The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood
By Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke
FRIEND OR FOE?
The Muslim Brotherhood is the world's oldest, largest, and most
influential Islamist organization. It is also the most controversial,
condemned by both conventional opinion in the West and radical opinion in
the Middle East. American commentators have called the Muslim Brothers
"radical Islamists" and "a vital component of the enemy's assault force
... deeply hostile to the United States." Al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri
sneers at them for "lur[ing] thousands of young Muslim men into lines for
elections ... instead of into the lines of jihad."
Jihadists loathe the Muslim Brotherhood (known in Arabic as al-Ikhwan
al-Muslimeen) for rejecting global jihad and embracing democracy. These
positions seem to make them moderates, the very thing the United States,
short on allies in the Muslim world, seeks. But the Ikhwan also assails
U.S. foreign policy, especially Washington's support for Israel, and
questions linger about its actual commitment to the democratic process.
Over the past year, we have met with dozens of Brotherhood leaders and
activists from Egypt, France, Jordan, Spain, Syria, Tunisia, and the
United Kingdom. In long and sometimes heated discussions, we explored the
Brotherhood's stance on democracy and jihad, Israel and Iraq, the United
States, and what sort of society the group seeks to create. The
Brotherhood is a collection of national groups with differing outlooks,
and the various factions disagree about how best to advance its mission.
But all reject global jihad while embracing elections and other features
of democracy. There is also a current within the Brotherhood willing to
engage with the United States. In the past several decades, this current
-- along with the realities of practical politics -- has pushed much of
the Brotherhood toward moderation.
U.S. policymaking has been handicapped by Washington's tendency to see the
Muslim Brotherhood -- and the Islamist movement as a whole -- as a
monolith. Policymakers should instead analyze each national and local
group independently and seek out those that are open to engagement. In
the anxious and often fruitless search for Muslim moderates, policymakers
should recognize that the Muslim Brotherhood presents a notable
opportunity.
BIG BROTHERS
Since its founding in Egypt in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood has sought to
fuse religious revival with anti-imperialism -- resistance to foreign
domination through the exaltation of Islam. At its beginning, the
Brotherhood differed from earlier reformers by combining a profoundly
Islamic ideology with modern grass-roots political activism. The
Brotherhood pursued an Islamic society through "tarbiyya" (preaching and
educating), concentrating first on changing the outlook of individuals,
then families, and finally societies. Although the Brotherhood's origins
were lower-middle class, it soon pushed Islamization into the local
bourgeoisie and then clear to the palace. At the same time, it formed the
armed Special Apparatus, replicating Young Egypt's Greenshirts, the Wafd's
Blueshirts, nascent Nazi Brownshirts, and other paramilitary organizations
that were rife in the Middle East at the time.
In 1948, with civil strife looming, the Egyptian government dissolved the
Brotherhood. Later that year, a number of Brothers were implicated in the
murder of the prime minister. Despite his public denunciation of the
assassins, Hasan al-Banna, the Brotherhood's founder, was soon
assassinated as well -- leaving the factionalized Brothers squabbling
over a successor.
In a gesture of conciliation to the palace (and also to prevent a single
faction from dominating), the Brotherhood chose an outsider, the
respected judge Hasan al-Hudaybi, to succeed Banna as its leader.
Hudaybi's selection coincided with the military coup that toppled the
Egyptian monarchy. The Free Officers Movement, led by Colonel Gamal Abdel
Nasser and his successor, Anwar al-Sadat, had worked closely with the
Muslim Brothers, who were attracted by the soldiers' nationalist stance
and Islamic rhetoric. But the Free Officers' promise to Islamize the new
constitution soon proved illusory. An embittered member of the
Brotherhood's paramilitary Special Apparatus emptied a pistol at Nasser
during a speech, prompting the new regime to herd into Nasser's squalid
jails much of the organization, few members of which had any inkling of
the hair-brained assassination adventure. Nasser, uninjured and unfazed,
emerged as a stoic hero, the Brotherhood's notorious Special Apparatus as
the gang that could not shoot straight.
