Return to the Shadows: The Muslim Brotherhood and An-Nahda Since the Arab Spring

By Alison Pargeter

The Arab Spring heralded a profound shift in the Middle East, bringing to power Islamist movements which had previously been operating in the shadows. The Muslim Brotherhood stormed to victory in Egypt and emerged as a key player in Libya's nascent political arena. Meanwhile, An-Nahda found itself catapulted into power as the head of Tunisia's coalition government. For a while, it looked as though the region was entering the dawn of a new Islamist age.

But navigating their respective countries through difficult and painful transitions ultimately proved too challenging for these forces, and, just as suddenly, the Brotherhood was dramatically overthrown in Egypt and left severely weakened in Libya. In Tunisia, An-Nahda managed to pull itself through the crisis, but its failure to articulate and deliver the hopes and aspirations of a large section of Tunisian society damaged its credibility.

In this authoritative account, Alison Pargeter expertly charts the Islamists' ascent and subsequent fall from power. Based on extensive research and interviews with high ranking members of the Brotherhood and An-Nahda, Pargeter offers a comparative analysis of the movement in North Africa since the Arab Spring, and outlines the consequences of the Brotherhood's decline on both the region and the wider Islamist political project.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Saqi Books
• Release date: Oct 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9780863561542

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Illustration

RETURN TO THE SHADOWS

ALSO BY ALISON PARGETER

The New Frontiers of Jihad: Radical Islam in Europe

The Muslim Brotherhood: From Opposition to Power

Libya: The Rise and Fall of Qaddafi

RETURN TO THE SHADOWS

The Muslim Brotherhood

and An-Nahda since the Arab Spring

ALISON PARGETER

SAQI

Published 2016 by Saqi Books

Copyright © Alison Pargeter 2016

Alison Pargeter has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-0-86356-144-3

eISBN 978-0-86356-154-2

A full cip record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD

Saqi Books

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www.saqibooks.com

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART ONE: EGYPT

1. The Rise of the Brotherhood

2. Brotherhood in Power: A Hollow Vision

3. The Fall

PART TWO: LIBYA

4. The Libyan Brothers: Out of the Shadows

5. Out in the Open

PART THREE: TUNISIA

6. An-Nahda at the Helm

7. Compromise, Crisis and Decline

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book was made possible by a research grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation. This generous support enabled me to build on my previous work on the Muslim Brotherhood and to examine the movement and its counterparts following the tumultuous events of the Arab Spring. In particular it enabled me to conduct primary research on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Libya, and on An-Nahda in Tunisia, through a number of research visits to the region and beyond. As a result, much of this book is based on interviews carried out with members of these movements, as well as with specialists and experts in the field. In particular I would like to thank Nadia Schadlow from the Smith Richardson Foundation for her continued support for my research on the Brotherhood. I also thank her for her patience. The research project was conceived at a time when the Brotherhood had recently come to power in Egypt but was delayed to accommodate the dramatically changing circumstances on the ground. I am very grateful to have been given the space to carry out this project at such an important time.

I would also like to thank the Airey Neave Trust and the Dulverton Trust, both of which also supported this project with research grants. They provided funding that enabled me to extend my research, and in particular to carry out additional field visits. This proved particularly invaluable given that key leaders from the Egyptian Brotherhood ended up being displaced across the region. My thanks also go to the Royal United Services Institute, and to Professor Michael Clarke in particular, for being willing to host this project and to support my research.

I would also like to thank Lynn Gaspard and Sarah Cleave at Saqi Books for supporting this book and for all their help and patience. I am also hugely grateful to Charles Peyton for copy-editing the text.

I am deeply indebted to all those individuals who were willing to be interviewed for this book, particularly those from the Muslim Brotherhood and from An-Nahda. In particular I would like to thank Osama Haddad and Mohamed Soudan from the Egyptian Brotherhood, Mohamed Abdulmalik and Alamin Belhaj from the Libyan Brotherhood, and Amer Larayedh, Said Ferjani and Walid Bannani from An-Nahda. I thank them for their frankness, kindness and generosity. Special thanks go to Professor Alaya Allani and Professor Mehdi Mabrouk for all their help, kindness and, most importantly, their insights, during my visits to Tunisia. I would also like to thank Shafiq Gabr for his interest in my work and his assistance in facilitating interviews in Egypt, as well as for his insights. Lastly, I would like to thank all those individuals whose names I cannot mention but whose assistance has been indispensable.

