The Report Committee for Steven Thomas Brooke
Certifies that this is the approved version of the following report:
Exit, Voice, and Islamic Activism: Organizational Fracture and the Egyptian Society of
the Muslim Brothers
APPROVED BY
SUPERVISING COMMITTEE:
Supervisor: ______
Jason Brownlee
______
Robert Moser
Exit, Voice, and Islamic Activism: Organizational Fracture and the Egyptian
Society of the Muslim Brothers
by
Steven Thomas Brooke, B.A., M.A.
Report
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School
of the University of Texas at Austin
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of
Master of Arts
The University of Texas at Austin
May 2011
Exit, Voice, and Islamic Activism: Organizational Fracture and the Egyptian Society of
the Muslim Brothers
by
Steven Thomas Brooke, M.A.
The University of Texas at Austin, 2011
SUPERVISOR: Jason Brownlee
Under what conditions does the Egyptian Society of the Muslim Brothers (SMB) fracture? The 1996 formation of the Wasat party by a group of former Muslim Brothers has attracted significant scholarly attention, although most studies focus on the ideological differences between the groups. By neglecting the organizational angle these studies are unable to explain why some ideological differences lead to group fracture, and why in the case of the SMB this occurred in 1996 and not before. This paper will argue that the SMB splits when high levels of state repression combine with internal organizational conflict, specifically the lack of stable, consultative internal dispute-resolution mechanisms. Empirical tests charting levels of state repression and
SMB internal politics throughout the period 1981-2010, covering variation on the dependent, as well as both independent variables, strengthen the theory.
iii
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Introduction………………………………………………………………….………………………..1
Chapter Two: Theory………………………………………………………………………………………………….…9
Chapter Three: Case Study………………………………………………………………………………….………..16
From Toleration to Repression: The SMB from 1981-1996………………………….……16
Repression, Disenchantment, and Fracture: The Emergence of the Wasat Party……………………………………………………………………………………………21
A Low Profile, 1996-2005………………………………………………………………………………….27
Repression Revisited: The SMB from 2005-2010…………………………………………….…28
Democracy under fire…………………………………….…………………………………………………32
Conclusion…………………………………………………….………………………………………………….38
Chapter Four: Shadow Cases and Theoretical Implications…………………………………………..39
Shadow Case #1: The SMB under Nasser……………………………………..…………………..39
Shadow Case #2: The Jordanian IAF………………………………………………………………….41
Discussion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………43
Theoretical Implications………………………………………………………………….………………..46
Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………..45
iv
Chapter One: Introduction
Electoral authoritarianism rests on pervasive regime manipulation of the political process. At its most extreme, this can include stuffed ballot boxes, intimidated voters, and imprisoned opposition candidates. However other, “softer” tactics promise to ensure the failure of electoral challengers without incurring the risk of blunter measures. In recent years scholars have focused on these tactics, including the ways autocrats engineer electoral districts and procedures, co-opt promising politicians, prevent challengers from coordinating, or sow disunity inside opposition parties.1 Yet despite their power and resources, regimes are not universally successful in their attempts at manipulation. Under what conditions do opposition movements fragment?
By focusing on the 1996 split of the Egyptian Society of the Muslim Brothers
(SMB), this paper will develop a theory of opposition party fracture which links external repression to internal organizational and institutional form.2 By adding an internal perspective, this paper is able to account for the variation in group response to repression: why some groups fracture while others cohere. The organizational perspective also provides insight as to why some internal disputes develop into organizational splits, while others are diffused with minimal consequences for group cohesion.
1 The literature is extensive. See, for example, Lust-Okar and Jamal 2002; Posusney 2002; Schedler 2002; Gandhi and Lust-Okar 2009, Diaz-Cayeros and Magaloni 2001; Lust-Okar 2005; Blaydes 2008; and Gandhi and Reuter, 2008. 2 I follow the approach of Salwen (2009), who attempted to answer why some Islamist groups participate in politics while others turn to violence by examining the group’s internal organization. 1
In January 1996 64 members provoked an internal crisis within the Egyptian
Society of the Muslim Brothers (SMB) by attempting to form a political party in contravention of the leadership’s wishes. The dissenters, according to Anthony Shadid,
“were not just foot soldiers. Some, like Abu ‘ala Maadi, were among the movement’s youngest [and] brightest.”3 The government quickly denied a license to the new grouping, called the Wasat (Center) Party, and by the end of the year 46 of the original
64 had returned to SMB’s fold.4 Yet the remaining SMB breakaways persisted in their efforts to have the new party approved, and the Wasat party continued to attract defectors from the SMB throughout the late 1990s.
The emergence of a coherent group of dissenters from the SMB was highly unusual, especially given the SMB’s conspicuous internal discipline and its informal motto, “al-sama’ wa’l-ta’a” (literally hearing and obeying).5 The Wasat departures were, according to El-Ghobashy, “unprecedented,” while to Pargeter they were “a shocking challenge to the Brotherhood’s leadership.”6 Stacher, meanwhile, refers to the whole episode as a “rare phenomenon,” while Wickham describes it as an
“unprecedented schism in the Brotherhood’s ranks.”7
Multiple accounts attempt to make sense of the Wasat’s emergence, however nearly all of them consider the problem ideologically. This is not surprising, given that
3 Shadid 2002, 254. 4 A more elaborate description of the Wasat party’s emergence is discussed below, pgs. 21-27. 5 Mitchell 1993, 300. 6 el-Ghobashy 2005, 386; Pargeter, 2010. 7 Stacher 2002, 416; Wickham 2004, 220, respectively. 2
the group quickly articulated a platform sketching out stances on religious minorities, women, and the role of Islam and politics that were more liberal than the SMB’s
(admittedly vague) positions on these contentious issues. Wickham focuses primarily on the apparent paradox that, in the Wasat case, government repression produced ideological moderation.8 Stacher explores the Wasat as an articulation of a more inclusive “post-Islamist” political ideology.9 Raymond Baker examines the Wasat as a broader Islamic ideological trend, mentioning the Wasat party only a handful of times.10
More descriptive, empirical articles exhibit the same focus.11 At odds with most of the literature, however, Pargeter downplays the ideological angle by arguing that “in reality, the al-Wasat platform was not essentially different from much of the thinking within the
Ikhwan (SMB) at that time and there was nothing especially controversial in their party programme.”12
While privileging the ideological perspective has yielded important insights, it cannot tell us why the particular group of Wasat activists decided to pursue their political project outside the confines of the SMB. As will be shown below, by 1996 the
SMB had made some headway inside Egypt’s cramped political system. Perhaps more importantly, the SMB, and in particular many of the Wasat activists themselves, had tremendous success during the preceding decades spreading their ideology throughout
8 Wickham 2004. 9 Stacher 2002; See also Scott 2010. 10 Baker 2003. 11 See Hatina 2005; Utvik 2005. 12 Pargeter 2010, 51. 3
Egyptian society, including notching impressive victories in a variety of professional associations, syndicates, and unions.13 While forming a political party may have been the primary motive of the Wasat activists, there was no chance that such a move would be countenanced by the Egyptian state.14 Indeed, the Egyptian government immediately denied the Wasat party a license in 1996, denied them again 1998, and for a third time in 2001.15
This is not to deny the importance of ideology in understanding organizational fracture. If there were not an underlying ideological conflict, there would be no reason to depart from the parent organization. However ideological conflict alone is underdetermining. The SMB can claim hundreds of thousands of adherents in Egypt alone, and it is commonplace to speak of differing ideological trends inside the movement: liberal vs. conservative, moderate vs. radical, and hawk vs. dove. Even the oft-mentioned generational conflict is largely an ideological one. Therefore it is important to consider explanations which provide some insight on when these ideological differences burst the seams of the organization.