In prison, the guards applied the kind of torture that would make Arab
nationalism infamous, in Egypt as well as in Iraq and Syria. The
Brothers' wounds throbbed with fateful questions: How could those who
stood shoulder to shoulder with us against the British and the king now
set their dogs on us? Can those tormenting devout Muslims really be
Muslims themselves? Sayyid Qutb, then the Ikhwan's most profound thinker,
produced an answer that would echo into the twenty-first century: these
were the acts of apostates, "kafireen". Accordingly, the torturers and
their regime were legitimate targets of jihad.
But from his own cell, Hudaybi disputed Qutb's conclusion. Only God, he
believed, could judge faith. He rejected "takfir" (the act of declaring
another Muslim an apostate), arguing that "whoever judges that someone is
no longer a Muslim ... deviates from Islam and transgresses God's will by
judging another person's faith." Within the Brotherhood, Hudaybi's
tolerant view -- in line with Banna's founding vision -- prevailed,
cementing the group's moderate vocation. But it appalled the "takfiris",
who streamed out of the Brotherhood. Qutb, who breathed his last on
Nasser's gallows in 1966, went on to become the prophet and martyr of
jihad. "Qutb has influenced all those interested in jihad throughout the
Islamic world," said a founding member of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, an
erstwhile jihadist group known for its vicious campaign against foreign
tourists in Egypt during the 1980s. "The Brothers," he continued sadly,
"have abandoned the ideas of Sayyid Qutb."
The Ikhwan followed the path of toleration and eventually came to find
democracy compatible with its notion of slow Islamization. An Islamic
society, the idea goes, will naturally desire Islamic leaders and support
them at the ballot box. The Ikhwan also repeatedly justified democracy on
Islamic grounds by certifying that "the "umma" [the Muslim community] is
the source of "sulta" [political authority]." In pursuit of popular
authority, the Brotherhood has formed electoral alliances with
secularists, nationalists, and liberals.
Having lost the internal struggle for the Brotherhood, the radicals
regrouped outside it, in sects that sought to topple regimes throughout
the Muslim world. (Groups such as al Jihad would furnish the Egyptian
core of al Qaeda.) These jihadists view the Brotherhood's embrace of
democracy as blasphemy. Channeling Qutb, they argue that any government
not ruling solely by sharia is apostate; democracy is not just a mistaken
tactic but also an unforgivable sin, because it gives humans sovereignty
over Allah. Osama bin Laden's lieutenant, Zawahiri, calls it "the
deification of the people." Abu Hamza al-Masri, the one-eyed radical
cleric who presided over London's notorious Finsbury Park mosque,
considers democracy "the call of self-divinity loud and clear, in which
the rights of one group of people, who have put their idea to vote, have
put their ideas and their decisions over the decisions of Allah." Abu
Muhammad al-Maqdisi (whom a recent West Point study found to be the most
influential living jihadist thinker) inveighs, "Democracy is obvious
polytheism and thus just the kind of infidelity that Allah warns against,
in His Book."
Many analysts, meanwhile, sensibly question whether the Brotherhood's
adherence to democracy is merely tactical and transitory -- an
opportunistic commitment to, in the historian Bernard Lewis' words, "one
man, one vote, one time." Behind that warning is an extensive history of
similar cadre organizations that promised democracy and then recanted
once in power: the Bolsheviks, the Nazis, the Baath Party in Iraq and
Syria, even the Nasserists. There is slim evidence that the Brotherhood
has pondered what it would do with power. Although it has been prodded by
the electoral process to define its slogan -- "Islam Is the Solution" --
Islamist governmental blueprints are scarce, even ones as sketchy as
Lenin's "State and Revolution" or Marx's "Critique of the Gotha Program".
But in at least one respect, the Brotherhood differs from those admonitory
precedents: its road to power is not revolutionary; it depends on winning
hearts through gradual and peaceful Islamization. Under this Fabian
strategy, the Brotherhood seeks a compact with the powers that be --
offering a channel for discontent while slowly expanding its influence.
