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Part 1 of a series on political Islam in Egypt

To understand Egypt’s current political situation, it is crucial to examine how and why the Muslim Brotherhood—a leading political actor just over a year ago—met its demise so suddenly and forcefully. Though it had to operate in a hostile political environment, the Brotherhood ultimately fell because of its own political, ideological, and organizational failures.

Key Themes

• The organization’s inclusion in the political system did not lead to its democratization and moderation, as some observers had predicted it would. Instead, the lack of political consensus in Egyptian society combined with the Brotherhood’s unwillingness to undergo a process of ideological and organizational transformation undermined the group’s democratic potential.


• The Brotherhood’s leadership was made untenable by its inability to placate the powerful old state or win over crucial elites and other political actors.


• Ideological hollowness and opportunism undercut the Brotherhood’s claims to a legitimate “Islamic democratic project,” and the organization’s structural deficits led it to be widely distrusted.


• The Brotherhood’s failure to transform electoral victories into sustainable political control effectively eliminated the possibility of Islamist domination. While its fall did not signify the end of political Islam in Egypt, it did mark the end of the utopian idea held by some that “Islam is the solution.”

Three Primary Faults

Politically, the Brotherhood misread the situation. It moved toward political domination too quickly, making a series of tactical mistakes in the process. It failed to either appease or successfully confront institutional power bases, and, believing its electoral victory to be an irreversible popular mandate, it was reluctant to make the concessions necessary to avoid alienating crucial secular elites. The Brotherhood waged an unwinnable battle, driven more by ideological zeal and delusions of grandeur than by a realistic assessment of the political environment.

Ideologically, the Brotherhood was shallow and opportunistic. It proved too willing to sacrifice elements of its ideology for short-term political victories. Furthermore, fundamentally antidemocratic components of Brotherhood dogma and the disconnect between the group’s professed ideology and the policy positions it assumed highlighted its incompatibility with modern democratic politics.

Organizationally, the Brotherhood was incapable of adaptation. Its rigid, hierarchical structure prevented it from successfully reacting to rapid societal changes. The Brotherhood’s attempts to promote organizational unity, while successful at muting the impact of intragroup differences, contributed to the exodus of fresh talent and ideas. Its organizational introversion and conspiratorial mind-set also undermined its ability to build a broad network of support.

Introduction

With attention in Egypt focused on the current political situation, it is critical to look back and understand how the country arrived where it is today. Crucially, this entails a serious examination of the failures of the Muslim Brotherhood. Just three years ago, in 2011, the Brotherhood looked to be a major political player and inheritor of power after the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak. Today, however, the group has been pushed aside and largely discredited in the eyes of many Egyptians. What happened?

In the wake of Egypt’s 2011 uprising, the Brotherhood faced the challenge of balancing its Islamic principles with popular demands for democracy and socioeconomic reform. The group failed to rise to the occasion and ended up failing both as “conservative democrats” and as Islamists. Its only real success was the preservation of organizational unity, but this came at the cost of perpetuating the movement’s lack of a sustainable ideology and political project.

In the wake of Egypt’s 2011 uprising, the Brotherhood faced the challenge of balancing its Islamic principles with popular demands for democracy and socioeconomic reform and ended up failing both as “conservative democrats” and as Islamists.

Prior to the Brotherhood’s rise to power, many believed that its political inclusion would lead to its democratization and moderation. However, this view appears to have broken on the rocks of reality, and its collapse was the result of a series of the Brotherhood’s political, ideological, and organizational failures. The group was also unable to read the real balance of power and the post-Mubarak social and political realities and act accordingly.

Politically, the Brotherhood’s bid for domination failed to effectively appease or confront the institutional power bases of the old state, which was the real power holder in the country throughout the post-Mubarak transitional period and even after the election of a Brotherhood-affiliated president, Mohamed Morsi, in 2012. Brotherhood leaders were also unable to appreciate the profound changes in Egyptian society that the 2011 uprising had produced. Ideologically, the Brotherhood failed to develop a nuanced platform that was attentive to political needs and rested on both Islamic legitimacy and democratic correctness. It proved too willing to compromise its already-hollow core ideology for the sake of short-lived tactical political victories. And organizationally, the rigidity of the Brotherhood’s structure, which lacked meritocracy, inclusiveness, and transparent decisionmaking, contributed to the movement’s inability to adapt to a rapidly shifting political landscape. These combined failures made the Brotherhood end up seeming to many Egyptians as a vestige of the old system rather than a herald of a forward-looking new Egyptian polity.