Much less prominently, another strand of inquiry has focused on the organizational angle to the fracture. For instance, El-Ghobashy writes that “the Wasat was a group of Muslim Brothers breakaways who felt muzzled by the Ikhwan’s rigid,
13 Wickham 2002, chapter 8. 14 It is important not to assume that the state will automatically reciprocate as the religious party moderates, a mistake made by Kalyvas 2000. See the critique in Brownlee 2010. 15 The Wasat was recently granted party status. See Perry, February 19, 2011. 4
top-down structure.”16 Mandaville speaks of a younger generation who “resented what they saw as the authoritarian control of a small group of septa- and octogenarians largely out of touch with modern society.”17
The organizational angle is undoubtedly important to explaining the fracture, but it cannot tell us why the Wasat activists decided to quit the organization in 1996 and not earlier. As we will show below, the Brotherhood’s “rigid, top-down structure” has remained essentially unchanged at least since its post-Sadat emergence in the early eighties (and even before). By 1996, most of the Wasat activists had been inside the
SMB for two decades, more than long enough to figure out that the while in theory
SMB’s internal bylaws may have invoked the principle of consultation, the practice was quite different.18 For instance, as the aforementioned Abu ‘ala Maadi, wrote: “we tried to reform the Ikhwan from the inside but the death of (Brotherhood General Guide
Omar) al-Tilmisani killed all types of internal reform.” 19 Yet al-Tilmisani died in 1986, and Maadi and his cohort waited ten more years to leave the SMB. Why did they delay?
While they appear in general and fleeting terms, a handful of authors mention that the confluence of autocratic internal politics and external repression from the
Egyptian state caused the 1996 split. As Asef Bayat argues, “state pressure exacerbated controversies and rifts already present in the Islamist movement. Internal division
16 el-Ghobashy 2005, 386. 17 Mandaville 2007, 117. See also 333-334. 18 Pargeter 2010, 51. 19 Pargeter 2010, 47. 5
within the Ikhwan led to the 1996 split that spawned Hizb ul-Wasat.”20 Similarly Stacher writes, “As a result of the institutional repression, discontent with the Brotherhood’s internal practices, and the politicizing experience of some of the younger generation in syndicates, the conditions were set for the emergence of the Wasat’s moderate Islamist initiative.”21 Anthony Shadid’s excellent journalistic account similarly observes that
gloom pervaded the [SMB], which in the wake of the (pre-1996) crackdown appeared more ossified than ever. It was in that climate that the younger Brotherhood activists went on their own in the attempt to gain government recognition for their newly-conceived Center Party.22
These comments indicate the way forward because they are able to explain both why the Wasat activists split from their parent organization in the first place, and why this happened in 1996 and not before. However in order to move beyond observation and towards theory, we must first demonstrate theoretical support for this interpretation, then begin to develop and test hypotheses based upon that theory.
Using these accounts as a starting point, I will argue that the reasons for the
SMB’s 1996 fracture are to be found in the interactive effects of two independent variables: state repression and the lack (or consistent failure) of internal participatory mechanisms able to solve contentious internal disputes in a stable and predictable manner. Of particular, but not sole importance, is the process behind the selection of the organization’s General Guide. Specifically, I believe that the SMB leadership’s
20 Bayat 2007, 47. 21 Stacher 2002, 421. 22 Shadid 2002, 257. 6
regular bypassing of these mechanisms combined with high levels of repression to produce the organization’s fracture in 1996.
Importantly, I do not attempt to theorize individual exit from the group. Since its foundation in 1928 the SMB has become a huge organization with an estimated 300,000 members in Egypt alone. In the group’s heyday, 1946-1948, Richard Mitchell estimated up to double that.23 Like any large organization there will be a number of members who decide, for whatever reason, to quit.24 While rare, I contend that fracture, defined here as the organized, coordinated departure of group members, who then re-establish themselves as a separate entity outside the parent organization, such as happened to the SMB in 1996, is a distinct phenomenon and therefore worthy of an attempt to theorize.25
In order to test this hypothesis, I will process-trace these twin independent variables from 1981 to 2010. This provides me with variation in the dependent variable, organizational fracture, as well as both independent variables: presence of internal dispute-resolution mechanisms and levels of state repression. Relatively speaking, I find that state repression of the SMB was low for the periods 1981-1990, picked up from
1990-1996, receded from 1996-2005, and increased again from the period of 2005-
2010. At the same time, the levels of internal democracy inside the SMB were changing.
23 Mitchell 1993, 328. 24 See, for instance, Taleema, November 1, 2008. 25 While the uprising in Egypt has thrown the country’s politics into a state of flux, rumors persist that some Muslim Brothers are planning to quit the organization and start an independent political party. Under my definition, this would be a fracture. See Al Masry al Youm, April 2, 2011. 7
Levels of internal democracy were low from 1981-1996, began to slowly increase from
1996-2005, and were relatively mature in the post 2005 period.26 I find particular support for my hypothesis in the 2005-2010 period, when the development, or regular use of, internal consultative mechanisms allowed the SMB to weather both state repression and an increasingly acrimonious debate about the organization’s ideological orientation and emerge intact.
In the next section, I develop a more complete theoretical framework emphasizing the interactive effects of repression and internal autocracy. I follow that with an empirical examination of the period 1981-2010, paying specific attention to the independent variables, state repression and internal democracy. In the final section I make tentative observations about how well this theory explains other cases of SMB fracture, in Egypt and beyond. Finally, I attempt to draw broader conclusions about the implications of my findings for other studies of opposition behavior under authoritarianism as well as the ongoing debate about Islamists and democracy.
26 The increasing democratization of the SMB as it ages poses interesting challenges to Robert Michel’s findings about the oligarchic tendencies which follow institutional maturity. See Michels 1966. 8
Chapter Two: Theory
A number of recent studies have shown how internal organization drives the behavior of political actors from rebel and terrorist groups to political parties.27 As
Panebianco wrote in his study of political parties,
the dynamics of the struggle for power within an organization-be it a firm, a public administration, or a voluntary association- offer the key for understanding its functioning, as well as the changes it undergoes.28
To craft a theory of organizational fracture, it is necessary to begin by examining the restraints and incentives which shape the behavior of members.
An important contribution to the literature on behavior inside organizations is
Albert Hirschman’s 1970 book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. In it, he crafts a framework for understanding the choices presented to an individual inside an organization under stress and touches on their relationship to organizational fracture. While “exit” is self- explanatory, it is worth further exploring the implications of his second and third options, respectively, with regards to the SMB’s behavior during the period 1981-2010.