INTRODUCTION

As Mohamed Morsi stepped up to the presidency on 30 June 2012, the world, or at least the Middle East, appeared to have changed irreversibly. After more than eight decades in the shadows of semi-clandestinity, the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni fundamentalist movement long considered to be the vanguard of political Islamism, had finally come to the fore. More importantly, it had done so through the ballot box. Following the uprisings that erupted in Egypt on 25 January 2011, leading to President Hosni Mubarak’s ousting the following month, the Brotherhood, by virtue of being the only organised force in the country, moved quickly to fill the vacuum that had opened up. The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won the public’s support in both parliamentary and presidential elections, and was poised to put its project into action. This was a deeply symbolic moment for the Brotherhood and for the Islamic movement more widely. As the pioneer of political Islam, the Brotherhood at last had the opportunity to demonstrate that an Islamist party could lead an Arab state in the contemporary era. More importantly, it had a chance to steer Egypt down a different path, breaking the hold of the military-backed regime that had ruled for generations, and to reconnect society to what the movement deemed to be its authentic self.

It had been a very long wait. Established in 1928 in Ismailia by schoolteacher Hassan Al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood had a history of patience and persecution. It started out as a socio-religious movement chiefly preoccupied with how to confront the challenges of modernisation, and what Al-Banna saw as the spiritual and moral decline of the Ummah (united Muslim nation). Drawing on the ideas of the reformist thinkers of the nineteenth century, Al-Banna believed that the only way to counter such challenges was to reform society by returning to the ideal Islamic society of the past. Al-Banna’s was a project of salvation aimed at putting Islam at the centre of things.

As it developed, the Brotherhood became more directly involved in politics, soon emerging as the most powerful opposition force not only in Egypt but across the region, where branches of the movement had sprung up. Inevitably, therefore, it came to clash with the secular nationalist regimes of the day, and found itself subjected to heavy repression. Not that it had ever been a movement that claimed to want to rule. ‘Participation not domination’ was its famous mantra – a phrase that was to be repeated again and again by senior Brotherhood leaders during the course of 2011. In fact, the Brotherhood invested significant energy over the years trying to signal that it was not power-hungry, but could work within the existing framework of the state. This was part of its almost schizophrenic approach that mixed appeasement and compromise on the one hand with opposition politics on the other, the aim being to carve out as much space as possible in which it could operate.

Moreover, the Brotherhood was a movement characterised by gradualism, believing that reforming society began with reforming the individual. Its project was a long-term one – something that elicited the condemnation of more militant elements over the years who, impatient for action, broke away to form their own groups. While the Brotherhood’s gradualist stance enabled it to outlive many of these more radical and hot-headed offshoots, by the eve of the 2011 uprisings its long years of waiting were taking their toll. Indeed, this large, unwieldy body was proving unable to break free from its own traditions in order to meet the challenges of operating as a modern body in a modern age. Its attempts at reforming itself in the 2000s had born little fruit and the movement appeared to be on the retreat from politics rather than the opposite.

It struggled too to move away from its own psychological impediments, which had arisen out of the long years of suffering, including a victimisation complex in which the Brotherhood believed itself to be targeted by everyone. Its inability to throw off these shackles meant that, when the revolution broke out in 2011, the Brotherhood appeared thoroughly anachronistic – as much a part of the old furniture as the regime it was meant to be opposing.

When Egyptians took to the streets in January 2011, inspired by protests in Tunisia that had led to the ouster of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the Brotherhood looked to be out of the fray. But once it realised the significance of what was happening, the Brotherhood stepped forward and deployed what until then had been its largely dormant might to direct the revolution as it saw fit. When the opportunity to take power finally arose the Brotherhood was less hesitant, seizing it with both hands. It was as if, despite its protestations to the contrary, this was what it had been waiting for all those long years.