As one senior member told us, "It would be unjust if the Brotherhood were
to come to power before a majority of the society is prepared to support
them." Another Ikhwan leader told us that if the Brotherhood should rule
unwisely and then face electoral defeat, "we will have failed the people
and the new party will have the right to come to power. We will not take
away anyone's rights." And in extensive conversations with the Muslim
Brotherhood's disparate allies throughout the Middle East, we heard many
expressions of confidence that it would honor democratic processes.
INTERNAL DEBATES
Middle Eastern jails, petrodollars, geopolitical rivalries, and the
"Muslim Awakening" have given rise to a highly variegated Islamist
movement. Unfortunately, nuance is lost in much of current Western
discourse. Herding these different beasts into a single conceptual corral
labeled "Salafi" or "Wahhabi" ignores the differences and fault lines
between them -- and has thwarted strategic thinking as a result.
When we asked Muslim Brothers in the Middle East and Europe whether they
considered themselves Salafists (as they are frequently identified), they
usually met our question with a Clintonian response: "That depends on what
your definition of Salafist is." If by Salafism we meant the modernist,
renaissance Islam of Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh
(turn-of-the-twentieth-century reformers who influenced Banna), then yes,
they were Salafists. Yet the ubiquitous Web site
www.salafipublications.com, which is run by Salafists who believe that
religion should never mix with politics and that existing rulers should
be supported almost unconditionally, attacks Afghani and Abduh for being
"far away from the Salafi "aqidah" [creed]." (This is the view, for
obvious reasons, of the Saudi religious establishment.) Such "pietists,"
most of whom were trained in official Saudi institutions, argue that the
Brotherhood's participation in politics has converted them into the
"Bankrupt Brotherhood." According to one, "The Muslim Brothers have
political goals and strategies, which induce them to make concessions to
the West. For us, the Salafists, the goal is purely religious."
Other critics speculate that the Brotherhood helps radicalize Muslims in
both the Middle East and Europe. But in fact, it appears that the Ikhwan
works to dissuade Muslims from violence, instead channeling them into
politics and charitable activities. As a senior member of the Egyptian
Brotherhood's Guidance Council told us in Cairo, "If it wasn't for the
Brotherhood, most of the youths of this era would have chosen the path of
violence. The Ikhwan has become a safety valve for moderate Islam." The
leader of the Jordanian Islamic Action Front, the Muslim Brotherhood's
political party in Jordan, said that his group outdoes the government in
discouraging jihad: "We're better able to conduct an intellectual
confrontation, and not a security confrontation, with the forces of
extremism and fanaticism." In London, Brotherhood leaders contrasted
their approach to that of radical groups, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT),
that "seek to bring society to a boiling point."
The Brotherhood claims success at sifting radicalism out of its ranks
through organizational discipline and a painstaking educational program.
(One Muslim Brother noted that the organization's motto could be "Listen
and Obey.") If a Muslim Brother wishes to commit violence, he generally
leaves the organization to do so. That said, a number of militants have
passed through the Brotherhood since its inception, and the path from the
Brotherhood to jihad is not buried in sand. Defections have historically
occurred when the organization has faced a conjunction of internal and
external pressures, as when the "takfiri" element emerged under
repression to produce the Egyptian jihadist movement. Today, however,
Brothers who leave the organization are more likely to join the moderate
center rather than to take up jihad. In the mid-1990s, internal dissent
over registering as a political party occurred in the context of a
government crackdown against a jihadist assault. These pressures resulted
in an exodus of Brothers, many of whom formed the core of the liberal
Islamist "wasatiyya" movement, including the moderate Hizb al-Wasat
(Center Party).
One issue of enduring concern is Qutb's ambiguous legacy in the
Brotherhood. Critiquing "the martyr," as Qutb is known, requires a
surgeon's touch: he died in the service of the organization yet had
strayed far from the founder's vision. Even Hudaybi's "Preachers, Not
Judges", an indirect but clear refutation of Qutb, never mentions him.
Today, the Brotherhood lionizes Qutb, admittedly a major figure whose
views cannot be reduced to jihad. But it straddles a barbed fence in
embracing Qutb while simultaneously arguing that his violent teachings
were "taken out of context." What lessons will younger members tempted to
radical action draw?