Voice is the option to remain inside the organization while communicating with the leadership in an attempt to rectify the organization’s decline. As Hirschman argued,
“the propensity to resort to the voice option depends also on the general readiness of a population to complain and on the invention of such institutions and mechanisms as can
27 Weinstein 2007; Sinno 2008; Panebianco 1988. Salwen 2009 studies the Jordanian Brotherhood’s decision to participate in politics (Voice) or not (Exit) by using Hirschman’s framework. 28 Panebianco 1988, xii. 9
communicate complaints cheaply and effectively (emphasis in original).”29 The view of institutions as dispute-solving mechanisms also finds support from Huntington, who wrote that
if the society is going to be a community, the power of each group is exercised through political institutions which temper, moderate, and redirect that power [of the group] so as to render the dominance of one social force compatible with the community of many.30
More specific to the cases under examination here is Przeworski’s noted formulation that “political forces comply with present defeats because they believe that the institutional framework that organizes the democratic competition will permit them to advance their interests in the future.”31 For my purposes, I see that institutions and mechanisms for consultation and redress serve to reassure those members unhappy with the direction of the organization that, although their input may have failed to sway the organization in the present, there is still the possibility they may at some future point be able to influence the direction of the organization.32
As we shall see, however, the SMB lacked effective internal consultative mechanisms during most of its history yet fracture was quite rare. In order to explain why the absence of voice alone is insufficient to explain fracture, it is important to elaborate Hirschman’s final option, loyalty. As he argued, loyalty tempered the individual’s decision to exit by assuming that they possessed some desire (such as brand
29 Hirschman 1970, 43. 30 Huntington 1968, 9. 31 Przeworski 1991, 19. 32 Brownlee (2007) advances a similar logic. 10
preference or patriotism) to remain in the organization beyond rationally expected, although not to the “bitter end.”33
Hirschman’s appreciation of loyalty as a concept which “holds exit at bay and activates voice” becomes critical when applied to the organizational politics of the
SMB.34 The SMB is a cadre organization, with a demanding curriculum for members and a number of mechanisms specifically designed to generate attachment to the organization. Prospective members spend a minimum of six months spent learning the basics of the organization and the obligations of membership. After the probationary period, and on the recommendation of his local chapter, the prospective member could take the oath of allegiance (bayat), and formally join the organization.35
Once inside the society, members are organized in small, interdependent and mutually-responsible groups of roughly 10 members in order to, as Mitchell notes,
“generate a total physical, mental, and spiritual absorption in and dedication to the
Society, its ideas, and its members.”36 The SMB’s founder, Hasan al-Banna, summed up the role of these small groups in three words: familiarity (ta’aruf), understanding
(tafahum), and responsibility (takaful). Tellingly, the Arabic terms al-Banna chose each appear in the verb pattern (tafa’ala, form V) connoting a sense of mutuality and
33 Hirschman 1970. 34 Hirschman 1970, 78. 35 Mitchell 1993, 183. (The oath is reproduced on pg. 165). 36 Mitchell 1993, 196. 11
reciprocity.37 These mechanisms were all specifically developed as the SMB membership began to expand and the newcomers lacked the personal connections with al-Banna which had previously been enough to ensure the member’s loyalty.38
The cumulative result of this organizational and ideological structure is the generation of intense loyalty to the organization. As previously mentioned, the
Society’s informal motto “al-sama’ wa al-ta’la” (literally hearing and obeying), testifies to this fact. Because members are required, even conditioned, to invest significant mental, social, and financial resources in the organization, leaving the organization is not something to be taken lightly. Thus while it may be tempting to see the split of the
Wasat activists strictly as a consequence of the organization’s lack of “institutions and mechanisms as can communicate complaints [to the leadership] cheaply and effectively,” this would overlook the fundamental role that loyalty plays in the organizational politics of the SMB.39
However Hirschman’s model also has a blind spot. When considering the options open to an individual, he groups all external considerations under a generic heading of “decline.” By elaborating the way that external effects, in this case repression, shape the balance of options open to members already dissatisfied with the
37 Mitchell 1993, 198-199. 38 Mitchell 1993, 197. Although it deals comprehensively with the very early years of the SMB, some measures to ensure loyalty to the organization are described in Lia 1998, 95-96 and 104-109. 39 Tellingly, General Guide Mamoun al-Hudaybi reportedly considered the departed Wasat activists as traitors. See Shadid 2002, 255. 12
absence of voice, we can supplement Hirschman’s theory and present a more complete picture of the conditions under which organizations fracture.
On its surface, the argument that repression plays some role in causing fracture seems to contradict the longstanding sociological theory that external conflict causes group cohesion. The relationship was first noted by Georg Simmel, who noted how conflict leads to a “tightening of the relations among *group+ members and the intensification of its unity, in consciousness and action…”40 Variations in the general conflict-cohesion or conflict-centralization theme can be found throughout political science, in the literature on state building (“war makes the state, and the state makes war”), the confluence of international and domestic politics (the Seeley-Hintze law), and alliance behavior.41
However, in 1956 Lewis Coser amended Simmel’s general theory to add two conditions necessary for the conflict-cohesion mechanism to work: the organization must possess a degree of cohesion prior to the onset of the conflict, and the conflict must affect all members of the group equally.42 As Stein notes in a subsequent review article, however, Coser’s conditions are usually- and unfortunately- forgotten, given that he is the most-cited source of the conflict-cohesion hypothesis.43 As we shall see, the
Egyptian state specifically targeted for repression and harassment that very segment of
40 Simmel 1964, 91. 41 The quote is, of course, from Tilly 1975, 42. In addition, see Wagner 2007; Gourevich 1978, 896-899; Almond 1989; Walt 1990 and Kupchan 1988. 42 Coser 1964, 92-95. 43 Stein 1976. 13
the SMB’s membership which contained the Wasat activists. Thus, the conflict-cohesion relationship broke down in 1996 for exactly the reason Coser noted forty years earlier.
It is necessary then to explain exactly how repression changes the balance of options outlined by Hirschman. In normal circumstances, the lack of internal mechanisms able to solve disputes in a regular and participatory manner has minimal consequences for group coherence in a cadre organization like the SMB. Members may be upset, but the involvement of loyalty and the benefits offered by remaining as part of the organization will entice nearly all members to stay. Similarly, repression by itself will raise the costs of membership, yet not enough to overcome the attachment members feel for the organization. However, when members suffer heavily under state repression at the same time as pathways for voicing concerns to the leadership close, exit becomes an attractive option, particularly for those who may already inhabit a minority position (in this case ideologically) inside the organization. By considering repression in interaction with organizational effects, we can both supplement
Hirschman’s theory as well as align these processes with Coser’s caveat that the level of group cohesion prior to the onset of conflict effects whether or not the conflict- cohesion mechanism applies.
I represent the theory graphically as follows:
14
FIGURE 1:
In the next section, I show how repression at the hands of the Egyptian state combined with the SMB’s lack of stable mechanisms to resolve internal disputes in the years leading up to 1996 and the departure of the Wasat activists. I then show how regime repression reached high levels again in 2005-2010 period, yet was mitigated by the SMB’s increasing use of consultative internal dispute-resolution mechanisms, preventing the fracture of the organization. A key task, then, will be to explain the variation in the SMB’s internal political organization between the years 1996 and 2005.
15
Chapter Three: Case Study
This section shows how repression combines with the relative absence of internally democratic dispute-resolution mechanisms to produce organizational fracture, as exemplified in the 1996 emergence of the Wasat Party. It also shows how similar levels of repression in the 2005-2010 period did not lead to fracture, an outcome
I attribute to the emergence of more robust forms of consultative dispute-solving mechanisms inside the SMB during the period 2005-2010. In other words, the MB was able to weather 2005-2010’s external repression and an acrimonious internal debate and emerge intact because of the group’s internal organizational changes since the mid-
1990s.
From Toleration to Repression: the SMB from 1981-1996
In November 1995 an Egyptian military court passed down harsh sentences to a high-profile group of 54 Muslim Brothers. Those appearing before the court had been among 81 SMB members arrested in a recent sweep, and many were well-known for their activity in politics or as the faces of the increasingly prominent SMB institutions throughout Egyptian society.44 The use of military courts against the Brothers was a particularly ominous sign, given that they had been last used against the SMB in 1965, at the height of the group’s confrontation with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
44 Campagna 1996. For Muslim Brothers brought to trial in military courts during this period, see ‘Ali 2007, 335-338. I am grateful to Hesham Sallam for bringing this source to my attention.
16
According to Joel Campagna, the 1995 trial “marked the culmination of a turbulent four year period which witnessed a deterioration of the state’s tolerance for the outlawed
Brotherhood- Egypt’s largest political opposition group.”45
The repression of the early to mid-1990s was a departure from the relative toleration the SMB had enjoyed in the decade prior. One of erstwhile Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak’s first overtures towards the group came shortly after Sadat’s
1981 assassination, when he released the SMB’s third “General Guide” Omar al-
Tilmisani, arrested months earlier during Sadat’s “Autumn of Fury.” In the years that followed, the SMB began to rebuild their organization and ease themselves into Egypt’s electoral politics. In an alliance with the Wafd the group secured eight seats in the 1984 parliamentary election, and further increased their representation in the 1987 elections, garnering 36 seats as part of an alliance with the two smaller labor parties (Labor and
Ahrar).
