washington, DC, titled ‘Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood’s global affiliates: new U.S. Administration considers new Policies.’ Foundation for Defense of Democracies, 23 May 2017. www .defenddemocracy.org/events/qatar-and-muslim-brotherhood/ (accessed 15 April 2018). During the event, the Republican Congressman Ed Royce announced that he would introduce legislation to designate Qatar as a ‘terrorist-supporting state’. Also see ‘Mueller Probe Witness secretly backed UAE Agenda in Congress.’ AP News. 26 March 2018. www.apnews.com/b4946f7bf1fe4328b0c81506434aa082/Mueller-probe-witnesssecretly-backed-UAE-agenda-in-Congress (accessed 26 March 2018). A recent analysis on the think-tank industry was published by Drezner, Daniel W. The Ideas Industry. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. In 2016, the Atlantic Council had received at least $1 million from the UAE government, between $250,000 and $999,999 from the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, and at least $1 million from the Lebanese businessman Bahaa Hariri, who had close ties to the House of Sa‘ud. See ‘Honor Roll of Contributors.’ Atlantic Council. www.atlanticcouncil.org/support/ supporters (accessed 15 April 2017). The Center for a New American Security in 2016 received $250,000 from the UAE government for a paper on the legal regime governing the export of drones. See Jilani, Zaid and Ryan Grim. ‘Hacked Emails show top UAE Diplomat

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ideological divide were liberal and centre-left institutions, some of which were funded by Qatar, such as the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC and its satellite organization in Doha, whose establishment Qatar had financed with a $14.8 million grant.268 A number of members and sympathizers of the

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coordinating with pro-Israel Think Tank against Iran.’ The Intercept, 3 June 2017. https:// theintercept.com/2017/06/03/hacked-emails-show-top-uae-diplomat-coordinating-withpro-israel-neocon-think-tank-against-iran/ (accessed 26 March 2018). The Center for Strategic and International Studies received a number of donations from the UAE government, with whom it has a long-standing relationship and whose new glass building, prominently located off Dupont Circle in Washington, DC, had been supported by the UAE with at least $1 million. See ‘U.A.E. and C.S.I.S.: a mutually beneficial Relationship.’ New York Times, 6 September 2014. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/07/us/07think tank-docs8.html (accessed 16 April 2018). The Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Hudson Institute received donations from the UAE government via George Nader, a political advisor to Mohammed bin Zayed, and Elliott Broidy, the deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. Both acted as middlemen involved in money transfers for sponsoring ‘countering violent extremism’-related conferences. See Kirkpatrick, David D. and Mark Mazzetti. ‘How 2 Gulf Monarchies sought to influence the White House.’ New York Times, 21 March 2018. www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/us/ politics/george-nader-elliott-broidy-uae-saudi-arabia-white-house-influence.html (accessed 15 April 2018). The Middle East Institute in 2016 and 2017 collected over $20 million from the UAE government. See Grim, Ryan. ‘Gulf Government gave secret $20 Million Gift to D.C. Think Tank.’ The Intercept, 10 August 2017. https://theintercept.com/2017/08/09/ gulf-government-gave-secret-20-million-gift-to-d-c-think-tank/ (accessed 16 April 2018). The heavily funded Washington Institute for Near East Policy was led by individuals committed to defending America’s special relationship with Israel. See ‘Robert Satloff Doth Protest too Much.’ Foreign Policy (blog). Accessed 6 August 2018. https://foreignpolicy.com/ 2010/04/09/robert-satloff-doth-protest-too-much/. Finally, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which has offices in Bahrain, received over £25 million between 2010 and 2016 from the government of Bahrain. See ‘The IISS Files: Investigation exposes British Thinktank Charity secretly bankrolled by Bahraini Government.’ Bahrain Watch, 6 December 2016. https://bahrainwatch.org/blog/2016/12/06/iiss-files-british-thinktank-bah rain/ (accessed 16 April 2018). Further information about the close relationship of the UAE to the Washington think-tank scene can be gauged from a cache of emails of the UAE’s Ambassador to the United States, Yousef al-Otaiba, published by Global Leaks in June 2017. See e.g. CAP-CNAS.zip on ‘Leak of Yousef Al Otaiba’s Inbox’, updated on 22 September 2017. http://otaiba-inbox.com/ (accessed 14 August 2017). As per March 2018 this website is no longer accessible, but all relevant communications have been downloaded and are in the possession of the author. The Brookings Center received at least $21.6 million by the Qatari government between 2011 and 2014, parts of which were used to fund the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. See ‘At fast-growing Brookings, Donors may have an Impact on Research Agenda.’ Washington Post, 30 October 2014. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/at-fast-growingbrookings-donors-help-set-agenda/2014/10/30/a4ba4e8e-48ef-11e4-891d713f052086a0_story.html (accessed 26 March 2018); Lipton, Eric, Brooke Williams and Nicholas Confessore. ‘Foreign Powers buy Influence at Think Tanks.’ New York Times, 6 September 2014. www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/us/politics/foreign-powers-buy-influ ence-at-think-tanks.html (accessed 26 March 2018).

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Brotherhood promoted the group’s ideology privately, mainly through a range of non-governmental organizations. One example was the Cordoba Foundation in London, which Anas al-Tikriti, the son of a former leader of the ‘Iraqi Islamic Party’ (al-Hizb al-Islami al-‘Iraqi), had established in 2005.269 Another outlet was the Emirates Centre of Human Rights, which was registered to Tikriti’s wife Malath Shakir.270 The fact that both organizations were for some time located at the Westgate House in London’s Ealing district, where the Muslim Brotherhood’s UK operations had been temporarily based, along with the Palestinian charity Interpal, gave way to conspiratorial speculations in the British tabloid press that all these groups were part of a mysterious wider ‘network of extremism’.271 A similar concentration of pro-Brotherhood think tanks took place in Istanbul, where Wadah Khanfar established al-Sharq Forum, organizing various meetings and roundtable discussions where an impressive panoply of journalists, activists and scholars from the pro-Brotherhood milieu gathered to talk about topics such as the ‘transformation of political Islamic movements’ or the Middle East’s ‘new security architecture’.272 The headquarters of the alSharq Forum were located in one of the Vizion Park buildings in Yeni Bosna, next to ‘Amr Darrag’s Egyptian Institute for Studies, and on the same floor as ‘Araby Post (as the previous Huffington Post Arabic was called after its rebranding due to Emirati pressure on its parent organization in the United States). In 2015, Khanfar’s rival Azmi Bishara founded the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, based at the University of Qatar and with the mission to ‘prepare a new generation of enlightened young Arab scholars, critical thinkers, and future leaders’ to serve their societies.273 While Khanfar and Bishara competed with one another for shares in the budget allocations of the Qatari government, their respective media empires constituted, from the

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al-Tikriti, Anas. Interview with author. London, 27 February 2019; ‘The Cordoba Foundation – Cultures in Dialogue. www.thecordobafoundation.com/ (accessed 10 August 2018). ‘The Emirates Centre for Human Rights.’ www.echr.org.uk/ (accessed 10 August 2018). ‘How the Muslim Brotherhood fits into a Network of Extremism.’ Telegraph, 8 February 2015. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/11398538/How-the-MuslimBrotherhood-fits-into-a-network-of-extremism.html (accessed 15 April 2017); Express Newspapers, which had falsely claimed that there was a link between Interpal and Hamas, was forced in 2010 to pay £60,000 to Interpal. See ‘Express pays out £60k over Charity Terrorism-Links Claim.’ Press Gazette, 25 October 2011. https://web.archive .org/web/20111025054552/http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&s torycode=45745 (accessed 22 August 2017). Author’s fieldnotes. Istanbul, 18 and 19 March 2017, 11 February 2018. See the website of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies at www.dohainstitute.edu.qa/ EN/About/Pages/default.aspx (accessed 22 August 2017).

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Qatari government point of view, complementary entities furthering the sheikhdom’s foreign policy ambitions.274 Besides fanning the flames in an intensifying war of perceptions, the Gulf crisis had a number of tangible geopolitical ramifications. For one, it undermined the fragile balance of power in a region that was hardly able to cope with the compounded effects of a number of unprecedented humanitarian and economic tragedies, including in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen. The bickering among the monarchies of the Arab Gulf hastened the polarization of the Middle East into two competing blocks – one dominated by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, including Israel and Egypt, and the other led by the Islamic Republic of Iran, comprising the Syrian regime as well as a number of influential non-state actors such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, various Shia militias in Iraq, such as the Popular Mobilization Forces (Hashd al-Sha‘bi), as well as the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The crisis also accelerated Qatar’s rapprochement with Turkey, which had taken a centrist position until recently, but now launched a massive aid campaign to supply the truncated Qatari economy with much-needed food and consumer products. Turkey’s pivot towards Qatar became evident two days after the outbreak of the Gulf crisis, when the parliament in Ankara approved legislation to send a contingent of up to three-thousand soldiers to its new military base in Doha. Simultaneously, a series of major investment deals were concluded between the two countries, making Doha the seventhhighest investor in the Turkish economy.275 Another outcome of the crisis was that it led to a deeper engagement of Turkey with Iran. Despite their contradictory objectives in Syria, the relationship between Turkey and Iran after 2015 started to improve after 2015. To Erdoğan’s satisfaction, the Islamic Republic had swiftly denounced the coup attempt in July 2016, while the two nations had pro-actively collaborated during the Astana talks. At the same time, Qatar’s import-oriented economy became more integrated with Iranian export markets. A few months after the start of the crisis, the Gulf sheikhdom was able to obtain produce from both Busheir and Istanbul ready for shipment within twenty-four hours. The Gulf crisis not only fragmented the cohesion of the Middle East, but also polarized the internal politics of the Horn of Africa.276 After the crisis in Yemen had spiralled into a full-blown international war in 2015, control 274

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Former Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. Berlin, October 2015. ‘International Direct Investment Relations Report.’ Uluslararası Yatırımcılar Derneği (International Investors Association), 1st Quarter 2017, p. 4. www.yased.org.tr/ ReportFiles/2017/YASED_FDI%20in%20Turkey_Q1_Evaluation%20Report_2017.pdf (accessed 15 October 2017). Clapham, Christopher S. The Horn of Africa: State Formation and Decay. London: Hurst & Company, 2017.

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over the East African coast – and therefore over the vital Bab al-Mandab Strait – had become an increasingly urgent priority for the Middle East’s competing geopolitical rivals. During a visit in December 2017 to Sudan, President Erdoğan signed a leasing agreement for the Suakin port, which stipulated for Turkey to expand its construction projects into building a naval dock for its civilian and military vessels.277 Erdoğan’s visit was shadowed by a six-nation tour by Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who was eager to solidify Qatari influence in East Africa in order to secure long-term agricultural supplies for his country. Investments worth $3.8 billion in infrastructure and tourism development projects along the Red Sea coast were announced, and a Qatari–Turkish partnership was established for building a container facility in Port Sudan. The commercial expansion of Turkey and Qatar in Sudan put these countries into a growing competition with the UAE’s DP World. Elsewhere on the Horn of Africa, the UAE and Saudi Arabia exerted diplomatic pressure on local governments to choose sides in the Gulf crisis, provoking a dangerous political destabilization in a historically contested region.278 This was the case, for instance, in the border region between Djibouti and Eritrea. As both governments were arm-wrestled into supporting the Saudi–Emirati coalition, Qatar announced that it would withdraw its contingent of peacekeepers that had been stationed in Ras Doumeira, enabling the island’s reoccupation by Eritrean troops.279 The consequences of the Gulf crisis were even more palpable in Somalia – a country fractured along multiple feudal, ethnic and factional lines. Since February 2017, the federal government was headed by Mohamed Abdullahi ‘Farmajo’, whose presidential campaign had been allegedly financed by Qatar and who had close ties to that country by virtue of his chief of staff, the former Al Jazeera correspondent Fahad Yasin. The fact that Somalia adopted a neutral position in the Gulf crisis led Emirati and Saudi leaders threaten that they would withdraw budgetary support for the government in Mogadishu. In September 2017 Turkey opened its largest overseas military base in Mogadishu, boasting a total capacity of 20,000 military personnel. A few months later, Erdoğan 277

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‘Turkey to restore Sudanese Red Sea Port and build Naval Dock,’ Reuters, 26 December 2017. www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-sudan-port/turkey-to-restore-sudanese-redsea-port-and-build-naval-dock-idUSKBN1EK0ZC (accessed 1 March 2018); Khaleel, Mohammad Abdulqadir. ‘Iran and Turkey’s Orientation towards Africa.’ International Institute for Iranian Studies, 24 January 2018. https://rasanah-iiis.org/english/centre-forresearches-and-studies/iran-and-turkeys-orientation-towards-africa/ (accessed 24 July 2018). Abdi, Rashid. ‘A dangerous Gulf in the Horn: how the Inter-Arab Crisis is fueling regional Tensions.’ International Crisis Group (Commentary), 3 August 2017. www .crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabian-peninsula/dangerous-gulfhorn-how-inter-arab-crisis-fuelling-regional-tensions (accessed 1 July 2018). ‘Qatar withdraws Troops from Djibouti–Eritrea Border Mission.’ Reuters, 14 June 2017. www.reuters.com/article/us-gulf-qatar-djibouti/qatar-withdraws-troops-from-djiboutieritrea-border-mission-idUSKBN1950W5 (accessed 10 April 2018).

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announced that Turkey was to deploy a total of 60,000 soldiers at its four overseas military bases by 2022.280 Given Mogadishu’s continued intransigence, the UAE accelerated its negotiations with Somalia’s semi-autonomous northern regions. In Somaliland and Puntland, the UAE gained concessions to construct port facilities in Berbera and Bosaso.281 Somaliland’s strategic position was further enhanced when DP World partnered up with the government of Ethiopia, which agreed to construct a $300 million corridor linking Berbera port to Addis Ababa. By downgrading the relative importance of the Doraleh Container Terminal, the deal further weakened the strategic importance of Djibouti.282 As a final geopolitical consequence, the Gulf crisis of 2017 added a new dimension to the relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran.283 In recent years the Islamic Republic had seen its international position diminish. This was the case, for instance, in early 2016, when Iranian diplomats were expulsed from Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti in the wake of diplomatic troubles following the execution by Saudi Arabia of the Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. From 2017 onwards, the Trump administration threatened that the United States would withdraw from the JCPOA and re-impose sanctions. As Iran evaluated the potential of Sunni non-state actors as a means to manipulate Arab politics, strategists in Teheran found the Brotherhood hesitant of engaging with Iran. Despite the backlash the Brotherhood had witnessed from the part of the conservative Gulf countries after the July 2013 coup, the vanguard leadership continued to prioritize its relationship with Saudi Arabia over that with Iran. In light of the changing geopolitical realities, the Iranian regime launched a new initiative to approach the Muslim Brotherhood. According to a cache of Iranian 280

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‘Turkey opens military Base in Mogadishu to train Somali Soldiers.’ Reuters, 30 September 2017. www.reuters.com/article/us-somalia-turkey-military/turkey-opensmilitary-base-in-mogadishu-to-train-somali-soldiers-idUSKCN1C50JH (accessed 1 March 2018); ‘Khatta Turkiyā li-Nashr 60 alf ‘Askarī bi-4 Qawā‘id khārijiyya baynahā ˙ Qatar (A Turkish ˙Plan to deploy 60,000 Soldiers in four foreign Bases, including in ˙ Qatar).’ Al-Khalij al-Jadid, 18 January 2018. https://goo.gl/FhXkX8 (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 1 June 2018). ‘Somalia and the Gulf Crisis.’ International Crisis Group (Report no. 260), 5 June 2018. www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/somalia/260-somalia-and-gulf-crisis (accessed 10 August 2018). ‘Dubay tasaytar ‘alā Qanāa al-Suwīs fahal tas‘ā li-Tanmiyyatiha am li-l-Haymana ˙ controls the Suez Canal: is it seeking to develop it or to dominate it?).’ ‘alayha? (Dubai Noon Post, 13 August 2017. www.noonpost.org/content/19371 (accessed 1 July 2018); DP World was expelled from Doraleh in early 2018 due to the UAE’s negotiations with Somaliland over the operation of Berbera port. See ‘Djibouti seizes Control of Dubai-run Doraleh Port,’ Al Jazeera English, 24 February 2018. www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/02/ djibouti-seizes-control-dubai-run-dolareh-port-180223200900708.html (accessed 1 July 2018). Badawi and al-Sayyad. ‘Iran and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood,’ p. 11.

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intelligence cables that were anonymously leaked to The Intercept in 2019, the Islamic Republic had siince 2014 attempted to revive its relations with the Brotherhood. This effort was initially led by the IRGC, a senior member of which attended a summit in Istanbul in April 2014, where Iranian delegates met with Ibrahim Munir, Youssef Nada and Mahmud al-‘Abiary to find areas of mutual interest.284 Other efforts were undertaken through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had gradually replaced the IRGC as the traditional gatekeeper of the ‘Brotherhood file’.285 Under Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iranian emissaries launched a multi-pronged outreach campaign that yielded several meetings in late 2017 and early 2018.286 As these efforts show, Iran had started to conceptualize the Brotherhood’s internal schisms as an opportunity to build relationships with individuals across a wide organizational spectrum. This included the senior Guidance Office leaders in Istanbul and the International Organization in London, as well as foreign representatives of the General Office. Overall, the Iranian representatives seem to have intuitively gravitated towards the second-rank leaders, whose proclivity for political activism dovetailed with Iranian objectives of diffusing Islamic revolutionary ideas among Sunni Islamist groups. The vanguard leaders’ dogmatic tendency to separate the Brotherhood’s da‘wa-focused mission from its political objectives, on the other hand, was seen as unfavourable to Iranian strategic objectives. Besides these ideological calculations, Iran seems to have also been motivated by pragmatic considerations: after all, it would be the younger generation, and not the eighty- or ninety-year-old vanguard leaders, who would come to occupy top organizational positions in the future.287 As far as the Muslim Brotherhood was concerned, the lack of engagement with Iran during Morsi’s tenure was a point of friction. Eager to articulate a foreign policy independent from the Guidance Office, the second-rank leaders in the Founding Body of the Muslim Brotherhood Abroad reproached the elders for having failed to accept Iranian overtures. Despite attempts to adopt a pragmatic course of action towards Iran, they remained constrained by the logic of Middle East geopolitics. Any substantial rapprochement with Iran was possible only as far as it served the foreign policy objectives of their state sponsors, Turkey and Qatar, whose governments were aware of the interactions between the second-rank leaders and the Iranians. But even if they 284

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Risen, James. ‘A secret Summit: Iran’s Quds Force and the Muslim Brotherhood considered an Alliance against Saudi Arabia.’ The Intercept, 18 November 2019. https://theintercept.com/2019/11/18/iran-muslim-brotherhood-quds-force/ (accessed 20 November 2019). Ibid., pp. 52 ff. Former Brotherhood member (anonymous). Interview with author. Istanbul, October 2017. This narrative is based on the research of Badawi and al-Sayyad. ‘Iran and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.’

