The Muslim Brotherhood: Program,

Strategy, Organization (II)

Written by Vladislav B. SOTIROVIC on 18/12/2021

Part I

Strategy No. 2: Charity and Welfare

The Muslim Brotherhood has long organized and kept the tradition of networks of schools and
hospitals for the poor and elderly people. The system of financial donations from the faithful
supporters is providing food and clothes, medical doctors are serving without charge for the
salary in Brotherhood clinics and hospitals, and Islamic schools are combining religious
education with some other topics of more political nature. Brotherhood tutors are participating in
the assistance to the higher level students to prepare themselves for the examination. This
practice is vital for those poor students as they cannot afford to be tutored by their teachers or by
the scripts (notes) of their professors. In essence, in addition to fulfilling a religious education,
the system of welfare services offered by the Muslim Brotherhood is providing an efficient
opportunity for the recruiting new members for the organization and creating a very positive
image of the Muslim Brotherhood as a caring organization that is capable to meet the needs of
the Muslim ordinary people. In fact, the Brotherhood system of welfare programs ensures that
poor youth will have some chance of finding jobs in the civil service and military making them
in this way a potential resource should the occasion arise.

Strategy No. 3: Political activism

From a very political perspective, the Muslim Brotherhood is a very large and powerful pressure
group that is involved in the battle to force the Muslim secular governments across the world to
administer their states and Muslim societies according to Islamic law and Quran. Among all
Muslim countries, the political agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood is the best and most fully
developed in Egypt – a country in which the Brothers are allowed to operate as a religious
organization. The Egyptian constitution prohibits religious organizations to participate in
political life but in practice, the Muslim Brotherhood is using one of Egypt’s meaningless
opposition parties to serve as a front for its political activities. In addition, many Brotherhood’s
candidates are running for parliament as independents and, despite the government’s opposition,
scored dazzling victories in the first or primary round of Egypt’s 2000 parliamentary elections.

It was so dazzling Brotherhood’s victory in the first round that the police openly prevented
supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood from casting their ballots in the second round of the
elections. The success was repeated in the 2005 elections with the Brotherhood having captured
88 seats in parliament (People’s Assembly) before massive police brutality and vote-rigging
stemmed the Brotherhood tide. The message became, nevertheless, quite clear: if free voting is
allowed, the Muslim Brotherhood will win what happened in 2011/2012. In other words, after
the Egyptian Arab Spring protests in 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood covered by civic political
the Freedom and Justice Party won almost half of the seats in parliament while its leader
Mohamed Morsi won the 2012 presidential elections. Only the US-Israeli-backed military coup
in Egypt could prevent further rising in the political power of the Brotherhood.

Muslim Brotherhood demonstration in Egypt

At H. Mubarak’s time, the political aim of the Brotherhood was to push a corrupt and inept H.
Mubarak’s regime ever closer to disaster. In Egypt, the only real opposition party was the
Muslim Brotherhood which representatives used parliament as a platform for airing their views
to a national audience, publicizing the obvious flaws of Mubarak’s corrupted regime, and
opposing the legislation as anti-Islamic. The Muslim Brotherhood lacked the power to pass new
legislation, but it had the power to weaken from within the regime of H. Mubarak. The
Brotherhood knew how to use its political influence in order to win unparalleled economic,
medical, and personal benefits for its members, victories that have extended its popularity and
demonstrated at the same time its real capacity to get things done.

For the former Mubarak regime, it was extremely threatening the direct and indirect control of
the student associations in Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood’s organization. It is known that
students in the Islamic states are protesting in the streets for the slightest provocation, making
them the most volatile actors in the politics of the Middle East. If student protests show signs of
promise, other groups will join them. Remember that in 2011, it was the students who got things
started. The regime of Hosni Mubarak and his ruling National Democratic Party did everything
to control university life in Egypt but with minimal success. Nevertheless, the Brothers are
particularly against the American University in Cairo (the AUC) for the reason that it is a bastion
of secularism in the high school system in Egypt.