Political Failures

From early 2011 to the middle of 2013, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood failed to lead an inclusive democratic transition, appreciate the full diversity of Egyptian society, and understand the need for a completely reinvented political culture. Brotherhood leaders did not marshal the resources, networks, and knowledge necessary for the implementation of effective reform policies. These failures were the result of a complex relationship with the state and a series of tactical blunders on the part of the organization’s leadership.

For the political inclusion of the Brotherhood to lead to the group’s democratization, two conditions were necessary. First, post-Mubarak Egypt required a consensus on new rules of the political game. Second, the Brotherhood needed to undergo an ideological and organizational transformation, including by embracing the principles of democracy, pluralism, individual freedoms, citizenship, and equality before the law. Neither of these conditions was fulfilled.

The uncertainties of the post-2011 political sphere are partly to blame for the lack of consensus on new rules of the game. Wrangling between those political actors striving for major institutional changes and those much stronger actors eager to preserve the status quo contributed to a complex political space unamenable to agreement. But the Brotherhood’s own political failings cannot be discounted, given the group’s dominance over Egypt’s post-2011 elected institutions.

The Brotherhood and the State

The Muslim Brotherhood has had a complicated relationship with the modern authoritarian state in Egypt. Historically, the state sidelined the Brotherhood and other Islamist movements, but they nevertheless blossomed in the vacuum created by the state’s socioeconomic ineptitude. The death of politics brought about by the state’s authoritarianism left only religion as a refuge. The Brotherhood filled the gap left by the state, accumulating considerable social, cultural, and economic capital in the process.

The Brotherhood cherished the idea, deeply embedded in Egyptian politics, that the state—the most modern and potent institution in society—was the principal instrument through which all ideological and political movements could realize their own goals. The conquest of the old state, with its three main features of elitism, authoritarian guardianship, and structural violence, therefore became the Brotherhood’s central long-term goal.¹

The movement deemed control over the old state necessary to enact its broader political vision. Brotherhood leaders believed that all they needed was a process of elite turnover to gain control of the existing state institutions, which they could Islamize once they had consolidated power. They aimed to position themselves in the long run to be able to capitalize on such an opportunity. The thirty years of Mubarak’s rule gradually witnessed the full integration of the Brotherhood into Egyptian politics. Over time, the group developed into a massive political movement that crowded out social alternatives but lacked the flexibility to challenge the status quo.

Moves Toward Domination

Throughout the eighteen days of demonstrations in January and February 2011 that toppled Mubarak, the Brotherhood was careful not to be perceived as taking control of the protest movement in terms of its slogans, discourse, or political demands. Brotherhood leaders were aware that the protests were not dominated by Islamist ideas but rather oriented toward the broad goals of freedom and social justice. They were also aware that other political groups and movements were instrumental in mobilizing demonstrators and writing the narrative of the uprising. As a result, Brotherhood leaders were careful not to alienate other protesters by expressing their Islamist views too overtly.

After Mubarak’s fall, a smart strategy would have been for the Brotherhood to restrain its power and moderate its political objectives for the time being. It could have supported an expedited constitution-writing process, endorsing an ad hoc panel to draft the document, with members representing all political and ideological factions and a composition not tied to the outcome of parliamentary elections. In the spring of 2011, the revolution was still fresh, and the institutions of the old state, including the military, police, bureaucracy, and judiciary, were still on the defensive. At that time, a united revolutionary front could arguably have secured better constitutional provisions regarding civil-military relations, checks and balances, political freedoms, and democracy.

The Islamists would not have been satisfied with the limited role for Islamic sharia that the new constitution would likely have embraced. Yet a calculated power-sharing pact could still have secured a place for Islamists in the system without intimidating or alienating secular revolutionary and reformist groups. Such an arrangement could also have allowed the Brotherhood to escape the regime’s crackdown that happened two years later.

