Self-criticism: A virtue not known by Muslim Brotherhood

Doaa Imam

With the anniversary of the dissolution of the Muslim Brotherhood, for the first time in its history in 1954; following its involvement in the assassination attempt of the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser, in what was known as the “Manshiyya incident,” the group still highlights its correctness with having a large number of people belonging to it organizationally and intellectually, considering itself an Islamic group that is beyond self criticism or path modification.

The decision to dissolve the group was issued on October 29, 1954, and remained valid until the death of President Abdel Nasser in 1970. During these years, the Brotherhood refused to submit to the decision to be dissolved and resorted to clandestine activities. They formed military organizations such as the 1965 Organization, which proved the failure of the Brotherhood experience.

The Muslim Brotherhood claims from time to time that the hadith of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) saying: “My Ummah does not meet with misguidance” applies to the case of the Muslim Brotherhood. The justifications of the Prophet’s biography and the book of God remain present in everything the group encounters.

After a long silence among members of the group during the fall of the deposed President Mohamed Morsi, through the June 30, 2013 revolution, the youth of the group issued in March 2017 a document entitled “Pre-Visibility Assessments: A View of the Past” and discussed the changes that the group underwent since 2011.

Despite waiting for the outcome of the assessments of the youth of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the possibility of contributing to the renunciation of violence, it did not come with new things and represented the desire of the youth wing within the group, while the group’s hawks did not need self-criticism or intellectual review.

In parallel, a strong trend has emerged among some of the prisoners from the Brotherhood to conduct discussions and self-criticism workshops within prisons to assess their joining of the group, and to discuss the possibility of abandoning hard-line ideology and engaging in society as unmediated individuals.

“Hamza Mohsen, one of the group’s youth who lead intellectual reviews at Fayoum prison, says that it does not exceed self-initiatives that represent its people and does not represent the organization’s organizational structure. The Brotherhood does not exercise self-criticism in the systematic organizational manner.”