26 July - 1 August 2001
Issue No.544
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 26 July - 1 August 2001 Issue No.544 |
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Conflicting signals
Regular police crackdowns on members of the Muslim Brotherhood may not be all bad news for the outlawed group, reports Khaled Dawoud
On 15 July, state security officers led an early morning raid on a flat in the densely-populated Giza district of Imbaba, arresting 25 members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Those arrested included Mohamed El-Shater, reportedly a member of the Brotherhood's highest decision- making body, Maktab Al-Irshad or Guidance Bureau. El-Shater was released from prison a year ago after serving a five-year sentence handed down by a military court.
This was the second major police crackdown against Brotherhood members in three months. In early May, police arrested 30 Brotherhood members in the southern city of Assiut. They included Mohamed Habib, a university professor who is a former MP and a leading member of the Guidance Bureau. He had been sentenced along with El-Shater to five years imprisonment in 1995.
According to experts on political Islamist groups, 1995 marked the end of the "honeymoon" in relations between the government and the Brotherhood that had lasted for more than two decades. In 1995, the government said that it would no longer tolerate any public activity by the 80-year-old organisation, accusing it of acting as a front for extremist militants who use force in an attempt to overthrow the government. More than 100 leading Brotherhood figures were arrested in January 1995 and referred to trial by military courts, which had been reserved until then for militants involved in anti-government attacks.
Over the past six years, says Diaa Rashwan, an expert on Islamist groups at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, "the government made it a point to round up a number of Brotherhood members every few months to affirm that it was not ready to compromise with the group. There may be, at times, political deals with the group, as we have seen recently in some syndicate elections," he said. "But [the government's message is that] allowing the Brotherhood to fulfil its dream of being recognised as a legal political party is totally out of the question."
While the May arrests in Assiut might have been predicted, having occurred shortly before the Shura Council elections, this month's crackdown was unexpected.
According to Rashwan, "It has become a pattern now to arrest Brotherhood members ahead of any elections, whether for parliament or for professional syndicates. Also, whenever security authorities feel that the group is about to carry out any activity to build its popularity, the response is a campaign of arrests."
Shortly before the parliamentary elections of last November- December, police arrested hundreds of young Brotherhood members, focusing on those with experience in mobilising voters and campaigning. Yet, this tactic proved unsuccessful as was shown by Brotherhood candidates' astonishing performance at the polls. Having won 17 parliamentary seats, the Brotherhood currently has a presence in parliament equal to that of all legal opposition parties combined.
Speculating about the reasons behind the latest arrests, Rashwan told Al-Ahram Weekly that they might be related to rumours that the government is considering dissolving the People's Assembly and calling elections following court cases contesting the validity of the membership of many MPs.
Brotherhood MP Mohamed Heshmat, however, had another theory. "As a matter of principle, of course, I think those arrests are not justified. But they might be linked to reports that elections are to be organised soon at the Engineers Syndicate," Heshmat told the Weekly in an interview. "El-Shater is an engineer and the government is probably trying to avoid a Brotherhood victory like the one we saw recently at the Bar Association."
The Engineers Syndicate, along with the lawyers, doctors and pharmacists syndicates, are known to be Brotherhood strongholds. As the government refused to allow the group its own political party, the Brotherhood has used the professional syndicates as an alternative forum where it can freely promote its political agenda. But the Brotherhood's dominance of the syndicates ended with the 1995 arrests, and the government resorted to a variety of legal tactics to postpone elections there. However, a court ruling last year requiring that Bar Association elections be held forced the government to reconsider. And despite a campaign of arrests that preceded the Bar Association elections, the Brotherhood still managed to win a stunning victory.
Heshmat said that in all recent elections, whether for parliament or syndicates, the group sent clear messages to the government that it did not want a confrontation or a repeat of the scenario of the past two decades of using syndicates as a political platform.
"We did not provoke the government in any way even after our major victory in the parliamentary elections," said Heshmat. "As a matter of fact, we have been criticised by some members for being so mild. We do not want a conflict with the government but, at the same time, we are not giving up our vocation as one of the main political groups in this country. For us, this is a matter of life or death."
Both Rashwan and Heshmat agree, however, that government measures may backfire. "There is stagnation in the domestic political scene," said Rashwan. "So, even if regular arrests do cause harm to the Brotherhood, they are still good news because they keep their name in the limelight and may even create sympathy for them as an oppressed group," he added.
This month's detainees are expected to be interrogated again by prosecutors by the end of this week to determine whether they should be detained an additional 15 days. On Tuesday, prosecutors renewed the detention of the Assiut group pending a trial.
Both Rashwan and Heshmat expressed concern that the two groups, comprising a total of 55 persons, would be referred together to a new military trial on the same charges of belonging to an illegal organisation and acting to revive its activity.
"The government's actions are useless," said Heshmat. "We are an existing group which has a long history and represents an important segment of the population. The claim that we are a secret organisation is false. We are an existing reality, and the government cannot ignore us or get rid of us, regardless of arrests and military trials."
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