The so-called “control of the street” the Muslim Brotherhood obtains by control over
professional associations, student unions, community organizations, and mosque complexes in
Egypt. It is a very fact that at a moment’s notice, a signal from the Brotherhood can send
demonstrators to the street not only in Cairo but in other major cities in Egypt too. As the events
of Arab Spring in 2011 proved, Cairo is the nerve center of Egypt, and to disrupt Cairo means, in
fact, to disrupt the whole of Egypt. In practice, the activists of the Muslim Brotherhood do it so
frequently, usually to oppose Israeli oppression of the Palestinians or U.S. policies in Iraq.
However, the Muslim Brotherhood is not the only group in Egypt that is involved in the anti-
U.S/Israeli protests on the streets as many of which begin as spontaneous explosions of
frustrations and anger. The Brothers, nevertheless, are active participants in the protests since
their establishment in 1828 with the ability to inflame the street.

The Brotherhood’s efforts to infiltrate its members (of religious activists) to both military and
security services are a less visible and noticeable phenomenon. Why it is important? It is
important for the very reason that Egypt was and is, basically, a military regime being dependent
on military support for its survival. The regime knows well that both jihadists and the Brothers
are enjoying broad support and sympathies in the military, a fact that is making them very
reluctant to use the regular army against the Brotherhood. Rather, most anti-Brotherhood and
anti-jihadist activities are carried out by special security forces in which the regime has greater
confidence. Even so, the Brotherhood’s support within the military provides a measure of
security from government repression.

The Muslim Brotherhood, violence, and the question of stability

The Muslim Brotherhood advocated an all-time comprehensive social reform program aimed at
bringing about social justice by peaceful means rather than using violence and revolutionary
instruments. According to the program, social justice can be achieved not by individual acts of
charity but by legal government handouts, thereby ensuring the equitable redistribution of funds.
The organization was opposed to any form of particular nationalist ideology as it was considered
a Western concept and it was calling for the revitalization of the umma by peaceful struggle.

The Brotherhood considers violence in principle to be counterproductive with the focal argument
that it serves only to kill innocent people and to punish Muslim populations by destroying the
economy. For example, the series of jihadist terror acts for two decades simply devastated the
tourist industry of Egypt, living tens of thousands without work. The Brotherhood as well
condemns jihadist violence for giving the Islamic movement a bad image and name and for
giving enemies of Islam a good pretext to launch a new crusade against Islam. The Muslim
Brotherhood claims that governments are more powerful than the Islamic groups. Therefore, it
would be little of benefit to fight a war that will cripple the Islamic movement and, in fact, ruin
its good opportunity to achieve an Islamic state by peaceful means. In sum, it looks that there is a
little doubt that the Brotherhood’s capacity and will for using violence remains. However,
although the Muslim Brotherhood denies that it possessed armed paramilitary troops (militia),
during the December 2006 military demonstrations by the Brotherhood’s students at Al-Azhar
University revealed that the organization possesses an increasingly active military wing.

The Muslim Brotherhood: Program,

Strategy, Organization (I)
The Islamic radical moderates in the Middle East

All Islamic movements, parties, or groups fighting for the creation of the Islamic states governed
by the Muslim authorities can be divided into two categories: 1) Those who are seeking their
goals using peaceful means; and 2) Those devoted to the use of different kinds of violence
including and terrorism. In the first group can be counted the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas,
Hezbollah (Arab. Hizbullah), or Turkish Justice and Development Party (currently in power).
However, they are joined by a variety of Islamic parties and/or movements that are reshaping the
electoral map of the Muslim states. In the second group of the Islamic political arena are the
jihadists.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezbollah followed by similar emerging Islamic political
parties can be called Islamic radical moderates. They are radical as they are dedicated to the
creation of Islamic religious authorities in the Muslim world but they are at the same time
moderate as they are in principle preferring to achieve their political goals by peaceful means
including above all parliamentary elections. Nevertheless, they are as well as moderate
concerning their vision of the Islamic state to be created by them in power which has to be
enlightened which is blending religious morality with the best of modern technology.

