Brotherhood and game of modernity: Strategy to get out of crises of group

Doaa Imam

In the course of its history, the Brotherhood has spread violence under the guise of religion, caliphate and the application of the Shari’a. Having realized the failure of their extremist project to restore power, the Brotherhood sought to take different paths and adapt to the existing policies and ideologies, followed by the search for means to reconcile democracy, freedom and modernity.

The Brotherhood movements in a number of Arab countries have accelerated to wear the dress of modernity in the hope of escaping the embargo or wishing to expand their grassroots base by presenting themselves as a group worthy of all affiliations.

Fragmentation of the Renaissance

The Renaissance Movement, the political arm of the Brotherhood in Tunisia, finds itself standing in the middle, confused between the rhetoric of modernity and inertia. The movement promotes internal democracy, while its deputies are surprised by the coup d’état, as did the President of the Renaissance Movement, Rashid Ghannouchi.

Last November, Al-Ghannouchi took advantage of his participation in the Rome Forum of Mediterranean Dialogue in Italy to lecture on “The New Islamic Identity: Politics, Science and Culture in a Multiverse World” on Sunday, 25 November 2018, during which he promoted Al Nahda. He believes in the promotion of women’s rights, the protection of their gains and the protection of the rights of minorities.

Speaking of a soft opposition to equality between men and women in inheritance, the President of the Renaissance in Italy spoke of the new Tunisian Constitution: “It is the building of a new political system based on the principles of democracy, including pluralism, freedom, public and private rights, equality of citizenship and devoting gender equality to minorities.”

Al-Ghannouchi seemed elusive in his speech at the forum. He gave a lecture on what he called “the new Islamic identity”. He took the Renaissance as a model for an Islamic movement whose authority did not change, as he described it, and then proceeded to wash the reputation of the movement and affirm its respect for equality and minorities and respect for democracy. He explained that the Renaissance does not present itself as a mere party that seeks power and exercise of governance, but rather stems from an intellectual project that establishes harmony between the values ​​of Islam and democracy within the context of what the movement defined in its tenth conference on democratic Islam.

Tunisian researcher Nizar Mekni commented on the modernist discourse promoted by the movement saying: “The president’s talk about equality is contrary to their position. The movement expressed its position on the inheritance law by rejecting equality before the president decided to propose a legislative initiative to approve it.“

According to the political researcher, Ghannouchi’s foreign visits to marketing the new Islamic identity come against the background of the change in the international community’s view of the Islamists since 2014. Therefore, the movement seeks to prove that it is not a Muslim Brotherhood and that it supports the choice of governance in a democratic framework.

He pointed out that this method enabled it to reserve an advanced seat within the ruling coalition, especially after the division in the appeal of Tunisia, and its alliance with a parliamentary bloc supporting the Prime Minister Yusuf witness.

Saving the Jordan Brothers

In an attempt to break the deadlock of restrictions, Jordan’s brothers issued a political document last June. In the manner of the leftist parties, the document included an explanation of the movement’s positions in Jordan, its identity, its objectives and concepts regarding its affiliation, its role and its relations with other powers, and despite the use of expressions, it aimed at sending messages that there were profound and qualitative changes in the group’s discourse.

The Islamic Action Front (IAF), the branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Hashemite Kingdom, claimed in its document that the Brotherhood in Jordan is a national movement that is moving towards a more leftist tradition by describing Jordan as an arena rather than a beginning and an end.

Over the past years, on the margins of wide controversies, deep questions have been raised within the framework of the Islamic movement on the need to separate politics and preaching, but the document was unable to draw a dividing line between preaching and politics although it has presented the Islamic Action Front Party as a political arm. This means that the Brotherhood is a preaching society, which has not been expressed in practice, since the confusion between the group and the party and their parliamentary bloc remained.

With regard to the Islamic movement in the folds of the document, it reflects the continued inability of the movement to provide a new understanding of the issues of violence, citizenship, extremism, terrorism and the civil state. Its ultimate goal is to enable the resumption of life, without setting a limit to that desired life.