A workable partnership could have been established allowing the Brotherhood’s organizational and popular prowess to support a united front in negotiations with the old state. In terms of the state’s democratic character, the final outcome would probably not have been much better than the 2012 or 2014 constitutions—in both cases, the old state emerged as a winner. But at least the process would not have divided the antigovernment demonstrators of early 2011 or polarized society to such an extent. Furthermore, the threat of a Mubarak loyalist assuming the presidency would have been strongly diminished if the Brotherhood had thrown its electoral weight behind a pro-change revolutionary or reformist figure. Even if a Mubarak loyalist such as Ahmed Shafiq had made it to the presidency, he would have had to struggle with an already-ratified, restrictive new constitution, sustained economic challenges, and a political opposition led by both secular parties and Islamists whose reputation had not yet been tarnished.

However, this is not the path the Brotherhood chose to take. Instead, the movement prematurely shifted its political approach after Mubarak’s downfall. To the fear and dismay of many in society, the Brotherhood opted to flex its political muscles, excluding and looking down on other political movements. The Islamists in general threw their weight behind an electoral path designed to make them the leading force within elected institutions and therefore assumed the burden of governance in both the parliament and presidency. This made the Brotherhood the sole negotiator with the military and other institutions of the old state. The Brotherhood sought to defer the drafting of a new constitution until after parliamentary elections—a sequence that Brotherhood leaders believed could provide the group with legitimacy as a representative of both the people and the revolution. Accordingly, the referendum of March 19, 2011, on constitutional amendments, which both the Brotherhood and the old state backed, postponed the constitution-writing process until the following year—after the election of a new parliament.

Given the magnitude of past government failures and the Brotherhood’s own lack of a genuine political project, voluntarily opting to take full responsibility for the post-Mubarak political system was political suicide.

Many factors led to the Brotherhood’s shift in political tactics, including the group’s nonrevolutionary character, its type of ideology and organization, and its fear of being sidelined by a constitution-writing process dominated by secular liberals and leftist elites. Also significant were the Brotherhood’s deluded belief in the power of its massive comparative advantage and encouragement from the old state itself, which preferred to negotiate with conservative and organized actors like the Brothers. This path secured some initial tactical gains, including the appeasement of the Brotherhood’s broad Islamist grass roots and the bolstering of the group’s foothold in the political system. Yet ultimately, it cost them greater losses.

The shift was also the result of the Brotherhood leadership underestimating the meaning of the 2011 uprising. The Brotherhood viewed the unrest as a heavenly gift that rewarded the group for its past sacrifices and eradicated all constraints that Mubarak had placed on it. Brotherhood leaders were therefore totally occupied with how to seize this golden opportunity, maximize their political gains, and dominate the post-Mubarak political sphere—regardless of the implications of their approach on the prospects for Egypt’s democratic transformation and even their own long-term interests. But given the magnitude of past government failures and the Brotherhood’s own lack of a genuine political project, voluntarily opting to take full responsibility for the post-Mubarak political system was political suicide.²

Other Islamist Political Models

The Brotherhood in Egypt was particularly fascinated by the Islamist model of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP). Based on this model, the Brotherhood believed that it could come to power via the ballot box and lead a majoritarian procedural democracy. It also maintained that it could consolidate its power through a series of international arrangements and domestic economic achievements based on a flexible combination of Islamist ideology, conservative culture, and economic liberalism.

However, the Brotherhood failed to successfully replicate the AKP model in Egypt due to its lack of a strategic vision, qualified cadres, and political expertise compared with the AKP.³ The Brotherhood was unable to spur economic development, failed to build a society-wide center-right coalition to back it in its struggle with the old state, and did not bring about the genuine ideological revision necessary to produce a version of the AKP’s “Islamic liberalism.” Instead, the Brotherhood reduced itself to being just another conservative political faction, squandering its decades-long historical claim to be a leader in the struggle against “imperialist designs.”

Another Islamist model that likely caught the attention of Brotherhood leaders was that of Sudan in the 1980s and 1990s. In that country, Islamists gained power through an alliance with the military. Any attempt to replicate the Sudanese model, however, was unrealistic since the Brotherhood failed to build an effective relationship with the military in Egypt.

Confronting the Old State

Key to the Brotherhood’s failed bid for political domination was the group’s inability to forge a working relationship with the state institutions in charge of “legitimate violence” and rule making: the military, police, and judiciary. A conflict between the Brotherhood and the old state was most probably unavoidable in the long run given the historical rivalry between them and the incompatibility of their respective interests and worldviews. But such a conflict did not have to happen so quickly. Had the Brotherhood played its cards better, it could have postponed the eventual confrontation. The organization’s postrevolutionary shift in relations with the old state, from a failed policy of appeasement to an even more failed policy of confrontation, contributed to the ultimate outcome.