Beyond formal politics, during the late 1980s the SMB became active in civil society, focusing on the student unions and later in numerous professional associations and syndicates. In September 1992 the SMB triumphed in bar association elections, an event some described as “the most important event to occur in Egypt since the assassination of Sadat” given the association’s longstanding reputation of a secularist
45 Campagna 1996. 17
stronghold.46 When coupled with the SMB’s earlier victories in medical, lawyers, and engineering syndicates, this was a tangible demonstration of the group’s growing profile in Egyptian political and social life.
Successes like these spurred the SMB to take more vocal, critical stands against the Egyptian regime. The SMB joined with other opposition groups in a boycott of the
1990 Parliamentary elections, openly challenging Mubarak by issuing a statement refusing “to contribute to the creation of a false democratic façade.”47 In foreign policy, the group staked out critical stances against the Egyptian government’s support of the first Gulf War as well as the October 1991 Madrid peace talks.
In response, the state began concerted campaign to bring the SMB to heel. The regime began to reign in the activities of the syndicates and student unions, introducing a series of amendments designed to curtail the electoral advance of Islamists. The regime also took more direct action, placing the SMB-controlled engineers syndicate
(1993) and bar association (1995) under investigation for financial mismanagement.48
The ongoing jihadist insurgency throughout Egypt also drove the regime’s sensitivity towards the SMB’s increasing profile.49 During the early 1990s regime officials, including Mubarak himself, began a rhetorical campaign accusing the SMB of
46 Kepel 2002, 292; Abed-Kotob 1995, 329. On the group’s growth in the syndicates, see International Crisis Group, April 20, 2004, 12-13. 47 Campagna 1996. 48 Fahmy 1998. 49 Brooke 2008. 18
being intertwined with the jihadist groups. Connections between the SMB and the jihadists were nonexistent. Rather, as Kienle notes, “the conflict with the armed groups provided the regime with a welcome pretext to harden its position vis-à-vis its unarmed
Islamist opponents.”50
Twin events in 1992 further challenged the legitimacy of the Egyptian regime.51
In October 1992 a devastating earthquake struck central Cairo. With the regime nowhere to be seen, the SMB’s web of organizations and services sprung into action.
Within hours the group had made their presence felt amongst the victims, handing out food and water, providing shelter, and making medical services available. The group’s effectiveness was a striking counterpoint to the government’s embarrassingly sclerotic response.52
The next month Sheikh Gaber, an Islamist militant, openly declared that Imbaba, one of Cairo’s neighborhoods, had become an Islamic Republic. With the Egyptian regime nowhere in sight, a band of jihadists had spent the past few years harassing the local inhabitants, Copt and Muslim alike, in an attempt to impose their strict brand of religious law on the neighborhood.53 Although the group’s proclamation triggered a
50 The SMB had, by this time, severed connections with jihadist groups. See Brownlee 2010; Kienle 2001, 137. 51 On the role of legitimacy in the conflict between the regime and the SMB, see al-Awadi 2004. A similar argument, albeit on a smaller scale, is made in Kienle 2001, 133. 52 al-Awadi 2004, 149-153. 53 Kepel 2002, 291-292. See also Abdo 2002, chapter 2; Weaver 2000, 144-148. 19
quick response by the state, its ability to proclaim an Islamic Republic just across the
Nile from one of the wealthiest sections of Cairo was highly embarrassing to the regime.
In the midst of challenges from both the jihadist insurgency and its own inability to deliver basic services to its citizens, the regime struck back. High-profile Brotherhood activists were arrested in December 1992 for what the regime said were plans to overthrow the government, in 1993 for organizing in support of Bosnian Muslims, and in
May 1994 for demonstrating in support of lawyers. Observers differ on the exact moment, but they agree that at some point after 1992 the regime-SMB confrontation escalated. For instance, El-Ghobashy argues that events in 1992 marked a “shifting from tenuous toleration to further legal and then physical repression.”54 Analysts at Cairo’s
Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies placed the start to the “era of deterioration and conflict” one year later.55 Gilles Kepel states that “direct confrontation with the Muslim
Brothers and their allies was decided upon early in 1993.”56
The confrontation continued throughout 1995. The jihadist insurgency was becoming increasingly bold, including a near assassination of Hosni Mubarak in June of that year in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. On the other hand, the regime geared up to send a message in advance of parliamentary elections scheduled for November, with the SMB and other opposition groups poised to re-enter after their 1990 boycott. The
54 el-Ghobashy 2005, 381. 55 Rashwan Ed. 2007, 187. 56 Kepel 2002, 293. 20
parliamentary elections proceeded as planned, but they were marred by violence.
Nearly 1,400 “Islamist supporters” were arrested during the 1st and 2nd rounds.57 In the end, regime manipulation limited the SMB’s gain to one seat (which was later revoked).58
The cumulative result of the period 1990-1995, according to El-Ghobashy, was a level of repression “unseen since the 1950s.”59 As Al-Awadi similarly argues, this period witnessed “a reappearance of extreme authoritarian methods of dealing with opponents that resembled those that had been used by Nasser in 1965 when he tried members of the movement in military courts and hanged its ideologue, Sayyid Qutb.”60
For Wickham,
in the few years preceding the Wasat party’s formulation (1996), the Muslim Brotherhood, and citizens active in Islamic groups more generally, were targets of increased repression, a trend interpreted by some observers as a retreat from the policy of controlled political liberalization that the regime had pursued during the previous decade.61
Repression, Disenchantment, and Fracture: the Emergence of the Wasat Party
Against the backdrop of continuing repression, the internal politics of the SMB were also in turmoil. While the organization had embraced electoral participation, events inside the group demonstrated that the commitment to rotation of power was
57 Egyptian Organization for Human Rights 1995, 17-18. 58 al-Awadi 2004, 171. 59 el-Ghobashy 2005, 384. 60 al-Awadi 2004, 170. 61 Wickham 2004, 212. 21
less than absolute. The 1996 selection of the organization’s fifth General Guide, in an infamous episode known as the “cemetery oath,” bayat al-maqabir, epitomizes the autocracy which had marked the SMB’s internal politics for decades. However other, less well-known episodes, such as the leadership’s interference in syndicate elections, help complete the picture of a group which had yet to embrace consultation in its own affairs.
