Abstract
The focus of the chapter is on how rapid and brutal political changes during and after 2011 in Egypt facilitated the process of disengagement from the Brotherhood. I do argue that these changes allowed exiting individuals to resist and challenge the power relations institutionalized by the Brotherhood through securing alternative paths of thought and action that served new interests, ideas, and values. Furthermore, they also gave meaning to this disassociation by constructing a credible and effective counter-discourse challenging the ambivalent and dissonant discourse of the Brotherhood. This counter-discourse was contextually substantiated with a lack of ideology, and an absence of galvanizing leadership in the revolutionary process. Judging by their representations of political changes, of their group, and of themselves, members of the Brotherhood could thus take up their individual disassociation as part of general concerns with issues supporting this step such as human rights, accountability, and organizational reform.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Bayat, A. (2017). Revolution without revolutionaries: Making sense of the Arab Spring (p. 11). Palo Alto: Stanford university press.
- 2.
Soueif, A. (2011). Tweets from Tahrir: Egypt’s revolution as it unfolded, in the words of the people who made it (p. 10). New York: OR Books.
- 3.
Bayat, A. (2017). Revolution without revolutionaries, p. 11.
- 4.
Milton-Edwards, B. (2015). The Muslim Brotherhood: The Arab spring and its future face (p. 34). Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge.
- 5.
Author, N (2011). 60,000 Nashit iftradi yusharekon fi mudahrat eid al-shurtah [60,000 virtual activists participate in the demonstration of the police anniversary day]. Available via Bladi-Bladi: http://www.bladi-bladi.com/index.php/news/egypt/614-60.html. Accessed 23 October 2018.
- 6.
YouTube. (2011). Doctor El-Erian wa mawkif Al-Ikhwanmin al-musharkah fi yawm 15 yanayer [Dr. El-Erian and the stances of the Muslim brotherhood toward the participation on January 15]. Available via Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phKSp95ZITw. Accessed 23 October 2018.
- 7.
Beshara, A. (2016). Thawret Masr: Men jumhuryet yulyu ella thawret yanayir [The Egyptian revolution: From Egypt’s July revolution to January 25 revolution] (Vol. I, p. 397). Beirut: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.
- 8.
Tammam, H. (2011). Al-Islamiyoon wal thawra al-Misriyya: Hidoor wa taradod wa musharakah [Islamists and the Egyptian revolution: Absence, hesitation and participation]. Available via Al-Akhbar: https://bit.ly/2Pw2ILn. Accessed 23 October 2018.
- 9.
Beshara, A. (2016). Thawret Masr: Men jumhuryet yulyu ella thawret yanayir, p. 409.
- 10.
Al-Awadi, H. (2014). The division ‘liaise between the central organisation and its university student members’ and is mostly overseen by ‘recent graduates in their 20s and early 30s.
Al-Awadi, H. (2014). The Muslim Brothers in pursuit of legitimacy: Power and political Islam in Egypt under Mubarak (p. 233). London: I.B. Tauris.
- 11.
Lutfy, I. (2017), see Beshara, A. (2016). Thawret Masr: Men jumhuryet yulyu ella thawret yanayir, p. 409.
- 12.
Bayat, A. (2015). Plebeians of the Arab spring. Current Anthropology, 56, S33–S43 (S37). https://doi.org/10.1086/681523.
- 13.
See Tammam, Al-Islamiyoon wal thawra al-misriyya. Indeed, the political events after 2011 echo an older political rift in Egypt in which the brotherhood paid the price as part of the splitting of nationalists and Islamists during the rule of Arab nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser (1956–1970), see Gerges, F. (2018). Making the Arab world: Nasser, Qutb, and the clash that shaped the Middle East. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- 14.
Lutfy, I. (2017).
- 15.
In 2015, four years after the Tahrir Square protests, the group conducted an internal review from within the organization and concluded that it had been insufficiently ‘revolutionary, Brown, N. J., & Dunne, M. D. (2015). Unprecedented pressures, Uncharted Course for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1_19 (2).
- 16.
Wikileaks. (2013). Re: Intelligence guidance foredit. Available via The Global Intelligence Files: https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/12/1263665_re-intelligence-guidance-foredit-html. Accessed 23 October 2018.
- 17.
Kandil, H. (2014). Inside the Brotherhood (p. 137). Malden: Polity Press. The leaders of the Brotherhood refused to disclose the details of the secret meetings even to members of the Shura Council inside the Brotherhood, Beshara, Thawret Masr: Men jumhuryet yulyu ella thawret yanayir, p. 505.
- 18.