The presence of such Islamic radical-moderate groups is the most vibrant political force in the
Muslim world. As a matter of fact, by all accounts and parameters, including election results and
the results of opinion surveys, they are drawing their political support from a broad spectrum of a
Muslim community. It is true that in many Muslim states, even less devout Muslims are finding
their vision of an enlightened Islamic state especially now at the time of turbo-globalization as a
political reaction to the brutal Westernization of the globe. The creators of the Western neo-
imperialism at the time of turbo-globalization after 1989 found that the Islamic radical moderates
constitute a far greater barrier to especially U.S. (and Israeli) control of the Middle East than the
Islamic jihadists. The nature of the jihadist message of violence and terrorism repels Muslims
and flies in the face of Islamic law. However, the message of the Islamic radical moderates is
mainly seductive, as is their commitment to honesty, equality, and welfare. In addition, unlike
the jihadists who are a very small segment of the Muslim world, the radical moderates are
already its mainstream. The Islamic radical moderates are as well as blending their propaganda
message of Islam and Muslim social values without pain with the potential for both terror and
guerrilla warfare. It was the letter that drove Israeli occupation forces from Lebanon in 2000 and
U.S. occupation forces from Iraq in 2011 and Afghanistan in 2021.
Officially, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, and some other less violent groups of
the Islamic radical moderates claim that they are not inherently anti-American and that they are
sharing Western anti-jihadist sentiments and attitudes. Moreover, they have long supported pro-
U.S. regimes in the Middle East like in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Those groups are opposing the
military presence of the U.S. in the Middle East but unlike the jihadists, they are not attacking
the U.S. military posts. However, this is not true of Israel – a state that occupied Muslim land
and committed ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are the leaders of
the Muslim struggle to force Israeli occupation troops and civic administration from the Arab
territories occupied (and de facto annexed) during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. The Muslim
Brotherhood is by now not far behind Hamas and Hezbollah but not using violent methods as
they do.

According to the Islamic radical moderates, the focal problem during the last two decades in
their relations with the U.S. is that the Washington administration proclaimed the war on Islam
after 9/11 within the excuse of a formal declaration of “The War on Terror” in 2001.
Additionally, the U.S. administration is opposing the establishment of Islamic governments in
the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world. The crucial viewpoint by the Islamist
radical moderates is that if Washington would stop its war on Islam and force Israel to evacuate
occupied Arab lands in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, anti-Americanism in the Middle East will
recede and the Islamic jihadists would lose the ground to exist. In reality, however, the Islamic
movement cannot be defeated but rather it can be led either by the jihadists or radical moderates.
The more Americans attempt to suppress Islam, the more radical and violent the Islamic
resistance will become.
Nevertheless, the Western political analysts argue that there are no firm guarantees that
accommodating less extremist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood or Hezbollah will reduce on
the ground either anti-American policy or terrorism – nor is there any guarantee that the Islamic
radical moderates will accept the existence of (a Greater) Israel and its borders. While in the
mid-2000s some European states established certain contacts with some diverse radical-moderate
groups, both Israel and Egypt warned that the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah are merely
fronts for terror.
The goals of the Muslim Brotherhood

