Brian M Downing
The new administration has taken several bold steps regarding the Middle East. The executive order on immigration from seven Muslim countries caused an uproar, though that’s far less important than its imprecision and questionable constitutionality. The plan to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has profound and worrisome implications that likely eluded the new president. The move has been put on hold.
The administration intends to put the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) on its terror list. This too has implications that probably elude the president and his national security staff. The MB has a long, checkered past, but it has helped American interests over the years by sending money and volunteers to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Today it supports a number of rebel groups in Syria, some of whom serve alongside American-backed groups and oppose hardline jihadis.
In a volatile region filled with murderous extremism and ruthless authoritarianism, the Brotherhood may one day serve American interests again. It could become one of the least objectionable and more durable options in the Middle East.
Violence and terror
The MB began as a reform movement in 1920s Egypt. Over the years governments alternately clamped down on it, used it for popular support, then clamped down once more. The MB has always reemerged.
The Brotherhood is associated with violence, but blameless forces in the region are not abundant. Kings, generals, and oligarchs have assassinated MB leaders, outlawed the organization, and imprisoned and tortured its followers. Foreign intelligence outfits have detonated bombs and blamed the MB, as with the Lavon program of the 1950s.
The movement has fought back. Often violence done in its name has been the work of splinter groups, such as the one that assassinated Anwar Sadat in 1981 as he reviewed his armed forces. The MB rose up against the Assad government in 1982 and was brutally repressed. The city of Hama was leveled and tens of thousands were killed.
After Egypt’s 2011 Arab Spring, the MB’s political party won a majority in the national assembly and took the presidency as well. It ruled in a heavy-handed, arrogant, though mainly lawful manner, but was overthrown by a military coup supported by the Saudis. Hundreds of its adherents were killed in ensuing street demonstrations. Splinter groups have joined ISIL and al Qaeda bands in Sinai. The mainstream MB has gone underground again.
If one day the violence the MB has done is balanced against that done against it, the scales are unlikely to tip the way the kings, generals, and oligarchs claim.
The Muslim Brotherhood in politics today
The MB has a presence in many Muslim countries. In some, it has seats in national assembles and engages in day-to-day politics. Elsewhere it operates underground. It has a large membership base, ranging from a sizable minority to a slight majority. It is highly disciplined and dedicated to governance in accord with religious principles.
Religious rule is alarming in the West, conducive as it is to pushing aside opponents deemed sinful and heretical. An authoritarian predisposition is clear in the MB, though it falls short of that practiced by almost all Middle Eastern leaders.
The Brotherhood’s idea of religious rule is less sweeping and intolerant than that of its chief religious rival – the Salafist movement. Salafis are dedicated to Wahhabism, the Saudi sect that interprets the Koran in a highly austere and anti-western manner, supports the Saudi royal family (which lavishly funds them), and seeks to build popular support for Riyadh across the Islamic world. The MB is an important obstacle to Saudi hegemony – and perhaps one that the US can find useful.
The Brotherhood and American foreign policy
The Islamic world is plagued by oligarchs who will not accept political change, Salafists who are devoted to spreading Saudi power, and radical Islamists who are trying to restore a caliphate – and slaughtering anyone in the way.
The MB is a large, broad-based, highly disciplined, and durable movement opposed to oligarchs, monarchs, and caliphs. Its religiosity is, by the standards of the region, less extreme than that of chief rivals. Its rule in Egypt, Tunisia, and to some extent in Turkey has been arrogant and imprudent but it does offer a measure of representative government where it presently seems highly unlikely.
The Brotherhood could also form a counterpoise to Russian influence. Moscow has solidified its ties and military presence in Syria, driven a wedge between Turkey and NATO, and is backing a powerful warlord in eastern Libya.
The United States faces difficult alternatives and diminishing influence in the Middle East. Its security experts must ask who is likely to be an important force in a decade or so, increasingly unpopular monarchs and oligarchs or the broad-based and resilient Muslim Brotherhood?
Copyright 2017 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.