Ali, A., & Al-Waziri, H. (2011). Abu Khalil yastaqeel min al-ikhwan: Al-jama’ah etafaqat ma’a Suleiman leinha al-thawrah muqabil hizb wa jameyah [Abu Khalil resigns from the Muslim brotherhood: The movement agreed with Suleiman to halt the revolution in favor of allowing it to create a party and association]. Available via Almasry Al-yawm: https://www.almasryalyoum.com/news/details/122713. Accessed 4 November 2018.
- 19.
Beshara, A. Thawret Masr: Men jumhuryet yulyu ella thawret yanayir, p. 505.
- 20.
For example, the meeting was held in the cabinet headquarters where the picture of Mubarak was centrally hanging high on the hall’s wall above all attendees, a symbolic sign at a time in which tens of thousands were protesting in the Tahrir Square nearby to demand the ‘fall of Mubarak.’
- 21.
Wikileaks. (2013). Transition in Egypt: Suleiman’s strategy. Available via Wikileaks: https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/13/1329987_transition-in-egypt-suleiman-s-strategy-.html. Accessed 28 October 2018.
- 22.
Ban, A. (2017). Ikhwan wa salafiyyon wa dawaish [Brothers, Salafists and members of ISIS] (p. 256). Cairo: Al-Mahrousa.
- 23.
Author, N. (2011). Al-Ikhwanba’d liqa Sulaiman: Muqtrahat al-islah ghair kafeyah [Muslim brothers after meeting with Suleiman: Proposals of political reform are not sufficient]. BBC. http://www.bbc.com/arabic/middleeast/2011/02/110206_suleiman_meeting_opposition. Accessed 28 October 2018.
- 24.
Remarkably, the video posted on YouTube of the statements of Sa’d El-Katatny who attended the meetings with Suleiman is symbolically entitled: ‘El-katatny after meeting Suleiman and betraying the revolutionaries’; YouTube. (2012). Alkatatni ba’ad liqa Omar Suleiman wa kheyanat al-thawar [Al-Katani after meeting Omar Suleiman and betraying revolutionists]. Available via Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3_D4Tgk13o. Accessed 4 November 2018.
- 25.
Statements of El-‘Erian as quoted in Beshara, Thawret Masr: Men jumhuryet yulyu ella thawret yanayir, p. 508.
- 26.
Ibid., p. 504.
- 27.
Lutfy, I. (2017). Perhaps Lutfy and other exiting members have in mind the behavior of other political forces and leaders of the revolution who better read the unfolding of events. Wael Ghonim, the most prominent figure representing the revolution, refused to hold talks with the regime out of calculation that the one in control was the ‘pulse of the street’ driven by a ‘revolutionary dreamy generation with no knowledge of politics, no desire to accept half solutions, and it is ready to sacrifice itself for realizing its targets’; Ghonim, W. (2012). Al-Thawra 2.0: Eza al-sha’b yawman arad al-hayah [Revolution: 2.0 If the people one day truly aspires to life] (p. 295). Cairo: Dar Al-shorouq.
- 28.
Nazily, A. (2017).
- 29.
See Pargeter, A. (2013). The Muslim Brotherhood: From opposition to power. London: Saqi.
- 30.
Nazily, A. (2017).
- 31.
El-Qassas, M. (2017). Late Hossam Tammam, one of the most prolific specialists on the Muslim Brotherhood, put this gradualism rhythmically in the title of his column: ‘Absence then hesitation then participation,’ see Tammam, H. al-islamiyoon wal thawra al-misriyya; On Gradualism, see also El-Sisi, A. (1982). Hassan El-Banna : mawaqif fi-al-da’wa wa al-tarbiya [Hassan El-Banna: Situations in da’wa and education] (pp. 138–139). Alexandria: Dar al-Da’wa.
- 32.
El-Banna underscored the importance of progressing in phases in order to ensure that the movement achieved its objectives. He outlined three main stages: (1) disseminating the group’s ideology, (2) recruiting supporters, and (3) implementing work and producing action, see Al-Anani, K. (2016). Inside the Muslim Brotherhood, religion, identity, and politics (p. 63). New York: Oxford University Press.
- 33.
Ban. (2017). Ikhwan wa salafiyon, p. 255.
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
Adopting this posture in analysis is justified as the ‘Islamist-nationalist fault line that enraged in the 1950s still exists’ during the Arab Spring; Gerges, F. (2013). Introduction: a rupture. In F. A. Gerges (Ed.), The new Middle East: Protest and revolution in the Arab World (pp. 1–40 [32]). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- 36.
See Gerges, Making the Arab world.
- 37.
Indeed, other Islamist groups such as Hamas, which considers itself a ‘wing’ of the Muslim Brotherhood, were more adept at dealing with somehow events similarly witnessing rising ‘nationalist’ sentiments such as the year of its creation in 1987, see Elshaer, A. (2013). Islam in the narrative of Fatah and Hamas. In D. Matar & Z. Harb (Eds.), Narrating conflict in the Middle East: Discourse , image and communications practices in Lebanon and Palestine (pp. 111–132). London: I.B. Tauris.
