“Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft,” Winston Churchill once famously said. We Egyptians are often too kind to offenders; we forgive and forget, or maybe we were just too young to remember or even understand. But history doesn’t forget, and history books, one would hope, will bear witness to the actions of a group that went from peaceful, to violent and peaceful again — depending on what card they thought would win the hand.
The Muslim Brotherhood might seem like the democratic peacemakers who preach unity, work on community development and organize the masses for a more secure square. But to attempt to understand who someone truly is, we can’t ignore their past; after all, it has shaped their present.
Secret Militias
Their beginnings were peaceful: Founder Hassan El Banna’s teachings were mostly directed toward harboring more conservative Islamic leanings in society. However, it was during his peaceful reign that the group's first signs of violence began to creep up.
The Brotherhood's secret military wing was formed in 1945 and one of their first and most notorious assassination victims were judge Ahmed Khazendar and late Prime Minister Mahmoud Al Nokrashy. Al Nokrashy had dismantled the group and arrested several of its prominent figures while Khazendar had imprisoned Brotherhood members for attacking British soldiers. Although El Banna officially denied that the group had anything to do with Al Nokrashy’s assassination, in 1949, a secret body allegedly attempted to bomb the court of cassation — full of people, women, children and all — to get rid of documents condemning the group in his assassination.
The group's leaders have a history of dominance and control over their members. They would famously expel anyone who joined the Liberation Rally that was formed by late President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1954. The Liberation Rally sprung out of dismantling all political parties on the scene and forming the Rally to represent the government as a whole. But it went beyond simple expulsions. Their verbal attacks of the Liberation Front turned deadly on January 1954 when the Brotherhood attacked members of the Rally with batons and even bombs and burning cars in universities in opposition of the newly formed Rally.
The relationship between the Brotherhood and the state turned sour at that point. While leading Muslim Brotherhood figure Abdel Moneim Khelaf was speaking to late President Anwar El Sadat, then Minister of State, about reaching a peaceful solution to the tense relationship, the group was reported to be plotting to assassinate Nasser the day Khelaf was slated to meet Nasser for negotiations, as Sadat recounted in his memoirs.
On October 26, 1954, they executed the first, and failed, attempt on Nasser’s life during a speech in Mansheya Square in Alexandria.
Then Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood Hassan Al Hodeiby had travelled to Alexandria one day before the assassination attempt and then disappeared shortly after a warrant for his and El Sabak Mahmoud Abd Latif's, who attempted the assassination, arrest and execution was issued. When the death sentence was eased to imprisonment, Hodeiby sent a letter to Nasser washing his hands of the crime.
In 1965, the Brotherhood was accused of attempting another assassination on Nasser to topple the regime. Weteran journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal published documents at the time proving the group’s involvement in the assassination. The documents included letters exchanged between Hodeiby and the assassins, proving the attempt was a group, not an individual, effort.
Zienab El Ghazaly, founder of Jamaa'at al-Sayyidaat al-Muslimaat (The Muslim Women's Association) who took an oath of personal loyalty to Banna, published a book detailing her time spent in prison under Nasser. Ayam Men Hayati, (published in 1994 in English as The Return of the Pharaoh) also recounts El Ghazaly's involvement in the attempted assassination. She claims she pledged allegiance to leading Brotherhood member Abd El Fattah Ismail and vowed to follow his call for jihad. She claims Hodeiby approved the assassination and relayed the task to notorious Islamist Sayyid Qutb.
Various other members admitted to claims that the group was behind the 1954 and 1965 assassination attempts, as well as attempts to poison Nasser and various other attempts on officials’ lives. Assassinating Nasser, they claimed, was deemed halal (lawful) because he was leading against God’s rule (mokhalef shar’ Allah) something various Brotherhood members elected to today's Parliament vowed not to break as they were being pledged in for their positions in the People’s Assembly. I have to hand it to them; they are unwavering, at least on that one.
Under Sadat’s rule, the Brotherhood was accused of plotting the assassinations of various artists, singers and actors, including Omm Kolthoum, Abd El Wahab, Abd El Halim Hafez and Shadia.
It’s in the Ideology
The biggest turning point in the history of not only the Brotherhood, but also various Islamist groups that were born as splinters from it, was then-leading figure Qotb’s (who led the Brothers in the 1950s and 60s) book Milestones, which deemed Egyptian society as a whole as heretics. Kotb called for radical action against the society he deemed “pagan”. And although the Brotherhood officially denies any ties to the book and firmly refutes the claims it represents, it was alleged by Heikal and various other media and political personalities that Hodeiby approved of the book when Qotb sent it to him from prison.
With this split in thought came a public interest in the group's ideology. Claims that the various assassination attempts and calls for violence came directly from the Supreme Guide of the time became all the more popular when the public grew aware that one of the most important traditions held by brothers is that they must obey and pledge allegiance to the Supreme Guide.
The group's dogma also openly calls for uniting Muslims across the world under one Islamic caliphate and neutralizing nationalism in favor of allegiance to the Islamic umma. For this, Banna's teachings stress a gradual change from bottom up, believing a change can’t be brought about by an uprising, but rather through infiltrating society’s ranks.
Banna's second phase includes training and mobilizing members. This leads to the final stage, when the troops have rallied and infiltrated all of society's ranks: implementing Islamic rules and principles to transform society into a fully Islamic state — this isn’t a political analysis, it is right their in their historical doctrines, website and published works.
Banna has been quoted as saying that the Brotherhood "will use practical force whenever there is no other way and whenever they are sure the implementation of faith and unity is ready."
Brothers of Today
Today, the group officially renounces violence and, up until January 25 at least, they had renounced any coups that might affect the unity of the country.
But it wasn’t the only or last time the Brothers changed their strategies, as history has shown. They had announced officially that they wouldn’t participate in the January 25 protests in 2011. When the scales turned in favor of the protesters, the group became prominent figures in Tahrir Square.
Similarly, they had announced they wouldn’t nominate a presidential candidate in the upcoming elections, but one of their leading figures, Abdel Moneim Abo El Fottouh, decided to break away from the group to join the presidential race.
And although the group had previously announced they would only take 30 percent of the seats in the Parliamentary elections, they retracted this statement right after the constitutional referendum held last March.
I am not saying all Brotherhood members are violent or deceiving; it just beats me why someone would willingly join a group with a divided political agenda and a bloodstained history. Clearly, there is more than one side to the coin. With a violent history and a divided present, it stands to reason that the Muslim Brotherhood's future stands on unsure ground.
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