Today, the most well-known and influential Islamic radical modernist group is the Muslim
Brotherhood (Ikh-wan al Muslimun, established in March 1928 by Hassan al-Banna) which has
its branches in more than 70 states. The Brotherhood was officially established as a “religious
organization dedicated to doing good and stamping out evil”. Nevertheless, the heartland of this
group is Egypt followed by neighboring Arab nations with predominantly Muslim Sunni
believers. However, its real total membership is very difficult to know for the reason the
Brotherhood is very much operating, in fact, under different names followed by the fact that it is
in some countries legally outlawed like in Syria, Libya, or Saudi Arabia. It is known that only 20
years after the establishment, the organization-movement had almost 2 million followers
spreading its activities across the Muslim world. Al-Banna, an excellent speaker, knew how to
exacerbate his countrymen’s resentment of the British colonial presence and in his speeches laid
all the Muslim community’s problems at the doorstep of Western domination. Today, the
membership is surely in millions, with a far larger body of dedicated sympathizers but in any
case, the Muslim Brotherhood is a dominant political organization in the Islamic world either
among Arabs or not.

The Muslim Brotherhood was organized along the lines of a religious fraternity (like in Christian
cases) and required that its members unquestionably obey the Guide (murshid). It was advised by
a consultative assembly, quickly becoming a genuine, structured political movement. That gave
it considerable power, as it controlled a number of social organizations like mosques, charitable
groups, health centers, or students associations.
The flags of the Muslim Brotherhood, Jordan and other political parties are waved with other signs of
protest denouncing the US-led Middle East economic conference in Bahrain

The Brotherhood themselves reinvigorated the position of moderate reform but without
abandoning the salafiyya approach (the principles and practices of early Islam) which, however,
at their founding was condemned. Originally, the Muslim Brothers have been fighting against
Western imperialistic colonialism in the Middle East and Western secularism (in the sense of the
separation of state and religion). The organization adopted at the beginning the way of Arab
nationalism against the Western occupation of Muslim lands. They are looking deeper into the
roots of Islam for the sake to purify and renew it by focusing on the principles and practices of
the earliest generations of Islam – the salaf.

The final aim of the group is to reestablish Islamic rule in all predominantly Muslim countries
across the world but mostly focus on the Middle East. However, the members of the Brotherhood
are quite convinced that this will not happen in the immediate future but rather the
reestablishment of Islamic rule is going to be a long-term process in which secular governments
will gradually give way to their Islamic counterparts. Different Islamic governments will
gradually come together until a unified Islamic state of some variety will be recreated. According
to the conception, such an Islamic state doesn’t need to be administered by the Muslim
Brotherhood as it is only important that the country’s authorities will apply Islamic law and
govern it in the spirit of Islam.

The goal of the Brotherhood’s activities in Christian states of North America and Europe with
Muslim minorities is to enable Muslims to deepen their faith by providing them with a network
of mosques, religious schools, and Muslim associations. All of these measures will finally assist
Muslims to become more influential in non-Muslim societies. It can be said that this process is
well underway in West Europe but at the same time is lagging in the U.S.A. The best position of
the Muslim minority in West Europe today seems to be in France where they have even an
official religious council that works with the French government for the sake to shape the
government’s policy towards the large Muslim minority in France. Similar councils have Jews,
Catholics, and Protestants.

Other states and regions are not so much convinced like the French government by the peaceful
intent of the Muslim Brotherhood. For instance, in October 2002, Russian security forces
uncovered the cells of the Muslim Brotherhood in several places across Russia. The members of
the Brotherhood have been accused of the preparation of the rebellion and, in several cases, of
supporting al-Qaeda. A similar picture appeared as well in several ex-USSR countries after 9/11.

One of the focal questions regarding the Muslim Brotherhood became: Is the Brotherhood a
reformist organization dedicated to the peaceful evolution of an Islamic state, or is its
commitment to nonviolence only of strategic nature? The answer can be found in the 5 principles
of the Brotherhood: 1) Allah is our objective; 2) The Prophet is our leader; 3) Quran is our law;
4) Jihad is our way; 5) Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. However, this is not the
way the Brotherhood is behaving in reality. For more than four decades, the organization is using
persuasion rather than violence and terror for the sake to reform Islam from within. On the
ground, the policy of moderation is not giving the results of the liberation of occupied Islamic
lands by Israel among them the most important West Bank, Golan Height, and Gaza Strip in the
Middle East or Indian-occupied Kashmir, etc. According to the Brotherhood, the only way to
liberate these lands is jihad. Therefore, it can be concluded that the apparent contradiction
between the Brotherhood’s moderate official face and its testimony glorifying jihad is making
strong concern that the Brotherhood’s present posture is only strategic adjustment designed to
cover its true intention.