- 38.
‘A “political culture” usually refers to a set of attitudes held by individuals and aggregated across a national unit,’ Brysk, A. (1995). Hearts and minds: Bringing symbolic politics back in. Polity, 27(4), 559–585 (562).
- 39.
El-Sayyed, K. (2018).
- 40.
Abdellatif, E. (2012). Balaghat al-hurriya: Ma’rek al-khitab al-siyassi fi zaman al-thawra [The freedom rhetoric: Battles of political discourse in the time of revolution] (p. 26). Cairo: Altanweer.
- 41.
See Brown, N. J. (2016). Arguing Islam after the revival of Arab politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 11.
- 42.
Van de Sande, M. (2013). The prefigurative politics of Tahrir Square: An alternative perspective on the 2011 revolutions. Res Publica, 19(3), 223–239.
- 43.
Castells, M. (2007). Communication, power and counter-power in the network society. International Journal of Communication, 1, 245–248.
- 44.
It is an interesting use of a mathematical idea by Castells based on mappings between sets can be one to one, one to many, many to one, or many to many. The simplicity of the idea has an eloquence as ‘many to many’ can describe several properties of the ‘revolutionary moment’ in Egypt featured by dispersion and lack of control of messages.
- 45.
Ibid., p. 248.
- 46.
Colla, E. (2013). In praise of insult: Slogan genres, slogan repertoires and innovation. Review of Middle East Studies, 47, 37–48 (38). https://doi.org/10.1017/s2151348100056317.
- 47.
Ibid., p. 38.
- 48.
See the introduction of Tadros, M. (2012). The Muslim Brotherhood in contemporary Egypt: Democracy redefined or confined? London: Routledge.
- 49.
Searle, J. (1995). The construction of social reality. New York: The Free Press.
- 50.
Colla, E. (2013). In praise of insult, p. 41.
- 51.
Ibid., p. 38.
- 52.
Indeed, early in the 2011 revolution, protestors compared it to the 1952 revolution led by Nasser; see El-Bendary, M. (2013). The Egyptian revolution: Between hope and despair: Mubarak to Morsi (p. 3). New York: Algora Publishing.
- 53.
Abdellatif I., Balaghat al-hurriya, p. 48.
- 54.
See Tammam, Al-islamiyoon wal thawra al-misriyya.
- 55.
I have witnessed some young leaders of the Brotherhood swearing and shouting in an obscene language in the Square especially during events such as the ‘Camel Battle’ which marked the fiercest of clashes between the regime loyalists and the Tahrir protestors. Interviewees confirmed the observation.
- 56.
See Wikileaks. (2011). H: Intel. Secret offer to El. baradei/Muslim Brotherhood-army alliance. Hillary Clinton email archive. Available via Wikileaks: https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/12845. Accessed 30 October 2018.
- 57.
Brown, N. (2011). The Muslim Brotherhood as helicopter parent. Available via Foreign Policy: https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/05/27/the-muslim-brotherhood-as-helicopter-parent/. Accessed 30 October 2018.
- 58.
Aboul-Gheit, M. (2017).
- 59.
Ban, Ikhwan wa salafiyyon, pp. 15–16.
- 60.
Ibid., p. 13.
- 61.
El-Beshbeshy, T. (2017).
- 62.
Leftist activist Sally Toma (Moore) attributed this foundation of the ‘Republic of Tahrir’ to the sense of ‘ownership’ as ‘we now have our own Egypt… I felt it like my own Egypt.’ Available via, YouTube. (2011). Sally Moore: Egyptian activist describes life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L-ue1e3x3c. Accessed 20 January 2019.
- 63.
Abdellatif, E., Balaghat al-hurriya, p. 56.
- 64.
Bayat, Plebeians of the Arab Spring, pp. 534–535.
- 65.
Nazily, A. (2017).
- 66.
Drawn on testimonies of other members of the Brotherhood as carried in Beshara, Thawret Masr: Men jumhuryet yulyu, p. 503.
- 67.
For example, part of this ‘decentralization’ is that as the Brotherhood’s traditional hierarchically positioned leaders neither organized nor participated in the protests initially, the ‘only link between the group and the protests was through the youth who were members of the Brotherhood and who were simultaneously part of the independent protests movements growing since 2004, and who took part on an individual basis,’ see Al-Awadi, The Muslim Brothers in pursuit of legitimacy, p. 232.
- 68.
Bayat, Revolution without revolutionaries, pp. 13–14.
- 69.