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would have actively encouraged such a rapprochement, it was clear to the second-rank leaders that Saudi Arabia continued to be the primary hegemon in the region, and that the relationship with the Kingdom needed to be prioritized at all costs. Not only was the Saudi regional project of unifying the Sunni Muslim world against Shia encroachment congruent with the Brotherhood’s outlook, but too close a collaboration with Iran might provoke Mohammed bin Salman to mount a full-blown crackdown on local and foreign Brotherhood members living in the Kingdom. The Brotherhood thus depended crucially on Saudi On the other hand, Arabia’s goodwill in terms of its survival in the Kingdom. Mohammed bin Salman needed the Brotherhood’s support if he wanted to effectively contain Iran’s ideological and military expansion. This was the case in Iraq, for instance, where the Brotherhood became the only Sunni group with a countrywide organization. Its removal would have ‘burst open the floodgates of Iranian expansion’.288 Similarly in Yemen, Saudi Arabia’s dependency on the Brotherhood led Mohammed bin Salman in late 2017 seek an agreement with the leader of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform, Mohammad al-Yadumi, whose loyalty the Saudi-led coalition needed in order to ensure a Houthi defeat. Mohammed bin Salman asked that Yadumi publicly distanced himself from the Brotherhood’s International Organization. This gesture that was symbolically underlined by the suspension of the membership of the Yemeni revolutionary activist Tawakul Karman following her outbursts against Saudi military strikes in Yemen.289 However, Mohammed bin Salman remained publicly opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood. That much he made clear in an April 2018 interview with The Atlantic, where he subsumed the Brotherhood, Iran and Sunni terror groups under the framework of a ‘triangle of evil’.290 Always concerned about political activism in the Kingdom, Saudi state officials threatened to ‘eradicate’ any trace of Brotherhood ideology from school curricula and books and ‘remove’ all teachers and educators who sympathized with the group. Narratives that sought to depict the Brotherhood as a radical and 288 289

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al-Tikriti, Anas. Interview with author. London, 27 February 2019. ‘Al-Yadūmī yatahamm Atrāfān bi-Shaytāna “al-Islāh” . . . wa yarhab bi-“l-Mū’tamar” ˙ ˙ “al-Islah” ˙ (al-Yadumi accuses the ˙Parties of demonizing . . . ˙and welcomes “the Conference”).’ Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 7 January 2018. https://goo.gl/bYCcvW (link shortened with URL link shortener, accessed 1 June 2018); ‘Saudi–Emirati Overture on Yemen deepens Houthi Isolation.’ Arabia Foundation. 15 December 2017. www.arabia foundation.org/arabia-comment/saudi-emirati-overture-on-yemen-deepens-houthi-iso lation/ (accessed 8 August 2018). Al Sa‘ud, Mohammed bin Salman. Interview with Jeffrey Goldberg. ‘Saudi Crown Prince: Iran’s Supreme Leader “makes Hitler look good”.’ The Atlantic, 2 April 2018. www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/04/mohammed-bin-salman-iranisrael/557036/ (accessed 5 August 2018).

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extremist organization were probably as much directed to the leaders of the Brotherhood, as they were designed to cater to Western Orientalist perceptions, especially eying the officials of the Trump administration on whose goodwill Mohammed bin Salman depended in his attempt to make himself Saudi Arabia’s undisputed ruler. From the Saudi perspective, it was clear that the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, so concisely enumerated in the ‘twenty concise principles’ of the ‘first pillar of the oath’, appealed to a silent majority among Sunni Muslims across the Arab and Islamic world. As the People’s Assembly elections in Egypt of late 2011 had shown, and as the 1991 elections in Algeria and the 2006 elections in Gaza had underlined previously, the Brotherhood had so far won any vote if, indeed, free and fair elections were held. There was little to suggest that, under similar circumstances, this scenario would not be repeated in other countries of the Middle East.

Ninety Years of Giving On 1 April 2018 the Muslim Brothers gathered in the Ali Emiri Efendi Cultural Centre in Istanbul to celebrate the ninetieth anniversary of their Society. The venue was situated in the prestigious Fathi district in historical Constantinople, sealed off by crowd control barriers and roadblocks and surrounded by several armoured riot police trucks. Visitors seeking entry to the centre had to first undergo a body scan by Turkish security personnel and were then led through a metal detector before entering a hall with a black-and-white tiled floor. Inside, organizers assiduously bustled around, walking busily with their phones and making the last preparations before the grand show was about to start. From 11 a.m. onwards, growing numbers of Brothers entered the venue. They were greeted by ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Fattah, the reclusive personal assistant of Mahmud Hussein, and Midhat al-Haddad, the brother of the jailed ‘Issam alHaddad. The sound of clapping hands, boisterous laughter and hugs filled the entry hall as the members of this old boys’ club greeted one another: ‘al-salam wa ‘aleykum – wa ‘aleykum al-salam, ya akhi’. Most were dressed in Westernstyle suits but some wore traditional clothing. The majority were Egyptians, but Turks, Palestinians, Syrians and Malaysians were also present, distinguishable by the keffiyas or taqiyyas they carried around their shoulders and on their heads. Some had brought their wives and daughters, who were dressed in discrete pastel-coloured garments and hijabs. Every now and then, a VIP delegate was whisked through the entry hall to the elevator in the back, surrounded by bodyguards and a few groupies who waved their blue-lighted smart phones through the air in order to shoot a picture. Here came Khalid Mash‘al, the leader of Hamas’ political wing, and there went Mahmud Hussein, followed minutes later by Ibrahim Munir.

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The theatre-style auditorium that was to house the celebrations was located on the second floor. The corridor leading to the auditorium was flanked with a bookstand and a number of dark-green banners depicting the faces, names and biographies of the nine General Guides, as well as a number of other important intellectuals of political Islamic thought. The corridor’s walls were adorned with some two-hundred pictures displaying major figures and milestones of the Brotherhood’s history: the famous black-and-white photo of Hassan al-Banna giving a sermon in the midst of an electrified crowd; Sa‘id Ramadan during his 1948 visit to Palestine, wearing a tarbush and flanked by two men in military fatigues; Zaynab alGhazali and Sayyid Qutb’s sister Hamida, both dressed in long white robes, probably en route to the Hajj pilgrimage; Qutb himself, sitting behind prison bars, his melancholic eyes tiredly fixating an undefined point in the distance; Mustafa Mashhur in Jerusalem, smiling and holding hands with Yasser Arafat; the corpulent Mahdi ‘Akif leading a visitor down the stairs of the Brotherhood’s Moqattam headquarters; Sa‘d alKatatni chairing his first parliamentary session in 2012; and finally Dr Mohammed Morsi – the tragic hero who perhaps best epitomized the epic saga of the Brotherhood’s rise and fall.291 By 12 p.m., some five-hundred participants had installed themselves on redcushioned chairs lining the rows of the auditorium. On a large, dark-green backdrop on the stage, flanked by two neon-illuminated Brotherhood logos, stood in elaborate Arabic calligraphy: ‘we celebrate the Society of the Muslim Brothers’, followed by a prominently displayed number ‘90’. On a golden ribbon below was written the theme of the meeting: ‘Ninety Years of Giving’. A quarter of the audience consisted of women, who had been assigned to the left third of the auditorium’s seats. A small corridor separated them from the men, who took up the remaining two-thirds of the seats. About half of the audience was in their fifties, sixties and beyond, while another third was in their late thirties and forties. The rest of the attendees – perhaps 20 per cent – were in their late teens, twenties or early thirties. The front rows were reserved for VIPs: at the centre of the first row sat Khalid Mash‘al, flanked by Ibrahim Munir to his right and Mahmud Hussein to his left. The advisor of the Turkish president, Yasin Aktay, sat next to Munir while Mohammed Hikmet Walid, the General Observer of the Syrian Brotherhood, sat next to Hussein. Unsurprisingly, neither ‘Amr Darrag, ‘Ali Batikh nor Ahmed ‘Abd alRahman were present. The celebrations started when an Imam recited some verses of the al-‘Imran (the Family of Imran) sura. This was followed by short speeches of two teenagers before a procession of youngsters entered the auditorium, solemnly marching onto the stage while carrying a wooden pole from which hung a very 291

Author’s fieldnotes. Istanbul, 1 April 2018.

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large, dark-green flag depicting the Brotherhood’s logo. The ill-choreographed ritual was accompanied by a cacophony of some two-dozen voices who cantillated the ‘Brotherhood motto’ – so-called and frequently cited by Western ‘terrorism experts’ to support the narrative of the Brotherhood’s nefarious intentions: ‘God is our goal. The Prophet is our leader. The Quran is our constitution. Jihad is our way. Death in the service of God is the loftiest of our wishes.’ But the disharmonious way in which these phrases were uttered fell short of the fierce battle cry for jihad, which these experts made them seem to be. The audience seemed hardly impressed and, even as someone on stage suddenly yelled ALLAAAAHU AKBAR!, seemingly attempting to energize the phlegmatic crowd, the call was reciprocated by perhaps a dozen or so interspersed handclaps and the disheartened, tired murmuring of a few: Allahu akbar . . . Allahu akbar. Then followed a series of long-winded speeches, the first of which was entirely read from paper by Ibrahim Munir. Standing tiredly behind the podium in his oversized dark-grey suit, the eighty-year-old uncharismatic ‘Secretary General of the International Organization of the Society of the Muslim Brothers’ repeated all the classical formalisms out of which the Brotherhood’s ideology was assembled: the Society had been founded in 1928 by the martyred Iman Hasan al-Banna (God bless his soul) and since then had grown deep roots in Egyptian society. It was a ‘a Salafi call, a Sunni way, a Sufi truth, a political organization, an athletic group, a cultural– scientific institution, an economic company and a social idea’. It had been cracked down upon repeatedly by various governments, yet it had always reemerged to perform its perennial, God-given mission: to carry the message of Islam to the peoples of the world. Turning to current events, Munir announced (by now, his brittle voice was barely audible anymore) that the power of the coup was about to collapse within a short while and that the Brotherhood would emerge victorious once again. He reminded his audience that ‘peacefulness’ was the only viable strategy to confront the regime. Violence, on the other hand, would fail to bring the Brotherhood closer to its professed goal of an Islamic caliphate. In light of the present circumstances, all that could be done was to be patient and ‘to pray to God, so that He may have mercy and defeat the coupists around the despicable Sisi and his dogs’.292 Munir’s address was followed by a series of speeches by the Syrian Mohammed Hikmet Walid, the Palestinian Khalid Mash‘al, and the Turk Yasin Aktay, each addressing the political situation in their respective 292

‘Jamā‘at al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn tahayī al-Dhikrā al-tis‘īn li-Ta’sīsihā (The Muslim Brotherhood celebrates the 90th ˙Commemoration of its Founding).’ Al Jazeera Mubashir, 1 April 2018. www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qz1IVpzkh4 (accessed 8 August 2018).

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countries. A number of younger Brothers spoke as well, their litanies imitating the same verbose circumlocutions that were used by the elders. An hour-and-a-half into the ceremony, the back rows of the theatre were half empty, as most younger Brothers had reassembled in the corridors outside, where they talked, laughed and drank Pepsi Cola and apple juice. Among those who remained, many played with their phones or talked to their neighbours. At times, the entire auditorium was engulfed with a brimming sound of chatting voices that made it difficult to understand the speakers gesturing behind the podium on the stage. After another hour or so, as some of the attendees had already left the festivities, a poorly produced documentary film once again showed the Brotherhood’s heroic rise and tragic fall before the ceremony finally concluded. According to an article published by the Middle East Monitor the following day, ‘thousands of the Brotherhood’s members from various Arab countries’ had participated. It was an obvious inflation of participant numbers for an event that could hardly be described as a ‘great success’.293 By the spring of 2018 the Society of the Muslim Brothers was more divided than it had ever been before. Even a letter sent in January 2018 by the General Guide from prison, which had urged the squabbling leaders to do ‘everything in their capacity to solve the internal crisis and calm the situation’, was unable to reunite the fractured tanzim.294 The recently elected members of the General Office in Egypt, certain of the ‘democratic legitimacy’ they enjoyed among the rank and file, had little incentive to subordinate themselves to the diktat of an unimaginative and dogmatic leadership-in-exile. Ninety years after six disempowered Egyptians of the British camp labour force had visited Hasan al-Banna, urging him to ‘perceive the road to action [and] the path to the service of the homeland, the religion and the nation’,295 and nearly six years after Mohammed Morsi had spectacularly won the presidency of Egypt, there seemed to be ‘simply no way that the Brotherhood [leadership] could come together to have a reasonable discussion about its future, its strategy and its organization, not to mention the shape of the relationship with the regime’.296

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‘Muslim Brotherhood celebrates “90 Years of Giving”.’ Middle East Monitor, 2 April 2018. www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180402-turkey-90-years-on-foundation-of-mus lim-brotherhood/ (accessed 3 April 2018) Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 15 August 2018. Mitchell. The Society, p. 8. Fayed, ‘Ammar. Interview with author. Istanbul, 20 March 2017.

u Conclusion

History, as it is normally written, usually represents ‘political’ – public – events as the most important, while spiritual – ‘inner’ – events are largely forgotten; yet prima facie it is they – the ‘inner’ events – that are the most real, the most immediate experience of human beings; they, and only they, are what life, in the last analysis, is made of. Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox (1953)

One of the most important questions asked by the members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and which continues to haunt them until today, was why their experiment with power had failed so abruptly and so disastrously. Why was it that the Muslim Brotherhood, after having spectacularly won almost half of the seats of Egypt’s parliament in early 2012 and then clinched the presidency six months later, was ousted in such a dramatic fashion, and after only one year? The most common answer given by many Brotherhood members was that the Morsi government had been systematically boycotted by conspirators in the Egyptian ‘deep state’. They were regarded as ‘a bunch of outsiders’ who should not be allowed to govern.1 Some even believed that the military had decided back in June 2012 that the Brotherhood should not last longer than one year.2 These internal centres of power had collaborated with the Israeli, the Saudi and the Emirati governments in a devious scheme to ‘divide and rule’ Egypt.3 Morsi’s lack of experience, and the trust he had placed in his Minister of Defence, caused this well-intentioned, albeit perhaps naive, president to tumble down a perfidious rabbit hole of power plays and political intrigues. In the final analysis, an unsavoury alliance of internal and external actors had created the conditions for the 30 June demonstrations to unfold, which had provided the rationale for the military to overthrow the democratically elected government of Mohammed Morsi.4 1 2 3 4

al-Qazzaz, Hussein. Interview with author. Istanbul, 28 March 2018. Sudan, Mohammed. Interview with author. London, 27 January 2018. Tariq*. Interview with author. Cairo, 30 January 2013. Fieldnotes, 20 June 2013; ‘Dangerous Information: Tamarrod Campaign asks the Military to execute Massacre at the Republican Guard.’ Ikhwanonline.com, 9 July 2013. www .ikhwanonline.com/Section/156266/Default.aspx (accessed 30 September 2017).

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There is no doubt that elements within the Egyptian state had boycotted the government of Mohammed Morsi, as evidenced in the welldocumented collaboration between Tamarrud and the military.5 Similarly, foreign governments had certainly favoured, if not actively encourraged, the return of secular military rule over the unpredictability of an idiosyncratic Islamist government. However, the manoeuvres of external actors explains the fate of the Brotherhood only insufficiently. For in a final analysis, the Brotherhood was a political actor in its own right, endowed with its own agency. Representing it as a mere pawn of history whose fate is determined by the machinations of uncontrollable outside forces fails to advance our understanding of the failures in decision-making that have led to its downfall. In this book, I have suggested that this process of decision-making must be understood against the reality of an ongoing internal conflict between two schools of thought. On the one hand stood an energetic Islamist intelligentsia around ‘Omar al-Tilmisani, who wanted the Brotherhood to engage in the world of politics. Having come of age during the days of the Islamic awakening that marked student life at Egyptian university campuses during the early 1970s, this generation was driven by careerist ambitions and political entrepreneurialism. Its ethos was based on meritocracy, pragmatism and political expediency and they regarded the Brotherhood as a marketplace for ideas and resources that could translate their desire for significance into political currency. They envisioned an ‘open Society’ that would welcome anyone who was willing to work for the Islamic project, and where progression within the internal hierarchy was based on democratic decision-making procedures. This generation was opposed by a group of hardliners whose perceptions were shaped by a different set of historical experiences. Many belonged to the generation of the ‘first cohort’. They were educated by Hasan al-Banna and had experienced Nasser’s prison camps first-hand during lengthy ordeals. Having been isolated from wider society for much of their lives, their worldview was informed by memories of torture, hardship and humiliation, which translated into an inward-focused state of emotional withdrawal and a psychological disposition distrustful of anyone who did not share similar kinds of experiences.6 They saw the politically ambitious adherents of the Tilmisani school as insurgent renegades who had never tasted the bitter feelings of suffering they themselves had endured, and who, therefore, could not rightfully claim the mantle of leadership. Whereas the Tilmisanians wanted the Brotherhood to be an active player in the political field, the vanguard leaders believed that the Society should limit itself to religious and educational 5 6

Ketchley. Egypt in a Time of Revolution, pp. 140 ff. Madi, Abu al-‘Ala’. Interview with author. Cairo, 21 May 2013.

