How big is the chance that the Muslim Brotherhood will be the largest, most popular and most effective opposition group? It is the question asked by all journalists to every academic expert on Egypt and, if possible, to each informal leader of the Tahrir Square demonstrations. The Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant asked Tariq Ramadan, an influential Egyptian-Swiss philosopher at Oxford University, known for his work on reinterpreting Islam. But more importantly, Ramadan is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. Ramadan calls on the West to stop demonizing each and every Islamist movement and recognize that there are huge differences between Iran in 1979 and Egypt in 2011. In Iran, according to Ramadan, Ayatollah Khomeini was involved in the revolution from the start and Islam played a major role. In Egypt, religion is not an important factor in the uprising, which he characterizes as an informal, spontaneous people’s protest. Therefore, Ramadan is not afraid of Egypt becoming a second Iran. Interestingly, he focuses on Turkey, praising Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for speaking out so clearly in favor of the protestors and expressing the hope that Egypt will be the next Turkey.
Faced with the question on the future role of the Brothers, most activists on the spot or on the Internet get irritated. They see it as an underestimation of their own brave role in pushing Mubarak out and a typical Western approach to the Arab world, based on a fear of Islam that is used by all dictators in the region to legitimize their oppressive regimes.
Although I understand the irritation about Western prejudices and I agree with the analysis that for the moment the Islamists do not play a dominant role in the protests, it would be naïve to discard questions about the Muslim Brotherhood as being biased. Because of the weak position of secular opposition groups and its own deep roots in Egyptian society, the Brothers will inevitably be a key player in the post-Mubarak era, whether one likes it or not. Better be well prepared and know what to expect.
On the very informative website of Foreign Affairs, the leading American magazine on foreign policy, several articles have been published on the Muslim Brotherhood. Carrie Rosefsky Wickham makes it clear that “portraying the Brotherhood as eager and able to seize power and impose its version of sharia on an unwilling citizenry is a caricature that exaggerates certain features of the Brotherhood while ignoring others, and underestimates the extent to which the group has changed over time.” In a brief sketch of the Brothers’ recent history, she refers to the moderating influence that cooperation with other political movements and participation in parliament has had on the policies and strategies of the Islamists. She distinguishes three major groups within the movement of which the pragmatic conservatives who combine religious conservatism with a belief in the value of participation and engagement seem to be the biggest. The author is not surprised that the Brothers are backing Mohamed ElBaradei as the provisional leader of the anti-Mubarak camp because they realize that a smooth transition to democracy will require an interim government acceptable to the military and the West. Still, Wickham is not sure whether the Brothers will continue to exercise their pragmatic self-restraint further down the road. There are still many question marks on their willingness to accept a new constitution that does not refer to sharia. How will their ambiguous positions on women and non-Muslims develop and which group inside the movement will turn out to be the dominant one? It is because of these uncertainties that she calls on all domestic and foreign players not to isolate the Muslim Brotherhood but to include them in the political process, “making sure there are checks and balances in place to ensure that no group can monopolize state power and that all citizens are guaranteed certain freedoms under the law.” I guess most pro-democracy activists could agree with this balanced approach.