Nonetheless, there is one big difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic jihadists.
For the Brotherhood, it is impossible to kill either innocent civilians or any Muslims.
Consequently, all of those corrupted Arab leaders and other Muslim leaders of the Muslim states
who are cooperating with the U.S.A. and Israel and being sinners cannot be physically
eliminated as they are simply, nevertheless, Muslims but they will be judged harshly by Allah.
The Brotherhood must lead them back to the true path and encourage them to apply Islamic law.
However, the Islamic jihadists believe that the leaders of the Arab Islamic countries have
repudiated Islam through their actions and their cooperation with the U.S.A., Israel, and other
enemies of Islam and, therefore, they are already unbelievers (kafirs) and must be exterminated.
In addition, the Islamic jihadists do not make any difference between military and civilian targets
as all unbelievers (not Muslims) are potential soldiers against Islam.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s three strategies

The Muslim Brothers are using three strategies for the realization of their political and other
goals founded basically on the reformation of the secular regimes of the Islamic world: 1)
Teaching and preaching; 2) Providing welfare to the needy; and 3) Political activism. Among all
Muslim states in which the Brotherhood is operating, these strategies are mostly developed in
Egypt but are finding expression in all of the 70 states in which the organization exists.

Strategy No. 1: Teaching and Preaching

Egypt was and is the center of the activity of the Muslim Brothers. The organization itself was
founded in Egypt as a youth organization designed to strengthen the religious and moral
foundation of Egyptian (Muslim) society. The strategy of teaching and preaching remained focal
to the program of the Muslim Brotherhood which believes that its final goal of the creation of the
Islamic state cannot be realized without a strong foundation of dedicated believers. This process,
according to the Brotherhood, starts by building the Muslim individual: brother or sister with a
strong body, high manners, cultured thought, earning ability, strong faith, correct worship,
conscious of time, of benefit to others, organized, and self-struggling character. Strong Muslim
individuals are making strong Muslim families, and finally, strong Muslim families are building
a strong Muslim society. This process of making a strong Muslim society is a significant step
toward the recreation of the Islamic state and the eventual re-establishment of the Islamic nation
or Umma.

The Brotherhood’s propaganda-indoctrination program is carried out in a vast network of

mosques, schools, and religious associations. Both sermons and lectures are stressing the general
need for a moral society and urge vigilance against the enemies of Islam. The leaders of Muslim
states are seldom attacked directly. The government of Egypt is constantly denying that it
censors the sermons of the Muslim Brotherhood, but it is watching their content very closely.
The Egyptian censors pay close attention to the Brotherhood’s vast media network which is
heavy of religious character but all the time there is a space for criticizing both the U.S.A. and
Israeli policy in the Middle East.

Political or ideological indoctrination, however, is far more than sermons in mosques or

churches. It is as well as the discussions with the faithful that take place either before or after the
sermons or some study groups, meetings, camps, trips, courses, workshops, and conferences. The
Muslim Brotherhood like many Christian fundamentalists is involved in the business of saving
souls, and Muslim Brothers can spend endless time convincing potential converts of the
righteousness of their propaganda and cause. One of the Brotherhood’s policies is the integration
of all dimensions of the life of the individual within the concept of the Brotherhood family.
Prayer and service are combined for the purpose to create the sense of kinship that is very
important in life in the Middle East. As a matter of fact, there are in the Middle East and the
Islamic world many youngsters who are bewildered, and the Muslim Brotherhood is providing
them with the sense of belonging and purpose that they so desperately need.
Nevertheless, the indoctrination-propaganda program of the Muslim Brotherhood is providing
beyond the moral basis for a future Islamic state the foundation for its political and social
activities. Sympathizers from the majority of the Muslim states vote and contribute money, but
the truly zealous are from the cadres of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is they who get out the vote,
volunteer for service in Islamic struggles like Kashmir or Palestine, and staff the Brotherhood’s
vast network of schools, welfare centers, and media outlets. It has to be noticed that religious
organizations are allowed in most Islamic states but political organizations are not and, therefore,
the preaching role of the Muslim Brotherhood has other dimensions and benefits as well. In other
words, both preaching and teaching are simply providing a cover for a broad range of political
activities that would otherwise be banned.