Baker, M. (2016). The prefigurative politics of translation in place-based movements of protest. The Translator, 22(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2016.1148438. This has roots in the twentieth-century philosophy at least in Western Europe. See, for instance, Walter Benjamin on the now-time and the Theses on the Philosophy of History. Some of this thinking draws on Jewish and/or Christian theology; I don’t know if similar things have been said within Islamic theology, but I suspect so, perhaps in part because of the role in it of miracles and thus events.
- 70.
Baker, The prefigurative politics of translation.
- 71.
Wickham calls this the ‘Islamist project of ideological outreach,’ see Wickham, C. R. (2002). Mobilizing Islam: Religion, activism, and political change in Egypt (pp. 119–120). New York: Columbia University Press.
- 72.
Bayat, Revolution without revolutionaries, p. 14.
- 73.
Azmi Beshara even identified what he also called ‘utopia’ in Tahrir Square as being of the ‘extreme’ type as it adopts a radical change of state and society, Beshara, Thawret masr: men jumhuryet yulyu, p. 503.
- 74.
Ibid.
- 75.
YouTube. (2011). Mu’atamar shabab Al-Ikhwan [Conference of Muslim Brotherhoods youth]. Available via Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKD9vrrKseU. Accessed 29 October 2018.
- 76.
Ibid.
- 77.
Al-Awadi, The Muslim Brothers in pursuit of legitimacy, p. 237.
- 78.
Hadeyah, S. (2011). Istiqalat Mohammed Habeeb min Al-Ikhwan wa endhimamih ella hizb al-nahdhah [Mohammed Habeeb resigned from the Muslim Brotherhood and joined al-Nahdhah Party]. Available via Yawam al-Saba’a: https://bit.ly/2EpSQBO. Accessed 29 October 2018.
- 79.
Aboul Sa’d, T. (2017).
- 80.
Ibid.
- 81.
Ramzy, A. (2013). Dawlat al-murshid wa sanam Al-Ikhwan [The state of the guide and the statue of Muslim Brotherhood] (p. 134). Cairo: Rodiy.
- 82.
See ’Abdel-Mon’im, I. (2011). Hekayatii ma’ Al-Ikhwan [My story with the MB]. Cairo: Al-Hayaa Al-Misriyya Al-‘Ama leil Kitab.
- 83.
Ban, A. (2013). Al-IkhwanAl-Muslimoon wa mehnat al-watan wal deen [The Muslim Brotherhood and the predicament of nation and religion] (p. 14). Cairo: Al-Neel Centre for Strategic Studies.
- 84.
Scholars contend this ‘exclusivity of religion’ is a legitimating factor and a source of the distinctiveness that sets the religious group and its ideology apart from other groups. See Pape, R. A. (2005). Dying to win: The strategic logic of suicide terrorism . New York: Random House Inc. As religious fundamentalism always contains a political component as well, it involves more than simply a religious perception. It is here that scholars such as Juergensmeyer also link the existence of such groups such as the Brotherhood to this religious-political identity of presenting ‘religious responses to social situations’; Juergensmeyer, M. (2001). Terror in the mind of God: The global rise of religious violence (p. 225). California: University of California Press.
- 85.
El-Sherif, A. (2014). The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s failures a series on political Islam in Egypt. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Available via Carnegie: http://carnegieendowment.org/files/muslim_brotherhood_failures.pdf. Accessed 6 April 2018.
- 86.
Sartori, G. (1966). Opposition and control: Problems and prospects. Government and opposition, 1(2), 149–154 (152). Available via: http://0-www.jstor.org.library.qnl.qa/stable/44481787. Accessed 9 December 2018.
- 87.
Ibid.
- 88.
Ibid.
- 89.
El-Sherif, The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s, p. 12.
- 90.
T.E. (2017).
- 91.
Ibid.
- 92.
Morsi justified the declaration as an attempt to ‘protest the transition to constitutional democracy.’ However, the rhetoric proved unconvincing to many Egyptians as it made his decisions ‘final and unchallengeable,’ raising accusations of being a ‘power grab’ by a ‘new dictator.’ The declaration drew mass protests, leading Morsi to take one step backward and limit the scope of the declaration to ‘sovereign matters’ but he still kept many other powers. Still, tens of thousands of people to the streets of Cairo calling for Morsi’s downfall. After protests and deadly clashes with members of the Brotherhood, some of them got killed, Morsi bowed to the pressure and rescinded most of his 22 November Decree. Other scholars argue that the decree was ‘reasonably and objectively justified’ but it was badly presented, which again related to the debate to the efficacy and credibility of the Brotherhood’s discourse and its power of persuasion, see Beshara, A. (2016). Thawret masr: Min al-thawra ella al-inqilab [Egypt’s revolution: From the revolution to the coup] (p. 284). Beirut: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.
- 93.
El-Nawawy, M., & Elmasry, M. H. (2018). Revolutionary Egypt in the eyes of the Muslim Brotherhood: A framing Analysis of Ikhwanweb (p. 146). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
- 94.