As the SMB began to slowly re-emerge after Gamal Abdel Nasser’s 1970 death, power inside the group lay with a small group of individuals who had been part of the
SMB’s “Secret Apparatus” (al-Tanzeem al-Sirri or al-Nizam al-Khass) during the Nasser years. As they left prison and filtered back to the SMB, these hardened veterans of the struggle against Nasser began to take up leadership positions, in particular by gaining control of the Guidance Council.62 This group, which included Ma’moun al-Hudeiby and
Mustapha Mashour, among others, was behind the 1973 appointment of Omar al-
Tilmissani as the General Guide. While they initially saw Tilmisani as a reliable “front man” for their behind-the-scenes leadership, Tilmisani was able to exert some independent influence on the Guidance Council by appointing more moderate figures to balance the hard liners.63 However, when Tilmisani died in 1986, the hard liners were able to reassert control by engineering the selection of Hamid Abu al-Nasr, who spent
62 Pargeter 2010, 36-38. 63 Pargeter 2010, 44. There is some confusion over the date. Pargeter notes 1977, yet Hudaybi died in 1973. Gilles Kepel insinuates that Tilmissani assumed defacto leadership of the SMB at that time, and thus perhaps only officially emerged as leader in 1977. Kepel 1993, 106. 22
much of his term incapacitated while Mustapha Mashour actually carried out the
General Guide’s duties.64
On January 20, 1996 Hamid Abu al-Nasr died. Although the SMB had formalized internal selection processes, as in previous leadership successions this transfer of power was handled through backroom maneuvering and reflected the wishes of a small group within the SMB leadership.65 Unlike other transitions, however, the appointment of the
General Guide became a public issue when a small group of Guidance Council members pledged allegiance to Mohammed Mashour at al-Nasr’s funeral. For perhaps the first time, the group’s secretive, autocratic methods of operation were exposed. Mashour sought to publicly downplay the incident, explaining that
Abu-al-Nasr used to delegate many of his duties to me, and the Brothers got used to me carrying them out. It was his will that I should succeed him. When Counselor Ma'mun al-Hudaybi announced this during Abu-al-Nasr's funeral, the Brothers shouted loudly, declaring their allegiance to me as the group's guide.66
However when privately queried about the episode by Essam Sultan, a former SMB member and one of the Wasat’s founders, Mustafa Mashour was decidedly less circumspect. He replied, “Allah chooses for this group: he chose Hasan al-Banna, then he chose Hasan al-Hudaibi, then he chose Omar al-Tilmissani, then Hamid Abu al-Nasr, then the poor slave (referencing himself).”67
64 Pargeter 2010, 48. 65 Rashwan ed. 2007, 167. See also el-Ghobashy 2005, 386. 66 Salah January 24, 1996. 67 Sultan September 3, 2009. 23
As el-Ghobashy notes, “tangible power dynamics rather than adherence to the group’s bylaws also governed the role of Mashour’s confidant Ma’mun al-Hudaybi.”68 A member of the Guidance Bureau, Hudaybi had carved out a position of authority for himself by becoming the SMB’s “official spokesman.” Though not accounted for within the organizational structure of the SMB, Hudaybi made the case that al-Nasr’s lack of media savvy necessitated the position.69 In fact, Hudaybi was more than a spokesman, exercising considerable power over the SMB’s direction. For instance, beginning in 1994
Egyptian opposition parties, including members of the SMB, laboriously negotiated a national pact sketching out basic reforms. Hudaybi submarined the initiative at the last minute by filling the draft with clauses about the necessity of Sharia law.70
Other episodes highlight the SMB’s generally autocratic, ad-hoc operating practices in the years leading up to the emergence of the Wasat activists. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, members of the Guidance Council interfered in the syndicates on multiple occasions in an attempt to get their preferred candidates elected. These episodes directly brought the “old guard” into conflict with the many of the Wasat activists, especially those who had invested significant time and energy in the
68 el-Ghobashy 2005, 386. 69 Wickham 2004, 223. 70 Rumayih 1997, part 1; el-Ghobashy 2005, 385-386. It was also Hudaybi who delivered the Spring 1996 ultimatum to Wasat activists that they return to the SMB’s fold or be expelled from the organization. 24
syndicates and had won their positions through skillful politics and problem-solving abilities.71
It is also important to note that the SMB’s organizational friction was not solely the result of senior leaders deciding to bypass the rules, or the lack of consultative mechanisms. The government’s measures both took senior figures out of circulation and made it more difficult for the organization to operate. In 1995, for instance, 28 members were arrested on charges of attempting to attend a meeting of the consultative council.72 As expected by Coser’s amendments, there is considerable evidence that the regime specifically targeted those from the middle generation.73
According to Shadid, “the loss of the junior activists…fractured the organization, removing respected up-and-comers who could link the septuagenarian leaders with the rank and file.”74 More broadly, as Stacher argues, “one can assume that this policy of governmental repression took a toll on the Brotherhood’s cohesion, because such attacks disrupted and fragmented the group’s internal structure.”75
The Wasat emerged against this background. The group listed 74 founding members in its early 1996 application for party status, and of those, 64 were from the
SMB.76 The numbers included prominent SMB figures such as Abu al-‘Ala Maadi,
71 Rumayih 1997, 165-168. 72 Rashwan ed. 2007, 168. 73 Stacher 2002, 421. 74 Shadid 2002, 257. 75 Stacher 2002, 421. 76 Stacher 2002, 422; Utvik 2005, 296. 25
formerly a deputy chairman in the Engineer’s Syndicate, Essam Sultan, Salah Abd-el
Karim, and two brothers of prominent SMB member Essam al-Erian.77 Throughout that year, however, the number of SMB members dwindled in the face of arrests of the
Wasat founders (April), the rejection of legal status (May), and an ultimatum from the
SMB leadership that Wasat members resign or be expelled. By January of 1997, 46 of the original 64 had returned to the SMB fold.78 However the party still continued to attract defectors from the SMB, and in the paperwork filed in support of the Wasat’s second attempt at legality, in May of 1998, 24 were identified as former SMB activists.
As Maadi explained in a 1998 interview:
We have 24 leading figures, all of whom resigned from the Brotherhood and informed it of their decision, whether before the new party's application was lodged or after that. Some of them were leading Brotherhood cadres with influential positions within that organization, while others were leading figures in provinces in which we never had representation before such as Alexandria and Daqhaliya. This is quite an achievement for us, especially as these are considered to be closed Brotherhood provinces and quite well disciplined. There are also representatives from Cairo, Giza and my own hometown of Minya among the 24 I mentioned. All are of the same generation as (the founders of) the Center Party.79
In interviews, the Wasat leaders have noted the lack of internal consultative mechanisms (or the leadership’s dismissive attitudes towards those mechanisms). As
Wasat activist Essam Sultan told Anthony Shadid, “*The SMB+ doesn’t believe in the democratic process, whether it concerns the state if it took power or the internal
77 Hatina 2005, 173, 175. 78 Hatina 2005, 176. See also Wickham 2004, 223. 79 Mideast Mirror, May 18, 1998. 26
movement within the Muslim Brotherhood itself. The opinion of the leader is the opinion that is followed…”80 Wasat founder Abu al-‘Ala Maadi’s explained to the
International Crisis Group, “there was no freedom to express differences... So we decided to separate and form an independent party to express our opinions without restrictions and to present in it the evolutionary ideas we aspired to.”81 Saleh Abd-El
Karim told Josh Stacher “we found through our experience that decisions were taken by a small group within the Brotherhood…this was something that made us very uneasy with the Brotherhood.”82
A Lower Profile: 1996-2005
The departure of the Wasat activists and the lingering effects of the crackdown forced the group into a lower profile following the tumultuous events of the mid 1990s.
As the jihadist insurgency fizzled around 1997, a “calmer climate” prevailed in relations between the regime and the SMB. 83 Periodically activists were imprisoned, in
November 2000 and in July 2002 most prominently, but during this time the SMB generally limited its criticism to events happening outside the country, in Israel-
Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Regime pressures on the SMB lessened.
80 Shadid 2002, 262. See also Essam Sultan’s comment on “organizational unemployment” as cited in el- Ghobashy 2005, 386. 81 International Crisis Group April 20, 2004, 16. 82 Stacher 2002, 419. 83 On the group’s growth in the syndicates, see International Crisis Group April 20, 2004, 13. 27
Importantly, throughout this period prominent “middle generation” leaders close to the Wasat trend who had been sentenced by military court in 1995 were released, including Essam al-Arian, Abdel Moneim Abu El-Futouh, Khairat al-Shatir, and
Ibrahim al-Za’afrani.84 Once released, these men re-entered the SMB and began to take up leadership positions. This would have longer term repercussions for the SMB’s internal operating procedures and attitudes, as will be discussed below.
Repression Revisited: The SMB from 2005-2010
As the 2005 Parliamentary elections got underway Essam al-Erian, a member of the SMB political bureau, struck a hopeful note when he mentioned that “for the first time since 1995 there is not a single Muslim Brother in prison.”85 The SMB would go on to an impressive showing in the November-December races, winning 88 seats to give the SMB an opposition bloc composed of 20% of the Parliament.86 The Parliamentary elections were a high point for the group, but they also prefigured a period of harsh repression.
