Word: brotherhood
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Almost as soon as the Ministry of the Interior announced the snap election on July 2nd, the Brotherhood suffered harrassment and arrest: an estimated 50 Muslim Brothers are believed to have been taken into custody. The MB, nevertheless, managed to field candidates for three of the four open seats. The districts, according to Reuters, saw only a "trickle" of voters at the polling stations on July 13. The next day the government declared victory. The MB pronounced the results fraudulent...
Such heavy-handed attempts to shore up the regime seem to work for now, but they may be shortsighted. A recent study conducted by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based NGO, argues that it would be beneficial, both for the government and the country, to gradually integrate the Brotherhood into Egypt's political system. ICG analysts say that Mubarak's efforts to combat the Brothers have "noticeably degraded the quality of parliamentary and political life, entrenching the NDP's virtual monopoly and dealing a severe blow to the legal, non-Islamist opposition...
That is a direction the security-obsessed Mubarak regime may find difficult to take. In the Brotherhood's 80-year history, its members have been involved in several attempts on the life of modern Egypt's founding President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s; earlier the Brotherhood was implicated in the assassination of Egyptian Prime Minister Nuqrashi...
...Muslims (they cannot, for example, hold the office of President). It also wishes to create a council to "guarantee that legislation adopted by the president and parliament conform with Sharia" - that is, Islamic law. For Egypt's secular rulers, such views are problematic; many believe legalizing the Brotherhood as a party would validate its views, and that any of the MB's actions would be simply cosmetic. Heritage Foundation Middle East analyst James Phillips argues that accepting the Brotherhood is too dangerous, that it will appear democratic at first, but "once in power would return to [its] old views...
...dynastic candidate, but he is not a member of the officer corps, from which every leader since the 1950s has emerged. There is no other obvious alternative. Meanwhile, the rapidly expanding, impoverished and young population of Egypt will continue to gravitate toward the outlaw appeal of the Muslim Brotherhood...