While jihadists have been sorting out the finer points of international
slaughter, the Ikhwan has hunkered down to pursue national goals. In the
November 2005 legislative elections in Egypt, independent candidates
affiliated with the Ikhwan, which is officially banned but still
tolerated, won a surprising 20 percent of the assembly -- especially
impressive considering widespread government fraud and voter
intimidation. In the new parliament, the Brotherhood has coordinated its
legislative efforts by forming an internal experts committee, nicknamed
"the parliamentary kitchen," that groups Brotherhood candidates according
to their specialties. Instead of pursuing a divisive religious or cultural
agenda, the Brotherhood has pushed for more affordable housing, criticized
the government's handling of the avian flu threat, and demanded
accountability for the recent series of bus, train, and ferry disasters.
These electoral advances and moderate, practical criticisms have made for
an increasingly tense relationship with the Egyptian government. The
Ikhwan's electoral gains were followed, in May 2006, by their support for
judicial reform and independence. President Hosni Mubarak's suspected
preparations for handing over power to his son Gamal have led to further
crackdowns on the opposition.
Such pressure exacerbates differences between various tendencies in the
Egyptian Brotherhood. Since the 1980s, middle-class professionals have
pushed it in a more transparent and flexible direction. Working within
labor unions and professional organizations, these reformers have learned
to forge coalitions with and provide services to their constituents. A
leader of the reformist faction told us, "Reform will only happen if
Islamists work with other forces, including secularists and liberals."
This current finds a comfortable home within the Egyptian umbrella
movement Kifaya (Enough!), which embraces the Brotherhood along with all
manner of secularists, liberals, nationalists, and leftists. Kifaya was
born in fervent opposition to the war in Iraq and now forms the battered
core of Egyptian democratic opposition. (It is ironic that a war waged in
the name of promoting democracy has midwifed a democratic front in Egypt
that is at odds with the United States and its war.)
The Brotherhood's reformist wing contends with conservatives in high
positions in the organization who bear the scars of repression and
secrecy. The sharpest divisions have occurred over the issue of forming a
political party, a key plank of the reformist agenda. Doing so, reformists
argue, would serve the broader goals of the organization by giving the
Brotherhood a platform to spread its message to an otherwise unavailable
audience. The conservatives argue that a party should be an annex to the
movement, devoted solely to politics. Meanwhile, the Brotherhoood's
social movement would perform tasks outside of politics, such as charity,
education, and health.
BROTHERLY LOVE OR SIBLING RIVALRY?
Although the Egyptian branch remains the most influential Brotherhood
group, offshoots have prospered throughout the Middle East and Europe.
But there is no Islamist "Comintern." The Brotherhood's dreaded
International Organization is in fact a loose and feeble coalition
scarcely able to convene its own members. Indeed, the Brotherhood's
international debility is a product of its local successes: national
autonomy and adjustability to domestic conditions. The ideological
affiliations that link Brotherhood organizations internationally are
subject to the national priorities that shape each individually.
Suppressed throughout much of the Middle East, the Brotherhood spread
across the Arab world and, via students and exiles, to Europe. In the
early 1980s, the Egyptian Ikhwan sought to establish coordination among
dozens of national offspring. But opposition was universal. Right next
door, the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood powerhouse Hasan al-Turabi
protested, "You cannot run the world from Cairo." When Iraq invaded
Kuwait in 1990, the Kuwaiti Muslim Brothers objected to the acquiescence
of the International Organization and withdrew, taking with them their
plump wallets. The U.S.-installed government in Iraq is another apple of
discord. While Muslim Brothers throughout the Middle East and Europe
inveighed against the "puppet" Iraqi government, the Iraqi branch of the
Muslim Brotherhood sat prominently in the Iraqi Parliament. More
recently, the alliance between the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and Abdel
Halim Khaddam, the dissident former Syrian vice president, has been
widely offensive to other Brotherhood branches. The war in Lebanon last
summer sharpened that divide, as the Syrian Brothers leaped to denounce
President Bashar al-Assad's meddling in Lebanon, while the rest of the
Brotherhood rallied behind Hezbollah.
