On the morning of March 4, the State Safety Felony Court docket in Egypt sentenced the Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme information Mohammed Badie to dying, together with seven of the outlawed group’s leaders (Mahmoud Ezzat, Mohamed el-Beltagy, Amr Zaki, Osama Yassin, Safwa Hegazy, Assem Abdel Maged, and Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud) for organizing acts of violence eleven years in the past within the so-called ‘Platform Occasions’ case.
The case traces again to 2013, days after the Egyptian army ousted the late Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated President Mohamed Mursi in a Saudi–UAE-backed coup.
Technically, this ruling marked 80-year-old Badie’s third encounter with a dying sentence following the notorious “Rabaa Operations Room” case in 2015.
But, past notions of ‘justice,’ a deeper narrative unfurls – one laden with political gravitas. The court docket’s ruling wasn’t solely about holding people accountable for previous transgressions; it was a strategic transfer by the Egyptian state.
Ticking time bomb
The federal government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is scared of the impending social upheaval anticipated on account of the state’s faltering financial system, flawed fiscal insurance policies, decline in Arab world clout, and Egypt’s impotence within the face of Israel’s ethnic cleaning of Gaza – all elements for a possible powder keg primed to detonate.
Commentators counsel the subsequent explosion may very well be of an unprecedented scale, eclipsing the Bread Intifada of 1977 and the 25 January revolution of 2011.
He recalled the position of the Brotherhood within the 1948 Conflict, after which the results of the Nakba on Egypt and the insurance policies of the state, geared toward eradicating the favored Islamic social and political motion because the fifties:
We do not care if we’re sentenced to dying and imprisonment. Palestine is our first trigger and the reason for the Arab and Islamic nation. Mr Choose, that is the basis of the case. We’re imprisoned till the deal of the century is accomplished.
Whatever the accuracy of Badie’s supra-temporal assertion, it stays simple that the occasions unfolding in Palestine right now are prone to forged a shadow on Cairo within the coming years, relying on which method the Egyptian authorities strategy Gaza. The potent repercussions of a mistaken transfer weigh closely on Egypt’s authorities.
State v Faith
On this context, it’s value reflecting on Roger Caillois’ dialogue in “Man and the Sacred” on the disparity between the state’s temporal perspective and the non secular notion of time.
A state usually adheres to an goal, temporal, and infrequently linear imaginative and prescient, whereas non secular frameworks normally embrace a “supra-temporal” perspective intertwined with a historic understanding – through which, given time, well-liked struggles will finally outmaneuver a failed authority.
Whereas the state endeavors to manage motion and time, manifesting its authority via establishments akin to courts and prisons, Islamists interact in a unique area. They confront the state in streets, alleys, pulpits, and prisons, focusing strategically on the temporal dimension – that’s, the “timelessness” of the battle.
Certainly, understanding the political standoff between Cairo and the Muslim Brotherhood necessitates a deep dive into their historic relationship.
The so-called “Arab road” has grown more and more indignant at Egypt’s silence over the Gaza disaster…
Individuals Ask “Why is the Border between Egypt and Gaza so fortified?” Verify the video.
Is it as a result of Egypt has little interest in Gazans?
Sure.El-Sisi is a secular ruler of Egypt. When he seized energy in 2014, he had 500 Muslim Brotherhood members sentenced to Loss of life at… pic.twitter.com/KjAhjqqlCv
— MidEast Insanity! (@joereal99) March 1, 2024
From the fraught interactions of the thirties to the dominance of the fifties, adopted by a reluctant coexistence within the seventies, then the emergence of the Muslim ‘field’ throughout the Arab Spring, and subsequently the period of “post-Islamism” (as described by Iranian–American sociologist Asef Bayat), the Brotherhood has gone via varied phases in a zero-sum recreation with the state.
This relationship is underpinned by foundational options deeply ingrained in Egyptian political life, which neither the state forms can overcome nor the Brotherhood can totally assimilate.
Moreover, the evolution of the Egyptian state, with its centralized management system spanning over six millennia, has moved via varied pivotal durations, every contributing to the distinctive crises that continue to shape the nation’s political scene.
The Brotherhood all through the ages
From a historic perspective, the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood could be understood as a civil response to state violence inflicted upon society. In different phrases, the secular–Islamic pressure in Egypt shouldn’t be merely a cultural conflict however slightly a consequence of the state’s violent encroachment upon society’s symbolic capital.
It’s also necessary to view the Muslim Brotherhood primarily as a social movement slightly than a political one, akin to its offshoots, Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which additionally hint their roots to grassroots social activism.
Throughout Egypt’s monarchial interval, the Brotherhood aligned carefully with figures akin to Fathi Radwan, Aziz al-Masri, and Muhammad Saleh Harb in opposing Saad Zaghloul and the nationalist, liberal Wafd Social gathering. Nevertheless, following the monarchy’s demise, the Brotherhood discovered itself on reverse sides.
Within the turbulent sixties, controversial figures like Sayyid Qutb confronted persecution, whereas Hassan al-Hudaybi, the Brotherhood’s former supreme information, emphasised their position as “preachers, not judges.”
Throughout Anwar Sadat’s presidency within the seventies, the Brotherhood oscillated between assist and opposition, and within the eighties, it condemned his assassination by militant offshoot al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya.
This helps clarify the fluctuating relationship between the state and the Brotherhood all through fashionable Egyptian historical past.
A blast from the previous
The ‘return’ of the Brotherhood, not less than to the general public’s consideration, raises questions on what the Egyptian state desires from society. The federal government’s expensive trophy ‘development-without-demand’ tasks – erecting solely new cities, together with a capital metropolis – and the random ‘renaissance funds’ that boomed beneath Sisi are but to learn strange Egyptians or resolve Egypt’s longstanding financial and nationwide challenges.
Regardless of the bogus increase attributed to those ego tasks, Egypt languishes on the backside of Arab states in schooling high quality, rating 139th globally in 2023, and 153rd in well being safety, as corruption continues to plague its establishments, for which it ranks one hundred and thirtieth.
Arguably, these ‘renaissance’ tasks in Egypt right now do little greater than enrich a monetary oligarchy deeply entrenched within the corridors of energy, who lack any imaginative and prescient for sustainable growth.
Whereas the Muslim Brotherhood could formally be banned, its historic position as a assist system for the individuals throughout occasions when the state was both unwilling or unable to offer necessitates warning.
If the federal government fails to tread rigorously in home affairs – significantly with the backdrop of Israel’s assault on Muslims proper on Egypt’s border – the Brotherhood might re-emerge from the shadows, colliding head-on with the state as soon as once more.
Loading…