The Brotherhood’s taking of power was all the more momentous because it seemed as though the whole region was about to ‘go Islamic’. The An-Nahda party in Tunisia, which while not actually part of the global Muslim Brotherhood movement was born out of the same tradition and ideological stable, was poised to take power in Tunisia. The triumphant return of its leader, Sheikh Rachid Ghannouchi, to Tunis from exile in January 2011, received by crowds of rapturous supporters, spoke of the dawn of a new era in which the region would regain its authenticity and self-respect. Meanwhile the Libyan Brotherhood, which because of the intolerance of the regime of Muammar Qadhafi had been more in the shadows than its counterparts elsewhere, had finally been able to move into the open. Although it could not boast the same networks or support base, it still looked set to do well in the country’s first democratic elections in decades, due to be held in June 2012.

For these Islamist movements, therefore, this was a moment of triumph like no other, and translated into a widespread belief that the long years of suffering finally had a meaning, and that the Islamist project was finally within reach. The sense of euphoria was evident, some members of the Brotherhood going as far as to raise the prospect of the re-emergence of the Ummah. In 2011, Ghannouchi declared: ‘These [Arab Spring] countries are working to increase the overall level of relations with fraternal countries to a level greater than cooperation and interdependence and mutual interests, and to reach progressive levels of Maghreb, Arab, Gulf, and Islamic unity. There are organizations of unity that remind us that we are one Ummah.’1 Indeed, the Arab Spring had heralded a dreamlike time in which, despite the challenges, anything seemed possible.

Just one year later, however, the scene could not have been more different. The Egyptian Brotherhood had been toppled by a temporary alliance between ‘people power’ and the military, bringing Morsi’s rule to an end. Worse, the movement was left decimated as it entered what was to be one of the most extreme periods of repression in its history. Although An-Nahda, thanks largely to the acumen of its leader, saved itself from sharing the same fate, it was nevertheless put very much on the back foot. Forced out of power, and the object of intense hostility and criticism, it was left wondering what had gone so wrong. The Libyan Brotherhood, meanwhile, had been consumed by the catastrophe that was post-Qadhafi Libya. While it remained part of the ruling establishment, it struggled – along with the establishment itself – to assert any authority. In the end, therefore, all three movements found themselves pushed out of the centre ground. As Tarek Osman put it: ‘political Islam in the region, despite a brief moment of ascendancy, has returned to its earlier status: marginalized, mistrusted, or persecuted’.2

What went wrong? And why did it happen so quickly? These questions have triggered a whole series of arguments about why the Brotherhood failed. But some commentators have gone further, asking whether Morsi’s collapse represented a bigger, more existential crisis related to the end of political Islam itself. ‘Islamism is no longer the answer’, proclaimed the Economist on 20 December 2014,3 while analyst Ali Alrajjal asserted: ‘The fall of the Muslim Brotherhood was accompanied by the fall of Islamism, as the movement went from empowerment and Brotherhoodization to bewilderment and exclusion, and from aspirations of power to the labyrinth of decay.’4 In some ways, the collapse of the Brotherhood seemed to vindicate the advocates of post-Islamism, who had long argued that political Islam had failed.5

To equate the Brotherhood’s fall with the end of political Islam, however, is premature at the very least. As Fawaz Gerges has argued, it is too soon to write an obituary for political Islam, not least because Morsi’s downfall was in large part a product of the conditions he had inherited: a country in deep economic crisis, plagued by decades of corruption and mismanagement.6 Furthermore, the Brotherhood also came to power at a time of sudden and chaotic transition, in an arena that had been static for generations. It would have taken a team of miracle workers to master what the Brotherhood faced. Likewise, Jocelyn Cesari has argued that to identify Morsi’s fall with the end of political Islam is to ‘limit Islamism to the Freedom and Justice Party, which was not even created until after the 2011 revolution’.7 Indeed, while Islamism may have been struck down in Egypt, it continues to survive elsewhere. In Tunisia, for example, while An-Nahda may have been weakened, it is not out of the game, remaining a powerful force in both the political and social arenas. Moreover, as Cesari notes, ‘Islamism is first and foremost a social movement.’8 While politics has always played a key role, political Islam’s strength has always been rooted in the fact that it is also a social and religious force, making it impossible to dislodge with the same ease with which a president can be overthrown. More importantly, perhaps, for all that the Arab Spring brought changes to the region, not the least of which is that it broke the fear of challenging the authority of the day, the underlying conditions in the region that gave birth to political Islam in the first place have not fundamentally altered, leaving ample space for political Islam to operate and evolve.

