The Muslim Brotherhood is facing a series of challenges that are knocking its political and organizational structures. The tensions are rising within the ranks of the group in tandem with the skirmishes among its wings following the latest decisions issued by acting supreme guide Ibrahim Mounir. An internal war ensued between Mounir’s camp and the front loyal to Mahmoud Hussein, the former secretary-general. This article dissects the tangledscene to draw conclusions and see into the group’s future.
Tangled Scene
After his inauguration as the acting supreme guide in mid-September 2020, Mounir embarked on a host of actions that sparked controversy within the organization.
Some said they were meant for reform, others considered them as authoritarian actions. Mounir decided to abolish the “General Secretariat” which was led by Mahmoud Hussein, then he worked on forming an “Organization Management Committee” which would be under his chairmanship. The Committee also included Hussein as he’s an elected member of the Guidance Bureau, alongside 6 more leaders, who are: Mohey Al-Din Al-Zayet, Helmy El-Gazzar, Ahmed Shousha, Muhammed Abdel Maati El-Gazzar, Medhat Al Haddad, and Mustafa Al-Mughir.
In early July this year, Mounir announced the dissolution of the Administrative Office of organizational affairs in Turkey, due to its incompetence, as well as postponing the internal elections and the selection of members of the Shura Council, which is the legislative authority of the Muslim Brotherhood organization, for six months. Not to forget his decision last August to refer Mahmoud Hussein and several members of the Shura Council to the investigation for refusing to comply with its decisions, alongside the establishment of Turkey Management Committee, which is a special committee that manages the organization’s affairs in Turkey, and it consists of a group of loyal leaders, against the backdrop of the dissolution of the Shura Council and the dissolution of the Administrative Office.
Those actions were rejected by Hussein’s front, which intensified their disagreement. In an attempt to bridge the rift within the organization, both agreed to hold internal elections with a view to selecting the members of the Administrative Office of the Brotherhood in Turkey. Accordingly, a poll was organized in the Fatih district of Istanbul in September. To further add, the elections resulted in the loss of the Hussein side, which prompted them to question the election results and refused to recognize them.
In this light, Mounir issued a decision on October 10 to suspend 6 of the organization’s leaderships due to “administrative and organizational irregularities.” These leaders are: Mahmoud Hussein (former Secretary-General and member of the Guidance Bureau), Mohamed Abdal Wahab (official of the Egyptian Brotherhood Association abroad), Hammam Ali Yusuf (member of the Shura Council and was formerly in charge of the Turkey Office), Medhat Al-Haddad (member of the Shura Council), Mamdouh Mabrouk (member of the General Shura Council) and Ragab Al-Banna (member of the General Shura Council).
In response, Hussein’s camp decided to take escalatory steps. Mamdouh Mabrouk sent an internal letter to the members of the Shura Council on the same day Mounir announced his decisions, calling for an urgent meeting of members to take numerous decisions, including “the removal of the deputy leader and his removal from the post of the acting supreme guide, the abolition of the body formed to administer the affairs of the Organization, and the annulment of the decision to suspend 6 of the leaders of the Shura Council.”
Mounir responded by issuing a statement in which he said that those referred to the investigation and others had applied to the Shura Council to vote on draft resolutions that would break the line, create confusion among the brothers and their work on their main tasks. He also said that these were actions contrary to labor regulations and laws, stressing that “those who contributed to these actions have taken themselves out of the organization.”
A few hours after Mounir’s statement, the Brotherhood’s official website published a statement stating that the Shura Council met in a quorum of over 75 percent and decided on an exemption of Mounir from his duties as deputy leader of the organization and acting supreme guide with the consent of 84 percent of the participants. Furthermore, 78 percent of the participants agree to abolish the body formed according to the document issued by the Shura Council on January 16, 2021. The Shura Council referred the projects it had initiated to the organization’s relevant Shurian and executive institutions.
On the evening of October 13, Talaat Fahmi (spokesman for the Brotherhood and calculated to be on Mahmoud Hussein’s side) announced that Mounir had been removed from his position as deputy leader of the organization and acting supreme guide while continuing “the external assignments entrusted to him.” A few hours later, members of the Shura Council of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood abroad renewed “allegiance” to Mounir as acting supreme guide, and announced the dismissal of Talaat Fahmi, while also considering what was published on the Online Brothers website and Al-Watan Channel, and the media spokesman’s statement “not true.”
Governing Contexts
There are factors governing the status of the Brotherhood organization at the present time, some of which are related to internal determinants, and others are related to external situations. These are:
- Leadership Crisis: Despite the inauguration of Mounir as the current acting supreme guide, with Mahmoud Ezzat’s, who was the acting supreme guide at the time, arrest declared, a state of incompatibility emerged around most of those elected for the position, especially Mounir and Mahmoud Hussein. In September 2020, a youthful group from the Brotherhood released a statement, which was posted on Telegram, titled “This is what Mounir and Hussein have done”. The statement reflected the sharp division within the organization. On the other hand, the inauguration of Mounir represents a departure from the “classical jurisprudence” of the organization that requires the presence of someone to fill that position in Egypt. However, the situation has been dealt with by resorting to the “necessity jurisprudence”. There is a leadership crisis within the organization as a result of the absence of a person that everyone agrees on.