The national branches also have divergent views of the United States. In
Egypt and Jordan, even as it has considered a partnership with Washington
against "autocracy and terrorism," the Brotherhood, driven partly by
electoral concerns, has harshly criticized the United States. The Syrian
Brotherhood, meanwhile, keenly supports the Bush administration's efforts
to isolate the Assad regime; the kind of inflammatory anti-U.S. statements
typical in Jordan and Egypt are rare in Syria.
Even on the central issue of Israel, each national organization calls its
own tune. Every Muslim Brotherhood leader with whom we spoke claimed a
willingness to follow suit should Hamas -- the Palestinian offshoot of
the Brotherhood -- recognize the Jewish state. Such earnest professions
may be grounded in the confident assumption of Hamas recalcitrance, but
that position nonetheless stands in sharp relief to that of most
jihadists. As Zawahiri expresses the jihadist view, "No one has the
right, whether Palestinian or not, to abandon a grain of soil from
Palestine, which was a Muslim land, which was occupied by infidels."
The Brotherhood does authorize jihad in countries and territories occupied
by a foreign power. Like in Afghanistan under the Soviets, the Ikhwan
views the struggles in Iraq and against Israel as "defensive jihad"
against invaders, the Muslim functional equivalent of the Christian
doctrine of "just war." However, the Brotherhood's failure to stress the
religious dimension incenses the jihadists, who mock the Brotherhood
(including Hamas) for conducting jihad "for the sake of territory" rather
than for the sake of Allah. Compare the statement from the Brotherhood's
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who argues that "the enmity between us and the Jews is
for the sake of land only," with this one from Zawahiri: "God, glory to
him, made the religion the cause of enmity and the cause of our fight."
Muslim Brothers expressly deny their organization is anti-Semitic. The
current Egyptian general guide, Muhammad Mahdi Akef, argues that there is
no conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jews, only between the
Muslim Brotherhood and the Zionists (who, Akef told us, "are not Jews").
Despite these denials, Brotherhood literature has expressed hatred for
all Jews, not just "Zionists." The October 1980 children's supplement to
the Brotherhood newspaper "Al Dawa", for example, was designed to
instruct young children on "the enemies of your religion": "Such are the
Jews, my brother, Muslim lion cub, your enemies and the enemies of God.
... Muslim lion cub, annihilate their existence." But in a recent sermon
at a Somali mosque in North London, Kamal El Helbawi -- reportedly the
most influential Muslim Brother in the United Kingdom -- declared that to
be a good Muslim, faith was not enough. After faith there was
neighborliness, and Helbawi related a story: "The well-known scholar
Abdullah Ibn al-Mubarak had a Jewish neighbor. The Jew wanted to sell his
house. The buyers asked him the price, and he said, 'Two thousand.' They
said to him, 'But your house is only worth one thousand.' He said, 'Yes,
but I want one thousand for my house and another one thousand because of
the good neighbour whom I am going to leave behind.'" After the service,
we asked Helbawi whether recent news accounts of Muslim anti-Semitism in
the English Midlands inspired his sermon, which publicly lauded a Jew for
displaying a sacred Islamic virtue. "Precisely," he replied.
Islamists have been accused of using deceptive "double discourse": good
moderate cop in English, bad fundamentalist cop in Arabic. A recent
article in the journal "Current Trends in Islamist Ideology" found
worrying discrepancies between the English and Arabic versions of certain
articles on the official Muslim Brotherhood Web site. But Helbawi's sermon
was delivered exclusively in English, with no restatement in Arabic. This
public, on-the-record display was far more persuasive than the usual
Brotherhood spin separating anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism.
BROTHERS ABROAD
In Europe, Brotherhood-led groups represent minorities in secular,
democratic countries, and they understand that they will remain
minorities for the foreseeable future. None actively pursues the
objective of converting its compatriots to Islam. Instead, the emphasis
falls on the rights of religious minorities. (Ironically, the European
Brotherhood-inspired organizations take full advantage of Europe's
extreme official religious tolerance, inspired by the experience of Nazi
anti-Semitism.)
One example of the Brotherhood's European approach came after a Danish
newspaper printed cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad last year.
