Egypt's crackdown on the MB

The Egyptian government continues to escalate its campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood.  Over the last couple of months it has arrested a lot of suspected Brotherhood members, and Mubarak and NDP officials have lambasted the Brotherhood as a threat to the country and brushed aside its idea of forming a legitimate political party.  The government has escalated with a campaign against the movement's economic infrastructure by seizing their property and shuttering businesses.  The other day the government escalated even further by arresting 16 senior members of the movement, including its deputy guide Khayrat al-Shatr, and is now set to try them in the notorious state security court.

It all makes me think about remarks I heard from a number of people in Egypt in a position to know, who I won't identify further, to this effect:  while the Muslim Brotherhood won't turn to violence itself, MB advocates of peaceful participation in the political system are having a harder and harder time convincing young activists to stick to the program.  Young activists see little to show for the Brotherhood's participation in the Parliamentary elections, and have seen their decision to play the rules of the democratic game rewarded with a viscious governmental campaign of repression.  As with Hamas and the Palestinian elections, it is common now to hear that the Muslim Brotherhood decided to give the US a chance to prove it was serious about promoting democracy, and that now it has its answer:  no.  That answer is likely to shape the calculations of would be Islamist democrats all over the region for many years to come. 

The really alarming part, though.  It seems almost inevitable to more and more well-informed people (and to me) that there is going to be a violent backlash against this repressive campaign, whether or not the Muslim Brotherhood leadership wants to unleash one.  There's a sense that the regime will just keep on pushing and pushing, despite all warnings to that effect.  And the cynic in me (and not just in me) thinks that the Mubarak regime wants that violence as retroactive justification for its campaign, and as justification for an even more direct assault on the Brotherhood.

It's all playing with fire, and it's very depressing.      

Comments

[Modern Pharaoh]

I realy feel the MB and such right wing groups are the REAL DANGER to Egypt.

http://modernpharaoh.blogspot.com/2007/02/real-danger-to-egypt-is-from-within.html

[jr786]

Well, I'm not an Egyptian, but I have a lot of respect for the Muslim Brothers and what they have tried to do, and I don't mind saying so. I would like to know, and I ask the question respectfully, how they are more a danger to the Muslims than Mubarak and son.

[Modern Pharaoh]

Jr Goto my blog and you can read about it. I would much rather an educated tolerant man like Gamal Mubarak run my country than a bearded cleric who only preaches hate against Israel and love for Palestine and puts his own country on the back burner. Those MB care more about the islamic Ummah than their own country. Don't get me wrong i am a muslim and Islam is my Spiritual Religious identity but not my Nationalist identity. I AM EGYPTIAN!

PS: I would only choose Gamal Mubarak if my only other choice was MB members. But if there were other tolerant people who COULD ACTUALLY run the country i'd be more than happy to see what they have to offer. But Religion should have nothing to do with Politics.

[Non-Arab Arab]

Modern Pharaoh: fair enough for you to have those views and positions, but what if in free and fair elections it turns out the majority (whether slim or vast) feel the other way around? What right does the minority have to impose its will like that? You might (potentially fairly) say that the majority would then step unjustly on the rights of the minority. Ok, but how is that any different than the minority unfairly stepping on the rights of the majority? And it would seem that history pretty unambiguously teaches that bottling up the frustrations of the majority only lays the ground for an even greater eventual explosion of violence. Whereas deftly compromising, managing, accomodating, and having sensible give and take can allow peaceful evolution instead of violent revolution. An axiom which seems to hold just as true in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, or the Middle East in the past and present. Difficulties and pain will occur either way, shouldn't the difficulties and pain be minimized over the long run and allowed to occur in ways that will allow genuine conciliation between the various elements of society - rich & poor, religious & secular, liberal & conservative, etc.? Bottling up the majority is unlikely to ever achieve that. Giving the majority (whichever it may be) the chance to truly speak its mind and assume powers more comensurate with its size, but then creating checks that force them to look the minority or minorities in the eyeball (not just allowing them to ignore them) seems to be a far more muddled but ultimately productive process.