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activities, including evangelistic proselytizing and preaching, calling Muslims to Islam’s salvation message and gradually transforming society from the bottom-up. Since the Brotherhood’s reconstitution in the mid 1970s, the adherents of these respective schools of thought coalesced into two distinct political coalitions, each of which attempted to justify its strategic priorities by shaping the Brotherhood’s ideology in a way that suited their specific worldview. Basing their decisions on contrasting experiences and value-systems, the members of these coalitions were pitted against each other in personal and oftentimes acrimonious conflicts over control of administrative and financial resources. At times, the squabbling among the rivalling aspirants to leadership took a regretfully pitiful tone for a ‘Society’ that claimed stewardship over the meaning of ‘true Islam’. When the Egyptian uprising erupted in January 2011, the Brotherhood’s internal power plays had divided its ranks to such a degree that the organization was unable to cope with the external crisis that came in the form of an explosive revolution and a turbulent transition. After the remaining Tilmisanians had been expelled from the womb of the Society, first in 2010 with the resignation of Mohammed Habib, and then in 2012 with the dismissal of ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh, as well as the members of its youth wing, the Brotherhood had lost much of the intellectual resources that could have been productively leveraged to the task of steering a fractured Egyptian polity through the period of governance. What remained was an exclusivist and pyramid-structured organization, ruled by a vanguard that envisioned itself as leading the faithful believers ‘through the vast ocean of ignorance that has encompassed the entire world’.7 As one former sympathizer had mentioned, this group resembled ‘a black box’ about which ‘nobody knows anything, not even the government or the secret service’.8 During the subsequent transition, the Brotherhood’s internal incongruencies led to a series of flawed decisions that exacerbated already existing conflicts while further alienating its revolutionized youth members. The first error was the leadership’s failure to embrace the revolutionary fervour that had been kindled during the 2011 uprising. While the rank and file fought side-by-side with the revolutionaries during the Battle of the Camel on 2 February, the Guidance Office withdrew its members from Tahrir Square as soon as the departure of Hosni Mubarak had been announced. By doing so, the Brotherhood committed its second error.9 Indeed, it could be argued that the only way for the uprising to turn into a real revolution would have been for Tahrir Square to remain occupied after Mubarak’s ouster. If the revolutionary pressure would have 7 8 9

Qutb. Signposts, p. 58. Mohammed. Interview with author. Sixth of October City, 26 July 2012. Ban, Ahmed. Interview with author. Cairo, 14 April 2014.

conclusion

391

been upheld, the Brotherhood may have been able to leverage the support of the street during its negotiations with the SCAF in order to push for fundamental changes in Egypt’s social contract, such as the adoption of a new constitution and the abolishment of the military’s supra-constitutional role.10 Given the enmeshment of the military in the fabric of the Egyptian state, it is difficult to know whether this would have been possible at all. In any case, the Brotherhood would have needed to adopt a truly revolutionary position, and it was precisely this that the vanguard leaders were unable or unwilling to do.11 That much was obvious during the Mohammed Mahmud Street clashes of November 2011, which constituted the backdrop for the Brotherhood’s third error of judgement. The fact that the Guidance Office explicitly interdicted its members to defend the martyrs’ families against the assaults of the security state indicated the degree to which the vanguard prioritized their relationship with the army over the aims of the revolution. As soon as the Brotherhood was confronted with the task of governing Egypt, its structural weaknesses became fully apparent. After having taken power, Morsi cobbled together a cabinet of ideologues rather than technocrats. This caused a number of cognitive fallacies, such as Morsi’s overconfidence in his own abilities to transform Egypt, the Brotherhood’s single-minded obsession with pushing through a new constitution, and a naive faith that the military and the United States would ultimately be on the Brotherhood’s side. The combination of these factors led to the Brotherhood’s fourth cardinal error: the adoption of the presidential decrees of November 2012. As public opinion started to turn against the Brotherhood, various institutional actors of the Egyptian state forged a consensus that Morsi’s time was up, which enabled the military coup of 3 July 2013 and the final coup de grâce on 14 August. During the following years, the Brotherhood became virtually consumed by its internal identity crisis. In addition to the Shakespearean question of the Society’s raison d’être, an emboldened second-rank leadership pointed to the errors in judgement the vanguard leaders had committed during Morsi’s governing tenure. With growing frequency, they argued for deep-seated organizational reforms in order to overcome the current crisis.12 But the senior leaders of the Guidance Office downplayed any mistakes on their part, arguing instead that they were only humans and that, after all, errare humanum est. Rather than adopting a confrontational approach, as the second-rank leaders 10

11

12

Fergusson, Niall. Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals. New York: Basic Books, 1997. See on this point Hamid, Shadi. Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014; and Brown, Nathan J. Arguing Islam After the Revival of Arab Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Sudan, Mohammed. Interview with author. London, 27 January 2018.

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wished, they insisted on ‘peaceful’ methods in order to solve the crisis in Egypt. Paradoxically, the second-rank leaders’ embrace of ‘qualitative operations’ as a continuation of politics by other means transformed ‘Omar al-Tilmisani’s political school of thought into a kind of Clausewitzian post-Tilmisanianism. ***

Let us, in conclusion, turn to the question of how the subjective approach can inform future research on how to approach the Brotherhood in particular, and Islamist movements in general. As stated in the Introduction of this book, political scientists had traditionally conceptualized the Brotherhood through the framework of social movement theory. According to this theory, the Brotherhood was typically presented as a unified and coherent social and political actor that could be identified ‘by the discourse of a single ideology’.13 However, as I have hoped to show, the Brotherhood had rarely been ‘one single Islamic body’, as both its supporters and its detractors liked to claim.14 Rather than a unified movement, the history of the Society of the Muslim Brothers resembled much more a series of ongoing internal confrontations over status, authority and leadership, opposing two schools of thought whose representatives had conflicting interests and competing worldviews, and where personal animosities, power plays, insurgencies and internal coups were the order of the day.15 This organizational conflict was not unique to the Brotherhood, and it did not happen for the first time, as the internal leadership contest in 1947 between Hasan al-Banna and his deputy, Ahmed al-Sukkari, suggests.16 Neither is this kind of organizational conflict specific to the Brotherhood. As Max Weber had observed already decades ago, conflict is an essential property of various kinds of political organizations.17 One has to look no further than to the early history 13

14 15

16 17

Bayat, Asef. ‘Islamism and Social Movement Theory.’ Third World Quarterly 26, no. 6 (2005), pp. 891–908. ‘Akif, Mahdi. Interview with author. Cairo, 19 May 2013. Collins, Randall. Conflict Sociology: Toward an Explanatory Science. New York: Academic Press, 1975, p. 289. Mitchell. The Society, pp. 53 ff. Weber, Max. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie. 5. Auflage [Nachdruck] / besorgt von Johannes Winckelmann. Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, originally published in 1922, pp. 551–624. Weber highlighted how members of organizations pursue political and status interest, which led him to develop a powerful theory of organization as part of his sociology of authority (Soziologie der Herrschaft). This aspect of internal conflict in Weber’s work has been somewhat lost in the English translation by Talcott Parsons (Economy and Society: an Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley; London: University of California Press, 1978). For a detailed discussion, see Vallier, Ivan and David Ernest Apter. Comparative Methods in Sociology: Essays on Trends and Applications. University of California Press, 1971, pp. 75 ff. Also see the discussion in Collins. Conflict Sociology, pp. 286–347.

conclusion

393

of, say, the Communist Party in Russia, whose debates during the Second Congress in 1903 were primarily concerned with organizational matters. It was not until February 1917, when Lenin had already returned to Russia, that the organizational conflict morphed into a wider argument over which faction was ideologically closer to Marxist orthodoxy.18 The style and structure of these debates strongly resembled those among the squabbling leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. In light of the evidence of internal conflict, it may be useful to conceptualize the Brotherhood as a ‘political organization’ rather than a ‘social movement’. This broadens the analytical and comparative focus beyond the narrow spectrum of ‘Islamist movements’ with their built-in neo-Orientalist assumptions of ‘Islamic exceptionalism’.19 This approach also avoids an overstating of the role of ideology, and the presumed causality between ideology and political behaviour.20 In a final analysis, the Brotherhood’s ideology seems to say little about the underlying historical, social and psychological dynamics that have shaped political decision-making during the period of Morsi’s rule. As suggested by the Oxford political theorist Michael Freeden, ideology is not a fixed and immutable entity that somehow dictates how human beings behave, as the Marxist reading would suggest. Rather, ideology should be conceptualized as a fluid, performative and continuously contested ‘cluster of concepts’ through which we can gain insight into the complex ways in which the political worlds of individuals are structured, and what meaning they assign to social and political phenomena.21 It is in this light that the gathering of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Ali Emiri Efendi Cultural Centre on 1 April 2018 has to be seen. Persecuted in 18

19

20

21

The very etymology of the terms ‘Mensheviks’ and ‘Bolsheviks’ were of a technical nature, referring to the ‘minority’ and the ‘majority’ of the delegates of the Social Democratic Party. See Harding, Neil. Leninism. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996, p. 11. Hamid, Shadi. Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam Is Reshaping the World. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016. Kandil. Inside the Brotherhood, pp. 47, 85 and 139. A similar argument was made by Jasim Sultan, the former General Observer of the Muslim Brotherhood in Qatar, who adopted the concept of ‘dense ideology’ (al-kathafa al-idyulujiyya) to explain the Brotherhood’s failure: Sultan, Jasim. Azmat al-Tanzīmāt al-Islāmiyya: al-Ikhwān namūdhajan (The ˙ Crisis of Islamist Organizations: the Example of the Brotherhood). Beirut: al-Shabaka alʻArabiyya li-l-Abhath wa-l-Nashr, 2015. A variety of the ‘mind-set’ argument was made by Gambetta, Diego and Steffen Hertog. Engineers of Jihad: the Curious Connection Between Violent Extremism and Education. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. These arguments were contested by Ketchley, Neil and Michael Biggs in ‘The Educational Contexts of Islamist Activism: Elite Students and Religious Institutions in Egypt.’ Mobilization: An International Quarterly 22, no. 1 (March 2017), pp. 57–76. See the concept of ideology suggested by Freeden, Michael. Interview with author. Oxford, 7 November 2016; Freeden, Michael. Ideologies and Political Theory: a Conceptual Approach. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, pp. 2–4; Freeden, Michael. Interview with author. Oxford, 7 November 2016.

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their own land, and with their friends and family members lingering in Egyptian prison cells, this group of exiled men and women had come together to find spiritual and psychological support in the womb of an emotional community. The Society was a vessel through which they could make sense of their shattered lives and find meaning for the pain and hardship they had endured. At the same time, Sayyid Qutb’s vanguardist model provided them with an intellectual strategy to bypass their traumatic historical experiences of the past. The narrative of trials and tribulations were, therefore, a mechanism through which they could corroborate their painful memories and translate their sacrifices into narratives of steadfastness and heroism. The circle of ‘love and affection’ that organizational membership in the Society conferred gave them a sense of belonging in a world that they perceived to be fundamentally unjust. The amount of years by which the Brotherhood’s objectives were to be achieved was only of secondary importance. It could be ‘now or next generation, this is not important’.22 Eventually, they believed, they would return to their homeland to continue working on the Islamic project in order to ‘guide humanity to the truth, leading mankind to good and the illumination of the entire world with the light of Islam’.23

22 23

‘Abd al-Ghany, Ayman. Interview with author. Istanbul, 1 April 2018. al-Banna, Hasan. ‘Ilā aiy Shay’ nad‘ū al-Nās? (To What Do We Invite Humanity?)’ in Collection of Letters, pp. 11–35.

u Epilogue

My God will help us, for He refuses injustice. He needs to filter the Brotherhood, like gold. If you want to get pure gold nuggets, you have to separate the gold from the base stones. The Rab‘a massacre to us is like a fire that will purify us. Tariq, a Brotherhood rank-and-file member (September 2013)

On 15 September 2013, I sat in the living room of Tariq’s small apartment, located on the tenth floor of a run-down high-rise building in al-Sayyida Zainab. Tariq, whom I had befriended a year ago, was the captain of one of the Brotherhood’s families in Cairo’s Darb al-Ahmar neighbourhood. This would be my final research visit in Egypt: three months later the Brotherhood would be declared a terrorist organization, and Egypt would become too dangerous to conduct research on this topic. Tariq was wearing his galabiyya and sat on a wooden armchair. He looked exhausted, having recently returned from the hospital where he had received a kidney transplant from his wife. His operation had taken place exactly one week before the military had ousted the government of Mohammed Morsi on 3 July. His gaunt body was still frail from the medical intervention. We talked about ‘the massacre of Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya’. Tariq showed me a photo book that had been recently published by a Brotherhood-affiliated publisher, displaying dozens of pictures of disfigured bodies, chopped-off limbs and gruesome scenes of the aftermath of the ‘clearing’ of Rab‘a al‘Adawiyya. As I flipped through the pages, he pointed out a picture showing a waxen face wrapped into white linen: ‘This was my friend’, he remarked. ‘He died as a martyr.’ After a short pause, I asked: ‘Are you scared?’ ‘I am scared only of God’, he replied. At one point, his wife entered the room, serving chicken, rice and mulukhiyya. ‘She was also in Rab‘a’, he explained after she had left the room. In fact, his whole family had been there. He was proud of his family’s commitment to the cause, he added. He himself, however, had been in the hospital when the massacre had taken place. 395

396

epilogue

As we ate, we watched Al Jazeera Mubasher, with its generic split screen showing four simultaneous protest marches taking place at different locations in Cairo. Protesters were holding banners displaying a black hand holding up four fingers on a yellow background – the iconic ‘Rab‘a symbol’. In the background, the voices of Al Jazeera’s anchors continued to debate.1 ‘Rab‘a means four. It is a symbol for the area where the massacre took place’, Tariq explained. But there was also a deeper religious meaning: ‘Mohammed says in the Quran: “Surely, my prayer, my sacrifice, my life, and my death are all for God.”’ The four fingers thus stood for the four events listed in the Quranic sura al-An‘am (the Cattle). Tariq flipped through the channels, briefly pausing at ON TV and pointing out Yusri Fuda, an investigative reporter who had established Al Jazeera’s London office before resigning in 2009. ‘He is a trickster!’ Tariq remarked. I asked him why the media was so biased against the Brotherhood. ‘Because secularism has deep roots in the Egyptian media’, he explained. Pro-state anchors were silent when the Brotherhood was in power. ‘But now they are back.’ He switched back to Al Jazeera Mubashir. After a while, I wondered how the Brotherhood would continue to operate now that its entire leadership was in prison. ‘The Brotherhood doesn’t depend on people’, he explained: It is a system. If one cell goes down, this doesn’t mean that the entire system goes down. [The military] was angry at the Brotherhood, so they cracked down on us in order to destroy us. This crackdown is much stronger than the one of 1954. Yet, the Brotherhood was not defeated . . . . Today, the family meetings continue. This is the real secret of the Brotherhood’s power: the strength of the system cannot be destroyed. [The regime] cannot know all people at the base. They know only the leaders. There is no new leadership, only alternative leaders – people who assist the leaders in prison. They are leaders only temporarily, until the leaders go back to their positions. If [the military] imprisons the alternative [leaders], there are other alternatives to replace the alternatives.

After a while, I said: ‘I am glad that you didn’t die’, pointing to the book on the coffee table. ‘I hoped I would have died. But my God didn’t choose me.’ Looking at me with his slightly withdrawn eyes, he explained: ‘We have another life in paradise. It is our goal to go to paradise. But not through violence. We

1

‘Memorabilia.’ The Fourth Ordeal Online Archive, June 2012–September 2013. www .thefourthordeal.com/home/memorabilia-2/ (accessed 29 August 2018).

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are a peaceful Society. Yet, the media tries to separate [Egyptian] society into pro-coupists and anti-coupists’. ‘Why are they trying to do this?’ I asked. Because if we are one unit, we are strong. We have one target, which is to remove the people who govern Egypt now. The reason is because of the notion of ‘divide and rule’. The other reason is because of Israel. If there are internal troubles it will be easier for Israel to invade Egypt. So [Israeli leaders] encouraged Sisi to stage a coup. They helped him by [providing him with] guns, bombs and other equipment for preventing the revolution to continue. The same is also true for America. [The US government] appeared to let the people believe that they supported freedom, but actually they helped [the military], provided them with information, and supported them with money and people who helped Sisi and his clique. We know that. Also, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE supported Sisi.

‘So, what’s going to happen next? What is the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategy?’ ‘We have to be strong. Everyone has his job. My wife doesn’t study, so she will protest. Even my children know that if they go [to the protests], they may be killed. But they are happy to go. They are not afraid.’ We continued eating and watching television. The voices of the Al Jazeera anchors continued to squabble in the background. As night fell above the victorious city of Cairo, the muezzin intonated the call to prayer: ‘Allahu akbar. Allahu akbar.’

GLOSSARY

akh ‘amil ‘alim, pl. ‘ulama’ amir ashbal bay‘a da‘wa Da‘wa Salafiyya

al-dawla al-Islamiyya dhikr faluka fiqh fikra fulul galabiyya hadith

hakimiyyat Allah

hudud

an ‘active’ or ‘working Brother’, designating the highest stage of organizational membership in the Brotherhood a religious scholar (literally a ‘learned’ or ‘educated’ man) a ‘commander’ or ‘prince’, used to designate a local or national leader of the Jama‘a Islamiyya ‘young lions’, the term used in the Brotherhood for boys under the age of ten the ‘oath of loyalty’ taken by an individual to become a member of the Brotherhood the act of preaching or proselytizing (literally the ‘call’ towards living an Islamic way of life) the ‘Salafi Call’, designating both the Salafi movement in general, as well as Egypt’s largest and most prominent Salafi organization founded in the 1970s in Alexandria ‘the Islamic state’, frequently used synonymously with the term ‘caliphate’ a devotional, short prayer repeatedly recited silently or aloud a type of boat on the Nile the whole body of ‘Islamic law’, both as an abstract concept and in terms of a religious practice ‘idea’ or ‘ideology’ the ‘remnants’ of the Mubarak regime traditional garment, worn primarily in Egypt and the Sudan the ‘sayings’ of the Prophet Mohammed, meaning the actual verbal expressions or opinions given by the Prophet on various topics the ‘sovereignty of God’, meaning a state of divine governance that is opposed to the state of ‘ignorance’ (see jahiliyya) punishments for criminal offences as defined by Islamic law

398

glossary infitah islahi jahiliyya khartush khilafa majlis al-shura al-‘amm

maktab al-idari maktab al-irshad al-‘amm manhaj al-mashru‘ al-islami mihna miliuniyya minbar mu‘ayyid muhafaza muhibb mujtahideen mulukhiyya al-munshaqqin muntaqa muntassib muntazim al-murshid al-‘amm al-nahda al-Islamiyya

naqib

399

the ‘opening’ of the Egyptian economy in 1974 ‘reformist’, i.e. having a reformist attitude towards the interpretation of Islamic texts ‘state of ignorance’, as opposed to the ‘sovereignty of God’ (see hakimiyyat Allah) shotgun pellets used as ammunition in homemade guns the ‘caliphate’, frequently used synonymously with the concept of the Islamic state (see al-dawla al-Islamiyya) the General Consultative Council, the Brotherhood’s legislative body (here referred to simply as Shura Council) ‘Administrative Office’, the highest executive body within a governorate the General Guidance Office, the Brotherhood’s executive body the educational ‘method’ used by the Brotherhood ‘the Islamic project’, designating the Brotherhood’s seven-step blueprint for Islamic reform an ‘ordeal’, i.e. a period of trial, imprisonment and exile a ‘million men’s march’ elevated pulpit in a mosque where the imam stands to deliver sermons a ‘supporter’, corresponding to the lowest level of membership in the Brotherhood ‘governorate’, corresponding to the second-highest administrative unit of the Brotherhood’s field apparatus a ‘lover’ or a fan of the Brotherhood and its ideas, corresponding to pre-membership in the Brotherhood (freedom) fighters thick, mucilaginous broth made of Jew’s mallow leaves designation for the ‘dissidents’ of the Brotherhood ‘region’, corresponding to the second-lowest administrative unit of the Brotherhood’s field apparatus an ‘associate’, corresponding to the second-lowest level of membership in the Brotherhood an ‘organizer’, corresponding to the second-highest level of membership in the Brotherhood the General Guide, the highest spiritual authority of the Muslim Brotherhood ‘the Islamic renaissance’ or ‘the Islamic revival’, used in reference to a period of growing religiosity in Egypt during the early 1970s ‘captain’, designating the head of a family (usra)