To be continued
Supporters of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi throw stones at riot police and army
personnel during clashes near Rabaa Adawiya square in Cairo August 14, 2013.

Historically, an armed wing – the “secret organization” – has been created within the
organization of the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1930s, whose military leadership was
entrusted to a close friend of Hassan al-Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), Salah
Ashmawi. The military wing was, actually, operating under the umbrella of a Muslim scouting
association not to attract the attention of the British occupation authorities but it grew rapidly
into a full-fledged armed entity. For instance, its members have been fighting alongside
supporters of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during the 1936 Palestinian uprising or alongside
Arab forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In fact, it was this conflict in 1948 in which the
Brotherhood acquired combat experience and, therefore, as a result, the Egyptian government,
concerned at the Islamic militias’ revolutionary capacity, ordered their disarmament. Hassan al-
Banna was forced to accept that move probably as he was not at that time prepared enough to go
to the open confrontation with the government. In order to minimize the level of suppression of
his movement, he claimed that it was a break-away group, marginalized by the failure in the
1948 war against the Zionist Israel, which against his orders was engaged in guerilla warfare
against the British forces near the Suez Canal. Nevertheless, despite his denials, evidence was
mounting as to al-Banna’s responsibility for political violence against the government of King
Farouk. He and his Brothers have been accused of a series of terror acts including murders in
1948 of an Egyptian judge, two British officers, and the Egyptian PM. Finally, al-Banna was
assassinated on February 12th, 1949, and almost 4000 of his organization’s members were
arrested. His followers maintained that the Egyptian government plotted to kill him and, in fact,
was responsible for his death.

Concerning the Mubarak regime, the Brotherhood offered it a simple deal to allow the
organization to promote its religious agenda peacefully, and in return, the Brotherhood will allow
Mubarak to rule. Egyptian government politicians will enjoy all the benefits of office and the
wealth that became accumulated to the ruling class; the Muslim Brotherhood will help Egypt to
become a more Islamic state. From Hosni Mubarak’s viewpoint, giving the Muslim Brotherhood
broader scope for its activities would isolate the Islamic jihadists and other radical extremists by
providing more moderate Muslim groups with a legitimate outlet for their concerns. However, H.
Mubarak at the same time feared a broad-based Islamic party more than he feared the jihadists.
Before the 2006 parliamentary elections in Egypt, the U.S. administration remained silent as
Egyptian police unleashed the clubs and rifle butts of the Brotherhood’s supporters followed by
the arrests of thousands of the Brotherhood leaders and members.