Although its transnational networks helped spread the word about the
cartoons, all branches officially called for peaceful protest. The
Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe, a grouping of the most
important European Brotherhood-led bodies, condemned the European papers
that printed the cartoons but hardly in stinging terms. Although it
criticized the cartoons for "hurt[ing] the feelings of Muslims," it
devoted more space to calling for increased cooperation between Muslims
and non-Muslims. The jihadists, in contrast, were offering blood money
for the heads of the cartoonists and coordinating "embassy burning days."
In France, the sheer number of Muslims, alarming press and government
reports about the Islamization of schools, radical "garage mosques,"
clamorous Muslim protests against Israel, desecrations of Jewish
graveyards, attacks on uncovered women, and several foiled terrorist
plots have created the general impression, inside and outside the
country, of a powerful rising Islamism. That is why a number of French
and overseas observers rushed to label the stone-throwing, car-burning
riots of 2005 in the largely Muslim slums "the French intifada." But in
three and a half weeks of riots, Islamism failed to make its presence
felt, still less to establish sharia in some obscure precinct, as
reported by overwrought observers. "Islamic radicals played no role in
the triggering or spread of the violence," according to France's domestic
intelligence service, Renseignements Généraux. "On the contrary, they had
every interest in a rapid return to calm in order to avoid being accused
of anything." The chief of the Paris branch of the Renseignements
Généraux told us that of the 3,000 rioters arrested in Paris last fall,
there was "not one known as belonging to an Islamist crowd, and we
monitor them quite closely."
In fact, when the Islamists emerged, it was to try to calm the autumn
rioters, who often greeted these missionaries with hails of stones. The
Brotherhood-linked organization Union des Organisations Islamiques de
France (UOIF) repudiated the riots in a fatwa. That fatwa was the
culmination of a UOIF strategy, forged 15 years earlier, to be perceived
as a reliable partner of the French government. The highest-ranking
permanent official of the domestic surveillance agency told us that the
UOIF "needs" them, presumably to certify that the organization poses no
danger.
Similarly, when French authorities banned the wearing of the hijab (or
"foulard"), the position of the UOIF was accommodation. The UOIF's
cautious stance on the law disappointed other European branches of the
Brotherhood. They wished their French counterpart would be more
aggressive and feared the French were setting a precedent of quiescence
for other European Islamist groups of a more separatist persuasion.
As part of their collaborationist, low-profile strategy, the UOIF has also
maintained a prudent distance from such lightning rods as the Ikhwan
figure Qaradawi, notorious in the West for justifying jihad in Israel and
Iraq. Qaradawi has gone notably uninvited to recent UOIF annual
congresses. (For many Islamists, Qaradawi is no radical; as far as the
jihadist ideologue Abu Basir al-Tartusi is concerned, Qaradawi deserves
excommunication for his "moderation.")
The UOIF newspaper "Al Ittihad" even treats the Palestinian question
cautiously, supporting only charitable donations to refugees and
presenting the Palestinians as victims rather than warriors. The UOIF
does not participate in pro-Palestinian demonstrations and steers clear
of the charged Arab-Israeli dispute. It did not take part in the 2003
national demonstration against the war in Iraq, nor in the massive
marches in the spring of 2006. The organization's absence from both the
riots and the marches, in the European country with the most Muslims,
ought to soothe fears of an Islamist takeover of Europe.
The UOIF's discretion differs sharply from its British counterpart, the
Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), which warmly welcomes the likes of
Qaradawi. Although a quarter the size of the French Muslim population,
the United Kingdom's Muslim population is more angry and assertive, and
far more prone to terrorism. The UOIF is more influential than the MAB,
but the smaller MAB splashes in a much stormier sea. When the Muslim
Brothers formed the MAB in 1997, it was but one of many Muslim
organizations in the United Kingdom. Many were radical, rejecting the
mild, if more fundamentalist, Deobandi and Barelwi traditions of their
parents. Already in the field for a generation was the U.K. Islamic
Mission, an offshoot of the Pakistani Islamist movement founded by Abul
A'la Maududi. While the UOIF'S voice boomed in the small room of French
Muslim activists, the MAB'S was a small voice trying to be heard in a
vast auditorium in which the young were already pitching rotten eggs at
their elders.
