How the Muslim Brotherhood won ordinary Egyptians’ hearts and minds
The Brotherhood's here to help Photo: Nasser Nouri
As Egypt marks the first anniversary of Mubarak’s fall, where are Egypt’s secularists? As Ed Husain, one of Britain’s foremost commentators on the Arab Spring has written, liberals must be asking themselves how they lost the revolution they helped trigger.
One reason, as Husain points out, is that secularists are seen as standing against something (ie Mubarak, and now Islamism) rather than for some ideal. “Secularist”, too, has the negative connotation in Egyptian ears, of “atheist” : in a nation where the majority are devout Muslims, this can prove a deciding factor.
But more importantly, the secularists have failed to win over the ordinary Egyptian’s heart and mind in the way that the Muslim Brotherhood has. It’s taken decades, for the Brotherhood to extend its network of influence over the whole country; it has succeeded by promoting both social and charitable enterprises.
The group runs 22 hospitals and has schools in every governorate in the country. The organization also runs numerous care centers for poor widows and orphans as well as training programs for the unemployed.
While public services in Egypt are, for the most part, free of charge, quality tends to be low. State schools are often so poor that families hire private tutors to ensure that their children pass public exams. Services offered by the brotherhood are much cheaper than private alternatives. Of the 5,000 legally registered NGOs and associations in Egypt, an estimated 20 percent are brotherhood-run
Social enterpreneurs who make up the Brotherhood actually have more in common with America’s Republican Party than with al-Qaida. As Avi Asher-Shapiro writes in Salon,
The Brotherhood is a free-market party led by wealthy businessmen whose economic agenda embraces privatization and foreign investment while spurning labor unions and the redistribution of wealth. Like the Republicans in the U.S., the financial interests of the party’s leadership of businessmen and professionals diverge sharply from those of its poor, socially conservative followers.
Although the Brothers do draw significant support from Egypt’s poor and working class, “the Brotherhood is a firmly upper-middle-class organization in its leadership,” says Shadi Hamid, a leading Muslim Brotherhood expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Not surprisingly, these well-to-do Egyptians are eager to safeguard their economic position in the post-Mubarak Egypt. Despite rising economic inequality and poverty, the Brotherhood does not back radical changes in Egypt’s economy.
The FJP’s economic platform is a tame document, rife with promises to root out corruption and tweak Egypt’s tax and subsidies systems, with occasional allusions to an unspecific commitment to “social justice.” The platform praises the mechanisms of the free market and promises that the party will work for “balanced, sustainable and comprehensive economic development.” It is a program that any European conservative party could get behind.
Ed Husain concludes that the one victory secularist liberals can claim is that they have moulded today’s Muslim Brotherhood. It is because of the secularist influence that the Brotherhood has evolved,
from assassinating Egypt’s prime minister in 1948 and creating jihadi training camps in the 1940s, to now embracing parliamentary democracy. The Brotherhood’s increased pluralism is, in large measure, a testament to the influence of Egyptian liberal secularism over the last six decades.
How the Muslim Brotherhood won ordinary Egyptians’ hearts and minds
The Brotherhood's here to help Photo: Nasser Nouri
As Egypt marks the first anniversary of Mubarak’s fall, where are Egypt’s secularists? As Ed Husain, one of Britain’s foremost commentators on the Arab Spring has written, liberals must be asking themselves how they lost the revolution they helped trigger.
One reason, as Husain points out, is that secularists are seen as standing against something (ie Mubarak, and now Islamism) rather than for some ideal. “Secularist”, too, has the negative connotation in Egyptian ears, of “atheist” : in a nation where the majority are devout Muslims, this can prove a deciding factor.
But more importantly, the secularists have failed to win over the ordinary Egyptian’s heart and mind in the way that the Muslim Brotherhood has. It’s taken decades, for the Brotherhood to extend its network of influence over the whole country; it has succeeded by promoting both social and charitable enterprises.
The group runs 22 hospitals and has schools in every governorate in the country. The organization also runs numerous care centers for poor widows and orphans as well as training programs for the unemployed.
While public services in Egypt are, for the most part, free of charge, quality tends to be low. State schools are often so poor that families hire private tutors to ensure that their children pass public exams. Services offered by the brotherhood are much cheaper than private alternatives. Of the 5,000 legally registered NGOs and associations in Egypt, an estimated 20 percent are brotherhood-run
Social enterpreneurs who make up the Brotherhood actually have more in common with America’s Republican Party than with al-Qaida. As Avi Asher-Shapiro writes in Salon,
Ed Husain concludes that the one victory secularist liberals can claim is that they have moulded today’s Muslim Brotherhood. It is because of the secularist influence that the Brotherhood has evolved,