400 qatar qita‘ al-Rabita al-rahil al-awwal

al-Sahwa al-Islamiyya

sam‘a wa ta‘a sha‘bi shahada

Sharia

shu‘aba shumuliyya shura Sunna

takfir takfiri tanzim tanzimi tarbiyya tarbush

umma

‘umra

glossary ‘chapter’, a national Brotherhood organization outside of Egypt ‘sector’, corresponding to the highest administrative unit of the Brotherhood’s field apparatus the Brotherhood’s ‘liaison’ office in London ‘the first cohort’ of the Muslim Brotherhood, designating those who were educated by Hasan al-Banna himself, in allusion to the ‘first generation of Muslims’ who had lived during the Prophet’s lifetime ‘the Islamic Awakening’, referring to a period of growing religiosity in Saudi Arabia between the 1960s and the early 1990s the principle of ‘listening and obedience’ ‘popular’, derived from al-sha‘b, ‘the people’ the first pillar of Islam, bearing witness to the belief that ‘there is no God but God, and Mohammed is God’s messenger’ Islamic Law, designating an entire body of literature consisting of the Quran, the Hadiths and the writings produced by Muslim jurists between the seventh and the ninth centuries CE ‘branch’, corresponding to the lowest administrative unit of the Brotherhood’s field apparatus ‘comprehensiveness’, the core organizing principle of the Muslim Brotherhood the Islamic principle of ‘consultation’ the mode of life as lived by the Prophet Mohammed, meaning the totality of his sayings, actions, judgements and attitudes (see hadith) the practice of ‘excommunicating’ fellow Muslims, thereby legitimizing their killing pertaining to the practice of takfir the ‘organization’ of the Muslim Brotherhood prioritizing ‘organizational’ aspects upbringing, education, literally ‘cultivation’ Egyptian headdress in the shape of a short, cylindrical and peakless hat, usually red and sometimes with a tassel attached to the top sacred humanity, usually translated as the ‘community of Muslim believers’, analogous to the ‘mystical body’ in Christian theology pilgrimage to Mecca, sometimes referred to as the ‘little Hajj’

glossary usra ustadhiyyat al-‘alam zaharat zakat

401

‘family’, corresponding to the smallest educational unit of the Brotherhood the age of ‘the global guidance’ of Islam, referring to a state of supreme enlightenment ruled by Islam literally ‘flowers’, the term used for girls under the age of ten the practice of almsgiving, one of the five pillars of Islam

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Secondary Oral Sources ‘Abd al-Malik, Mohammed (representative of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood in Europe). Workshop. London, 7 November 2016; Interview. Manchester, 9 August 2017. Ahmed* (revolutionary activist). Interview. Cairo, 21 February 2013. ‘Ali, ‘Abd al-Rahim (journalist and author). Interview. Cairo, 22 September 2013. ‘Amr* (revolutionary activist). Interview. Cairo, 25 December 2012. Aktay, Yasin (former spokesperson for the AK Parti). Ankara, 14 August 2018. Badawi, Marwa* (Al Jazeera journalist). Interview. Istanbul, 6 October 2017. Barakat, ‘Izzedine (architect). Interview. Cairo, 11 January 2019. Ben Yahia, Habib (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tunisia, 1991–7). Interview. Dubai, 13 November 2012. Gamal* (revolutionary activist). Interview. Cairo, 12 January 2013. Karima, Ahmed (Azharite Sheikh and imam). Interview. Cairo, 24 September 2013. Kassem, Mohammed (businessman). Interview. Cairo, 25 September 2013. Khanfar, Wadah (former Director General of Al Jazeera). Interview. Doha, 16 April 2017. Marwa* (revolutionary activist). Interview. Cairo, 12 January 2013. Owen, Roger (historian). Interview. Cambridge MA, 12 May 2010. Qutb, ‘Izz al-Din (unknown). Interview. Mansura, 17 May 2013. Rifa‘a, Mohammed (independent Quran expert). Interview. Cairo, 21 October 2012. *

Name anonymized.

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Sara* (revolutionary activist). Interview. Cairo, 4 February 2013. el-Shayyal, Jamal (Al Jazeera journalist). Interview. Berlin, 4 October 2015. Tarek* (former employee at the American Embassy in Cairo). Interview. Geneva, 15 January 2017. al-Tikriti, Anas. Interview. London, 27 February 2019. Zaki, Sue (eyewitness of Ittihadiyya events). Interview. Cairo, 1 August 2015. Zahir, Mahmud (former Egyptian civilian intelligence agent). Interview (with Sara Ramadan). Cairo, 20 May 2013.

Primary Written Sources Memoires, Biographies & Histories Abdelfattah, Saif Eldin and Mohamed Elfeky. The Black Book: Crimes of the Military Coup in Egypt, July 2013–March 2018. Egypt Parliament Abroad, 2018. Abu al-Futuh, ʻAbd al-Munʻim and Husam Tammam (eds.). ʻAbd al-Munʻim Abū al-Futūh: ˙ Shāhid ʻalā Tārīkh al-harakat al-Islāmiyyah fī Misr, 1970–1984 (ʻAbd al-Munʻim Abu al˙ ˙ Futuh: Witness to the History of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, 1970–1984). Cairo: Dar alShuruq, 2010. Abu Khalil, Haytham. Ikhwān Islāhiyyūn (The Reformist Brotherhood). Cairo: Dar al-Dawwin, ˙ ˙ 2012. ʻAshmawi, ʻAli. al-Tārīkh al-sirrī li-l-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn: Mudhakkarāt ʻAlī ʻAshmāwī (The Secret History of the Muslim Brotherhood: the Memoires of ʻAli ʻAshmawi). Cairo: Dar alHilal, 1993. Badr, Badr Mohammed. ‘Amr al-Tilmisānī. Unknown publisher, 2008. al-Banna, Hasan. Mudhakkarāt al-Daʻwa wa-l-Dā‘iyya (Memories of the Message and the Advocate). Cairo: Dar al-Zahra’ li-l-‘Ilam al-‘Arabi, 1990. Basam, Amir. Hakamat al-Mahkama (The Court Ruled). Cairo: Dar al-Tawziʻ wa-l-Nashr al˙ ˙ Islamiyya, 2012. al-Ghazali, Zainab. Ayām min Hayātī (Days of My Life). Cairo: Dar al-Tawzi’ wa-l-Nashr al˙ Islamiyya, 1999. Habib, Mohammed. Dhikrayāt D. Muhammad Habīb: ʻAn al-Hayat wa-l-Daʻwa wa-l-Siyāsa wa˙ ˙ ˙ l-Fikr (Memories of Dr. Mohammed Habib: On Life, Daʻwa, Politics and Ideology). Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2012. al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn bayna al-Suʻūd wa-l-Riʼāsa wa Taʼākul al-Sharʻiyya (The Muslim ˙ Brotherhood: Between the Rise, the Presidency, and the Erosion of Legitimacy). Cairo: Sama lil-Nashr wa-al-Tawziʻ, 2013. al-Hudaybi, Hasan. Du‘āt . . . lā Qudāt: Abhāth fī al-‘Aqīda al-Islamiyya wa Manhaj al-Da‘wa ilā ˙ ˙ Allah (Preachers Not Judges: Studies in the Islamic Faith and the Method of Calling to God). Cairo: Dar al-Tiba‘a wa-l-Nashr al-Islamiyya, 1977. Husayni, Ishaq Musa. al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn: Kubrā al-Harākāt al-Islāmiyya al-hadītha (The ˙ ˙ Muslim Brotherhood: The Biggest Modern Islamic Movement). Beirut: Dar Beirut, 1955. Jackson, Robert. Hasan Al-Banna’: Rajul al-Qur’ān (Hasan Al-Banna: Man of the Quran). Cairo: ˙ Mu’assasa Iqra’ li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzih wa-l-Tarjama, 2012. al-Jawwad, Muhammad and Mashhur, Mustafa Mashhur. Hayat Mustafa Mashūr: Kāma ‘Ashatha ˙ ˙˙ Usrathu (The Life of Mustafa Mashhur: How His Family Experienced It). Cairo: Dar al-Tawzi’ wa-l-Nashr li-l-Islam, 2005. Mahmud, ‘Abd al-Halim. al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn, Ahdāth sanaʻat al-Tārīkh: Ruʼya min al-Dākhil ˙ ˙ (The Muslim Brotherhood: The Events that made History: View from the Inside). Alexandria: Dar al-Daʻwa, 2004. Nada, Youssef and Douglas Thompson (eds.). Inside the Muslim Brotherhood. London: Metro, 2012. Shadi, Salah. Safahāt min al-Tārīkh (Pages from History). Kuwait: Sharikat al-Shuʻaʻ, 1981. ˙ ˙

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al-Tilmisani, ‘Omar. Dhikrayāt Lā Mudhakkarāt (Memories, Not Memoires). Cairo: Dar al-Tawzi’ wa-l-Nashr, 2012. al-Tuhan, Mustafa. Al-Imām Hasan al-Banna (The Imam Hasan Al-Banna). Cairo: Markaz al˙ Dirasa al-Islamiyya, 2008.

Key Educational Texts Abu Raya, Mohammed. Fī Nūr al-Islām (In the Light of Islam). Cairo: Dar al-Tawziʻ wa-l-Nashr alIslamiyya, 2006. al-Banna, Hasan. Five Tracts of Hasan al-Banna (1906–1949): A Selection from the Majmūʿat Rasāʼil al-Īmām al-Shahīd Hasan al-Bannāʼ (Charles Wendell, trans.). Berkeley: University ˙ of California Press, 1978. Majmūʻat Rasāʼil al-Īmām al-Shahīd Hasan al-Bannā (Collection of Letters of the Martyred ˙ Imam Hasan al-Banna). Beirut: al-Sohoh, 2012. al-Buti, Mohammed Sayyid Ramadan. Fiqh al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya ma‘ Mūjaz li-Tārīkh al-Khilāfa al-Rāshida (The Jurisprudence of the Biography [of the Prophet] with a Summary of the History of the Caliphate). Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1993. Dusuqi, ‘Abd al-Mustafa (ed.). Mawāqif Tarabawiyya fī Daw‘ Arkān al-Bay‘a (Educational ˙ Situations in the Shadow of the Pillars of the Oath). Cairo: Mu’assasa Iqra’, 2012. al-Ghazali, Muhammad and Khalid Khalid Muhammad. Our Beginning in Wisdom. Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies, 1953. Min Hunā Naʻlam (From Here Let’s Learn). Cairo: Dar al-Kutub al-Haditha, 1965. Jaddid Hayātak (Renew Your Life). Cairo: Nahda Masr, 2005. ˙ Fiqh al-Sīra (The Jurisprudence of the Biography [of the Prophet]). Damascus: Dar al-Qalam, 2006. Hamida, Husam. Fī Rihāb al-Islām (In the Garden of Islam). Cairo: Dar al-Tawzi’ wa-l-Nashir al˙ Islami, 2004. Laban, Ali. Min Mabādi’ al-Islām (About the Principles of Islam). Cairo: Dar al-Tawzi’ wa-l-Nashir al-Islami, 2003. Mahmud, ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Halim. Wasā’il al-Tarbiyya al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn (Methods of Education of the Muslim Brotherhood). Mansura: Dar al-Wafa’, 1990. Mashhur, Mustafa Mashhur. Bayna al-Qiyāda wa-l-Jundiyya ‘alā al-Tarīq al-Da‘wa (Between ˙ Leadership and Soldierhood on the Way to The Call). Cairo: Dar al-Tawzi’ wa-l-Nashir alIslami, 1986. al-Jihād huwa al-Sabīl (Jihad is the Way). Cairo: Dar at-Tawziʻ wa-l-Nasr al-Islamiyya, 1986. Morsi, Mohammed Sa‘id. Fī Rihāb al-Usūl al-‘Ashrīn (In the Vastness of the Twenty Principles). ˙ ˙ Cairo: Mu’assasa Iqra’, 2006. al-Nawawi, Abu Zakaria Yahya Ibn Sharaf and Hafiz Salahuddin Yusuf. Riyād al-Sālihīn (The ˙ ˙ ˙ Meadows of the Righteous). Riyadh: Darussalam Publishers & Distributors, 1998. Qutb, Sayyid. al-ʻAdāla al-Ijtimāʻiyya fī-l-Islām (Social Justice in Islam). Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, 1975. Fī Zilāl al-Qurʼān (In the Shade of the Quran). Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 1999. ˙ Maʻālim fī al-Tarīq (Signposts on the Road). Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2012. ˙ Sabiq, al-Sayyid. Fiqh al-Sunna (The Jurisprudence of the Tradition). Beirut: Dar el Fikr, 1996.

Official Documents ‘Dustūr Jumhūriyyat Misr al-‘Arabiyya li-Sana 1971 (The Constitution of the Arab Republic of ˙ Egypt of 1971),’ adopted 11 September 1971. ‘Dustūr Jumhūriyyat Misr al-‘Arabiyya li-Sana 2012 (The Constitution of the Arab Republic of ˙ Egypt of 2012),’ adopted 30 November 2012.

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‘al-Lāʼiha al-‘ālamiyya li-Jamā‘a al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn [1994 M] (The International By-laws of ˙ the Muslim Brotherhood [AD 1994]).’ ‘al-Lāʼiha al-‘āmma li-Jamā‘a al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn ‘Āmm 1990 M wa-l-Mu‘ādala ‘Āmm 2009 M ˙ (The General By-laws of the Society of the Muslim Brothers of the Year AD 1990 and the Amendments of the Year AD 2009).’ ‘al-Lāʼiha al-dākhiliyya al-‘āmma li-l-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn [2 Safar 1371 H/2 Nūfimbir sanat ˙ ˙ 1951 M] (The Internal General By-laws of the Muslim Brotherhood [AH 2 Safar 1371/AD 2 November 1951]).’ ‘al-Nizām al-‘āmm li-l-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn [1982 M] (The General Organization of the Muslim ˙ Brotherhood [AD 1982]).’ ‘Mashrū‘ al-Lā’iha al-‘āmma al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn (Project of the General By-laws of the Muslim ˙ Brotherhood),’ 22 March 2017. ‘Qānūn al-Nizām al-asāsī li-Hayʼat al-Ikhwān al-Muslīmīn al-‘āmma [2 Shawwāl sanat 1364 H/8 ˙ Sibtimbir sanat 1945 M] (Basic Law of the General Assembly of the Muslim Brotherhood [AH 2 Shawwal 1364/AD 8 September 1945]).’ ‘Rū’iya’28 (Vision’28),’ March 2017.

Magazines & Periodicals al-Hurriyya wa-l-‘Adala. Cairo: March 2011 to September 2013 Majallat al-Da‘wa. Cairo: June 1976 to September 1981.

Key Speeches (in chronological order) 27 January 2011. ‘Bayān D. ‘Issām al-‘Ariān Hawla Mawqif al-Ikhhān al-Muslimīn min al˙ Musharaka fī Thawra 25 Janāīr (Statement of Dr ‘Issam al-‘Arian Regarding the Position of the Muslim Brotherhood of the Revolution of 25 January).’ 24 June 2012. ‘Khitāb Dr. Muhammad Mursī Ra’īs Jumūriyya Misr (Speech by Dr Mohammed ˙ ˙ ˙ Morsi, President of the Republic of Egypt).’ 29 June 2012. ‘Khitāb al-Ra’īs Muhammad Mursī fī Mīdān al-Tahrīr (Speech by Mohammed ˙ ˙ ˙ Morsi on Tahrir Square).’ 26 September 2012. ‘Kalima al-Ra’īs Muhammad Mursī li-l-Jama‘iyya al-‘āma li-l-Umum al˙ Muttahida (Speech of President Mohammed Morsi to the General Assembly of the United ˙ Nations).’ 6 December 2012. ‘Khitāb al-Ra’īs Muhammad Mursī (Speech of the President Mohammed ˙ ˙ Morsi).’ 7 December 2012. ‘Khitāb Muhammad Badī‘ min al-Jām‘at al-Azhar (Speech of Mohammed Badi‘ ˙ ˙ from al-Azhar University).’ 24 April 2013. ‘Khairat al-Shatir: Mashrū‘ al-Nahda al-Islāmī (Khairat al-Shatir: The Project of ˙ ˙ Islamic Renaissance).’ 3 June 2013. ‘Kalima al-Ra’īs Mursī li-l-Ijtimā‘ al-Watanī (Speech of President Morsi in the ˙ National Meeting).’ 15 June 2013. ‘Khitāb al-Ra’īs Mursī fī Mu’tamar al-Umma al-Masriyya li-Da‘m al-Thawra al˙ ˙ Sūriyya (Speech by President Morsi at the Conference of the Egyptian Community for the Support of the Syrian Revolution).’ 26 June 2013. ‘Khitāb al-Ra’īs Mursī fī al-Markaz al-Qāhira al-Dawlī li-l-Mu’tamarāt (Speech by ˙ President Morsi at the Cairo International Conference Centre).’

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30 June 2013. ‘al-Duktūr Mohammad al-Beltajī: Khitāb al-Beltajī min Munassa Rāba‘a al˙ ˙ ˙˙ ‘Adawiyya (Dr Mohammed al-Beltagi: Speech from the Stage of Raba‘a al-‘Adawiyya).’ 2 July 2013. ‘Kalima al-Ra’īs Mursī li-l-Sha‘b al-Masrī 2 Jūlī (Speech of President Morsi to the ˙ Egyptian People on 2 July).’ 5 July 2013. ‘Kalima al-Murshid al-‘āmm li-Jamā‘a al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn Muhammad Badī‘ min ˙ Munassa Rāb‘a al-‘Adawiyya (Speech of the General Guide of the Society of Muslim Brothers ˙˙ Mohammed Badi‘ from the Stage of Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya).’ 24 July 2013. ‘Kalima al-Farīq al-Sīsī amām Tullāb Kullīatī al-Difā‘ al-Jawī wa-l-Buharī (Speech of ˙ ˙ Abdel Fatah al-Sisi before Students at the Airforce and Naval Defence College).’

