Egypt: How Significant is the Muslim Brotherhood’s Election?
Hitching onto Shadi Hamid‘s earlier comments on the rise of Muhammad Badie to General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood — namely that the MB’s “organizational commitments trump the beliefs of individual leaders” — Gregg Carlstrom of The Majlis doubts that the “election has much external significance, despite widely-publicized concerns that Badie (a conservative) will push the group to the right.” Expounding upon this point, Carlstrom echoes a Fawas Gerges post at The Guardian predicting that “the Brotherhood will be more preoccupied with increasing its membership…than lending a helping hand to the opposition.” If the MB maintains its non-violent rhetoric and avoids provoking the regime, Carlstrom believes that President Mubarak may tolerate the organization — but only if it doesn’t become more conservative. And in light of the MB’s “institutional inertia” and instinct for self-preservation, he expects the Brotherhood’s short-term politics to “remain largely unchanged.”
I personally think that all the speculation about Dr Badie and which direction the Brethren head in is a red herring. Organisational integrity is key, as Shadi asserts, but not the Egyptian domestic structure of the Ikhwan. Rather, the global set-up of the organisation will have more of a bearing on the group’s efforts to attain power in Egypt or elsewhere in the NME. By dint of entryism into the far-left groups in Europe, the US and elsewhere, and by making political capital out of issues such as the Iraq war and Islamophobia, the MB has positioned itself in various contexts as important partners for ‘community’ governance. I would be very surprised if some sort of Islamic political party doesn’t appear in the UK or France within the next decade. Growth and the ideological affiliation of the MB will be determined outside Egypt.