Financial corruption in the Brotherhood: Are the doves abandoning the hawks?

Mohammed Abdul Ghaffar

Financial corruption, personal interests, public scandals, and accusations exchanged between hawks and doves. This is how the situation of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey can be described as of recent.

What happened?

A member of the Brotherhood’s Shura Council, Amir Bassam, leaked a voice recording on Wednesday, July 24 exposing the leaders of the terrorist organization in Turkey and indicating the existence of a dispute between senior leaders of the group on the division of $2 million donated by one of the leaders of the international organization.

This was not the first leak about the Brotherhood’s scandalous leadership from Bassam, a former member of the House of Representatives, as he had published a text message in August 2017 in which he objected to the poor organization, rigging of elections in some countries, and converting the group into an “angel project” by the “elders of the organization” after they take the group’s funds without accountability.

According to Omar Hassan, properties and cars in Turkey were registered with the names of a group of leaders – Mahmoud Hussein, Ibrahim Mounir, Mohamed al-Beheiri and Mahmoud el-Abiari. With the discovery of the situation, two of them surrendered the property by means of “customary paper” which is not recognized in Turkey, while Abiari refused.

Mixed trends

It is known that the group’s members follow the principle of blind obedience to the leader and top leadership. If any individual tries to break away from this principle, he faces great difficulties that lead to separation from the group. Based on this intellectual formation, it can be considered that this issue raises questions about the validity of the group’s youth disobeying the elders.

First trend:

Supporters of this trend believe that the group’s youth will be separated from the organization and will not abide by the historical principles of the Brotherhood, especially regarding obedience, under the weight of the crises they have suffered and the loss of their future in Egypt because of their absolute support for the leaders of the group.

The ill-treatment of young Brotherhood members in Turkey prompted them to think logically, away from the narrow Brotherhood ideology, which resulted in their rejection of the practices of the group’s hawks.

The doves’ rejection of what the hawks do does not mean that young people have come away from the mantle of extremist ideas that the Brotherhood believes in, but they may have found that the way the elders of the group have dealt with the events was wrong.

The director of Yusuf Al-Qaradawi’s office, Essam Talima, said on his official Facebook page that the Shura Council had held several meetings to discuss the issue of financial scandals, adding that the Council has concluded that the donations belong to the group and not to individuals, but they do not abide by this at all.

“The issue of leaks emerged after the conflict between the old guard and the youth over who leads the group,” said Hisham al-Najjar, an expert on Islamic groups. “The old guard sought to end the conflict in any way, even if it was illegal.”

Najjar added that the issue of financial allocations has emerged because most go to the old guard, represented by the stream of Mahmoud Hussein and Ibrahim Mounir, so the young people started a propaganda campaign against their corruption.

Second trend:

There is another trend that sees differences between hawks and doves in the group as a fictitious dispute, with no physical evidence of its existence, except for audio leaks only, which the group can renounce or deny responsibility for at any time.

Supporters of this trend point out that the disagreement between the youth and the elders is only one of the group’s mechanisms to reemerge again. The familiar faces have lost popularity because of their views and attitudes and are replaced by young faces who speak more friendly and have no long history that could affect them or the group.

This mechanism ensures the creation of a positive mental image of the organization in the Egyptian public arena specifically, and Arabs in general, after being involved for years in terrorist operations and losing its popular backing in the Arab world.