Overall, the Brotherhood’s bid for domination misunderstood the balance of power in Egypt. Brotherhood leaders overlooked the fact that the real levers of power still rested in the hands of the old state. The military lay at its core, but the old state also encompassed a number of other institutions, including the police, ministerial bureaucracies, public-sector companies, the judiciary, municipalities, and all these institutions’ related patronage networks. Taking on these well-entrenched institutions would be a heavy lift even if all opposition forces acted together, but the Brotherhood’s decision to go it alone made the challenge even more difficult.

Throughout the post-Mubarak transitional period, the old state maintained its inherent traditional hostility toward Islamists. The institutional actors of the old state particularly abhorred the peculiar character of the Brotherhood and its international extensions, which they saw as a parallel state that threatened their interests. The Brotherhood did not fall into line with the old-state actors’ worldview and their self-ascribed role as the “guardians of the national interest and identity of the country.” Furthermore, the old state presided over a network of players with vested economic interests that were sensitive to the emergence of new power seekers like the Brotherhood.

Regional factors were also significant. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were concerned, not just by the rapid ouster of their ally Mubarak, but also by the increasing prominence in Egyptian politics of the Muslim Brotherhood—a group supported by their regional nemesis Qatar. The potential domino effect of the Brotherhood’s ascent in Egypt was threatening to these conservative Gulf regimes, which were already suspicious of their own domestic Brotherhood organizations. Thus, they were determined to throw their political, economic, and media weight behind the anti-Brotherhood camp in Egypt, including the old state and the opposition. The political, economic, and financial support provided by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and to a lesser extent Kuwait to the July 3 military coup that ousted then president Morsi and the caretaker regime it installed was indispensable to its survival.  

Nevertheless, between 2011 and 2013, the old state chose to cooperate with Islamists, including the Brotherhood, to neutralize the revolutionary mood in the country and cast all revolutionary forces as unreliable and irresponsible actors. This tactical decision ultimately paid off for the old state. The radical wave of the revolution waned, and the Brotherhood made enemies of the revolutionary youth movements and lost the support of average voters as a result of policy failures.⁴ After that, it was much less costly for the old state to confront the self-isolated Brotherhood.

By contrast, the Brotherhood did a poor job of its tactical engagement with the state. Unlike its counterpart in Turkey, the group lacked experience in bureaucratic administration, and the well-entrenched existing bureaucracy defied the Brotherhood’s attempts to exert control over it.⁵

Failure to Include Other Revolutionary Factions

The Brotherhood underestimated the level of anger among revolutionary and reformist factions. These groups reacted negatively to the Islamist electoral landslide and the Brotherhood’s overt attempt to dominate the process of establishing the foundations of a new political system. The tech-savvy youth movements that were at the heart of the January 2011 uprising despised the Brotherhood’s protofascist dream of establishing cultural domination based on “Islamist common sense.” Also, secular elites’ fundamental opposition to Islamist ideology and their unwillingness to live with the Brotherhood’s surprise electoral victory weakened the position of the revolutionary and reformist blocs, which paved the way for the subsequent comeback of the old-state hegemony.

The Brotherhood believed that a strong victory at the polls was enough to stamp its newly acquired dominant political position with popular legitimacy. But this proved to be a serious miscalculation. Liberal, nationalist, and leftist elites might not have had the same electoral clout as the Brotherhood and the Salafists, but that did not mean that they would easily accept the unexpected and unsettling electoral outcome of a Brotherhood takeover of Egypt’s parliament, presidency, and constitution-drafting process.

The Brotherhood believed that a strong victory at the polls was enough to stamp its newly acquired dominant political position with popular legitimacy. But this proved to be a serious miscalculation.

The elites’ opposition to the Brotherhood was rooted in the fundamental incompatibility of secular and Islamist worldviews. That made the elites hypersensitive to the threat of an Islamist takeover that they believed would undermine their liberties, economic interests, and way of life and, no less dangerously, split the country and ignite social strife. While these elites could likely have lived with a gradual movement of the Brotherhood into politics, their fears were justified by the group’s swift and exclusivist approach, which constituted an imminent threat that the elites refused to accept.