As put by Al-Awadi: ‘The Brothers were unable to count on Egyptians’ sympathy for their rough treatment at the hands of the Mubarak regime lasting indefinitely, because the revolution changed everything’; Al-Awadi, The Muslim Brothers in pursuit of legitimacy, p. 232.
- 95.
M.’A.Z (2017).
- 96.
Quoted in Abed-Kotob, S. (1995). The accommodationists speak: Goals and strategies of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 27, 321–339 (325). https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020743800062115.
- 97.
Al-Awadi, The Muslim Brothers in pursuit of legitimacy, p. 239.
- 98.
Aboul-Gheit, M. (2017).
- 99.
El-Bendary, The Egyptian revolution: Between hope and despair, p. 4.
- 100.
See Brown, The Muslim Brotherhood as helicopter parent.
- 101.
Al-Awadi, The Muslim Brothers in pursuit of legitimacy, p. 238.
- 102.
Aboul Sa’d, T. (2017).
- 103.
For debate on the issue of forming a party in 1980s, see Al-Awadi, The Muslim Brothers in pursuit of legitimacy, pp. 83–84.
- 104.
Al-Awadi, The Muslim Brothers in pursuit of legitimacy, p. 82.
- 105.
Castells, Communication, power and counter-power, p. 242.
- 106.
Wickham, C. (2013). The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist movement. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 154.
- 107.
Lutfy, I. (2017).
- 108.
Morsi joined the Brotherhood in 1978 and its political department in 1992. He served in parliament in 2000, see Al-Awadi, The Muslim Brothers in pursuit of legitimacy, p. 239.
- 109.
El-Sherif, The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s, p. 9.
- 110.
Eason, D. (1965). A systems analysis of political life (pp. 302–303). New York: Wiley.
- 111.
A.E. (2017).
- 112.
S.E. (2017).
- 113.
A.S.R. (2017).
- 114.
El-Beshbeshy, T. (2017).
- 115.
YouTube. (2013). Ezhak ma al-rua’a al-elaheyah fi Raba’ah al-’Adaweyah [Laugh with God-inspired dreams in Rabea’a al-Adweya. Available via Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NAyi00COSQ. Accessed 4 November 2018.
- 116.
YouTube. (2013). Manasat Rabea’a: Gabriel (alayhe alsalam) dahar fi masjed Rabea’a [Rabea’a stage: Gabriel (peace be upon him) appeared in Rabea’a mosque]. Available via Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oOaAbsqVcg. Accessed 4 November 2018.
- 117.
Kandil, Inside the Brotherhood, p. 2.
- 118.
The evocation of these tales in the Rabi’a sit-in can be taken as part of a general understanding inside the Brotherhood that Qur’an, from which some of these tales are drawn, can provide solutions concerning this crisis and ‘every aspect of daily life’; see Al-Hudaybi, H. (1878). Dusturuna [Our constitution] (pp. 9–10). Cairo: Dar al-Ansar.
- 119.
Ibid.
- 120.
Ibid.
- 121.
The author’s interview with Ahmed A.Y., Istanbul, August 25, 2017. This sense of security-related readiness as part of the inflammatory promises made by the leaders to have the campsite ‘secured,’ and to imply to many members that there are ‘weapons’ enough to defend the protestors in case of any attack (based on my field trip during the first few days of the sit-in), was found to be false. During clashes with police in the break-in, there was a small group with guns who killed eight policemen while defending the camp that day, against over 800 protestors got killed by police forces: Kingsley, P. (2014). Egypt’s Rabaa massacre: One year on. Available via The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/16/rabaa-massacre-egypt-human-rights-watch. Accessed 4 November 2018. The variation in figures not only indicate a factual imbalance of power, but it also shows to exiting members the hollowness of reassuring rhetoric of the group’s leaders.
- 122.
M.H. (2017).
- 123.
K.F. (2017).
- 124.
’A.G. (2017).
- 125.
See Matar, D., & Harb, Z. (Eds.). (2013). Narrating Conflict.
- 126.
A.Y. (2017).
- 127.
A.Y.A ( 2017).
- 128.
Ibid.
- 129.
Ibid.
- 130.
Triandis, H., & Vassiliou, V. (1967). A comparative analysis of subjective culture (p. 49). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois.
- 131.
Vonderford, M. (1981). Vilification and social movements: A case study of pro-life and pro-choice rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 75, 166–182 (174).
- 132.
A.Z. (2017).
- 133.
Ban, Ikhwan wa salafiyyon wa dawaish, p. 337.
- 134.
See Aboul-Futouh, A. (2010). ’Abdel-Mon’im Aboul-Futouh: Shahid ‘ala al-haraka al-Islamiyya [’Abdel-Mon’im Aboul-Futouh: A witness to the Islamist movement] (p. 75). Cairo: Alshorouk.