Websites & Social Media www.facebook.com www.ikhwanonline.com https://ikhwanonline.info http://ikhwan.site www.ikhwanweb.com www.ikhwanwiki.com www.wikileaks.org https://twitter.com www.youtube.com https://858.ma

Secondary Written Sources Periodicals and Websites (in Arabic) Al-Ahram Arabic. www.ahram.org.eg Al Jazeera Arabic. www.aljazeera.net ‘Araby 21. https://arabi21.com Al-Arabiya English. https://english .alarabiya.net BBC Arabic. www.bbc.com/arabic El-Fagr. www.elfagr.org Al-Khalij al-Jadid. www.thenewkhalij.org Mada Masr Arabic. www.madamasr.com/ar Masr al-‘Arabiyya. www.masralarabia.com Al-Masriyoon. www.msry.info

Al-Masry al-Youm. www.almasryalyoum.com Maydan. http://midan.aljazeera.net El-Mogaz. www.elmogaz.com Al-Musawwar (available in print only). Noon Post. www.noonpost.org Sasa Post. www.sasapost.com Al-Sharq al-Awsat. https://aawsat.com Al-Hayat. www.alhayat.com Ida’at. www.ida2at.com Al-Riyadh. www.alriyadh.com/home Al-Wafd. https://alwafd.org Al-Watan. www.elwatannews.com Youm 7. www.youm7.com Tahrir News. www.tahrirnews.com

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Periodicals and Websites (in English) al-Ahram Weekly Online. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg Al Jazeera English. www.aljazeera.com Al Monitor. www.al-monitor.com BBC. www.bbc.co.uk Daily News Egypt. https://dailynewsegypt.com Daily Sabah. www.dailysabah.com Egypt Independent. www.egyptindependent.com Egyptian Streets. www.egyptianstreets.com Financial Times. www.ft.com Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com Gulf News. http://gulfnews.com Haaretz. www.haaretz.com Huffington Post. www.huffingtonpost.com Hürriyet Daily News. www.hurriyetdailynews.com Independent. www.independent.co.uk

Mada Masr. www.madamasr.com Middle East Eye. www.middleeasteye.net Middle East Monitor. www.middleeastmonitor.com New Yorker. www.newyorker.com New York Times. www.nytimes.com New York Review of Books. www.nybooks.com Reuters. www.reuters.com Spiegel Online. www.spiegel.de The Atlantic. www.theatlantic.com The Economist. www.economist.com The Guardian. www.theguardian.com The Intercept. https://theintercept.com The National. www.thenational.ae Yahoo News. www.yahoo.com/news Wall Street Journal. www.wsj.com Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com

Blogs (in Arabic and English) The Arabist. https://arabist.net The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Baheyya. http://baheyya.blogspot.ch Policy. https://timep.org Informed Comment. www.juancole.com Al-Wasat. Jadiliyya. www.jadaliyya.com https://thewasat.wordpress.com Qaliyubiyya Gate. http://qalyubiagate.com

Monographs (in Arabic) ʻAli, ʻAbd al-Rahim. Al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn: Min Hasan al-Bannā ilā Mahdī ʻĀkif (The Muslim ˙ Brotherhood: From Hasan al-Banna to Mahdi ‘Akif). Cairo: Markaz al-Mahrusah li-l-Nashr wa-l-Khidmat al-Suhufiyya wa-l-Maʻlumat, 2007.

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Al-Tarīq ilā al-Ittihādiyya: Al-Malaffāt al-sirriyya li-l-Ikhwān (The Road to Ittihadiyya: The ˙ ˙ Secret Files of the Muslim Brotherhood). Giza: al-Markaz al-ʻArabi li-l-Buhuth, 2013. al-Khalidi, Sami Nasir. Al-Ahzāb al-Islāmiyya fī-l-Kuwait: al-Shī‘a, al-Ikhwān, al-Salaf (The ˙ Islamic Parties in Kuwait: The Shias, the Brotherhood, the Salafis). Kuwait: Dar al-Naba‘ li-l-Nashar wa-l-Tawzi‘, 1999. ‘Askari, Murtada. ‘Abd Allāh Ibn Saba’ wa Asātīr Ukhrā (ʿAbdallah Ibn Saba’ and other Myths). ˙ ˙ Tehran: A Group of Muslim Brothers, 1978. Ban, Ahmed. Al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn waMihnat al-Watan wa-l-Dīn (The Muslim Brotherhood ˙ ˙ and the Crisis of Country and Religion). Cairo: Markaz al-Nil li-l-Dirasat al-Iqtisadiyya wa-l-Istiratijiyya, 2013. Dalal, ‘Abd Allah Sami Ibrahim. Al-Islāmiyūn wa-l-Dīmuqrātīa fī Masr (The Islamists and ˙ ˙ Democracy in Egypt). Cairo: Madbouli Publishers, 2006. Faraj, ‘Abd al-Salam. Al-Farīda al-Ghā’iba (The Neglected Duty). Cairo: Dar Thabit li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawziʻ, 1982. Faruq, ‘Amr. Dawlat al-Khilāfa al-Ikhwāniyya: Asrār wa Wathāʼiq Takshifu al-Jamāʻa min alDākhil (The Brotherhood Caliphate State: Secrets and Documents Revealing the Society from Within). Giza: al-Jazirah li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawziʻ, 2010. Hammudah, Husayn Muhammad. Asrār Harakat al-Dubbāt al-Ahrār wa-l-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ (The Secrets of the Free Officer Movement and the Muslim Brotherhood). Cairo: al-Zahraʼ li-l-Iʻlam al-ʻArabi, 1985. Jamiʻ, Mahmud. ‘Araftu al-Sādāt: Nasf Qarn min Khafayā al-Sādāt wa-l-Ikhwān (I knew Sadat: Half ˙ a Century of Secrecy of Sadat and the Brotherhood). Cairo; Alexandria: al-Maktub al-Misri alHadith, 1998. Jam‘iyat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin. Shahādatnā (Our Testimony). London: International Islamic Forum, 1995. Muhammad Khalid, Muhammad. Min Hunā Nabdaʼ (From Here Let’s Begin). Cairo: Maktabat alAnglu al-Misriya, 1969. Muntassir, Mazhar. ‘Abd al-Nāsir: al-Malaf al-Sirry (Abdel Nasser: The Secret File). Giza: Maktabat ˙ al-Nafidha. 2003. Ramih, Tal’at. al-Wasat wa-l-Ikhwān: al-Wathāʼiq wa-l-Qissa al-kāmila li-akhtar Sirāʻ siyāsī fī˙ ˙˙ ˙ ˙ l-Tisʻīnāt (The Wasat and the Brotherhood: The Documents and the Complete Stories of the Most Serious Political Conflict in the Nineties). Cairo: Markaz Yafa li-l-Dirasat wa-l-Abhath, 1997. Salah, ʻAbd al-Fattah Khalidi. Amrīkā min al-Dākhil bi-Minzār Sayyid Qutb (America from Inside ˙ ˙ the Looking Glass of Sayyid Qutb). Cairo: Dar al-Wafaʼ, 1986. Samih, Fayz. Jannat al-Ikhwān: Rihlat al-Khurūj min al-Jamāʻa (The Paradise of the Brotherhood: ˙ Journey of the Exit from the Society). Beirut: al-Tanwir li-l-Tiba’a wa-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawziʻ, 2013. Sultan, Jasim. Azmat al-Tanzīmāt al-Islāmiyya: al-Ikhwān Namūdhajan (The Crisis of Islamist ˙ Organizations: The Example of the Brotherhood). Beirut: al-Shabakah al-ʻArabiyyah li-l-Abhath wa-l-Nashr, 2015. Tammam, Husam. Tahawwulāt al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn: Tafakkuk al-aydulūjiyya wa Nihāyat al˙ Tanzīm (The Transformations of the Muslim Brotherhood: Ideological Splits and the End of the ˙ Organization). Cairo: Maktaba Madbouli, 2006. al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn: Sanawāt mā qabla al-Thawra (The Muslim Brotherhood: The Years before the Revolution). Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2012.

Monographs (in English, French and German) ‘Abd al-Raziq, ‘Ali. Islam and the Foundations of Political Power. Filali-Ansary, Abdou (ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, Press 2012.

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INDEX

6th of April Movement (Harakat Sitta Abril), 216, 226, 263 6th of October City, 228, 322, 337, 364 ‘Abbas, Mahmud, 277 ‘Abbas, Mohammed, 227 ‘Abd al-Baqi, Hosni, 156 ‘Abd al-Fattah, ‘Ala’, 312 ‘Abd al-Fattah, ‘Ali, 384 ‘Abd al-Fattah, Fathi Tawfiq, 143 ‘Abd al-Gawwad, Ahmed, 213–14, 227, 243, 244, 256 ‘Abd al-Ghaffar, Magdi, 314 ‘Abd al-Ghany, Ayman, 227, 241, 326, 328 ‘Abd al-Hamid, Ahmed, 374 ‘Abd al-Jawwad, Mohammed, 176 ‘Abd al-Karim, Salah, 171 ‘Abd al-Khaliq, Farid, 124 ‘Abd al-Latif, Mahmud, 56 ‘Abd al-Latif, Mohammed, 171 ‘Abd al-Malik, Mohammed, 145 ‘Abd al-Mohsin, Taher, 328 ‘Abd al-Mun‘im, Taher, 146 ‘Abd al-Rahman, ‘Omar, 261 ‘Abd al-Rahman, Ahmed, 221, 328–9, 331–40, 355, 361, 363, 385 ‘Abd al-Rahman, Mohammed, 339 ‘Abd al-Sattar, Sayyid, 202 ‘Abduh, ‘Aisi, 69 ‘Abduh, Mohammed, 20–3, 30, 71 ‘Abdullah al-Khatib, Mohammed, 213 ‘Adel, Mohammed, 216 ‘Affan, Mohammed, 227–8, 248 ‘Ain al-Shams University, 127 ‘Aisa, Mohammed Hussein, 165 ‘Akif, Mohammed Mahdi, 110, 128, 130, 162, 164, 172, 179, 190, 197, 202, 204, 205, 207, 214, 220, 221, 222, 258, 385 becomes General Guide, 196 on Sayyid Qutb, 128 prison experience, 127–8 resignation of, 223–5 upbringing, 126

‘Ali Ibn Abi Talib, 90 ‘Ali, ‘Abd al-Rahim, 147 ‘Ali, Yassir, 271 ‘Alluba, Muhammad ‘Ali, 92 ‘Araby Post, 374, 378 ‘Ashmawi, Salih, 80 ‘Atta, Mohammed, 181 ‘Azzam, ‘Abdullah, 185, 359 ABC News, 245 Abdullah, Ahmed, 176 Abdullahi ‘Farmajo’, Mohamed, 380 Abu al-Fadl, Mohammed ‘Abd al-Mun‘im, 69, 76 Abu al-Futuh, ‘Abd al-Mun‘im, 60, 63, 65, 67, 74, 76–8, 79, 80, 88, 122–3, 132, 151, 156, 157, 168, 173, 178, 186, 192, 193, 201, 203, 205, 206, 213, 214, 218, 225, 248, 269, 270, 390 acquaintance with the Brotherhood, 66 and Khairat al-Shatir, 159 announces candidacy for the presidency, 255 as president of the student union, 68 confronting Sadat, 84–5 meeting with ‘Omar al-Tilmisani, 77 ousted from the Brotherhood, 255 upbringing, 60 Abu al-Magd, Kamal, 65 Abu Deif, al-Hosseiny, 290 Abu Ghazala, ‘Abd al-Halim, 98 Abu Khalil, ‘Amr, 148, 154, 156, 176 Abu Khalil, Haytham, 110, 248 Abu Nasr, Hamid, 131, 132, 134, 156 passes away, 173 upbringing, 131 Abu Nass, Mohammed, 321 Abu Pasha, Hasan, 124 Abu Zayd, Mahmud, 162, 221, 242, 247, 248 al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din, 19–22, 71, 92 Afghanistan, 19, 34, 89, 115, 117, 137, 181, 185–8, 323 Ahlawy Ultras, 233, 266, 293 al-Ahly football club. See Ahlawy Ultras Ahmadinejad, Mahmud, 274–5

435

436

index

al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, 172 al-Ahram, Egyptian daily newspaper, 15 Aktay, Yasin, 351, 385–6 AlAraby Television Network, 373 Al Jazeera, 176, 242, 243, 268, 280–2, 312, 370, 373, 380, 397 Al Jazeera Mubashir, 396 Al Khalifa, Hamad bin ‘Isa, 324 Al Maktum, Rashid bin Sa‘id, 167 Al Nahyan, ‘Abdullah bin Zayed, 296, 309 Al Nahyan, Khalifa bin Zayed, 296 Al Nahyan, Mohammed bin Zayed, 295, 343, 344, 371 Al Sa‘ud, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz (Ibn Sa‘ud), 22, 115 Al Sa‘ud, ‘Abdullah bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, 219, 342 Al Sa‘ud, Fahd bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, 136, 278 Al Sa‘ud, Faysal bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, 116, 117, 185, 342 Al Sa‘ud, Khalid bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, 185 Al Sa‘ud, Mohammed bin Nayef, 343, 372 Al Sa‘ud, Mohammed bin Salman, 343–4, 347, 349, 371, 383–4 Al Sa‘ud, Sa‘ud bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, 117 Al Sa‘ud, Salman bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, 119, 185, 342 Al Thani, Ahmed bin ‘Ali, 277 Al Thani, Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohammed, 282 Al Thani, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber, 278 Al Thani, Hamad bin Khalifa, 278, 280, 283 Al Thani, Khalifa bin Hamad, 278 Al Thani, Tamim bin Hamad, 283, 370, 380 al-Albani, Nasir al-Din, 74, 89 al-‘Abiary, Mahmud, 361, 382 al-‘Adawi, Mohammed, 145 Algeria, 52, 152, 384 al-‘Arian, ‘Issam, 74–5, 79, 88, 123, 134, 151, 159, 168, 173, 178, 202–3, 208, 213, 214, 221, 223, 225, 239, 242, 251, 270, 285, 302 and ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh, 255 and Guidance Office elections of 2009, 220–1 and the Egyptian uprising of 2011, 237–8, 248 al-‘Atar, ‘Issam, 115 al-‘Atiyya, Khalid bin Mohammed, 309 al-‘Awa, Selim, 171 al-‘Udayd Airbase, 278 al-‘Urwa al-Wuthqa (the Firmest Bond), 21 Amanpour, Christiane, 245 American University in Cairo, 148, 204, 213 Amin, Gum‘a, 78, 146, 157, 160, 214, 221, 225, 300, 321 Amin, Mustafa, 66 Amnesty International, 314

Anan, Sami, 284 Ansar al-Sunna, 260 Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, 330 al-Aqsa Intifada from 2000 to 2005, 178 Arab Cold War, 116 Arab Development Group, 161 Arab Gulf. See Gulf region Arab nationalism, 19, 139 Arab oil weapon, 67, 72, 165 Arab socialism, 60, 61, 64, 83 Arab Socialist Union (ASU), 64 Arab Spring. See Arab uprisings of 2011 Arab University of Cairo, 73 Arab uprisings of 2011, 13, 233, 257, 258–9, 274, 276, 281, 295–6, 324, 347, 353 Arafat, Yasser, 120, 192, 385 al-Asad regime. See Syria, al-Asad, Bashar, 275, 276, 283, 323, 344 Ashton, Catherine, 307 Association of Social Reform (Jama‘iyyat alIslah al-Ijtima‘i), 116, See Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait Asyut University, 122 Atlantic Council, 376 Attacks of 11 September 2001, 11, 105, 114, 179, 181, 185, 188, 196, 296 Australia, 232 Austria, 128 al-Azhar militias case, 209 al-Azhar Mosque, 291, 298 al-Azhar University, 21, 92, 208, 264, 286, 325, 334 Azzam, Maha, 326 Bab al-Mandab Strait, 349, 379 Badi‘, Mohammed, 129, 214, 221–2, 244, 248, 291, 311, 313, 321 and Guidance Office elections of 2009, 224–5 and the Special Apparatus (al-nizam alkhass), 224 upbringing, 224 Bahrain, 137, 187, 249, 280, 283, 324, 370 Ban, Ahmed, 201 Bangladesh, 128 al-Banna, ‘Abd al-Rahman, 131 al-Banna, Hasan, 7, 10, 24, 66, 69, 80, 92, 100, 106–9, 110, 114–16, 118, 124, 126–8, 131, 158, 166, 169, 173, 184, 192, 199, 251, 277, 355, 367, 385, 386–7, 389, 392 and party politics (hizbiyya), 104 assassination of, 55 on nationalism, 33 on power, 182–4 al-Baradei, Mohammed, 226–7, 228, 239 Barakat, Hisham, 357 al-Barr, ‘Abd al-Rahman, 221, 318, 333

index Batikh, ‘Ali, 318, 322, 337, 361, 363, 369, 385 al-Bayumi, Rashid, 172, 214, 221, 225, 321 al-Beblawy, Hazim, 307 BBC Arabic, 280 Begin, Menachem, 64, 94, 99 Belhaj, ‘Abd al-Hakim, 282 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), 350 al-Beltagi, Mohammed, 3, 268 Ben Ali, Zine El Abidine, 152, 229, 230, 235 al-Beshlawi, Mohammed, 328 Between Yesterday and Today (Bayna al-Ams wa-l-Yawm), 107, 169 Bin Bayyah, ‘Abdallah, 325 Bin Laden, Osama, 179, 182, 261 and the Muslim Brotherhood, 186 in Afghanistan, 187 Bishara, Azmi, 373, 378 Bishr, Mohammed ‘Ali, 208, 214, 218, 221, 225, 268, 307 Black Standard of the Prophet, 287 Blair, Tony, 194 Blue Bra Girl incident of December 2011, 265 Bread Riots of 1977, 82, 84, 136 British Labour Party, 194 British occupation of Egypt of 1882, 19, 30, 127, 183, 304, 387 Brookings Institution, 377 al-Bu‘azizi, Mohammed, 229 al-Buhairi, Mohammed, 76 Bureau of Services (Maktab al-Khidmat), 186 Burhami, Yassir, 165 Burj al-‘Arab prison, 316 Burns, William, 309 Bush, George H.W., 136 Bush, George W., 179, 190, 194, 196 Butros Ghali, Yusuf, 200 Cable News Network (CNN), 246 Cairo Book Fair of 1992, 152, 189 Cairo International Airport, 168, 226 Cairo International Conference Centre, 299 Cairo International Stadium, 195, 298 Cairo Polytechnic University, 64 Cairo Public Transport Authority, 246 Cairo University, 1, 5, 53, 58, 60–2, 67, 74, 78, 80, 85, 110, 118, 122, 124–7, 213, 218, 289, 300 Cairo Zoo, 292 Caliphate, 7, 11, 22, 23, 31, 32–4, 63, 93, 94, 100, 114, 140, 157, 169, 185, 258, 386 Cambridge University, 314 Cameron, David, 325, 374 Camp David Accords of 1978, 51, 86–7 Camp David Summit of 2000, 178 Carnegie, Dale, 158 Carter, Jimmy, 94 Çavuşoğlu, Mevlüt, 351

