Dillon Swensen

Dillon Swensen

Political Islam in the media

3/31/12

                  On Wednesday March 28^th, Reuters published an analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood movement and the current growth of their power and influence.

                  The full text of the article can be found here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/28/us-egypt-islamists-idUSBRE82R0OB20120328

                  Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood believed in a return to pan-Islamic unity, reaching beyond the secular idea of pan-Arab nationalism, and it seems his dream is coming to fruition. Across the Middle East, in North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, the Muslim Brotherhood has been gaining power, sweeping up political majorities in countries in the wake of the Arab Spring. The article describes this shift in power, one that occurred quite unintentionally as a pan-Arab backlash against their secular and generally not-democratically elected leaders such as Hosni Mubarak and Bashar al-Assad, leading to the Brotherhood becoming a popular choice in the ensuing free and fair elections. This formerly repressed group has emerged suddenly onto the stage of Middle Eastern politics, but it is moving towards a more moderate stance as it does so.

                  However, in the transition to power, the Brotherhood has become far more politically pragmatic, moderating their views to gain a mass appeal that their Salafi and liberal rivals lack. And they are also well aware that they must court ideologically different governments. "The Brotherhood understands that better relationships with the Gulf countries are absolutely necessary now because they are going to be among Egypt's major donors," the article quotes one of their sources as saying, referring to the fact that currently Egypt is in the middle of financial crisis. These Gulf States are majority Wahhabi regimes, but practice a degree of separation of power between their clerics and their government that the Islamist Brotherhood does not necessarily share. The Saudis in particular fear that the Brotherhood’s mass appeal will next spread to their own doors. The Iranians, meanwhile, being Shi’ite, see the Arab Spring as a major threat to their own power, having more difficulty dealing with Sunni regimes than the previous secular or Alawite regimes which are either toppled or tenuously holding on.

However, the Saudi fears have been widely dismissed by critics, who “[say] the Brotherhood's pragmatism had less appeal to Saudi society than Salafis, whose yearning for a return to early Islamic teachings lies at the heart of the kingdom's Wahhabist creed.” In summary, the movement, despite growing rapid mass appeal, has been forced to make itself more pragmatic and more moderate to gain and keep that mass appeal. While it is undeniably Islamist, the Brotherhood keeps a less strict form of Islamism than many of its rivals.

I have to say, it is relatively reassuring to see the views of the Muslim Brotherhood moderated somewhat by political concerns. While the Brotherhood is replacing a series of tyrannical regimes with a long history of bloodshed and atrocity, when I first heard in the news in the aftermath of the Arab Spring that the Brotherhood might come to power, I was worried. I knew little of the Brotherhood, only that they were Islamist, and with media-induced images of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in mind, I feared that the Brotherhood’s election, however fair, would mean a return to the same sort of tyranny that characterized Mubarak’s and countless other dictators’ regimes.  However, after reading this article, which provides a political big picture that helps demonstrate the pragmatism and the plus-sides of the Muslim Brotherhood’s election, my view towards them has softened somewhat.

Also, I found another article in my searching regarding political islam, here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/egypts-parliament-begins-debate-on-constitution-body/article2357740/

That provided a very interesting insight into the local Egyptian political process, and further seemed to indicate that the Muslim Brotherhood would function within the bounds of the democratic system the people had originally been fighting for. I believe now that the election of the Muslim Brotherhood might not be an inherently bad thing, as I had been conditioned to believe by the frequent repetitions of the term Islamist in the news, and the negative connotations that most Westerners, including myself, have with this phrase. That the Brotherhood shuns its Jihadist offshoots and is seeking to align itself with a moderate state like Turkey both ring in my ears as positive steps forwards for their organization.

This is not to say that this is necessarily a positive step forward for the Middle East. The Muslim Brotherhood, as the first article indicates, is making lots of enemies, getting cold reactions from many of the established powers in the region, and this could be a recipe for future conflicts. I worry that the future conflicts we will see will not be Islamist Jihadists attacking the West, but rather other Islamists due to an inability to compromise. The second article I mentioned discusses how there is little unity within the Egyptian government, with the Liberal factions, the Brotherhood, and the Salafis all having entirely different ideas of where the country should be headed, and all the while the specter of the U.S. funded Egyptian military looms over the country. It’s difficult to be optimistic, given the sheer number of variables and potential sparks of conflict in that area of the world. The real question is what will emerge from this situation, which seems to have profoundly altered the structure of the Middle East? There is ultimately no clear answer, but the winds of change seem to be shifting in favor of the Brotherhood.