After incredible early successes during the Arab Spring the Muslim Brotherhood overstretched itself and is now squarely on the back foot, writes Roshan Muhammed Salih.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Muslim Brotherhood. During my years as a journalist I’ve met, interviewed and become friends with many ikhwaani activists. I was impressed by their moderate non-takfiri brand of Islam, their willingness to work collaboratively with others, and, of course, I sympathized with the repression they suffered under successive Arab regimes.
I also had the opportunity to visit some of the hospitals and clinics they set up in Cairo and witnessed first-hand how these social services gained them the respect of ordinary people.
Lost respect
But I must admit that a lot of that respect has now dissipated.
Firstly, in Libya many Muslim Brotherhood activists seemed to support the direct NATO intervention to topple Muammer Gaddafi. This was difficult for me to stomach because I’m always against any type of western intervention in Muslim countries.
In Egypt itself Mohamed Morsi’s one-year rule achieved practically nothing and was incredibly divisive. Western, Israeli and army interests remained untouched, the Rafah border with Gaza stayed closed, and the Palestinians continued to be isolated.
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I know a lot of this wasn’t Morsi’s fault because he had no real power and faced an intransigent and hateful opposition, but had he done less grandstanding on issues such as Syria and concentrated more on reaching out to non ikhwaan supporters he might have at least delayed his downfall. I also couldn’t understand why the Brotherhood was so desperate for power in Egypt given that it was such a poisoned chalice.
Foreign alliances
The foreign alliances the ikhwaan formed were also troubling. NATO member Turkey and Qatar (which hosts the biggest US military base in the Middle East) became close allies and funders. And the Brotherhood’s strategy in the Arab world seemed to closely coincide with western strategy or at least wasn’t in conflict with it.
When legitimate protests broke out in Syria in 2011 the Brotherhood allied with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the West to pour fuel on the fire and flood the country with arms and foreign jihadis. The repression from the Assad regime was real but the militarisation of the protest movement guaranteed its failure and played a part in the destruction of the country and its exploitation by foreigners.
Meanwhile, the sectarian rhetoric which the Brotherhood encouraged pushed the Islamic world towards a civil war which will only have losers.
Retrenchment
Buoyed by its successes in Tunisia and Egypt and with its alliance with Aljazeera Arabic TV station, it seems that the Brotherhood simply got too big for its boots and believed it could take power across vast swathes of the Arab world.
But then things started to go wrong. Libya post-Gaddafi is a militia-controlled mess, discontent is brewing in Tunisia and, above all, the Assad regime seems to be winning in Syria. And now the Brotherhood has lost power in the largest Arab nation Egypt in a military coup that was wrong and short-sighted.
So the Brotherhood has lost the respect of the Shia world and the Arab left; it is mistrusted by the salafis; and it has been discredited in the eyes of many as too power-hungry and not anti-imperialist.
Yet it remains a huge force in many Arab countries with significant and loyal street support. Therefore, despite this retrenchment it is unlikely to be finished or to go away. But it might take years to re-establish the good reputation it once had and if that ever happens it should definitely limit its ambitions.
In the meantime I hope it goes back to what it is good at – providing services to the poor and teaching people about Islam. And I hope it stays away from what it is bad at – world domination.
@RMSalih