As the MAB grew in prominence, it began to work with the British
government. This cooperation has been notable at London's Finsbury Park
mosque. That mosque gained notoriety thanks to its infamous erstwhile
preacher. Despite Masri's arrest and expulsion from the mosque, his
followers returned and quickly regained control. The police, hesitant to
intervene directly in a house of worship, offered the MAB control of the
mosque in exchange for ridding it of radicals. The MAB gained a majority
on the mosque board and gathered to retake the building. Although Masri's
men tried to storm the mosque, the assembled MAB supporters routed them.
Since then, Scotland Yard tells us that their "reliable and effective
partners" have even "deradicalized" some of Masri's former followers.
Open cooperation with the authorities has put the MAB at odds with radical
groups such as HT. The contest between the MAB and HT roughly follows
ethnic and generational lines: young Muslims of Pakistani descent are
heavily represented in HT, whereas the older and fewer Muslims of Arab
descent join the MAB. A former HT member told us that his group
"dominates the British scene." He estimated that HT had some 8,500
members in the United Kingdom; the MAB could boast only 1,000. The
formally nonviolent HT itself is a full step away from the subjects of
the British internal security chief's recent assessment of jihadist
activity: "Some 200 groupings or networks, totaling over 1,600 identified
individuals (and there will be many we don't know) who are actively
engaged in plotting, or facilitating, terrorist acts here and overseas."
In light of these numbers, no wonder MAB officials told us that their
group was "a decade behind," and not gaining ground against, radical
groups in the United Kingdom.
DIVIDE AND ENGAGE
Born as an anti-imperialist as much as an Islamic revivalist movement, the
Brotherhood, like the United States, will follow its own star. If
individual branches resist the intercession of fellow organizations, how
much less likely is it that they will embrace U.S. tutelage? But
cooperation in specific areas of mutual interest -- such as opposition to
al Qaeda, the encouragement of democracy, and resistance to expanding
Iranian influence -- could well be feasible.
One place to start would be with representatives of the Brotherhood's
reformist wing, especially those already living in the West. The United
States lost an opportunity to hear from one of these reformers last
October when Helbawi -- the imam whom we heard deliver a sermon extolling
a Jew -- was forced off a flight en route to a conference at New York
University. This treatment of a figure known for his brave stand against
radical Islam and for his public advocacy of dialogue with the United
States constitutes yet another bewildering act by the Department of
Homeland Security, which provided no explanation. This London-based
admirer of Shakespeare and the Brontës appears to be exactly the sort of
interlocutor who could help bridge civilizations. Instead, his public
humiliation was a gift for the radicals, a bracing serving of "we told
you so" on the subject of engaging Americans.
U.S. policy toward the Brotherhood is contested between those who view the
Brotherhood and its affiliates as a vital component of the global jihadist
network and those who argue that the Brotherhood's popular support in key
Muslim countries and moderating potential require some degree of
engagement. The former view seems ascendant and explains an increase in
U.S. efforts to isolate the Brotherhood -- such as preventing Helbawi and
other reformist members of the Brotherhood from entering the United States
or prohibiting U.S. government personnel from engaging with the
Brotherhood.
But if the United States is to cope with the Muslim revival while
advancing key national interests, policymakers must recognize its almost
infinite variety of political (and apolitical) orientations. When it
comes to the Muslim Brotherhood, the beginning of wisdom lies in
differentiating it from radical Islam and recognizing the significant
differences between national Brotherhood organizations. That diversity
suggests Washington should adopt a case-by-case approach, letting the
situation in each individual country determine when talking with -- or
even working with -- the Brotherhood is feasible and appropriate. In the
United States' often futile search for "moderate Muslims" with active
community support -- and at a moment when, isolated and suspect,
Washington should be taking stock of its interests and capabilities in
the Muslim world -- a conversation with the Muslim Brotherhood makes
strong strategic sense.
Robert S. Leiken is Director of the Immigration and National Security
Programs at the Nixon Center and the author of the forthcoming "Europe's
Angry Muslims". Steven Brooke is a Research Associate at the Nixon
Center.
Foreign Affairs
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/03/the_moderate_muslim_brotherhoo.html
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