437

Center for New American Security, 376 Center for Strategic and International Studies, 376 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 88, 187 Centre Islamique de Genève, 115 Centre Party (Hizb al-Wasat), 171–3, 178, 222 Chatham House, 326 China, 19, 151, 350 Clinton Foundation, 162 Clinton, Hillary, 242, 260, 288 Clinton, William J., 137 Cold War, 116, 137 Communists, 62, 67, 86, 116, 187, 201 Constitutional referendum of March 2011, 249–50 Consultation Party (Hizb al-Shura), 122, 171 Coptic Christians, 54, 95, 97, 152, 261, 308, 360 Cordoba Foundation, 378 Crusaders, 3, 81, 86 Cyprus, 120 al-da‘wa (the act of proselytizing), 31, 41, 48, 50, 75, 77, 116, 117, 119, 124, 134, 147, 162, 174–6, 185, 192, 202, 207, 224, 228, 359, 368, 369, 382 al-Da‘wa al-Salafiyya. See Salafism al-Da‘wa magazine, Brotherhood-affiliated monthly magazine, 51, 80–4, 86, 95, 98, 174, 199 Dafarawi, Hamid, 62, 74, 93, 214 Dar al-‘Ulum College, 21, 30 Darb al-Ahmar, 16, 52, 395 al-Dardary, ‘Abd al-Mawgud, 326 Darrag, ‘Amr, 251, 297, 308, 326, 328–9, 348, 361, 363, 385 Davutoğlu, Ahmet, 257 Dawud, Khalid, 62, 74, 78, 159, 168, 178, 214 Days in my Life (Ayyam min Hayati), 252 Defence of Muslim Territories: the First Obligation after Faith (al-Difa‘ ‘an Aradi al-Muslimin: Ahamm Furud alA‘yan), 185 Democratization, 180, 196, 198, 199, 207, 209, 211, 252 Democratization theory, 9 Djibouti, 280, 350, 351, 380–1 Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, 378 Downtown Cairo, 289, 314 Dubai Ports (DP) World, 351, 380–1 Duma, Ahmed, 312 Earthquake of 1992, 150 East Africa, 279–80, 350–3, 380 Economic Reform and Structural Adjustment Programme of 1991, 215

438

index

Egypt Cairo Court for Urgent Matters, 311, 330 Central Security Forces, 64, 98, 133, 166, 235, 240, 264, 265, 309, 314 Constitution of 1971, 65, 99, 249 Constitution of 2012, 212, 231, 266, 283, 287, 288, 291, 304, 391 Constitutional Assembly, 266, 284, 288, 291 Doctors’ Union, 122, 151, 235, 237 Egyptian Armed Forces (EAF), 1, 155, 230, 298, 302, 305 Engineers’ Syndicate, 122, 150, 160, 208 General Intelligence Directorate, 241, 285, 295 High Court, 235, 237, 284 Journalists’ Syndicate, 197 Lawyers’ Syndicate, 77, 151, 169, 193 Military Academy, 285 Military Intelligence Service, 56, 248, 284, 285, 293 Ministry for Environmental Affairs, 271 Ministry for Youth, 271 Ministry of Culture and Information, 95 Ministry of Defence, 1, 98, 267, 285, 286, 294, 299, 300, 388 Ministry of Economy, 267 Ministry of Education, 9, 58, 79, 271 Ministry of Endowments, 85 Ministry of Finance, 267 Ministry of Health, 357 Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, 271 Ministry of Industry and Trade, 271 Ministry of Interior, 264–6, 267, 290, 295, 301, 302, 305, 309, 311, 312, 314, 316, 354, 357 Ministry of Media, 271 Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, 297 Ministry of Social Affairs, 96, 166, 168, 311 Ministry of Social Solidarity, 313 National Security Agency (NSA), 314 People’s Assembly, 86, 104, 134, 202, 221, 243, 266 dissolution of 2012, 269, 284 elections of 1984, 123 elections of 1987, 134, 140, 151, 197 elections of 1990, 140 elections of 1995, 197 elections of 2000, 177 elections of 2005, 204–6, 208 elections of 2010, 227–9 elections of 2011, 230, 265–6, 368, 384 State Security Apparatus, 95, 146, 147, 149, 153, 155, 166, 168, 173, 178, 203, 205, 208, 221, 230–1, 240, 265–6, 314, 316

State Security Investigations Service (SSIS). See National Security Agency (NSA) Student Unions, 51, 61–2, 64, 67–9, 79–80, 84, 94, 122 Supreme Administrative Court, 267, 293 Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC), 140, 267, 269, 284, 288 Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), 5, 230, 243–5, 249, 250, 261–5, 267, 269, 284, 286, 288, 290, 304, 391 Veterinaries’ Syndicate, 224 Egypt Call (Nida’ al-Kinana), 333, 358 Egypt Spinning and Weaving Company, 214 Egyptian Current Party (Hizb al-Tayyar alMasry), 256 Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation, 273 Egyptian Institute for Studies, 326, 378 Egyptian Islamic Jihad. See Islamic Jihad (alJihad al-Islami) Egyptian Movement for Change (al-Harakat al-Masriyya min ajl al-Taghayyir, 204 Egyptian Movement for Change (al-Harakat al-Masriyya min ajl al-Taghayyir), 201, 216 Egyptian Museum, 240 Egyptian Reform Party (Hizb al-Islah al-Masri), 122 Egyptian revolution of 2011. See Egyptian uprising of 2011 Egyptian Revolutionary Council, 326 Egyptian State Railways, 246 Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), 215 Egyptian uprising of 2011, 5, 12, 181, 229, 230–49, 252, 256, 259, 265, 268, 272, 288, 289, 293, 294, 303, 304, 306, 332, 354, 368, 369, 390, 397 Battle of the Camel of February 2011, 242, 287, 390 Friday of Anger (Jum‘at al-Ghadab), 239, 246, 301 Friday of Purging and Solidarity (Jum‘at al-Tathir wa-l-Tadamun), 249 Friday of the Sharia (Jum‘at al-Shari‘a), 260 Einstein, Albert, 190 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 117 Elshayyal, Jamal, 268 Emergency Laws of 1981, 104, 136, 168, 197, 241, 245 Emirates Centre of Human Rights, 378 Empowerment Plan, 147–9, 156, 176, 190 Ennahda, 152, 281 Erbakan, Necmettin, 91, 187, 258 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip, 256–8, 259, 380 Eritrea, 279, 380, 381 Ethiopia, 166, 381

index European Council for Fatwas and Research (alMajlis al-Aurubi li-l-Ifta’ wa-l-Buhuth), 334 European Enlightenment, 20, 22 European Union (EU), 33, 257, 307, 311, 351, 374 Ezz, Ahmed, 200 Facebook, 216, 226, 234–5, 270, 303, 330, 362, 366 Fahmy, Mohammed, 312 Fahmy, Samih, 273 Fahmy, Tal‘at, 341, 361 al-Faqih, Sa‘d, 280 Faraj, ‘Abd al-Salam, 97 Faraj, Saleh, 297 Farid, Ahmed, 165 Faruq of Egypt, 56 Fatah al-Sham Front. See Jabhat al-Nusra Fath Mosque, 202 Fayed, ‘Ammar, 192, 203, 207 Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (Ittihad al-Munazamat al-Islamiyya fi Auruba), 334 FIFA World Cup of 2022, 279 Foundation for Defense of Democracies, 376 Free Officers, 8, 56, 64, 125, 127 Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), 6, 132, 148, 161, 230, 251–6, 258–9, 267, 269, 270, 272–5, 293, 318, 326, 368 French Revolution, 184 From Here Let’s Learn (Min Huna Naʻlam), 59 Front Islamique du Salut (al-Jabhat alIslamiyya li-l-Inqadh, or FIS). See Muslim Brotherhood in Algeria Fu’ad I. School. See Cairo University Fuda, Farag, 152 Fuda, Yusri, 396 Fukuyama, Francis, 34 al-fulul (remnants of the Mubarak regime), 2, 5, 103, 259, 262, 287, 294 Ga‘far, Hisham, 176 Gadallah, Mohammed Fu‘ad, 293 Ganzouri, Kamal, 265, 267 Gates, Robert, 242 Gaza, 64, 128, 178, 218, 232, 280, 288, 379, 384 Gazzar, Helmi, 85, 122, 123, 151, 225, 228, 270 Georgetown University, 211, 268 Georgia, 196 Germany, 128, 276, 323 Ghallush, ‘Abd al-Latif, 340 al-Ghanoushi, Rashid, 152, 281 al-Ghazali, Mohammed, 59, 69, 74, 85, 127, 131, 152, 158, 165, 189, 192

439

al-Ghazali, Zaynab, 252, 385 al-Ghonaymi, Mustafa, 221, 242 Ghonim, Wael, 226, 270 Ghozlan, Mahmud, 214, 221–2, 238, 260, 300, 318, 332 Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, 297 Great Britain. See United Kingdom Greater Middle East Initiative, 196 Greek Club, 213 Greste, Peter, 312 Group of 8 (G-8), 196 Guardianship of the Jurist (Velayat-e Faqih), 91, 92 Gül, Abdullah, 258 Gülen movement, 257 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), 137, 279, 324, 348, 370 Gulf Crisis of 2017, 370–3, 379–81 Gulf of Aden, 350 Gulf region, 136–9, 143, 145, 150, 257, 275, 276–9, 296, 323–5, 345, 379 Gulf War of 1990, 136–7, 139–40, 148, 149, 157, 165, 200, 278, 342 Habib, Mohammed, 110, 156, 157, 168, 196, 205–6, 209, 214, 223, 225, 390 Habib, Rafiq, 251, 270 al-Haddad, ‘Issam, 160–2, 267, 271, 299, 303, 384 al-Haddad, Abdullah, 161, 162 al-Haddad, Gehad, 162, 300 al-Haddad, Hisham, 160 al-Haddad, Midhat, 160, 181, 208, 384 Hadi, ‘Abd Rabbuh Mansur, 347 Hadith, 31, 36, 40, 53, 67–9, 74, 78, 89, 183 al-Haftar, Khalifa, 344 Hajazi, Mahmud, 285 al-Hakim, Tawfiq, 160 Hamas. See Islamic Resistance Movement (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya) Hamid, Muhi, 217, 221, 242 Hamid, Yahia, 297 Hanbalism, 22, 71, 90, 277, 343 Hani al-Ithi Mosque, 293 Harvard University, 226 Hasan, ‘Abd al-Rahim, 67 Hasanin, Ahmed, 104, 156 al-Hatti, Nasser, 337 al-Hayat, London-based pan-Arab newspaper, 166 Hearst, David, 373 Heikal, Mohammed Hasanin, 82, 98 Hejaz, 22, 116–17, 186, 188 al-Helbawy, Kamal, 117–20, 186–8, 268 Heliopolis, 73, 195, 213, 247, 289, 357 Heliopolis Sheraton Hotel, 178 Heshmat, Gamal, 213, 225, 270, 300, 326, 327

440

index

Hezbollah, 280, 295, 323, 371, 379 Hijazi, Safwat, 3, 354 Hikestep military prison, 168, 170 Hilal, Mohammed, 156, 196, 220 Horn of Africa, 349, 351, 352, 379 al-Hosseini, Sa‘d, 217, 221, 224, 242 House of Sa‘ud. See Saudi Arabia al-Houthi, ‘Abd al-Malik, 280 Houthis, 280, 346, 351, 379, 383 al-Hudaybi, Hasan, 8–9, 10, 50, 51, 56, 125, 129, 181, 184, 358 al-Hudaybi, Ma’mun, 156, 166, 170, 173, 193, 196 Hudhud, Ayman, 271 Hudson Institute, 376 Huffington Post Arabic, 374, 378 Hussein bin Talal, 120 Hussein, Mahmud, 130, 168, 214, 218, 221, 300, 318–22, 326–9, 341, 361, 364, 369, 384–5 Hussein, Saddam, 136, 194, 219 Huwaydi, Hassan, 224 al-I‘tisam (Adherence to God), Brotherhoodaffiliated magazine, 174 Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, Mohammed, 22, 52, 71 Ibn Taymiyya, Taqi al-Din Ahmad, 22, 70–1, 97, 118 Ibrahim, Hussein, 221, 270, 318 Ibrahim, Mohammed, 311 Ibrahim, Saad Eddin, 178 In the Shade of the Quran (Fi Zilal al-Qur’an), 93, 106 India, 68 Indonesia, 115 al-infitah (policy of economic opening), 81–3, 102, 165 Interbuild, 161 International Institute for Strategic Studies, 376 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 135, 141, 253, 273, 291, 297 International Union of Muslim Scholars (alIttihad al-‘Alami li-l-‘Ulama’ alMuslimin), 325, 334 Interpal, 378 Iran, 93, 99, 137, 219, 257, 274, 278–80, 295, 306, 323, 344, 346, 349, 370–2, 379, 381, 383 Iranian Revolution of 1979, 88–93, 258 Iraq, 33, 67, 116, 137, 138, 181, 194, 219, 281, 323, 379, 383 invasion of Kuwait. See Gulf War of 1990 Iraqi Islamic Party (al-Hizb al-Islami al-‘ Iraqi). See Muslim Brotherhood in Iraq al-Iskanderani, Ismail, 313

al-Islambuli, Khalid, 99 al-Islambuli, Mohammed, 98 al-Islambuli, Shawqi, 166 Islamic Action Front (Jabhat al-‘Aml al-Islami). See Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan Islamic Awakening, 60–3 Islamic Centre in Munich, 128 Islamic Constitutional Movement (al-Haraka al-Dusturiyya al-Islamiyya). See Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait Islamic Guidance Association (Jam‘iat alIrshad al-Islami). See Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait Islamic Jihad (al-Jihad al-Islami), 97, 166, 341 Islamic Law Association of the Practitioners of the Book and Sunnah (Jama‘iyya alShari‘a al-Islamiyya li-Mu‘arasin alKitab wa-l-Sunna), 260 Islamic Legitimate Body of Rights and Reformation (al-Hay’a al-Shar‘iyya lil-Huquq wa-l-Islah), 260 Islamic modernism. See Muslim reformers Islamic project, 7, 9, 95, 101, 107, 109, 118, 119, 127, 145, 148, 155, 169, 251, 253, 266, 311, 389, 394 Islamic Quartet, 276 Islamic Relief Committee, 161 Islamic Resistance Movement (Harakat alMuqawama al-Islamiyya, or Hamas), 43, 161, 207, 210, 211, 232, 275, 280, 287, 295, 323, 348, 379, 384 Islamic Revolution. See Iranian Revolution of 1979 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), 91, 274, 382 Islamic state. See Caliphate Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), 330, 344, 360, 375 Islamism. See Political Islam Islamist movements. See Political Islam Islamophobia, 11 Isma‘il, Mohammed, 165 Isma‘il, Mohammed ‘Uthman, 65 Isma‘il, Nabawy, 79 Israel, 51, 59, 60, 64, 67, 79, 86–7, 96–7, 103, 120, 137, 149, 161, 180, 192, 213, 217, 232, 244, 257, 273, 281, 287, 379, 389, 397 peace negotiations with Egypt, 86–7 Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), 60, 103, 192, 288 Ittihadiyya clashes of December 2012, 289–91 Ittihadiyya Presidential Palace, 3, 15, 247, 292, 301 ‘Izzat, Mahmud, 128–30, 133, 134, 146, 156–7, 162, 168, 203, 209–10, 212, 214, 217, 220–1, 241, 243, 268, 318–19, 327, 332, 335, 341, 361–3, 366

index and Guidance Office elections of 2009, 223–5 and the Egyptian uprising of 2011, 238 upbringing, 129 Jabhat al-Nusra, 325, 360 Jama‘a Islamiyya, 73, 74–7, 85, 87, 94, 121, 131, 134, 152, 161, 166, 251, 260, 298, 341 birth of, 67–9 internal splits, 96 Jama‘at-i-Islami, 68, 186 Jami‘, Mahmud, 66 Jenkins, John, 325, 374 Jerusalem, 86, 178, 385 Jihad, 11, 27, 29, 184–5, 188, 298, 330, 358–9, 386 Jihadism, 61, 73–4, 95, 97, 99, 105, 153, 298, 330, 335, 360 al-Jindy, Anwar, 118 Jinping Xi, 350 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), 323, 345, 381 Jordan, 115, 120, 122, 128, 297 Jurisprudence of the Tradition (Fiqh al-Sunna), 69 Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partissi, or AKP), 256, 268 Kalin, Ibrahim, 351 Kamal, Mohammed, 318–23, 327, 330–1, 332–42, 355, 357, 361, 362–7 Kamil, Sharif, 326 Kandil, Hisham, 271 Karman, Tawakul, 383 al-Katatni, Sa‘d, 132, 217, 221–2, 239, 242, 243, 245, 248, 251, 266, 270, 272, 285, 304, 385 al-Kawmi, Sabri ‘Arafa, 145 Kefaya. See Egyptian Movement for Change (al-Harakat al-Masriyya min ajl alTaghayyir) Kemal, Mustafa (Atatürk), 22 Kenya, 120 Kerry, John, 343 Khafaji, Hisham, 337 al-Khairat, ‘Adel, 298 Khaled, ‘Amr, 162 Khalifa, Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman, 115, 185 Khamenei, ‘Ali, 92, 274 Khandil, Hisham, 299 Khanfar, Wadah, 281, 374, 378 Khomeini, Ruhollah, 89, 90, 93 al-Khuli, al-Bahi, 69, 118 King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz University, 186 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. See Saudi Arabia Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), 344

441

Kushner, Jared, 371 Kuwait, 67, 136–40, 167, 397 Labour Party (Hizb al-‘Amal), 134, 174 Lalsar, Amin, 115 Lebanon, 91, 219, 280, 379 Legitimacy Association (al-Hay’a al-Shar‘iyya), 359 Lenin, Vladimir, 393 León, Bernardino, 307 Letter of the Fifth Conference (Risalat al-Mu’ tamar al-Khamis), 158, 166, 199 Letter on Jihad (Risala al-jihad), 27 Letter on Teaching (Risala al-ta‘lim), 25, 31, 66, 76, 106, 108, 166, 367 Lewis, Bernard, 188 Liberal Party (Hizb al-Ahrar), 134 Liberation Rally, 118, 127 Libya, 67, 99, 135, 249, 257, 276, 282, 325, 344, 379 Libya Dawn, 344 Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC), 282 Life Makers (Sunna‘ al-Hayat), 162 Liman al-Torah prison, 78, 127, 208, 211, 217 Liwa’ al-Islam (the Banner of Islam), Brotherhood-affiliated magazine, 174 Lotfy, Islam, 213–14, 227, 238, 244, 256 Luxor terrorist attacks of 1997, 152, 298 Madi, Abu al-‘Ala’, 87–8, 95, 122, 171–3, 198, 201–2 al-Maghraby, Ahmed, 200 Mahallat al-Kubra strike of 2007, 214 al-Mahallawi, Ahmed, 98 Maher, Ahmed, 216, 312 Mahfuz, Asmaa‘, 216 Mahmud, ‘Abd al-Halim, 69 Mahmud, ‘Abd al-Meguid, 287 Mahmud, Hani, 227–8, 237–40, 255 Malaysia, 143, 327 Malek, Hasan, 145, 161, 208 Mali, 128 al-Malt, Ahmed, 104, 110, 124, 156, 157 al-Manar (the Lighthouse), Arabic-language magazine published from 1898 to 1935, 22 Manshiyya incident of 1954, 8, 56 Mansur, Ahmed, 281 Marine barracks bombing of 1983, 91 Marx, Karl, 393 Mash‘al, Khalid, 280, 348, 384–5, 386 Mashhur, Mustafa, 28, 59, 74, 80, 86, 95, 104, 124, 128–30, 131–3, 134, 146, 154, 156, 166, 173, 175, 181–2, 185, 187, 190, 199, 213, 385 and the Special Apparatus, 125–6 becomes General Guide, 173

