Muslim Brotherhood failing in portraying its founders as ‘heroes’

Doaa Emam

The Muslim Brotherhood does its best to underestimate the successes the TV series “Choice,” which focuses on the life story of Egyptian army officer Ahmed al-Masni, has made.

Muslim Brotherhood pages on Facebook have been publishing the books of theoretician Sayyed Qotb, portraying him as a hero, to deflect attention from the successes of the series.

The series puts the sacrifices made by army personnel and police in their defense of their country under the spotlight.

It is leading to an upsurge in public interest in army officers, in general, and in al-Mansi’s life, in particular.

The series also documents the crimes the Muslim Brotherhood and its members committed against Egyptians during the year the Islamist group ruled Egypt until the June 30, 2013 revolution.

None of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders or members has succeeded in rising to the status of a national hero since the emergence of the Islamist group in 1928.

Ibrahim al-Zaafarani, a former senior member of the group, detailed the reasons for the failures of the group in this regard.

The Muslim Brotherhood, he said, isolated itself from the rest of the people.

It introduced terms foreign to Egyptians and spoke a language the people was unfamiliar with, al-Zaafarani wrote on Facebook.

He added that this was why the group failed in convincing the public to rally behind any of its leaders or symbols.

Al-Zaafarani noted that the Muslim Brotherhood also failed in addressing the core problems of the people, instead focusing on solving its own problems.

This was why everybody stayed away from it, al-Zaafarani said.

Saudi Islamism specialist Abdullah bin Begad al-Utaibi said the Muslim Brotherhood works hard to make its leaders and members famous.

He added in a study on the making of Islamist political celebrities that the Muslim Brotherhood just wants to show that its founders were innovative and great figures.

Nevertheless, the image the Brotherhood tries to project about its founders has nothing to do with realities, especially given the accounts of the people who had known these founders at the personal level, al-Utaibi said.