Raging Against the Machine: Political Opposition under Authoritarianism in Egypt

4. Anti-System Opposition: The Islamist Challenge

97 4 Anti-System Opposition The Islamist Challenge The Islamist movement constitutes the strongest political force in Egyptian politics. Political Islam in Mubarak’s Egypt was composed of three forms of movement organizations: a moderate Islamist mass movement based on strong popular backing, a number of clandestine groups and would-be parties that have been loosely associated with the Brotherhooddominated mainstream political Islam, and radical groups that have engaged the state in militant activism between the mid-1970s and 1997. Whereas the Muslim Brotherhood and the smaller mainstream organizations composed an anti-system opposition to the ruling incumbents, the militant movements offered a form of political resistance that was not based on a minimum degree of mutual acceptance between the relevant Islamists and the incumbency. The Muslim Brotherhood Some observers of Egyptian politics held that the core organization of politically relevant Islamic activism, the Muslim Brotherhood, was the only “real” opposition in the country. The Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, MB) was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, and was, at that time, the first organized form of Islamic contentious activism not only in Egypt but in the whole Muslim world. The MB quickly emerged as a powerful movement in pre-1952 Egypt. Most groups and movements in other countries, from the ambit of political Islam, trace their roots back, in one way or another, to the Brotherhood (see Ansari 1984a; Lia 1998; Gerges 2000; Munson 2001; Aclimandos 2002). 98  Raging Against the Machine The Muslim Brotherhood has been, since its inception, the main source of trouble for those who controlled the state in Egypt: the British administration until 1952 and the different Egyptian authoritarian regimes afterward, including the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, which took over power from Mubarak. In order to account for the rapid rise of the movement, one should keep in mind that two ideological traits highlighted by the Brotherhood happened to be particularly appealing to the populace in Egypt: the movement’s call to apply Islamic principles for the transformation of society, culture, politics, and the economy; and its struggle against the British occupation of the country. The Nasserist coup in 1952 marked a first decisive turning point for the Brothers: they initially welcomed the end of the British occupation, but quickly found themselves caught in a fierce power struggle with the new regime of the Free Officers. Gamal Abdel Nasser won this fight by resorting to blunt repression and by incarcerating thousands of Islamists. This, in turn, led to the radicalization of parts of the Islamist movement. Inspired by radical thinkers, of whom the most influential was Sayyid Qutb, Islamist radicalization triggered the emergence of militant groups and splinter factions of the Muslim Brotherhood. Such underground extremist movements included the Islamic Jihad (Struggle), the Jama‘a Islamiya (Islamic Group), and the Takfir wa al-Hijra (Excommunication and Flight). These groups quickly turned away from the Brotherhood and resorted to a militant struggle with the aim to overthrow the Egyptian regime, lasting from the late 1970s to 1997. The Muslim Brotherhood, however, denounced violence as a means of political action in the early 1970s and entered the political scene again when Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, discretely encouraged the Islamists in an attempt to counterbalance secular opposition from Nasserist, Marxist, and nationalist circles. In an ironic twist, the Islamist resurgence encouraged by Sadat in the 1970s proved to become a genie that escaped the bottle in 1981 when Sadat was assassinated by the Islamic Jihad. With this political move, Sadat laid down the origins for the demise of the secular opposition forces and, at the same time, for the strengthening of Islamism in Egypt at large. The country’s universities became the harbor for the resurgence of Islamist activism and Anti-System Opposition  99 the birthplace of a new generation of activists. Those members of the MB that joined the organization as university students in the 1970s have formed the so-called middle generation of activists (gil al-wasat) or the generation of the 1970s (gil al-saba‘inat). Interestingly, this new generation of activists appeared on the scene in the 1970s as members of those student organizations that formed the nucleus of the Jama‘a Islamiya. Before it radicalized and its activists went underground, some of its members decided to join the mainstream organization of political Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood. Whereas this new generation contributed to a profound reorientation and...