- 135.
Al-Anani, K. (2018). Transformation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Paper presented at a symposium on the transformation of Islamist parties and movements after the Arab Spring: Contexts, tracks, and consequences. Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, 7 October 2018.
- 136.
See Aboul-Futouh, ’Abdel-Mon’im Aboul-Futouh: Shahid ‘ala al-haraka al-islamiyya.
- 137.
Zainab El-Ghazaly, the first leader of the Brotherhood’s Sisters’ section, dedicated her memoirs to those ‘who got tortured’ in prison whom she was one of them, El-Ghazaly, Z. (1987). Ayyam min hayyati [Days from my life] (pp. 1–10). Cairo: Al-Shorouk. Some publishing houses closely linked or owned by Brotherhood members also produced some of this literature; see Rizq, G. (1978). Mazabeh Al-Ikhwanfi sujun Abdel-Nasser [The massacres against the Brotherhood in Abdel-Nasser’s prisons]. Cairo: Dar Al-I’tisam.
- 138.
M.E. (2017).
- 139.
Ibid.
- 140.
I.M.I. (2017).
- 141.
S.M. (2017). On June 29, 2019, the Brotherhood issued a statement admitting that ‘we committed mistakes during the revolution and during our rule of Egypt … which enabled to the counter revolution to [forces] to take over’; https://bit.ly/2YozxPM. Accessed 4 June 2019. Nevertheless, exiting members dismissed the statement as ‘too late an admission as it comes six years after the events which the Brotherhood now claim responsibility for’, see the statements of exiting leading figure Kamal El-Helbawy, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilHYuWyF9Qw. Accessed 4 June 2019. Furthermore, while the Brotherhood asked in the statement for the ‘revolutionary camp’ and ‘different ideologies’ to unite against El-Sisi’s regime, it failed to apply the request on itself. A faction led by significant figures in the divided Brotherhood dismissed the statement (issued by the ‘the General Office of the Muslim Brotherhood’) as not representing them. What also does matter here is how the discourse of the group lacks its distinctive consistency (judged by how all leaders and members repeat the same rhetoric) and coherence (judged by how different parts of this rhetoric have always fit together as a reasonable whole).
- 142.
S.M. (2017).
- 143.
Ibid.
- 144.
Kingsley, Egypt’s Rabaa massacre.
- 145.
Kingsley, P. (2014). Massacre of Muslim Brotherhood enables sister to emerge from shadows. Available via The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/26/massacre-muslim-brotherhood-sisters-egpyt-women. Accessed 20 January 2017.
- 146.
Ibid.
- 147.
Ibid.
- 148.
The media discourse of the Brotherhood before 2011 gave salience to this ‘victimization frame’ as named in El-Nawawy, M., & Elmasry, M. H. Revolutionary Egypt in the eyes of the Muslim Brotherhood, pp. 56–58.
- 149.
Kapur, R. (2002). The tragedy of victimization rhetoric: Resurrecting the ‘native’ subject in international/post-colonial feminist legal politics. Harvard Human Rights Journal, 15, 1–38.
- 150.
Khalili, L. (2007). Heroes and martyrs of Palestine: The politics of national commemoration (Vol. 27, p. 63). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- 151.
https://www.facebook.com/ahmed.ramzy.25/posts/10220003086406994. Accessed 4 July 2018.
- 152.
https://www.facebook.com/ahmed.ramzy.25/posts/10220004010590098. Accessed 4 July 2018.
- 153.
https://www.facebook.com/ahmed.ramzy.25/posts/10220004156033734. Accessed 4 July 2018.
- 154.
- 155.
https://www.facebook.com/ahmed.ramzy.25/posts/10220004781089360. Accessed 4 July 2018.
- 156.
https://preview.tinyurl.com/y5xulaad. Accessed 4 July 2018.
- 157.
https://www.facebook.com/mohamed.aboelgheit. Accessed 4 July 2018.
- 158.
Bayat, Plebeians of the Arab Spring, p. 540.
- 159.
See Wickham, The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist movement.
Bibliography
Al-Hudaybi, H. (1878). Dusturuna [Our constitution]. Cairo: Dar al-Ansar.
Abdellatif, E. (2012). Balaghat al-hurriya: Ma’rek al-khitab al-siyassi fi zaman al-thawra [The freedom rhetoric: Battles of political discourse in the time of revolution]. Cairo: Altanweer.
Abed-Kotob, S. (1995). The accommodationists speak: Goals and strategies of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 27, 321–339 (325). https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020743800062115.
Aboul-Futouh, A. (2010). ’Abdel-Mon’im Aboul-Futouh: Shahid ‘ala al-haraka al-Islamiyya [’Abdel-Mon’im Aboul-Futouh: A witness to the Islamist movement]. Cairo: Alshorouk.