The political deal that the Muslim Brotherhood offered to Hosni Mubarak in the 1980s was
already accepted in the 1950s by the King Hussein of Jordan when at that time the young king,
then a teenager, used the Brotherhood to counter the leftists and Palestinian radicals intent on
overthrowing his shaky monarchy. In fact, and the king and the Brotherhood prospered.
However, in 2000‒2005, the U.S. administration was putting increasing pressure on Jordan’s
new king, Abdullah II, to curtail the Brotherhood’s support for the Second Intifada (uprising) in
Palestine. Nevertheless, that was a tall order as some 70% of Jordan’s population is of
Palestinian origin, and support for the Palestinian uprising was the key element in the program of
the Muslim Brotherhood. It has to be noticed as well that the line between the Muslim
Brotherhood and Hamas in Jordan is also blurred as the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas,
was, in fact, founded as the military wing of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, and the
Brotherhood has been instrumental in brokering tensions between Hamas and the Jordanian king.
There were strong relations between the Muslim Brotherhood and the government of Yemen in
the 1990s, mostly thanks to the political role of the Brotherhood in easing tensions between
Yemen and neighboring Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Much to the irritation to the Saudi puppet government of the U.S., Yemen had supported Saddam
Hussein, maybe in the belief that the next to fall is going to be the Saudi anti-democratic
monarchy. As it did not happen, the Yemeni workers were expelled from Saudi Arabia. A few
years later, Saudi Arabia supported the rebellion in South Yemen. The intersections of the
Muslim Brotherhood succeeded to ease both crises, and the Brotherhood became a legal political
organization as the Yemeni Society for Reform. In fact, rather than opposing the government, the
Muslim Brotherhood became its supporter. Up to the Arab Spring in 2011, Yemen was an ally of
the U.S. in its struggle against jihadists but the open question remained up today: Whether it can
convince the U.S. that the Muslim Brotherhood is a peaceful organization or at least not anti-
American?

Syria, by contrast to Yemen or Egypt, is treating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist

organization. As a matter of fact, the Brotherhood launched a series of military actions in Syria
in the early 1980s provoking a civil war. Consequently, the Syrian government launched military
attacks on the Muslim Brotherhood, killing between 10.000 and 30.000 of its members.
Nevertheless, the massacre was terrible. Membership to the Muslim Brotherhood became a crime
that was punishable by death. The leadership of the Brotherhood in Syria, therefore, was forced
to flee to Jordan, West Germany, and Iraq, as it was done by most of its active members.

The answer by the Brotherhood was quick and bloody: launching terrorist strikes into Syria in
the mid-1980s, but the German-Jordan wing of the Syrian Brotherhood has since fallen in line
with the nonviolent position of the Cairo leadership. Indeed, the Brotherhood HQ in Egypt
applied to the Syrian government for permission to return to Syria as a cooperating partner of the
ruling Ba’ath party but Damascus was rejecting the offer as the Brotherhood rejected to take
responsibility for the terrorism campaign in Syria in the early 1980s. According to the Syrian
leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, that was exactly Damascus that had created the political
crisis by attempting to liquidate the Brotherhood. Nevertheless, for the Brotherhood in Syria, it
was of the focal importance to place its members in positions of power either by working with
the government or by attempting to overthrow it. The U.S., for its part, appears to be supporting
the Brotherhood’s efforts to overthrow an Assad’s government accusing it of sponsoring
terrorism.

Like in Syria, something similar was going on in post-Saddam’s Iraq. In other words, it was the
same practice of making odious alliances for the sake of gaining political influence. Although
hostile to the U.S. occupation, the Iraqi Islamic Party (an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood)
participated in the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s authority together by the U.S. military.
However, its position looks to be logical. The Iraqi Islamic Party is sharing the fundamentalist
goals of the ruling Shi’a elite and can represent the interests of Iraqi’s Sunni minority better than
either the former Ba’athist supporters of Saddam Hussein or the jihadists. In this case, both sides
the Muslim Brotherhood and the U.S. government found themselves on the same side. Much the
same is true throughout the region of the Middle East including Yemen or Libya.
However, the Zionist government of Israel is uneasy about American’s backdoor flirtations with
the organization of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas, the Palestinian (Gaza) wing of the Muslim
Brotherhood, today is representing the core of the Arab-Palestinian resistance to the Israeli
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Reflecting its Brotherhood heritage, Hamas has
refused to accept Israeli’s right to maintain a Jewish state on Islamic land. Nevertheless, we have
to keep in mind that this does not necessarily mean that two parties cannot coexist together.

To be continued