The Muslim Brotherhood: Between Democracy, Ideology and Distrust

This article examines the rise and fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt after the 2011 uprising. It analyzes the Brotherhood’s behavior and strategy since taking power in June 2012, exploring the underlying factors leading to their downfall in 2013. The article argues that the short-lived Islamist government’s fall can be ascribed to three key factors: its lack of a revolutionary agenda, the Brotherhood’s organizational stagnation and inertia, and its leaders’ incompetence and inexperience in governance.

Center for Open Access in Science, Serbia, 2021

This study aims to present the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, its ideology and pragmatism. With progress and modernization, the Islamic movements in the Middle East realized that they could not deny progress, so they decided to join the mainstream and take advantage of technological progress in their favor. The movement maintains at least one website in which it publishes its way, and guides the audience. Although these movements seem to maintain a rigid ideology, they adapt themselves to reality with the help of many tools, because they have realized that reality is stronger than they are. The main points in the article are: The status of religion in the country; What is the Muslim Brotherhood? According to which ideology is the movement taking place?-Movement background and ideology; Theoretical background-The theory of Pragmatism; How is pragmatism manifested in the activity of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt? In conclusions: The rise of the Islamist movements as a leading social and political force in the Middle East is the result of the bankruptcy of nationalism, secularism and the left in the Arab world, which created an ideological vacuum, which is filled to a large extent by the fundamentalists, ensuring that Islam is the solution. It is not only about the extent of the return to religion, but about the transformation of religion into a major political factor both by the regimes and by the opposition. These are political movements that deal first and foremost with the social and political mobilization of the masses, and they exert pressure to apply the Islamic law as the law of the state instead of the legal systems taken from the Western model.

Journal of the Human and Social Science Researches, 2020

The Muslim Brotherhood witnessed an unexpected political power with its electoral victory in legislative and presidential elections soon after the fall of Mubarak in Egypt. Although the Brotherhood enjoyed high popular support, to a great extent, thanks to its charity activities and social services, soon after Morsi took office, this popular support began to diminish dramatically. On the first anniversary of Morsi’s inauguration as president, millions of Egyptians took to the streets to protest against his administration. Massive street protests ended up with a military coup that eliminated the prospects for Egypt’s transition to democracy. This article investigates how the Brotherhood’s policies vis a vis the deep state in Egypt made the organization vulnerable in the awake of street protests in 2013. First, the article makes a brief overview of the historical evolution of the Muslim Brotherhood and then, it explores critical decisions taken by the Muslim Brotherhood leadership during Egypt’s transition and their implications. Finally, it examines the organization’s policies in the aftermath of the coup.

Mediterranean Politics, 2016

Carrie Rosefsky Wickham Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-6911-4940-0 Inside the brotherhood Hazem Kandil London, Polity Press, 2015, ISBN 978-0-7456-8291-4

The Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafist Call and the Orientation Towards State and Society in Egypt, 2024

This book considers the time span between 1981 and 2013, which is shaped by the rule of Hosni Mubarak until the ousting of the Islamist president Mohamed Morsi on 3 July 2013. Although the two movements are Egyptian movements, their ideologies reach far beyond Egyptian borders. This book will enrich one’s understanding of the difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafist Call and the ideological transformations of each of them by focusing on the impact of the Egyptian regime’s power network (ideological, economic, military, and political) on these transformations, and studying the ideological attitudes of both movements to many issues such as political participation, democracy, women’s issues, minorities, freedoms, and systems of governance. This first requires an exploration of the regime’s power networks and the relationship between these sources of power, which are both featured in this book.

Middle East Policy Journal, 2014

This paper examines the short-lived rule of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt after the Arab Spring and argues that the Muslim Brotherhood had abandoned Islamist values without embracing democratic ideals. It identifies a pathway to reform for the Brotherhood if it is serious about democratization. The paper insists that the failure of democracy in Egypt is not a judgement on the compatibility of Islam and democracy.

2015

Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.

Immanent Frame , 2014

The “secularism versus Islamism” narrativ­e is a political one—it performs important legitimizing labor for a plethora of social actors in Egypt, from the Brotherhood­ to deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak’s allies and both liberal and leftist activists alike. It is, however, of very limited analytical utility in making critical sense of what is actually at stake in the current impasse for the many Egyptians who do not subscribe to a secularized conception of government, yet whose religiosity cannot be conflated with the Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Political Theology, 2011