Brotherhood breathing its last, US newspaper says

Asmaa al-Batakoushi

The Washington Diplomat ran an article recently by contributing writer and Middle Eastern Affairs specialist Jonathan Gorvett about the future prospects of the Muslim Brotherhood after the death of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

In his article, which is titled “Its Leader Dead, Muslim Brotherhood May Be on Its Last Legs”, Gorvett refers to the potential eradication of the Brotherhood and possible designation of it by the US as a “terrorist” group.

He says with the Trump administration considering designating it a terrorist organization and its members facing a wave of repression across the Muslim world, these are dark days for the Brotherhood.

He adds that after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi visited the White House in April this year, President Trump announced that the U.S. would be reviving an earlier move, abandoned in 2017, to designate the Brotherhood a terrorist organization.

This designation, Gorvett says, is a process, most recently used by Trump in April to brand the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran as a “foreign terrorist organization”.

Many U.S. defence and diplomatic officials have also voiced concern about the legalities of the designation because the Brotherhood is not a single party or organization, but a loose association of similarly minded “chapters” in various countries, each of which pursues its own vision.

“The Brotherhood is going through a period of intense flux,” Martyn Frampton, an expert on the group from London’s Queen Mary University, said. “The period since 2013 has been a historic nadir for the group.”

He added that this has also been their strategy elsewhere, in the U.S., France, Germany and other Western countries.

“It’s a form of identity politics, to become the authentic voice of the Muslim community, even though, of course, that community has many voices,” Frampton said.

He noted that saying the Brotherhood is nonviolent is problematic.

“While they have embraced politics, the Brotherhood also believes in ‘resistance,’ in the case of occupation,” Frampton said. “So, they supported the insurgency against the U.S. and U.K. in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan and they all support Hamas.”

Frampton said the designation is not the right answer, describing it as a “too crude device” to deal with such a complex organization.

Meanwhile, the Brotherhood itself recognizes that its fortunes have been waning, although it draws strength from its long history of advances and withdrawals, having survived numerous crackdowns throughout its 90 years of existence.