Shortly after the SMB’s triumph the ground began to shift under their feet. In
January 2006 Hamas candidates triumphed in the Palestinian legislative elections, seriously diminishing the optimism of some in the Bush Administration that desirable
84 el-Ghobashy 2005, 384. 85 International Crisis Group June 18, 2008, 1. 86 Prior to February 11, SMB candidates must technically run as independents in light of the SMB’s official status as a banned organization. The group has since announced that it would seek to form a political party. 28
processes would lead to desirable outcomes. Concerns began to surface of cooperation between the SMB and Hamas, and the international environment became more conducive to repression of Islamist actors who had chosen to pursue their goals through the electoral system.
As in the 1990s, the SMB began to convert their electoral momentum into a more assertive posture vis-à-vis the Egyptian state. The SMB parliamentarians used their position to highlight embarrassing issues of official corruption and cronyism and, more generally, to force the ruling National Democratic Party to take issues of parliamentary procedure seriously.87 Outside the halls of power, the SMB threw their weight behind a pair of senior judges under regime pressure for reporting electoral fraud, in the process becoming embroiled in a confrontation over judicial independence.88 In May 2006, at the height of the confrontation, over 800 Brothers were in jail, including senior figures such as Essam al-Erian and Muhammad Mursi, head of the parliamentary department.89
Israel’s war on Lebanon in the summer 2006 further heightened the tensions, bringing out large groups of protestors and providing yet another issue for the opposition to seize upon. In December, the SMB provided the regime a perfect pretext for a further crackdown when a group of SMB youth staged an ill-advised “karate
87 Shehata and Stacher 2006. While some Brotherhood parliamentarians had been doing this for years, the post-2005 period was unique for both the sheer numbers of SMB deputies and their organization. 88 International Crisis Group June 18, 2008. 89 Shehata and Stacher 2007. 29
demonstration” on al-Azhar’s campus in order to, as they claimed, show that they were unafraid of regime-backed thugs attempting to intimidate them. The regime seized on the clumsy maneuver, portraying it as a rebirth of the movement’s “Secret Apparatus” in the popular press and further ratcheting up pressure on the group.90
Among those caught up in the subsequent wave of arrests were prominent leaders such as Deputy General Guide Khairat al-Shater, the third highest member of the
SMB (and one of those who had been sentenced by a military court in 1995 to a five year term of hard labor).91 In addition to the arrests the regime froze SMB assets, including companies and bank accounts.92 Forty of those arrested were eventually brought before a military tribunal, and on April 15, 2008 the verdict finally came down.
The tribunal sentenced two leading detainees, al-Shater and Hassan Malek, to seven years in prison while sentencing 23 others to terms ranging from 18 months to five years. 15 were acquitted.93 Throughout 2007 the confrontation continued, with several hundred more Brothers arrested in the run up to the June elections for the Shura
Council (Egypt’s upper house of Parliament), which the SMB attempted (but failed) to enter.
The end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 witnessed the devastating Israeli attacks on Gaza, which brought tens of thousands of Egyptians into the streets. The
90 For the Al-Azhar incident, see Shehata and Stacher 2007. 91 Shehata and Stacher 2007. 92 International Crisis Group June 18, 2008, 10. 93 International Crisis Group June 18, 2008, 10; Stacher 2009. 30
Brotherhood was at the front of the protests, with General Guide Muhammed Mahdi
Akif even leading marches personally. The scope of the protests can be measured by the fact that, according to SMB sources, almost 1,700 Brothers were arrested for their activities during this period.94 In addition to the war on Gaza, throughout early 2008 over 800 SMB candidates and supporters were also arrested in advance of that April’s municipal elections.95
While comparing levels of repression is difficult, the period following the 2005 parliamentary elections at least rivaled other infamous eras of the SMB’s persecution.96
For instance, Muhammed Habib, a high-ranking member of the group’s Guidance
Council observed in April 2007, “the repression is as strong and as annoying as in the
1960s and the 1990s but now they [the regime] are much smarter and plan better. They know better where to hit us.”97 As the International Crisis Group remarked in a 2008 report “the 2005 elections marked a quantitative and qualitative change: the regime dramatically increased the number of arrests of rank-and-file members whenever the
Muslim Brothers contested an election or took part in public protests, imposed travel bans on most of their senior leaders and curtailed their public activities and contacts with other opposition and civil society figures. The new policy also included long-term detention (without charges under the Emergency Law) of prominent members and
94 Stacher 2009. 95 Brooke 2009, 21. 96 Shehata and Stacher 2007. 97 Shehata and Stacher 2007. 31
targeting the Society’s key financiers and most influential leaders. Muslim Brothers and external observers describe the crackdown as the most widespread campaign against the group since the 1960s, even if the level of brutality is far less and its aim is to control and contain rather than eradicate the group.”98
Democracy under Fire
A number of scholars have noted the slow yet pronounced transformation of the
SMB during recent decades. Mona El-Ghobashy is perhaps the leading proponent of this view, arguing in 2005 that
over the past quarter-century, the Society of Muslim Brothers has morphed from a highly secretive, hierarchical, antidemocratic organization led by anointed elders into a modern, multivocal political association steered by educated, saavy professionals not unlike activists of the same age in rival Egyptian political parties.99
El-Ghobashy and others trace the changes to the increasing influence of a younger generation of activists inside the organization as well as the long-term attitudinal changes wrought by decades of participation in electoral politics at multiple levels.
The younger generation of activists themselves entered the SMB as high school or university students in the 1970s and went on to become very active in university politics, especially in student associations. After they graduated, it was natural for
98 International Crisis Group June 18, 2008, 8-9. 99 el-Ghobashy 2005, 373. See a similar view in Wickham 2004; Stacher 2002. 32
many to become involved with the syndicates or professional associations.100 As
Wickham writes, “beginning in 1984 they represented the Brotherhood in elections for the syndicates’ executive board, eventually forming majorities in doctors, engineers, scientists, pharmacists, and lawyer’s syndicates.”101 The experiences of these young activists in syndicates and unions changed their thinking from a radical and insular
“weltanschauung politics” to a view more attuned to compromise and open mindedness.102
The political experiences of these activists, and their participation in union and syndicate politics more specifically, carried over into the SMB. 103 As Utvik argues, “the work in the student movement was instrumental in inculcating in the 1970s generation the habit of organizational activities according to democratic procedures.”104
Importantly, these changes did not just occur on an ideological level. Although some of these changes occurred earlier (such as the 1992 decision to limit the term of the
General Guide to 5 years, albeit with no limit on the number of terms) they began to accumulate in appreciable numbers in the post 1996 period, and especially post 2004.105
One way to appreciate these changes is to examine the selection of General Guides in
2004 and 2009-2010, which are instructive for their public and democratic character, in contrast to earlier leadership transitions.
100 al-Awadi 2004, 95. 101 Wickham 2004, 218. 102 Wickham 2004, 217. See also Sultan September 3, 2009. 103 el-Ghobashy 2005, 380. 104 Utvik 2005, 299. 105 el-Ghobashy 2005, 377. 33
In 2004 Ma’moun al-Hudaybi died, leading the group to publicly announce that the election of his successor would occur via a majority vote in the Guidance Council.
