The Day Ikhwan Vanished from the Egyptian Streets

Amr Mag­di

His­to­ry will remind us that the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (MB) has lived 80 years dream­ing of being in pow­er as a van­guard for ‘world lead­er­ship’. But after one year in pow­er they could hard­ly find a foothold in Egypt­ian streets, hav­ing been squeezed in one square after the streets were flood­ed by angry pro­test­ers.

I am refer­ring to the protests of June 30, which were pre­dict­ed and sur­pris­ing at the same time. On that day, I pre­ferred to stay away from big protests and walk in the streets to observe the peo­ple. In Pyra­mids Street (a low-medi­um mid­dle class neigh­bour­hood), I walked on foot to come across many spon­ta­neous protests which I nev­er wit­nessed since the angry Fri­day, 28^th of Jan­u­ary 2011. Until I reached Giza square, these pro­test­ers were most­ly non-politi­cised ordi­nary folks. Most of these fre­quent protests were small and spon­ta­neous. Even their chants were short and sim­ple lack­ing any sign of orga­ni­za­tion or lead­er­ship.

There are mul­ti­ple aspects of ral­ly­ing against the Broth­er­hood. From cars and microbus dri­vers chant­i­ng slo­gans to crowds of peo­ple inside the sub­way, I could see groups of peo­ple either com­ing back or head­ing to the protests at Ithad­diyya Palace. Through­out my round-up I could not find a sin­gle indi­vid­ual or plac­ard sup­port­ing Mor­si. I believe that any Ikhwan sup­port­er in these cir­cum­stances was in one of three sit­u­a­tions: hid­ing in Rabaa Alad­waya (the only square where Ikhwan could find a place to gath­er), stay­ing home, or favour­ing silence in order to pre­serve his/her per­son­al safe­ty (which is of course not a healthy sign).

From Saray El-Kob­ba metro sta­tion to Ithad­diyya Pres­i­den­tial Palace, I wit­nessed uncount­able num­bers of peo­ple. These protests, in my own view, were most reflec­tive of Egyp­tians. They were the biggest in size and the most diver­si­fied in gen­der, class and polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions, unlike any­thing seen since Jan­u­ary 2011.

The near­er I became to the palace, the hap­pi­er I felt see­ing flags of Mina Danial, Khaled Said and Jika while lis­ten­ing to chants that called Mor­si an heir of Mubarak. How­ev­er, one could also hear some chants from some small and medi­um sized protests by ordi­nary non-politi­cized peo­ple wel­com­ing the mil­i­tary and the police. Not all peo­ple joined such chants but, to be fair, it was also part of the day.

An Egypt­ian could make sense of cheer­ing for the mil­i­tary as most of the peo­ple had lost their trust both in Broth­er­hood regime as well as the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion which failed to pro­vide any reli­able alter­na­tive. The chants for the police, how­ev­er, have dif­fer­ent expla­na­tions con­tin­gent upon com­plex cir­cum­stances.  One of these is of course the rage against Ikhwan. Who could have imag­ined that one day the descen­dants of Al-Ban­na will have to face such an infamy?

How­ev­er tak­ing these excep­tion­al exam­ples of sup­port for mil­i­tary to dis­cred­it the mil­lions that ral­lied to end the unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic rule would not be fair. They can­not just be called pup­pets or rem­nants of Mubarak’s regime. Say­ing that Egyp­tians are long­ing for an old kind of regime would be a ridicu­lous and far­ci­cal analy­sis that does not deserve seri­ous atten­tion.

How and why did the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (MB) van­ish from the streets on the 30th of June? How, after one year of their rule, did the sit­u­a­tion reach such degree of pop­u­lar dis­ap­proval con­sid­er­ing they have his­tor­i­cal­ly always been the group that enjoyed the widest grass­roots incu­ba­tor?

Since Jan­u­ary 2011 rev­o­lu­tion, the MB and Islamists prac­ticed the worst degree of hypocrisy towards the police and the Supreme Coun­cil of the Armed Forces (SCAF). Islamists indeed defend­ed the secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus and described the rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies as hired thugs who aimed to obstruct the demo­c­ra­t­ic tran­si­tion. Mean­while some of these dis­si­dents were being killed, stripped and smashed in Mohamed Mah­moud street bat­tles.