442

index

Mashhur, Mustafa (cont.) passes away, 194 upbringing, 124 Maspiro, 247, 261 Maspiro clashes of October 2011, 261–3, 361 Mattis, James N., 344 Mauretania, 334 Mawdudi, Abu-l-A‘la, 62, 68, 106 Meir, Golda, 67 Mekameleen, Brotherhood-affiliated TV station, 373 Mekki, Ahmed, 293 al-Meligui, ‘Abd al-Sattar, 111, 162, 172, 270 Middle East Eye, 373 Middle East Institute, 376 Middle East Monitor, 373 Military coup of 1952, 56, 57 Millî Görüş, 91, 258, 259 al-Missnad, Moza Bint Nasser, 278–9 Mitchell, Richard P., 18 Mohammed Mahmud Street, 249, 271 Mohammed Mahmud Street clashes of November 2011, 249, 263, 264–5, 391 Mohammed Muntassir Facebook account, 330, 333, 341, 362, 366 Mohammed, Baher, 312 Mohsen, ‘Ali, 347 Moqattam, 293, 301 Morsi, Mohammed, 130, 160, 162, 178, 208, 209, 213, 221, 231, 242, 243, 285, 292, 294, 322, 330, 332, 363, 369, 385, 387, 388, 391 and the Egyptian uprising of 2011, 239, 244–5, 248–9 as president of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), 251 becomes president of Egypt, 7, 14, 230, 269–70 death of, 306 last speech, 6 ouster of, 1, 7, 231 al-Morsi, Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman, 160, 217, 221, 318, 335, 339, 363, 366, 368 Mossadegh, Mohammed, 88 Movement of Egypt’s Forearms (Harakat alSawa‘id Masr), 357 Mu’min, Mustafa, 115 Mubarak, ‘Ala’, 146 Mubarak, Gamal, 200, 215 Mubarak, Hosni, 67, 84, 98, 101, 124, 134, 140, 142, 147, 149–51, 153, 166–8, 180, 193, 196, 201, 209, 211–12, 232, 258, 281, 290 and hereditary succession, 200, 202, 225, 228 and the Egyptian uprising of 2011, 240, 242, 246 and the Gulf War of 1990, 136–7 and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), 135, 273

and the People’s Assembly elections of 2005, 205, 208 and the United States of America, 204, 207, 229 early presidency, 102–4 ouster of, 13, 230, 236, 247–8, 249, 258, 263, 285, 287, 390 al-Mukhtar (the Chosen One), Brotherhoodaffiliated magazine, 174 Munir, Ibrahim, 160, 224, 300, 322, 326–9, 337, 355, 361–4, 369, 382, 384–5, 386 al-Musawwar, Egyptian weekly current events magazine, 147 Muslim Brotherhood Alexandria Administrative Office, 148, 154, 157, 160, 162, 181, 193, 361 Alexandria Sector. See Western Delta Sector and anti-Semitism, 81, 86 and ordeals, 7–9, 55–6, 118 and the Constitution of 2012, 283–6 and the Jama‘a Islamiyya, 76–80 as a terrorist organization. See Terrorism By-laws of 1951, 112 By-laws of 1990, 220, 223, 227, 328 By-laws of 1994, 45, 48, 113, 155, 209 By-laws of 2009, 222 Committee of the Brotherhood Youth (Lajna Shabab al-Ikhwan), 359 Communications Bureau with the Islamic World (Qism al-Ittisal bi-l-‘Alam alIslami), 114 Crisis Management Committee (Lajna Idariyya al-Azma), 332, 337, 348, 361, 364 founding of, 327–9 Crisis Management Office for Egyptians Abroad. See Crisis Management Committee (Lajna Idariyya al-Azma) Daqahliyya Sector. See Eastern Delta Sector Eastern Delta Sector, 43, 111, 336, 361 Egypt Office (al-Maktab al-Misri), 101, 111 Executive Office of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab Countries (al-Maktab alTanfidhi li-l-Ikhwan al-Muslimin fil-Bilad al-‘Arab), 115 Founding Body of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Abroad (al-Hai’a al-Ta’sisiyya li-l-Ikhwan al-Muslimin al-Masriyyin bi-l-Kharij), 369, 382 General Guidance Office (Maktab al-Irshad al-‘Amm), 14, 41–8, 50, 54, 101, 112, 115–16, 124, 127, 129, 130, 132, 139, 142, 148, 154–7, 159, 161, 162, 169, 171–3, 178, 180, 182, 193, 195, 196–8, 201, 203–4, 205, 206, 209, 211–14,

index 217–18, 219–23, 225, 227–9, 230–1, 236–42, 243–5, 247–8, 249–50, 254–6, 260, 262–7, 272–3, 275, 283, 287, 289–91, 293, 305, 311, 317–23, 326, 328, 331–3, 335, 337, 340–1, 342, 348, 361–6, 368–70, 382, 390–2 General Office (al-Maktab al-‘Amm), 367–70, 382, 387 General Shura Council (Majlis al-Shura al‘Amm), 45–8, 112, 130–1, 133, 149, 154–7, 159, 162, 165, 168, 171, 174, 176, 194, 202, 212, 220, 221–3, 228, 248, 268, 321, 322, 330–2, 335, 340, 362–3, 366 General Statutes of 1982, 31, 45–8, 112, 194, 222, 321, 331, 339 Greater Cairo Sector, 43, 111, 157, 162, 209, 336, 339, 340, 361, 364 High Administrative Committee (al-Lajna al-Idariyya al-‘Uliya), 321–2, 326, 328, 330–3, 337, 339–42, 358, 360, 362–6 ideology, 38, 50, 54, 69, 92, 104–10, 117, 121, 130, 138, 167, 169, 177, 203, 210, 343, 345, 367, 378, 383, 386, 390 Ikhwan.site, 341, 362–3 Ikhwanonline.com, 176–7, 262, 304, 330, 341, 363, 366 Ikhwanonline.info, 363 Ikhwanweb.com, 176, 177, 190 in Algeria, 152 in Asia, 8, 91, 327 in Europe, 8, 66, 91, 224, 327, 369 in Iraq, 105, 115, 121 in Jordan, 105, 115, 120, 152, 185 in Kuwait, 115–16, 139–40 in Lebanon, 115 in Libya, 145, 344 in Malaysia, 369 in Palestine. See Islamic Resistance Movement (Harakat al-Muqawama alIslamiyya, or Hamas) in Qatar, 369 in Saudi Arabia, 115–17, 188, 275 in Somalia, 279, 352 in Sudan, 115, 121, 359, 369 in Syria, 105, 115, 283, 385 in the Gulf region, 224, 327 in the Middle East, 8, 66, 91, 327 in the United Arab Emirates, 167–8, 296, 325–6 in the United Kingdom, 378, 383 in the United States of America, 8, 33, 66, 91, 327 in Tunisia. See Ennahda in Turkey, 359, 369, 373 in Yemen, 345, 383 International Organization (al-Tanzim alDawli), 43, 100–1, 112–16, 120, 124,

443

126, 128, 139, 148, 161, 186, 190, 224, 258, 275, 311, 327–8, 369, 374, 382–3, 386 Liaison Office (al-Rabita). See International Organization (al-tanzim al-dawli) logo, 3, 28, 385 Middle Delta Sector, 43, 111, 336, 339–41 Northern Sa‘id Sector, 43, 336, 339–41, 361 Office of Arab Upbringing for the Gulf Countries (Maktab al-Tarbiyya al‘Arabi li-l-Duwal al-Khalij), 187 on atheism, 54, 62, 192, 216 on Coptic Christians, 133, 171, 198, 212, 262, 270, 361 on democracy, 3, 6, 106, 194, 197–200, 206, 219, 270, 303, 324, 348 on women, 2, 53, 65, 133, 176, 198, 212, 250, 265, 271, 334, 385 Organization’65 (al-tanzim khamsa wa sittin), 9, 125, 129–30, 145 organizational structure, 41–9 Secret organization. See Special Apparatus (al-nizam al-khass) Sharqiyya Sector. See Eastern Delta Sector Sinai & Canal Sector, 336 Southern Sa‘id Sector, 43, 336, 339–41, 361 Special Apparatus (al-nizam al-khass), 8, 37, 55, 56, 78, 80, 98, 101, 104, 108–12, 115, 125, 130, 131, 133, 210, 224, 270 stages of membership, 34–41 ten pillars of the oath, 26–34, 66 Upper Egypt Sector, 43, 111 Western Delta Sector, 43, 111, 336, 339–41, 361 Zubayr Brotherhood, 116, 138, 280 Muslim Council of Britain, 187 Muslim Council of Elders (Majlis al-Hukama’ al-Muslimin), 325 Muslim reformers, 19–23 Muslim Welfare House (Dar al-Ra‘aya alIslamiyya), 120 Muslim World League (Rabita al-‘Alam alIslami), 116–17, 185 Mussa, Yehia, 357 Mustafa, Shukri, 73, 78, 108, 129, 341 al-Mutawa, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, 138 Nada, Youssef, 190, 382 al-Nafisi, ‘Abdullah, 139 Nahda Project. See Renaissance Project (Mashru‘ al-Nahda) Nahda Square, 15, 300, 302, 308, 310 al-Nahhas, Mustafa, 105 al-naksa (the setback). See Six Day War of 1967 Nasr al-Din, Osama, 154, 217 Nasr City, 2, 300, 304, 311

444

index

Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 8–9, 51, 56, 57, 60–2, 64, 66, 76, 82, 99, 105, 117, 118, 125, 127, 129, 142, 163, 170, 215, 224, 244, 252, 273, 305, 389 Nasserism, 61 Nasserists, 61, 62, 65–6, 103, 124, 179, 201 National Association for Change (al-Jam‘iyya al-Wataniyya li-l-Taghyir), 226, 239 National Democratic Party (NDP), 103–4, 124, 140, 200, 208, 229, 240, 262, 285 National Endowment for Democracy, 196 Nazif, Ahmed, 200, 208, 214 Neoliberalism, 135, 137, 141, 159, 163, 164, 200, 215, 231, 232, 273 Neom, 350 New Arab (Al-Araby Al-Jadeed), 373 New York Times, 370 al-Nimr, Nimr, 381 Non-Aligned Movement, 81, 274 Noon Post, 374 North Dome/South Pars gas field, 278, 324 Nuh, Mokhtar, 77, 132, 134, 151, 172–3 al-Nuqrashi Pasha, Mohammed, 8, 55, 69, 125 Nur (Light) Party (Hizb al-Nur), 260, 266, 293, 299 ‘Omar, Ahmed, 151 ‘Omar Ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Mosque, 289 ‘Omar Ibn al-Khattab, 119 Obama, Barack, 218, 243, 246, 270 October War of 1973, 67, 72, 75 Oral History, 12, 51, 101, 143, 180, 231, 306 Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (Munazama al-Ta‘awun al-Islami), 116 Orientalism, 20, 188, 190, 373, 384, 393 al-Otaiba, Yousef, 371, 375 Ottoman Empire, 257, 277 Owen, Roger, 12, 226 Pahlavi, Mohammed Reza, 89 Pakistan, 120, 186 Palestine, 43, 127, 137, 178, 192, 207, 277, 385 Palestine War of 1948, 110, 115, 125 Palestinian Authority (PA), 178, 192 Palestinian Intifada from 1987 to 1993, 136 Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), 120 Pan-Islamism, 19–20, 92, 140 Party of Islamic Action (Hizb al-‘Amal alIslami), 318 Patterson, Anne, 299 People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. See Yemen Peres, Shimon, 273 Persian Gulf. See Gulf region Police Day of 25 January 1952, 229, 235

Political Islam, 9–11, 15, 22, 93, 98, 103, 117, 137, 152, 159, 166, 188, 201, 207, 211, 257, 261, 276, 344, 373, 375, 378, 385, 393 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, 120 Popular Mobilization Forces (Hashd al-Sha ‘bi), 379 Popular Resistance Front (Jabhat alMuqawama al-Sha‘biyya), 357 Popular Resistance Movement (Harakat alMuqawama al-Sha‘biyya), 356 Preachers Not Judges (Du‘at la Qudat), 51, 181, 358 Prophet Mohammed, 5, 20, 26, 30, 83, 106, 183, 287, 291, 386, 396 Puntland, 381 Purdue University, 252 al-Qadhafi, Mu‘ammar, 99, 280, 282, 325 al-Qahtani, Mohammed, 90 al-Qaida, 179, 182, 185–6, 375 in Syria. See Jabhat al-Nusra in the Arabian Peninsula, 349 al-Qaradawi, Yusuf, 66, 69, 74, 118, 243, 277, 281, 325, 334, 361 Qasr al-Nile Bridge, 240 al-Qassas, Mohammed, 213–14, 227, 243, 244, 247, 256 Qatar, 137, 276, 295, 306, 323, 324–6, 327, 334, 344, 347, 352, 370–4, 376–9, 382 and Saudi Arabia, 277–80 and the Muslim Brotherhood, 276–7 and Turkey, 379 Qatar Foundation, 279 Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), 279 Qatar News Agency, 370 Qatar Sports Investments, 279 al-Qattan, Manna‘, 116 al-Qazzaz, Hussein, 148, 251, 253–4, 268, 272–3, 292, 327 Qualifying Industrialized Zones (QIZ), 273 al-Qubba Presidential Palace, 300 Quran, 1, 3, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31, 34, 36, 40, 53, 61–3, 67, 69, 75, 78, 106, 118, 122, 157, 161, 170, 175, 176, 190, 245, 291, 316, 360, 385, 386, 396 Qutb, Hamida, 385 Qutb, Sayyid, 9, 10, 51, 62, 73, 77, 78, 92, 95, 101, 104–10, 118, 125–8, 129, 131, 134, 165, 188, 192, 199, 217, 224, 385, 394 and jahiliyya, 106–8, 184 execution of, 9, 18, 66 on social justice, 83–4 Ra’uf ‘Izzat, Hibah, 176 Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya, 1–6, 14, 128, 173, 240, 300, 302, 304, 308, 309, 354, 395

index Ramadan War of 1973. See October War of 1973 Ramadan, Sa‘id, 115, 385 Ramadan, Tariq, 115, 279 RAND Center for Middle East Public Policy, 188 Rashid, Rashid Mohammed, 200 Rassd, 374 Reagan, Ronald, 91, 98 Red Sea, 120, 276, 349–51, 380 Reform and Social Counselling Association (Jam‘iat al-Islah wa-l-Tawjih al-Ijtima‘i). See Muslim Brotherhood in the United Arab Emirates Reform Initiative of 2004, 198, 212–13, 220 Renaissance Party (Hizb al-Nahda), 255 Renaissance Project (Mashru‘ al-Nahda), 76, 252–5, 272, 292 Renew Your Life (Jaddid Hayatak), 158 Republican Guards Club, 302, 307 Research methods. See Oral History Revolution of 1952. See Military coup of 1952 Revolutionary Brigade (Liwa‘ al-Thawra), 357 Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), 8, 118 Revolutionary Punishment (al-‘Aqab alThawri), 357 Revolutionary Youth Coalition (I’tilaf Shabab al-Thawra), 214, 235, 238, 244, 248–50, 256, 263, 269 Rice, Condoleezza, 204 Rice, Susan, 242 Rida, Mohammed Rashid, 21–3, 30, 71 Rizq, Hamdi, 147 Rouhani, Hassan, 323 Russia, 182, 186, 232, 393 Sa‘d al-Sayyed, Mohammed, 340 Sa‘id al-‘Asar, Mohammed, 285 Sa‘id, Nadah, 115 al-Sabah, Jaber al-Ahmad, 139 Sabahi, Hamdin, 61, 269 Sabiq, al-Sayyid, 66, 69, 127, 131, 165 al-Sadat, Anwar, 81, 86, 98, 135, 195, 244 and the Islamic movement, 64, 96 and the Muslim Brotherhood, 65, 94–6, 98 assassination of, 51, 98–9, 102 becomes president, 63 Safavi, Navvab, 92 al-Sahwa al-Islamiyya, the ‘Islamic Awakening’ in Saudi Arabia, 117, 137, 278, 342 Said, Khaled, 226, 232 Salafis, 298 Salafism, 17, 61, 69–74, 75, 95, 117, 165, 260, 266, 286, 298, 330, 346, 386 Salah Abu Isma‘il, Hazem, 211 Salah Salem Street, 289, 302, 307 Saleh, ‘Ali ‘Abdullah, 280, 346–7

445

Salsabil, 145–9, 158 Salsabil affair, 149, 153, 155, 174 al-Sananiri, Kamal al-Din, 77, 104, 186 Sandmonkey, 241 Sasa Post, 374 al-Sattar, ‘Abd al-Mo‘az, 277 Saudi Arabia, 22, 67, 72, 89, 115, 119, 128, 136–8, 165, 185–7, 219, 274, 279, 280, 283, 285, 306, 308, 342, 343, 348, 370–2, 379, 381, 383, 389, 397 and Iran, 274–6, 323 and Qatar, 277–80 and the Muslim Brotherhood, 115–17, 295, 325 and the United Arab Emirates, 343–5 Saudi Aramco, 117 Saudi Leaks. See Wikileaks Saudi Vision 2030, 349 al-Sawi, Hafiz, 328 al-Sawi, Mustafa, 241 al-Sayyid, Hussam, 176 al-Sayyid, Mohammed Sa‘d, 321 Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF), 15 Scotland, 145 al-Sha‘b (the People), Brotherhood-affiliated newspaper, 174 al-Sha‘rawi, Mohammed Mitwally, 74 Shabab militias, 351 Shadi, Salah, 124, 131 Shafiq, Ahmed, 269 Shakespeare, William, 190 Shakir, Malath, 378 Shalash, Magdi, 335, 340 Sharaf, Ibrahim, 155 Sharia and Life (al-Shari‘a wa-l-Haya), TV programme on Al Jazeera, 281 Sharia law, 2, 7, 11, 30, 34, 56, 65, 73, 81, 122, 139, 172, 252, 286 al-Sharif, ‘Abd al-Khaliq, 165 Sharon, Ariel, 103, 178, 192 al-Sharq Forum, 378 al-Sharqawi, ‘Abd al-‘Azim, 318, 333 al-Shatir, Khairat, 32, 58, 62, 74, 109, 128, 130, 142, 143, 145–7, 148, 157, 158, 161–3, 168, 177, 197, 202, 204, 205, 208, 209, 211, 214, 217, 221, 227, 254, 256, 260, 267, 272, 304, 318, 321 and Qutbism, 145 and the Egyptian uprising of 2011, 238, 243–4 on the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), 254 on the Renaissance Project (Mashru‘ alNahda), 252, 254 presidential run, 267–9 prison experience, 153, 170 upbringing, 144 al-Shatir, Zahra’, 145, 227