But if political Islam is not dead, it is nonetheless in crisis, and the Brotherhood brand has been dealt a heavy blow. There are many factors that contributed to the Brotherhood’s cataclysmic fall, and these have been discussed at length by numerous scholars. Indeed, there is a broad consensus that the Brotherhood’s failures are rooted more in the political than the religious domain, and are largely the result of its woeful lack of experience and understanding. As Khalil Anani has commented, the Brotherhood failed to ‘effectively and positively handle power’, while its organisational problems ‘exposed its weakness and lack of political vision’.9 Similarly, Ashraf El-Sherif has shown how the Brotherhood misread the situation, moving towards political domination too quickly and making a series of tactical mistakes in the process. He argues too that the Brotherhood was ideologically ‘shallow and opportunistic’, and ‘too willing to sacrifice elements of its ideology for short-term political victories’.10 Many have also pointed to the Brotherhood’s failure to work in a consensual fashion, alienating other political forces to its own detriment. Eric Trager has described how the initial source of the Brotherhood’s political strength – its organisational prowess and mobilising capabilities, which enabled its presidential candidate to be elected with a significant popular mandate despite his shortcomings – obviated the necessity for it to work with others, precipitating its own downfall.11 As Hani Sabra has noted, the Brotherhood relied on a narrow majoritarianism, which it confused with democracy, and believed gave it a free hand to pursue its agenda.12

These observations all reflect the fact that the Brotherhood’s failings were the result of a combination of many different factors, both objective and subjective, but largely related to the movement’s fundamental inability to turn itself from a semi-clandestine opposition movement into a credible political actor capable of dealing with the challenges that were being thrown at it. Indeed, the Brotherhood proved utterly incapable of rising to the challenge of being a modern political power in a modern age.

However, the Brotherhood’s failings were also a reflection of a deeper internal crisis. Despite being considered as the standard-bearer of political Islam, when it came to actually putting its project into practice, the Brotherhood proved that not only was it bereft of viable political strategies, it also struggled to translate its Islamic ideals into concrete policy solutions. As I will argue, political Islam – or at least the version of it articulated by the Brotherhood and its counterparts – turned out to be an empty vessel comprising little more than slogans and generalities that could not be translated into tangible or meaningful political outcomes. The result was not only that the Brotherhood appeared utterly lost the moment it arrived in power, but that it became locked into a cycle of reactive policymaking in which it veered from one stance to another as it sought to appease all constituencies. Indeed, its vision seemed to boil down to little more than a belief that, if more virtuous or ‘reformed’ individuals were at the helm, then somehow things would magically work out. The Brotherhood was thus ultimately brought down by its own intellectual shallowness, and the flimsiness of the core tenets to which it had anchored itself since its inception.

This was true not only of the Egyptian Brotherhood. While An-Nahda had always presented itself as occupying the most progressive end of the Islamist spectrum, when it came to power it also struggled to articulate what it really stood for. In addition, despite its more enlightened stance, An-Nahda made many of the same mistakes as its Egyptian counterpart. It rushed at power before it was ready, alienated others through its inability to work in a truly consensual fashion, and proved unable to turn itself into a truly national force. Although An-Nahda ultimately proved shrewder than the Egyptian Brotherhood, absorbing some of the lessons of Morsi’s fall, it was forced in the process to compromise to the point where it seemed like an Islamist political party without Islam.