Al-Anani, K. (2016). Inside the Muslim Brotherhood, religion, identity, and politics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Al-Anani, K. (2018). Transformation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Paper presented at a symposium on the transformation of Islamist parties and movements after the Arab Spring: Contexts, tracks and consequences. Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, 7 October 2018.
Al-Awadi, H. (2014). The Muslim Brothers in pursuit of legitimacy: Power and political Islam in Egypt under Mubarak. London: I.B. Tauris.
Al-Waziri, H. (2011). Abu Khalil yastaqeel min al-ikhwan: Al-jama’ah etafaqat ma’a Suleiman leinha al-thawrah muqabil hizb wa jameyah [Abu Khalil resigns from the Muslim brotherhood: The movement agreed with Suleiman to halt the revolution in favor of allowing it to create a party and association]. Available via Almasry Al-yawm: https://www.almasryalyoum.com/news/details/122713. Accessed 4 November 2018.
Baker, M. (2016). The prefigurative politics of translation in place-based movements of protest. The Translator, 22(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2016.1148438.
Ban, A. (2017). Ikhwan wa Salafiyyon wa Daawaish [Brothers, Salafists and members of ISIS]. Cairo: Al-Mahrousa.
Bayat, A. (2015). Plebeians of the Arab Spring. Current Anthropology, 56, S33–S43 (S37). https://doi.org/10.1086/681523.
Bayat, A. (2017). Revolution without revolutionaries: Making sense of the Arab Spring. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Beshara, A. (2016). Thawret masr: Men jumhuryet Julyu ella thawret yanayir [The Egyptian revolution: From Egypt’s July revolution to January 25 revolution] (Vol. I). Beirut: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.
Brown, N. J. (2011). The Muslim Brotherhood as helicopter parent. Foreign Policy.
Brown, N. J., & Dunne, M. D. (2015). Unprecedented pressures, uncharted course for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Washington, DC: Carnegie Brief, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Brysk, A. (1995). Hearts and minds: Bringing symbolic politics back in. Polity, 27(4), 559–585.
Castells, M. (2007). Communication, power and counter-power in the network society. International Journal of Communication, 1, 238–266.
Colla, E. (2013). In praise of insult: Slogan genres, slogan repertoires and innovation. Review of Middle East Studies, 47, 37–48 (38). https://doi.org/10.1017/s2151348100056317.
Eason, D. (1965). A systems analysis of political life. New York: Wiley.
El-Bendary, M. (2013). The Egyptian revolution: Between hope and despair—Mubarak to Morsi. New York: Algora Publishing.
El-Ghazaly, Z. (1987). Ayyam min hayyati [Days from my life]. Cairo: Al-Shrouk.
El-Nawawy, M., & Elmasry, M. H. (2018). Revolutionary Egypt in the eyes of the Muslim Brotherhood: A framing Analysis of Ikhwanweb. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
El-Qassas, M. (2017). Late Hossam Tammam, one of the most prolific specialists on the Muslim Brotherhood, put this gradualism rhythmically in the title of his column: ‘Absence then hesitation then participation’, see H. Tammam, Al-Islamiyoon wal thawra Al-Misriyya.
Elshaer, A. (2013). Islam in the narrative of Fatah and Hamas. In D. Matar & Z. Harb (Eds.), Narrating conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, image and communications practices in Lebanon and Palestine (pp. 111–132). London: I.B. Tauris.
El-Sherif, A. (2014). The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s failures’ a series on political Islam in Egypt. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Available via Carnegie: http://carnegieendowment.org/files/muslim_brotherhood_failures.pdf. Accessed 6 April 2018.
Gerges, F. (2013). Introduction: A rupture. In F. A. Gerges (Ed.), The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (pp. 1–40). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gerges, F. (2018). Making the Arab world: Nasser, Qutb and the clash that shaped the Middle East. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Ghonim, W. (2012). Al-Thawra 2.0: Eza al-sha’b yawman arad al-hayah [Revolution 2.0: If the people one day truly aspires to life]. Cairo: Dar al-Shorouq.
Juergensmeyer, M. (2001). Terror in the mind of God: The global rise of religious violence. California: University of California Press.
Kandil, H. (2014). Inside the Brotherhood. Malden: Polity Press.
Kapur, R. (2002). The tragedy of victimization rhetoric: Resurrecting the ‘native’ subject in international/post-colonial feminist legal politics. Harvard Human Rights Journal, 15, 1–38.
Khalili, L. (2007). Heroes and martyrs of Palestine: The politics of national commemoration (Vol. 27). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kingsley, P. (2014). Egypt’s Rabaa massacre: One year on. Available via The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/16/rabaa-massacre-egypt-human-rights-watch. Accessed 4 November 2018.