- A Struggle between Generations: The organization is currently witnessing a generational struggle. On one hand, the organizational differences around work priorities and management of the political crisis have resulted in limiting the role of youth in the organization. This is due to the fear of any developments that might make the leaders lose control over the organization, amidst the political balances that control the organization’s path with its hosting companies abroad. This resulted in the reduction of the credibility of these leaders in the youth’s eyes. On the other hand, a complex problem exists in the youth sector of the Brotherhood, due to the deterioration of the living conditions of many of them, whether regarding the living, education, or health aspect. The support provided to them is linked to the level of loyalty to the organization without taking into account the political and organizational effectiveness of some of them.
- Absence of Trust: The state of mistrust keeps increasing within the organization, and there’s a case of mutual accusations between the Mounir camp and the Hussein front. The former side accuses the latter of involvement in financial and political offenses, alongside registering organization properties, estates, and funds in their names and those of their children. At the same time, the Hussein side accuses the other of wanting to control the office and excluding anyone who disagrees with them. In this case, it should be noted that the audio leak of Bassem Amir, who’s a member of the Brotherhood’s Shura Council, in which he referred to the corruption of the Brotherhood’s fugitive leaders in Turkey, as well as his talk about the financial embezzlement of Mahmoud Hussein and Ibrahim Mounir.
- Declining Influence: the organization is suffering from a declining influence within the societies that have seen its rise, and this has coincided with the fall of the Brotherhood regime in Egypt following the 30 June 2013 Revolution. Moreover, it also coincided with the undermining the influence of the Ennahda movement in Tunisia, as a result of loss of its popularity by its exclusionary practices, as well as the resounding loss of a party Justice and Development in Morocco after garnering 12 seats in the legislative elections last September compared to 125 in the 2016 elections, not to mention the potential fate of Libya’s brothers amid internal division and popular rejection.
- The failure of the organization to continue to govern is arguably the result of its political, ideological, and organizational failures. At the political level, it moved towards political hegemony and sought to alienate the various political factions, not understanding the full diversity of the societies in which it was present. At the ideological level, it lacked the ideological flexibility to formulate its own political model. At the organizational level, its strict hierarchical structure prevented it from responding successfully to rapid societal changes, prioritizing loyalty to efficiency.
- Europe Tightening the Noose: Many European counties are reviewing their political stance from the Muslim Brotherhood. Their positions have evolved from monitoring the organization and calling on it to renounce extremism to discussing its prohibition and classifying it as a terrorist organization, as its moral ambivalence has unfolded and it has used European democracy to implement its agenda within and outside Europe to achieve its political objectives. This scene thus marks the beginning of a shift in the European stance regarding the organization, which proves that a new anti-Brotherhood trend is taking shape in Europe.
Possible Scenarios
The above-mentioned scene regarding the escalation of internal political conflict within the organization, together with its current governing contexts, suggests three possible scenarios:
- The first scenario: This scenario suggests the stabilization in favor of Ibrahim Mounir, especially since the General Shura Council of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Abroad renewed their allegiance to him as their acting supreme guide and decided to consider what was posted on the Brotherhood propaganda platforms as untrue. Not to forget that many leaders in the organization oppose what the Mahmoud Hussein side did, stressing their complete rejection of the steps taken on their part. Generally, there is a need for the organization to unite its internal ranks and to circumvent around a leader, even if it’s just for image, intending to overcome the structural challenges they have faced recently, whether in terms of generational conflict, mistrust, or decline in influence.
- The second scenario: This one is linked to the first, and it suggests that the organization will experience a state of schism in the aftermath of the conflict between the Ibrahim Mounir side and the Mahmoud Hussein side. This will be represented in the splitting of the latter side since many of the Brotherhood leaders declared their support for Mounir’s recent decisions. This scenario is likely to occur, particularly with the previous model of the schism of Mohamed Kamal (member of the Guidance Bureau and Chairman of the High Administrative Committee) under similar circumstances. Mahmoud Ezzat (acting general leader at the time) issued a decision in 2015 to dissolve the High Administrative Committee, which was led by Mohamed Kamal and referred him to an investigation as a result of management irregularities. In the midst of that scene, the latter split from the organization and established a parallel entity called the Public Office Front. This scenario thus carries with it the possibility of new entities with different names emerging.
- The third scenario: This scenario suggests that Ibrahim Mounir could be overthrown through physical elimination, especially since he asked the leadership of the international organization to intensify his security and increase his personal and home security personnel, fearing that he would be killed in the wake of his recent resolutions. Especially since he received information that confirms the presence of a threat to his life amidst his strong conflict with the group in Istanbul. To explain further, the likelihood of such a scenario is low, but once it occurs, it opens the door to major challenges and problems facing the organization.
In conclusion, the Muslim Brotherhood organization is experiencing many crises and complex challenges in terms of the organizational structure, the decline in ideological attractiveness, and the loss of popularity. Furthermore, the most major crisis is the political conflict between the organization’s branches, which afflicts its cohesion and institutional structures. The gravity of these conflicts enables the emergence of new entities from the organization’s womb. These organizations will penetrate societies and advance themselves in the fake sense of moderation and the adoption of political action free from extremism and terrorism