Meanwhile the Libyan Brotherhood, which has received very little attention, was hampered from the start by its own weaknesses, finding itself outflanked at almost every turn – including in the Islamist sphere, where it was dwarfed by more militant elements. But this did not prevent it from exhibiting some of the same weaknesses as its Egyptian and Tunisian counterparts. Having struggled to establish itself inside the country, it had been obliged to hitch its wagon to a bigger force. But in its desire for power, it chose the forces of revolution and radicalism, and ended up pigeonholing itself with some of the most extreme elements operating in the Libyan arena.

If An-Nahda’s experience in power seemed to uphold the ‘inclusion–moderation’ hypothesis – which holds that that, through open and participatory politics, ideological parties shift towards the centre ground in order to capture the broadest cross-section of the electorate,13 and around which much scholarly debate on Islamist movements has revolved – the experience of the Libyan Brotherhood shattered it completely. Indeed, while all three movements shared similar traits and failings, once the democratic space opened up, they responded very differently, highlighting the fact that such complex movements operating in complex environments cannot be captured by reductive theories.

This book explores the trajectory of these three Islamist movements during the Arab Spring and beyond. The culmination of a research project that entailed interviewing scores of leaders and members of the Brotherhood and An-Nahda during the turbulent times of 2013 and 2014, it examines how these most un-revolutionary of movements dealt with the uprisings in their own countries, and how they tried to transform themselves into mainstream political actors. It also looks at their experiences in power, and how and why they fell from grace so quickly, showing that their naivety and fundamental lack of vision was at the root of their downfall.

Chapter One focuses on the mother branch, exploring how the Egyptian Brotherhood turned from being reluctantly revolutionary to become a force that not only sustained the revolution, but that also reaped its benefits. Chapter Two examines the Brotherhood’s first few months in power, showing how it sowed the seeds of its own downfall. Chapter Three looks at the Brotherhood’s final months, examining how, despite all its attempts at mobilisation, it could not save itself. Chapters Four and Five focus on the Libyan Brotherhood, showing how it came from out of nowhere to position itself at the centre of the political arena, only to be tripped up by its own mistakes. Chapters Six and Seven deal with An-Nahda, looking at the rise to power of this most progressive of Islamist movements and how its absorption of the lessons of the Egyptian crisis, while perhaps saving its skin, nonetheless culminated in an identity crisis of its own. This book is a study of the rise and fall of political Islam as articulated by the reformist school of the Muslim Brotherhood beyond the Arab Spring, and argues that, while it promised to offer both authenticity (connecting society to its authentic self) and a unifying ideology, it provided neither, leaving fractured and polarised societies in its wake. While this process of fracturing had as much to do with the societies in which these movements operated as with the shortcomings of the movements themselves, the fact remains that the Brotherhood manifestly failed to transform itself into the modern and truly national force for which so many of those who had taken to the revolutionary streets had yearned.

PART ONE

EGYPT

ONE

THE RISE OF THE BROTHERHOOD

As thousands of young Egyptians poured into the streets on 25 January 2011 to protest against the Mubarak regime, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was thrown into disarray. Despite the events that had unfolded in neighbouring Tunisia, unleashing an air of change across the region, the Brotherhood appeared almost as taken aback by this sudden show of people power as the regime itself. The Brotherhood may have been the country’s oldest and longest-suffering opposition movement, but its leadership was cautious about rushing headlong into what was still a developing situation. Instead, it watched what was unfolding as it deliberated over what stance to take. This cautious approach was driven partly by a strong sense of self-preservation. Having suffered years of repression at the hands of successive regimes, the movement feared making any wrong move that might lead to a further truncation of the limited space for activity that it had so painstakingly carved out over the decades. Although still an outlawed movement whose members were regularly rounded up and imprisoned, the Brotherhood was able nonetheless to operate under the radar, carrying out its educational and charitable activities, and periodically dipping its toe into Egyptian politics. The movement was not about to squander such gains lightly.

More importantly, the Brotherhood had never been a revolutionary movement, either politically or ideologically. Its teachings advocated a gradualist approach that revolved around reforming society from the bottom up, with the aim of preparing it for the eventual establishment of an Islamic state. As former Murshid, or Supreme Guide, Mehdi Akef proclaimed in May 2005, ‘We are not people of revolution. Revolution is not part of our vocabulary.’1 Having held to this principle since its founding in 1928, the Brotherhood was hardly going to rush headlong into protests calling for the overthrow of the regime – or at least not until it became clear where these protests might lead.