The position of “official spokesman” was also abolished.106 Muhammed Mahdi Akif would go on to become the seventh General Guide, winning nine of the Guidance
Council’s 15 votes. Mohammed Habib gained the remaining six votes and, according to the SMB’s bylaws, became the first Deputy Guide. 107 Akif’s selection was especially important, given his ability to straddle the divide between the generations and the perception that he shared some ideological affinities with the younger generations. He was seen as a “spiritual father” of the Wasat activists and some even speculate that he encouraged their activities.108
The election was crucial because it was conducted relatively publicly and showcased the movement’s internal democracy, especially important after the fiascos of the Mashour-Hudaybi years. Taken together with Akif’s January 2006 announcement that the society would limit the General Guide’s number of terms (and his 2009 decision to step down after only one term, see below), the elections signaled that the SMB understood that autocracy cut both ways.109 If they were to successfully criticize the
106 el-Ghobashy 2005, 277. 107 Sadi January 23, 2004. 108 Tammam 29 October- 4 November, 2009; Utvik 2005, 305. 109 International Crisis Group June 18, 2008, fn. 119 (pgs. 19-20). 34
regime for failing to abide by democratic rules, then the SMB would have to first make sure their own house was in order.110
Another measure of the group’s increasing reliance on more democratic procedures came in 2009 with the election of Akif’s successor. In April 2009 Akif surprised observers by revealing that he would not run for a second term after his first term ended in January of 2010.111 The decision to step down from the office was unprecedented- all previous General Guides had died in office, including the group’s founder Hasan al-Banna, felled by an assassin in 1949. In addition to posing a series of organizational questions about how election of his successor would occur, the process itself would take place during the ongoing government crackdown.
According to contemporaneous press accounts, Muhammed Habib, the organization’s Deputy General Guide, suggested postponing the elections until July
2010, after the elections for a new Guidance Council.112 Objections were raised on two counts. First, some in the SMB were concerned that because Habib would become acting General Guide in the interim, he would use the time to cement his position and essentially present the Guidance Council with a fait accompli when election time rolled
110 El-Ghobashy notes that the public contestation was also a signal to potential members that the group ran itself democratically. el-Ghobashy 2005, 390. See also Setrakian October 26, 2010. 111 Abd-al-Hafiz and Khayyal December 21, 2009. According to Khalil El-Anani, the resignation was in reaction to a dispute between Akif and the rest of the Guidance Council over Akif’s plan to appoint Essam el-Erian to the Guidance Council to replace the deceased Mohammed Helal, and part of a larger conflict between conservatives in the group’s leadership. See El-Anani November 2, 2009. For a sense of the importance of Akif’s announcement, see al-Hudaiby November 10, 2009. 112 Al-Erian January 5, 2010. See also Abd-al-Hafiz and Khayyal December 21, 2009. 35
around.113 Others raised procedural concerns, questioning the legality of the Deputy
Guide assuming power simply because the General Guide resigned, given that the
General Guide could cede his authority only in extreme cases of incapacitation, sickness, or imprisonment.114
The decision to postpone the elections was put to a vote before the Shura
Council, the group’s 100-odd member general assembly.115 After two rounds of close voting, the Shura Council rejected Habib’s proposal. The elections for General Guide would occur as scheduled, while the Guidance Council elections would be moved forward to occur simultaneously.116 The Council also voted that five members of the
Guidance Council who had been elected in a special vote in May 2008 would have to re- compete for their seats in the January elections.117
When the dust settled, the elections were widely interpreted as a triumph for the conservatives. Muhammad Badie was elected as General Guide, winning 66/100 votes from the Shura council.118 Badie is a reported hard-liner and widely known to have the support of the “Qutubist” trend inside the organization. He is also a veteran of
113 Izzat December 16, 2009. See also Tammam 29 October- 4 November, 2009 114 Al-Erian January 5, 2010. 115 Contemporary accounts note that the council includes 15 appointed members in addition to the representatives of the local offices. Abd-al-Mun’im December 13, 2009. 116 Muhammed Habib claims that the Shura council members were misled to believe they were voting only to hold or postpone the Guidance Council elections, not the General Guide elections as well. It is difficult to believe this would be the case. Abd-al-Hafiz and Khayyal December 21, 2009. 117 Stacher 2009. 118 Mustafa January 12, 2010. 36
the SMB’s underground organization.119 Not only did Habib fail to become General
Guide, he lost his spot on the Guidance Council. Prominent “reformist” voice Abd al-
Moneim Abu El Foutouh also failed to win re-election to the Council.120
In the wake of the elections, prominent reformist voices raised concerns that the elections had been somehow rigged.121 Mohammed Habib apparently froze his membership from the SMB in disgust, arguing that that procedure had been violated in an effort to install Badie.122 The extent to which Habib’s criticisms were motivated by ending up on the losing end of a contentious, yet largely procedural, power struggle are not clear. Given that moderates make up a minority inside the Brotherhood, estimated by one Egyptian analyst at around %15, it probably would be more suspicious, however, if the “moderate” candidate had triumphed.123
Another window into the group’s internal practices comes from the SMB’s decision to contest the November 2010 Parliamentary Elections. The plans of other opposition parties to boycott ignited a serious internal debate about the SMB’s own participation. Broadly speaking, on one side the “moderates” favored joining the other opposition parties in the boycott, while the “conservatives” favored participation because they valued the platform (and the immunity) granted to Parliamentarians. As
119 Islamonline December 24, 2009. 120 El-Din February 4-10, 2010. 121 Lynch December 21, 2009. 122 El-Din February 4-10, 2010. It is still not clear if Habib resigned, froze his membership, or simply withdrew from all administrative activities of the group. 123 International Crisis Group June 18, 2008, 22. See also al-Hudaiby November 10, 2009. 37
related by Mohammed Mursi, a SMB MP, "there was a lot of internal discussions and debate" around the issue.124 The end result, according to Abdelhamid Ghazali, a former advisor to General Guide Muhammed Mahdi Akif, was a thin margin (%52) of members who supported participation.125 Even after the decision, however, a group of Brothers calling themselves “Muslim Brotherhood Reformists” continued to publicly lobby the
SMB’s leadership to withdrawal from the races, even up to the day of elections themselves.126
Conclusion
Since the mid 1990s, the SMB has developed and implemented participatory mechanisms which resolve contentious issues in regular, predictable fashion based on input from the membership. These mechanisms proved vital to preserving cohesion in the face of both considerable external repression and intense internal debates about political participation and through the selection of new General Guides in 2004 and
2009-2010. While there is, as we have seen, frustration among some segments of the
SMB, particularly the “reformists,” the regular use of consultative mechanisms has, to date, seemingly resolved these disagreements before they mature to the stage of organizational fracture.
124 Khalil November 26, 2010. 125 Al-Shorouk October 27, 2010. 126 Adib and ElWaziry November 23, 2010; Hamzawy and Dunne November 15, 2010. 38
Chapter Four: Shadow Cases and Theoretical Implications
Any theory of SMB fracture based only upon one episode of splitting is inherently limited. While I follow the above mentioned scholars who remark on the rarity of what happened in 1996, there is at least one other instances when an organized, coordinated group has left the confines of the SMB and then set themselves up as an alternative. Here I will briefly examine an additional case, the Egyptian SMB during the reign of Gamal Abdel Nasser. In an attempt to maximize variation in geographic and political context, I will also consider the recent tribulations of the Islamic
Action Front (IAF), the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood’s associated political party.
