Harvest 2020: Brotherhood uses momentum of US events for political benefit

Nahla Abdel Moneim

The Brotherhood in the United States was affected by the successive events that occurred in the country during the year 2020, through which it tried to formulate variables adapted to its goals that it seeks to achieve in society.

With the beginning of 2020, US politicians were looking forward to the presidential elections that took place in November, which ended with the announcement of the victory of Democratic candidate Joe Biden and the defeat of Republican Donald Trump, which may have been the most important event of the year.

While the political preparations were in place to spread propaganda for both candidates, the country was tested with the spread of the Covid-19 corona virus among its citizens to record high death rates during the pandemic, which contributed to the formation of the Brotherhood’s agenda of dealing with the various events.

The Black Lives Matter campaign resulting from the killing of the black American citizen George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis, Minnesota by a police officer remains one of the most prominent events that the group exploited to achieve its political and strategic goals, especially since the incident accompanied the election year in parallel with widespread popular protests over the human rights file in the country.

Brotherhood activities in the United States in 2020

The United States was struck by the corona virus like other countries around the world, and thus the Brotherhood took advantage of the pandemic to collect the largest percentage of donations through the group’s network spread throughout the country, represented by CAIR, the Islamic Conference of North America ICNA, and other associations.

For its part, the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) employed a special form in order to donate electronically to help those affected by the pandemic globally, and its value starts at $35, with news and claims about the importance of donation and the need to make zakat allocated to CAIR in order to support its activities in this field.

The slogan “Donate for Corona” came as one of the most prominent campaigns promoted by the Islamic Department of the organization to collect donations in an image that the Brotherhood wants to promote as contributors to solving the problems of the pandemic among the most affected citizens.

However, in a previous statement to the Reference, Saeed Sadiq, professor of political sociology at the American University in Cairo, said that the use of corona in the Brotherhood’s campaigns is political money that is collected and paid for the purposes of their own agenda and not for the service of humanity, calling for the need to monitor the ways in which these funds are spent.

The second issue was dismantling the American police. The Brotherhood moved, according to the heat of events, from “Donating for Corona” to “Donating for Blacks.” The Brotherhood took advantage of the demonstrations that erupted after the killing of Floyd in order to demand that their followers donate. CAIR spread a campaign to collect money to defend citizens imprisoned by the police in connection with the protests.

At the time, the American police were detaining the protesters for violating the precautionary measures to undermine the spread of the corona virus, such as the curfews, but citizens believed that their human rights were not compromised with life, but the Brotherhood was in the middle, so the group employed the incident in order to hold seminars on the possibility of dismantling some departments in the US police apparatus or reducing its budget, in a clear political treatment of events that have transformed from human rights into strategy game that the group likes to play. On June 12, CAIR in Baltimore promoted its approval of a bill presented by the city council on reducing financial allocations to the police force.

If Washington allows, through democratic mechanisms, to monitor the financial inputs and outputs of the agency in a transparent manner, then why does the group need to exploit the events to demand a reduction in the police apparatus’s expenses in light of a standard of living that is not poor for the general public?

Thirdly came the US presidential election. The aforementioned events represented rich material for the group to use to attack outgoing President Donald Trump, who had put himself in the crosshairs of criticism due to his performance in the corona file and his treatment of police practices against those protesting against the killing of Floyd. The group ran campaigns through its own analyzes indicating that black people, Muslims and all minorities in the United States would vote massively in the presidential election and choose Joe Biden for his moderate or even welcome speech towards them. On October 5, CAIR published survey data on its reaping ratios indicating Biden’s progress over Trump.

Can Washington undermine the group?

From the activities of the Brotherhood towards society to the efforts of American politicians against the Brotherhood, some congress members tried to move the issue of excluding the organization from the American scene through a bill presented by Republican Senator Ted Cruz from Texas on December 1 in order to declare the group a terrorist organization and prohibit its activities and impose legal restrictions on its elements.

The Cruz bill had the support of some Republicans to officially pass the law, and the campaign is still underway amid calls for a ban, matched by promotional campaigns from the group that targeting the Brotherhood is targeting Islam in the form of alleged Islamophobia.