Kingsley, P. (2014). Massacre of Muslim Brotherhood enables sister to emerge from shadows. Available via The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/26/massacre-muslim-brotherhood-sisters-egpyt-women. Accessed 20 January 2017.
Milton-Edwards, B. (2015). The Muslim Brotherhood: The Arab Spring and its future face (p. 34). Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge.
Pape, R. A. (2005). Dying to win: The strategic logic of suicide terrorism. New York: Random House Inc.
Rizq, G. (1978). Mazabeh Al-Ikhwan fi sugun Abdel-Nasser [The massacres against the Brotherhood in Abdel-Nasser’s prisons]. Cairo: Dar Al-I’tisam.
Sartori, G. (1966). Opposition and control: Problems and prospects. Government and Opposition, 1(2), 149–154 (p. 152). Available via: http://0-www.jstor.org.library.qnl.qa/stable/44481787. Accessed 9 December 2018.
Searle, J. (1995). The construction of social reality. New York: The Free Press.
Soueif, A. (2011). Tweets from Tahrir: Egypt’s revolution as it unfolded, in the words of the people who made it (p. 10). New York: Or Books.
Tadros, M. (2012). The Muslim Brotherhood in contemporary Egypt: Democracy redefined or confined?. London: Routledge.
Tammam, H. (2011). Al-Islamiyoon wal thawra al-Misriyya: Hidoor wa taradod wa musharakah [Islamists and the Egyptian revolution: Absence, hesitation and particpation]. Available via Al-Akhbar: https://bit.ly/2Pw2ILn. Accessed 23 October 2018.
Triandis, H., & Vassiliou, V. (1967). A comparative analysis of subjective culture. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois.
Van de Sande, M. (2013). The prefigurative politics of Tahrir Square: An alternative perspective on the 2011 revolutions. Res Publica, 19(3), 223–239.
Vonderford, M. (1981). Vilification and social movements: A case study of pro-life and pro-choice rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 75, 166–182.
Wickham, C. (2013). The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist movement. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wickham, C. R. (2002). Mobilizing Islam: Religion, activism, and political change in Egypt (pp. 119–120). New York: Columbia University Press.
Autobiographies
’Abdel-Mon’im, I. (2011). Hekayatii Ma’ Al-Ikhwan [My story with the MB]. Al-Hayaa Abdel-Mon’im, I. (2011) Hekayati ma’ Al-Ikhwan [My story with the Muslim Brotherhood]. Cairo: Al-Hayaa Al-Misriyya Al-‘ama leil Kitab.
Ban, A. (2013). Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimoon wa Mehnat Al-Watan wal Deen [The Muslim Brotherhood and the Predicament of Nation and Religion]. Cairo: Al-Neel Centre for Strategic Studies.
Ban, A. (2017). Ikhwan wa Salafiyyon wa Dawa’ish [Brothers, Salafists and ISIS Loyalists]. Cairo: Al-Mahrousa.
’Eid S. (2013). Tajribati fi Saradeeb Al-Ikhwan [My experience in the basements of MB]. Cairo: Jazeerat al-Ward.
’Eid, S. (2014). Qissati ma’ Al-Ikhwan [My story with the Muslim Brotherhood]. Cairo: Al-Mahrousa.
’Eid, S. (2014). Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimoon Al-Hader wal Mustaqbal: Awraq fil Naqd Al-Zati [The Muslim Brotherhood: The present and The future: Papers from Self-Criticism]. Cairo: Al-Mahroussa.
El-‘Agouz, A. (2012). Ikhwani Out of the Box [A Muslim Brother out of the box]. Cairo: Dewan.
El-Khirbawy, T. (2012). Ser Al-M’abad: Al-Asrar Al-Khafiya li Gama’t Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslemeen [The Temple’s secret: The hidden secrets of the Muslim Brotherhood]. Cairo: Nahdet Masr.
Fayez, S. (2011). Janat Al-Ikhwan: Rehlat Al-Khuroug Min Al-Gam’a [The MB Paradise: The Journey of Getting Out of the Group]. Cairo: Al-Tanweer.
Ramzy, A. (2013). Dawlat Al-Murshid wa Sanam Al-Ikhwan [The State of the Guide and the Statue of Muslim Brotherhood]. Cairo: Rodiy.
Other Interviewees
El-Sayyed, Khaled, a left-wing activist, Doha. 6 November 2018.
*For Interviewees who are Ex-members of the Brotherhood see the appendix Table A.1.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Menshawy, M. (2020). Political Disengagement: Exiting the Brotherhood in 2011 and Afterwards. In: Leaving the Muslim Brotherhood. Middle East Today. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27860-1_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27860-1_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-27859-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-27860-1
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)