446

index

al-Shatti, Isma‘il, 139 Sheikh Mohammed, Khalid, 185 Shiism, 70–2, 90, 280, 298, 348, 371, 383 al-shumuliyya (comprehensiveness), 18, 24 al-shura (the Islamic principle of consultation), 23, 35, 68 Sidqi Pasha, Isma‘il, 53 Signposts on the Road (Ma‘alim fi-l-Tariq), 8, 62, 106–9, 128, 192, 358 Sinai Peninsula, 43, 60, 64, 67, 103, 239, 313, 330, 364 Sirriyya, Salih, 73 al-Sisi, ‘Abbas, 66, 78, 156–7 al-Sisi, ‘Abd al-Fattah (member of the Muslim Brotherhood), 318, 328, 337, 340 al-Sisi, ‘Abd al-Fattah (President of Egypt), 1, 284–5, 299–300, 302, 308, 322, 334, 374, 386, 397 Six Day War of 1967, 57, 59, 64, 139 Social justice, 30, 83–4, 135, 231, 236, 287 Social Justice in Islam (al-ʻAdala al-ijtimaʻiyya fi al-Islam), 83 Social movement theory, 9, 392 Socialists, 61, 65–7, 124, 144, 178, 179, 201 Society for Business Development (Ebda), 161 Society of Excommunication and Emigration (Jama‘at al-Takfir wa-l-Hijra). See ‘Society of Muslims’ (Jama‘at alMuslimin) Society of Muslims (Jama‘at al-Muslimin), 73, 341 Society of Our Master Muhammad’s Youth (Jam‘iyyat Shabab Sayyidna Muhammad), 355 Society of the Youth of Islam (Jama‘a Shabab al-Islam), 65 Soltan, Mohammed, 315 Somalia, 115, 279, 351–3, 380, 381 Somaliland, 381 Soviet Union, 64, 89, 117, 135, 137, 185 Strait of Hormuz, 276, 345 Student protests of 1968, 57–9 Sudan, 115, 166, 279, 317, 327, 334, 352, 380, 381 Suez Canal, 57, 60, 67, 82, 98, 102, 135 Suez Canal Authority, 246 Sufism, 17, 20, 37, 38, 68, 71, 386 al-Sukkari, Ahmed, 392 Sulayman, ‘Omar, 166, 241, 243, 245, 247 Sulayman, Osama, 328 Sultan, ‘Issam, 171 Sunna, 17, 23, 30, 63, 69, 75 Sunnism, 17, 21, 23, 70, 90–3, 216, 274, 280, 286, 298, 348, 371, 381, 383, 386 Switzerland, 190, 191, 298

Syria, 33, 67, 70, 115, 219, 257, 275–6, 298–9, 323, 325, 344, 360, 371, 379 Syrian Democratic Forces, 344 Tagarrud (Impartiality) campaign, 300 Tahrir Square, 64, 195, 242, 259–61, 271, 286, 287, 289, 308 demonstrations of 30 June 2013, 2, 4, 301 Egyptian uprising of 2011, 193, 233–6, 237–41, 242, 245, 246, 249, 250, 285, 353, 390 al-takfir (act of declaring a fellow Muslim an apostate), 26, 51, 71, 73–4, 78, 88, 90, 105, 184, 335, 360 Tali‘at al-Iman (the Vanguard of the Faith), 143 Tamarrud (Rebel) Campaign, 2, 294–5, 302, 389 Tammam, Husam, 198 al-Tantawi, Mohammed Hussein, 262, 284–5 al-Taqwa Bank, 190 al-Tayeb, Ahmed, 325 Technical Military Group (Jama‘at al-Fanniyya al-‘Askariyya), 73 Telecom Egypt, 246 Telima, ‘Issam, 334 Terrorism, 6, 11, 15, 63, 105, 113, 152, 166, 179, 181, 182, 187, 188–90, 194, 196, 207–8, 298, 308, 312, 313, 325–6, 330, 334, 340, 354, 358, 370, 373, 383, 386, 395 The Atlantic, 383 The Caliphate and the Supreme Imamate (alKilafa wa al-Imamat al-Uzma), 22 The Guardian, 206, 373 The Innocence of Muslims, 287 The Intercept, 382 The Neglected Duty (al-Farida al-Gha’iba), 97, 99 The Return of Consciousness (‘Awdat al-Wa’i), 160 al-Tikriti, Anas, 378 Tillerson, Rex, 375 al-Tilmisani, ‘Omar, 50, 66, 74, 95, 100, 104, 121, 122, 125, 128, 131, 151, 171, 209, 255, 389, 392 meeting with Hasan al-Banna, 54–5 passes away, 130 prison experience, 56–7 upbringing, 52–3 Tiran and Sanafir, 350 Treaty of Ta’if of 1943, 346 Trump, Donald J., 371–2, 375, 381, 384 Tunisia, 229, 230, 235, 276 Turkey, 22, 70, 91, 120, 122, 128, 143, 268, 276, 278, 280, 306, 327, 337, 350, 351–3, 370, 380–1, 382

index and Qatar, 379–80 and the Muslim Brotherhood, 256–9 Turkish International Cooperation and Development Agency, 351 Twitter, 229, 234, 364, 372 Ultras. See Ahlawy Ultras and White Knights Ultras Union of Islamic Courts (Ittihad al-Muhakim al-Islamiyya). See Muslim Brotherhood in Somalia United Arab Emirates, 167, 279, 280, 283, 306, 323, 370, 374, 376, 379, 389, 397 and Saudi Arabia, 343–5 and the Muslim Brotherhood, 295 United Kingdom, 120, 128, 161, 187, 277, 325 United Nations, 55, 242 General Assembly, 282 Millennium Development Goals, 279 Security Council, 137, 191, 323 United States of America, 33, 88–9, 111, 117, 120, 128, 149, 157, 179, 188, 191, 196, 202, 210, 211, 229, 230, 232, 234, 246, 251, 253, 269, 273, 278, 375, 378, 381, 391, 397 and the Egyptian uprising of 2011, 242 and the Gulf War of 1990, 136–8 and the invasion of Iraq of 2003, 180, 194, 196, 213, 219, 281 Embassy in Cairo, 203, 206, 208, 210, 218, 220, 225 relations with the Muslim Brotherhood, 196, 206–8, 209–12, 218, 220, 260 University of Alexandria, 58, 62, 74, 109, 144, 253, 265, 315 University of Asyut, 98, 111, 169, 210 University of Birmingham, 161 University of Glasgow, 145 University of Mansura, 192 University of Medina, 186 University of Minya, 87, 94, 210 University of Northridge, 221 University of Oxford, 12–15, 115, 279 University of Qatar, 378 University of Southern California, 221 al-Utaybi, Juhayman, 89 Uthman, Mohammed, 227 Virginity tests, 250, 259 Vision 28, 368 Voice of the Truth (Sawt al-Haqq), 74

447

Wadi al-Natrun prison, 242, 315 Wafd Party, 53, 105, 123, 126 Wahat prison, 56, 127 Wahdan, Mohammed Taha, 321–2, 333 Wahhabi Salafism, 52, 72, 75, 86, 116, 117, 123, 125, 138, 165, 186, 298, 324 Wahhabism, 90 Walid, Mohammed Hikmet, 385, 386 War of Attrition from 1967 to 1970, 60 War on Terror. See Terrorism Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 376 Watan, 374 al-Watidy, Ahmed, 328 Weber, Max, 392 West Bank, 180, 192, 213 White Knights Ultras, 234 Wikileaks, 181, 238 Wilayat Sina’, 330, 360 Without Borders (Bi-la Hudud), TV programme on Al Jazeera, 281 World Assembly of Muslim Youth (al-Nadwa al-‘Alamiyya li-l-Shabab al-Islami, or WAMY), 116–17, 119, 186 World Bank, 141 World Economic Forum, 137, 161, 297 World Trade Centre, 179, 185, 261 Wright, Lawrence, 188 al-Yadumi, Mohammad, 383 Yasin, Fahad, 380 Yemen, 115, 122, 280, 334, 345–50, 379–80, 383 Yemen Arab Republic. See Yemen Yemeni Congregation for Reform (alTajammu‘ al-Yemeni li-l-Islah). See Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen Yom Kippur War. See October War of 1973 Youssef, Bassam, 276 YouTube, 286 al-Za‘farani, Ibrahim, 62, 74, 111, 123, 159, 161, 168, 173, 178, 214, 222–3, 225, 255 al-zakat (Islamic practice of almsgiving), 31, 83, 117 Zaki, Ahmed, 322 Zaki, Hamid, 303 Zamalek football club. See White Knight Ultras Zaqaziq University, 222, 224 Zarif, Mohammad Javad, 382 al-Zawahiri, Ayman, 186, 188, 359 Zayidism, 346 Zuhdi, Karam, 94, 97, 341

Books in the Series

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Parvin Paidar, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930–1945 Annelies Moors, Women, Property and Islam: Palestinian Experiences, 1920–1945 Paul Kingston, Britain and the Politics of Modernization in the Middle East, 1945–1958 Daniel Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought Nathan J. Brown, The Rule of Law in the Arab World: Courts in Egypt and the Gulf Richard Tapper, Frontier Nomads of Iran: The Political and Social History of the Shahsevan Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt Sheila Carapico, Civil Society in Yemen: The Political Economy of Activism in Arabia Meir Litvak, Shi’i Scholars of Nineteenth-Century Iraq: The Ulama of Najaf and Karbala Jacob Metzer, The Divided Economy of Mandatory Palestine Eugene L. Rogan, Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850–1921 Eliz Sanasarian, Religious Minorities in Iran Nadje Al-Ali, Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East: The Egyptian Women’s Movement Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, eds., The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 Gershon Shafir and Yoar Peled, Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship A. J. Racy, Making Music in the Arab World: The Culture and Artistry of Tarab Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Crisis Revisited Yasir Suleiman, A War of Words: Language and Conflict in the Middle East Peter Moore, Doing Business in the Middle East: Politics and Economic Crisis in Jordan and Kuwait Idith Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood David Romano, The Kurdish Nationalist Movement: Opportunity, Mobilization and Identity Laurie A. Brand, Citizens Abroad: Emigration and the State in the Middle East and North Africa James McDougall, History and the Culture of Nationalism in Algeria Madawi al-Rasheed, Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic Voices from a New Generation

26 Arang Keshavarzian, Bazaar and State in Iran: The Politics of the Tehran Marketplace 27 Laleh Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration 28 M. Hakan Yavuz, Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey 29 Mehran Kamrava, Iran’s Intellectual Revolution 30 Nelida Fuccaro, Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf: Manama since 1800 31 Michaelle L. Browers, Political Ideology in the Arab World: Accommodation and Transformation 32 Miriam R. Lowi, Oil Wealth and the Poverty of Politics: Algeria Compared 33 Thomas Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 34 Sune Haugbolle, War and Memory in Lebanon 35 Ali Rahnema, Superstition as Ideology in Iranian Politics: From Majlesi to Ahmadinejad 36 Wm. Roger Louis and Avi Shlaim eds, The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences 37 Stephen W. Day, Regionalism and Rebellion in Yemen: A Troubled National Union 38 Daniel Neep, Occupying Syria under the French Mandate: Insurgency, Space and State Formation 39 Iren Ozgur, Islamic Schools in Modern Turkey: Faith, Politics, and Education 40 Ali M. Ansari, The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran 41 Thomas Pierret, Religion and State in Syria: The Sunni Ulama from Coup to Revolution 42 Guy Ben-Porat, Between State and Synagogue: The Secularization of Contemporary Israel 43 Madawi Al-Rasheed, A Most Masculine State: Gender, Politics and Religion in Saudi Arabia 44 Sheila Carapico, Political Aid and Arab Activism: Democracy Promotion, Justice, and Representation 45 Pascal Menoret, Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism, and Road Revolt 46 Toby Matthiesen, The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism 47 Bashir Saade, Hizbullah and the Politics of Remembrance: Writing the Lebanese Nation 48 Noam Leshem, Life After Ruin: The Struggles over Israel’s Depopulated Arab Spaces 49 Zoltan Pall, Salafism in Lebanon: Local and Transnational Movements 50 Salwa Ismail, The Rule of Violence: Subjectivity, Memory and Government in Syria 51 Zahra Ali, Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation 52 Dina Bishara, Contesting Authoritarianism: Labour Challenges to the State in Egypt 53 Rory McCarthy, Inside Tunisia’s al-Nahda: Between Politics and Preaching 54 Ceren Lord, Religious Politics in Turkey: From the Birth of the Republic to the AKP 55 Dörthe Engelcke, Reforming Family Law: Social and Political Change in Jordan and Morocco 56 Dana Conduit, The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria 57 Benjamin Schuetze, Promoting Democracy, Reinforcing Authoritarianism: US and European Policy in Jordan 58 Marc Owen Jones, Political Repression in Bahrain

59 Dylan Baun, Winning Lebanon: Populism and the Production of Sectarian Violence, 1920–1958 60 Joas Wagemakers, The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan 61 Amnon Aran, Israeli Foreign Policy since the End of the Cold War 62 Victor J. Willi, The Fourth Ordeal: A History of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, 1968–2018

Plate 1. Four key protest sites in Cairo late June and early July 2013, with an approximate number of square metres occupied by demonstrators.

And prepare against them whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy of God and your enemy and others besides them whom you do not know [but] whom God knows. And whatever you spend in the cause of God will be fully repaid to you, and you will not be wronged. Sura 8 (the Spoils of War), Verse 60 Plate 2. The Brotherhood’s logo, with the Quran verse lending it the two emblazoned words ‘and prepare’.

(i)

(ii)

(iii)

Plate 3. Ethnographic sketches by Brotherhood rank-and-file members. The drawings show: (i) a depiction of the Brotherhood’s internal conflicts by a former member (made in 6th of October City on 26 July 2012); (ii) a sketch of the Brotherhood’s family system; and (iii) its organizational structure by a current grassroots leader (both (ii) and (iii) were made in Cairo on 30 January 2013).

(i)

(ii)

(iii)

(iv)

Plate 4. Four front covers of the al-Da‘wa magazine, which the Brotherhood published between June 1976 and September 1981, depicting common narratives among Brotherhood members. From top-left to bottom-right: (i) the October 1967 issue with the headline: ‘The martyr Sayyid Qutb: the tyrants executed him because of his writings’; (ii) the May 1981 issue with the headline: ‘Let’s liberate the al-Aqsa mosque’ and the subtitle ‘Has the time of the intelligence pirates returned?’; (iii) the October 1979 issue featuring an anti-Semitic depiction of a Jew holding an olive branch, with the headline: ‘Such are the Jews: they don’t keep their word and they have no honor’; and (iv) the March 1979 issue with the Persian Shah and the Ayatollah Khomeini, along with the headline: ‘Khomeini: between the hope of the Muslims and the conspiracies of the Crusaders and the Communists’.

Plate 5. Key Brotherhood members: (i) Mohammed Badi‘; (ii) Mahmud ‘Izzat; (iii) Khairat al-Shatir; (iv) Ibrahim Munir; (v) Mahmud Hussein; (vi) ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh; (vii) Mohammed Habib; (viii) Mohammed ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Morsi; (ix) Mohammed Kamal.

(i)

(ii)

Plate 6. An iconic street corner at Tahrir Square’s south-eastern perimeter, entering Mohammed Mahmud Street, which became an outlet for graffiti artists between 2011 and 2013. The graffiti depict specific moments during the transition, showing: (i) the militaryregime complex emerging behind the deposed President Hosni Mubarak, represented by Ahmed Shafiq, ‘Amr Moussa and Mohammed al-Tantawi (shot on 10 April 2012); and (ii) the Brotherhood’s General Guide Mohammed Badi‘, legitimizing the state’s onslaught against Egyptian artists (shot on 18 October 2012). Pictures by the author.

(iii)

Plate 6. Continued. (iii) Revolutionary activists who confront the military–Brotherhood alliance (shot on 24 June 2013). Pictures by the author.

(i)

(ii)

(iii)

(iv)

Plate 7. Graffiti in Cairo, made between April 2012 and June 2013, depicting: (i) Khairat al-Shatir (left) and Mohammed Morsi (right), being controlled by some unidentified third figure (middle); (ii) an image made in the aftermath of the YouTube trailer The Innocence of Muslims that was meant to insult Muslims’ religious feelings; (iii) a depiction of two Islamist radicals accusing their opponents as apostates and heretics; (iv) a famous anti-SCAF graffito at Mohammed Mahmud Street. Pictures by the author.

(i)

(ii)

(iii)

Plate 8. Three representations of Mohammed Morsi, showing the way he was seen by different audiences: (i) an electoral campaign poster of Morsi along with a symbol of a scale above which is written ‘symbol of balance’; (ii) a front cover of Time Magazine with its post-Orientalist notion of an ‘Islamist’ president able to guarantee regional stability; (iii) a graffito at Mohammed Mahmud Street, where Egyptian street artists poke fun on Morsi’s gesture during his 30 June 2012 inauguration rally at Tahrir Square.

(i)

Plate 9. Four issues of the al-Hurriyya wa-l-‘Adala newspaper, with some of the Brotherhood’s core narratives about their own role during Morsi’s year in power, as well as the scheming of the Egyptian ‘deep state’. The headlines read: (i) ‘Ittihadiyya million’s march: the people support the decision of the president’ (24 November 2011).

(ii)

(iii)

(iv)

Plate 9. Continued. (ii) ‘The game is all about the petrol: how an operation sabotaging large warehouses are the reason of the crisis … and citizens (say): we’re sick of it!’ (26 June 2013); (iii) ‘The National Alliance for Support of Legitimacy announces a sit-in at Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya’ (29 June 2013); (iv) ‘the fasting ones (i.e. the believers) occupy [Egypt’s] squares’ (11 July 2013).

(i)

(iii)

(v)

(ii)

(iv)

(vi)

Plate 10. Anti-Morsi and anti-Brotherhood memorabilia collected in late June and early July 2013 in Cairo: (i) Mohammed Morsi, Mohammed Badi‘ and Khairat al-Shatir crossed out, with the tagline: ‘Leave! The people want the downfall of the Brotherhood’; (ii) Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Mohamed Badi‘ and Barack Obama above the title ‘foreign alliance for rights, Sharia and law [sic]’; (iii) a graffiti showing a boy standing up to a Brotherhood-like comic-book villain; (iv) a poster representing the Brotherhood leadership as sheep-like babies; (v) the flyer of the Tamarrud (Rebel) campaign; (vi) a printed flyer reading ‘leave!’.

(i)

(ii)

(iii)

(iv)

(v)

Plate 11. Pro-Morsi memorabilia collected in late June and early July 2013 in Cairo: (i) Mohammed Morsi with the tagline ‘there is no alternative to legitimacy’; (ii) a self-made poster reading ‘Islamic, Islamic’; (iii) prayer equipment with Brotherhood and FJPlogos; (iv) a printed flyer reading ‘legitimacy is a red line’; (v) a flyer of the Tagarrud (Impartiality) campaign.

Plate 12: Day-time scene of Tahrir Square on 30 June 2013, and night-time scene of Marghany Street in front of Ittihadiyya Presidential Palace on 2 July 2013. Pictures by the author.

Plate 13. Two scenes of Brotherhood rank-and-file members at Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya, praying and then demonstrating, both shot on 1 July 2013 in the evening within the span of a few hours. Pictures by the author.

Plate 14. The Brotherhood’s headquarters in Moqattam in the morning of 1 July 2013, looted and pillaged during the previous two nights. Picture by the author.