Shadow Case #1: The SMB under Nasser
Following the attempt on Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s life in 1954 the Egyptian SMB entered a long period of repression. During that time, thousands of
Muslim Brothers were imprisoned, fled the country, or were executed, including Sayyid
Qutb (hanged in 1966). As former Deputy General Guide Muhammed Habib’s statement above illustrated, the 1960 repression was comparable to the repression in the 90s and post-2005 period.127
Alongside the intense state repression, the internal politics of the SMB were chaotic. In 1949 the Brotherhood’s founder Hasan al-Banna was assassinated, likely in retaliation for the SMB’s assassination of Egyptian Prime Minister Nuqrashi Pasha a few
127 Shehata and Stacher 2007. 39
months earlier.128 With the group officially dissolved (as of December 1949), Banna dead, and most of the members in prison, the SMB began to reform under the temporary leadership of Salih ‘Ashmawi, Banna’s deputy. In October 1951 the SMB announced the appointment of respected judge and relative outsider Hasan al-Hudaybi to the position of General Guide.129
Hudaybi immediately came into conflict with the secret apparatus, which had carved out an independent position under al-Banna.130 While the conflict had both ideological and strategic facets, the organizational angle was prominent. Mitchell notes complaints from SMB members about Hudaybi’s “imperious usurpation and dictatorial abuse” of power in the organization,” in particular Hudaybi’s attempts to bypass the
Guidance Council in determining the group’s course as well as arbitrarily dissolving branches which entered into conflict with him.131 During these years, Zollner cites “the hierarchical and autocratic makeup, undefined mission statement as a mass movement, its opaque means of choosing a leader, and the almost autonomous command of the
Secret Unit” as key reasons why the organization weakened.132
As predicted by the theory, in 1965 Jama’at al-Muslimeen, a group composed of former Muslim Brothers (the group’s leader, Shukri Mustapha, was a former Muslim
128 Mitchell 1993, 71. 129 Mitchell 1993, 85-86. 130 Pargeter 2010, 88. 131 Mitchell 1993, 117. See also pg. 120-122. 132 Zollner 2007, 426. 40
Brother), broke away.133 Mustapha and his group would become one of the first jihadist groups to take up violence against the state, sparking a campaign which would include al-Jihad’s assassination of Sadat in 1981 and that organization’s later merger with al-
Qa’ida.134
Shadow Case #2: The Jordanian IAF
In December 1992 the Islamic Action Front (IAF) officially registered with
Jordan’s Interior Ministry as a political party. While initially created as an umbrella
Islamic party, it soon became a largely, if not totally, SMB operation. While levels of repression in Jordan are significantly lower than Egypt and, in fact, the SMB enjoys a relatively close relationship with the monarchy, a brief analysis of the IAF’s recent tribulations provides some additional support for our theory.
One of the most remarked-upon elements of the IAF is its extraordinarily high degree of institutionalization: it possesses carefully delineated and maintained legal, legislative, and executive branches and widely agreed-upon mechanisms for managing leadership succession and resolving disputes. As a Jordanian analyst remarked about the party in 1997, “the shura process has been institutionalized. The process now has crystal clear formulas and agreed mechanisms to be followed by the bodies in charge of
133 Zollner 2007, 420. For a fuller account of Jama’at al-Muslimeen, see Kepel 1993, chapter 3. On the split, see specifically pgs. 74-75. 134 For a brief history of these groups, see Brooke 2008. 41
applying shura in practice. The mechanism is based on election…”135 Schwedler specifically contrasts the behavior of the IAF to its Yemeni counterpart:
these internal processes for reaching decisions on particularly contentious issues are a significant point of variation between the IAF and Islah (the Yemeni SMB- linked political party). Both parties have similar internal decision-making processes, but whereas IAF leaders almost uniformly adhere to those practices and honor outcomes they might have opposed, Islah leaders frequently do not.136
The IAF is highly factionalized, and although these disputes have been long- running and incredibly contentious, they have not split the organization. A brief discussion of the controversy surrounding the late June 2010 election of the IAF’s leadership, and the subsequent decision to boycott the November 2010 Parliamentary
Elections illustrates the importance of the above-mentioned mechanisms for ensuring that disputes do not reach the stage of organizational fracture.
As in recent years, the 2010 election of a new Shura Council head served as a proxy for the longstanding feud between the “hawks” and “doves” within the IAF. An attempt by the hawks to install their candidate by means of a technicality were overruled by the IAF’s internal court, and, after further jockeying, the moderate candidate Hamzeh Mansour was elected. As Schwedler summarized the incident,
135 Azem 1997, 107. See also Schwedler 2006, 87. 136 Schwedler 2006, 96. 42
“While the party's conflicts run deep, it has again sought to resolve those differences by adhering to its formal internal governing practices, which are democratic.”137
A few months later, the IAF decided after internal consultations to boycott the
November 2010 Parliamentary Elections.138 However, as the elections drew closer, some members of the IAF decided to participate, in defiance of the group’s decision. In the aftermath of the elections, these members were referred to the IAF’s in-house court for investigation and possible punishment.139 As illustrated by both the group’s internal election and later decision to enforce sanctions against those members who ignored the participation ban, the IAF’s mechanisms provide stable, recurring, and consultative methods of solving contentious issues posed both by inter-group dynamics and outside events.
Discussion
Adding the shadow cases updates the diagram presented earlier as follows:
137 Schwedler June 30, 2010. 138 Agence France Presse July 30, 2010. 139 Ben Hussein December 16, 2010; Ben Hussein December 13, 2010; Ben Hussein December 5, 2010. 43
While it is clear that further refinement and case studies are necessary, we are able to draw some specific conclusions from the addition of the shadow cases.
Primarily, the way external repression interacted with internal organizational turmoil in the Nasser years provides further support to my contention that ideology is a necessary but not sufficient condition to explain organizational split. Under Nasser, the SMB splintered in a more radical direction while in 1996 the fracture produced a more moderate entity. We gain confidence from the fact that the theory presented here provides an explanation for cases of organizational fracture despite variation in the underlying ideological conflict.
Second, expanding the analysis beyond Egypt and beyond the vague social movement/underground organization/political party territory inhabited by the Egyptian
SMB to the concrete case of a Jordanian political party gives us hope that this theory can 44
explain the fracture or cohesion of other SMB branches and organizations. A potential next step, then, would be to examine whether other organizational crises in SMB organizations- be they official parties or other types of organizations- in Syria, Iraq, the
Palestinian Territories, North Africa, and the Gulf can be interpreted by this framework.
Theoretical Implications
Tentatively, this paper demonstrates the importance of stable mechanisms of intra-group dispute resolution to maintaining cohesion in the face of government repression. This is particularly relevant to opposition actors in authoritarian political environments. As Schedler notes, “with lamentable frequency…incumbents find ways to engineer the failure of opposition parties…Alert authoritarian rulers can take advantage of this fluidity to split or marginalize inexperienced opposition groups.”140
A common criticism of opposition parties in the Middle East is that they are highly personalistic, uninstitutionalized, and lack internal democracy.141 Some have also noted the propensity of the opposition parties to split as a result of government repression and manipulation.142 The research presented here suggests that these two phenomena are intimately related, and thus it becomes critical for opposition parties to develop more consultative, robust, and institutionalized forms of internal governance in order to thwart the efforts of authoritarian governments to manufacture their failure.
140 Schedler 2002, 42. 141 Posusney 2004, 135; Abukhalil 1997. More generally on the weaknesses of political parties in authoritarian regimes, see Carothers 2002. 142 In the Middle Eastern context, see Stacher 2004. 45
Supplementing the studies of El-Ghobashy and Wickham more specifically, this paper provides additional evidence of Islamists’ continuing adoption of democracy.
However this paper goes further by showing the institutional consequences of attitudinal change. In this respect it supports Schedler’s argument linking the acceptance and creation of democratic attitudes and institutions inside the movement to democratic attitudes writ large.143
Finally, one claim by critics of the SMB is that the group speaks the language of democracy, yet has been unable to reconcile the demands of democratic participation with their particular interpretation of Islamic law, particularly regarding the rights of women and religious minorities.144 This study provides some evidence that the
Brotherhood’s endorsement of democracy, however limited, is not simply rhetoric.
Instead of pondering “are they or aren’t they” questions and exploring hard-to-gauge attitudinal changes, this paper has shown the institutional consequences of an increasingly democratic orientation, especially since the 1990s. While the process may be less than linear, it is also undeniable.
143 Schwedler 2006, chapter 5. 144 More crudely, some argue that the Brotherhood uses a “dual discourse,” concealing their anti- democratic attitudes when speaking in English or to naïve Western audiences. 46
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