After gain­ing pow­er, Ikhwan showed the high­est lev­els of stub­born­ness and arro­gance towards the oppo­si­tion and ignored the real engine of the rev­o­lu­tion, i.e. the youth. The MB thought that it was unde­feat­able and that the coun­try was theirs, while turn­ing their back to the peo­ple who sin­cere­ly served them one advice after anoth­er. They also turned their back to those who sup­port­ed Mor­si against Shafik while fail­ing to car­ry out any of the promis­es that Mor­si pledged to.

Mean­while, they con­tin­ued their hypocrisy to state appa­ra­tus of Mubarak’s regime with an aim to broad­en­ing its cir­cle of pow­er. Instead of rely­ing on a social rev­o­lu­tion­ary base to cleanse and reform the secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus, Mor­si described the police­men as “part­ners in the rev­o­lu­tion”. In addi­tion, Islamists con­sti­tu­tion­al­ized the mil­i­ta­riza­tion of Egypt in the new con­sti­tu­tion through monop­o­liz­ing the process of con­sti­tu­tion mak­ing. They increased the wages of the mil­i­tary and police while oth­er pop­u­lar stra­ta were increas­ing­ly suf­fer­ing. This is evi­dence enough of the kind of regime Mor­si was rely­ing on.

The MB was also too reluc­tant to wage a time­ly war on the mas­sive cor­rup­tion. Their bat­tle was selec­tive; mak­ing use of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary dis­course to pass their own par­ti­san agen­da and to guar­an­tee the total alle­giance of the state insti­tu­tions instead of reform­ing them. They let the peo­ple down and changed their posi­tions to match their own inter­ests.

Peo­ple watched all of these chang­ing posi­tions in addi­tion to being stroked by relent­less cat­a­stro­phes and crises, not to men­tion the poor gov­er­nance that failed to achieve any polit­i­cal or eco­nom­ic progress.

Con­trary to what Ikhwan says, media bias have minor role in this upris­ing. Peo­ple were already moti­vat­ed enough. Ikhwan accus­es media of being biased and for­get that they already own the state TV and tens of reli­gious satel­lite chan­nels. More­over, it goes with­out say­ing that no gov­ern­ment fails or suc­ceeds just because the media attacks or prais­es it. Although Mubarak owned the most pow­er­ful media pro­pa­gan­da, the rev­o­lu­tion man­aged to top­ple him at the end.

The MB has sur­vived for more than 80 years resist­ing author­i­tar­i­an sup­pres­sion and attempts to exter­mi­nate it. All the time they man­aged, with vary­ing degree, to pre­serve a con­sid­er­able grass­roots incu­ba­tor. Even in the worst sit­u­a­tion in the past, they enjoyed sense of respect from con­sid­er­able soci­etal and intel­lec­tu­al groups. How­ev­er, with­in a year of their rule they have lost most of this respect. They have become the most hat­ed after Mubarak’s rem­nants as they pre­sent­ed the worst mod­el of fail­ure as man­i­fest­ed through their monop­oly of pow­er and author­i­tar­i­an­ism.

Regard­less of how we would describe the mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion, the 30th of June protests resem­ble the biggest and strongest social and polit­i­cal “NO” to Islamists in the region since the estab­lish­ment of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and it shall have con­se­quences in the whole region.

What is cer­tain is that Mor­si has already gone and that the MB will not be able to com­pete again for the pres­i­den­cy in the near fea­ture. More stub­born­ness and no-com­pro­mise pol­i­cy from the MB will not affect the fate of Mor­si who is being inevitably top­pled now. It would rather affect the fate and future of the MB in Egypt for long years to come.

(The writer is an Egypt­ian activist, a grad­u­ate of Lund Uni­ver­si­ty Swe­den, and a for­mer research direc­tor at the Arab Net­work for Human Rights Uni­ty.)