In addition, on the eve of the revolution the Brotherhood was already on the back foot, and seemed like a movement that had turned in on itself. The long years of sacrifice, which had yielded so little, were starting to take their toll, and the Brotherhood become embroiled in petty squabbles and turf wars. Furthermore, there was a growing feeling of disenchantment inside the movement. The Brotherhood’s attempts during the 2000s to engage more directly in the political arena, through the development of a new reformist discourse aimed at winning over both a domestic and an international audience, had produced few tangible results, prompting increasing calls inside the movement for it to turn its back on politics and focus instead on its traditional activities of preaching and education. In many ways, it seemed as though the Brotherhood had resigned itself to the role of a semi-clandestine opposition movement that would never have the chance to put its Islamist project into practice.

The revolution thus acted as a wake-up call for the Brotherhood, jolting it out of its inertia. Despite its initial hesitation, once it became apparent that Egypt was on the brink of major change, the movement shed it cautious approach and threw itself fully behind the unfolding events. In the absence of any other opposition movement or force that could match the Brotherhood’s size or weight, it was not long before it was propelled to the fore. Emboldened by events and by a sense of its own mobilising power – which until now had been something it could only guess at, given its status as an outlawed movement – this was a position it seemed to relish. Once it saw its chance, this ‘non-revolutionary’ movement swept up the revolution in its arms, carrying it as if it were its own. Thus, while it is true that the Brotherhood did not initiate the revolution, accusations such as those of the US secretary of state, John Kerry – who claimed that the Brotherhood had ‘stolen’ the revolution from the ‘kids’ in Tahrir Square2 – were overheated. Once the Brotherhood committed itself to the revolution, it became its major driving force. Without the Brotherhood, it is far from clear whether the revolution would have got as far as it did.

The realisation that it was shouldering the revolution gave the Brotherhood a strong sense of entitlement, which was further enhanced by the movement’s sense of its own destiny. Having suffered patiently for so many long years, the Brotherhood felt that its preordained time had finally come. As it internalised the revolution, therefore, it started to direct events according to its own agenda. Less than two weeks after the protests had begun, the Brotherhood opened negotiations with the very regime it was protesting against. Indeed, with its natural aversion to revolutionary action, the Brotherhood jumped at the first opportunity to strike some sort of deal with the regime, despite the fact that those protesting in the streets and squares – including some of its own youth factions – were averse to any kind of compromise with the forces of the past. The Brotherhood was so caught up with itself and its own agenda, however, that it forged ahead, even claiming that it was negotiating with the regime in the name of the ‘the people’.

The Brotherhood continued along this track following Mubarak’s departure, entering into a kind of informal alliance with the military in which these two old powers thrashed out the terms of the transition. In fact, the Brotherhood seemed more comfortable dealing with the familiar furniture of the old regime – however unpalatable it may have been – than with the unknowns of Tahrir Square. Once the Brotherhood realised its own power and strength, it was therefore willing to cut the revolution short in order to achieve its own objectives. Not that it abandoned the revolution entirely. Seeing no contradiction in planting one foot with the regime and the other with the revolution, the Brotherhood continued to mobilise those on the streets to pressurise or dictate its own terms whenever the need arose. The Brotherhood used the revolution, in short, as a tool to try to secure the post-revolutionary order it desired.

This strategy paid off. By the time of the parliamentary elections, held between 28 November 2011 and 11 January 2012, the Brotherhood had positioned itself to dominate the transition. It had mobilised its networks to fill the political space opened up by the fall of the Mubarak regime; steered and taken charge of the revolution, enabling it to claim revolutionary legitimacy; and moulded the transition to derive maximum benefit for itself. In addition, the Brotherhood enjoyed the extra legitimacy arising out of its long years of sacrifice and suffering. It was able to portray itself as a clean and untainted alternative to the deposed regime. More importantly for many Egyptians, it also additional legitimacy through its identification with Islam and for some of its supporters represented Islam itself. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that when the elections came around the