Despite their lack of strong electoral support, these well-educated, secular elites remained politically relevant since they represented the core of the privileged classes who ran the country. These urban classes refused to accept the idea that they needed to forego their lifestyles and social status and submit to the uncertainties of intolerant, divisive, and hate-based religious politics just because the Islamists received strong electoral support in Upper Egypt and rural parts of the Nile Delta. In a country like Egypt, where relations between religious institutions, the state, and society were historically quite unsteady, commanding electoral victories were not nearly enough to secure political and social legitimacy. Deeper agreements about the place of religion in society had to be forged to assuage concerns and establish Islamist legitimacy in the eyes of non-Islamist Egyptians.

The Brotherhood attempted to rely on patronage to secure support within the traditional bastions of the old state, but such patronage did not help allay the concerns of these other influential secular actors.⁶ To make things worse, the far-from-clear relationship between former president Morsi, while he was in power, and the group he belonged to (the Brotherhood), with its secretive, opaque structure and regional extensions, raised fears among already-suspicious non-Islamist observers.

The huge Islamist demonstration in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on July 29, 2011, which embraced slogans about Islamic identity and sharia, effectively negated the possible radicalization of street politics in the wake of the January 2011 uprising. Hundreds of thousands of Islamists, including Salafists, Qutbists, and jihadists, poured into Tahrir Square from all over Egypt. Their frightening theocratic discourse raised serious concerns among many Egyptians that radical democratic politics aimed at dismantling the old state could pave the way for a takeover by sectarian, intolerant, and reactionary Islamists. In a sense, the fantasy that a new radical democratic political culture was easily achievable in Egypt came to an end that day.

The presidential campaign of radical Islamist firebrand Sheikh Hazem Salah Abu Ismail sent shock waves throughout secular circles that feared the rise of an Egyptian version of Iran’s Ruhollah Khomeini. The Brotherhood’s trademark conservative self-restraint and refined standpoints, which could have soothed fears, were absent in the rhetoric of this radical Islamist cleric and his anti-state revolutionary populism. Rather than the elite-based terrorist activities of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden or jihadist military operations against selected regime targets, Abu Ismail’s source of inspiration was the anti-regime protests embraced by the masses that were at the heart of Khomeini’s “comprehensive Islamic revolution” in Iran—a phenomenon even more terrifying than al-Qaeda-style terrorism.

Practically speaking, an Egyptian version of Khomeinism had no real chance of success. Even the Brotherhood and Salafist Call, another Islamist group, were unhappy with Abu Ismail’s rhetoric and have worked with the old state and the social mainstream to counter it. Still, the presence of such rhetoric served only to strengthen popular support for the old state as the sole line of defense against extremism and disorder.

Tactical Blunders

The Brotherhood failed to react effectively to challenges to its leadership and legitimacy. Increasing social resentment manifested itself over time in the Islamists’ sectarian hate speech, threats against freedom and secular lifestyles, and concrete policies in the (albeit short-lived) elected parliament, which failed to address economic crises or improve living conditions and public services. This dwindling social support was evident in the results of the 2012 presidential election, in which the Brotherhood lost some of its traditional strongholds in parts of Alexandria and the Delta, and in persistent labor strikes, informal sector disturbances, and mass protests under Morsi. The near-even result in the second-round presidential contest between Morsi and Shafiq indicated the depth of polarization in society.

The Brotherhood failed to react effectively to challenges to its leadership and legitimacy.

This should have been a wake-up call for the Brotherhood. Reaching out to the opposition, granting concessions to enlarge its ruling coalition, and building a consensual democracy might have been effective political choices for the Brotherhood. These steps might have enabled the movement to stabilize the situation, enhance its standing vis-à-vis the old state, and mitigate the lack of trust that existed. However, despite initial attempts at such a strategy,⁷ the Brotherhood, to its own detriment, ultimately chose the exact opposite path, adamantly refusing to make any concessions and alienating not just secular groups but even Islamist allies like the Salafist Nour Party.⁸

The Brotherhood also suffered from political inconsistency and the lack of a long-term strategic vision. Brotherhood leaders—self-styled political tacticians—inconsistently caved to the demands of some political actors, both in rhetoric and in policy, just to maximize short-term tactical gains, regardless of the long-term strategic implications.

As such, the Brotherhood appeared to shift alliances frequently. First, Brotherhood leaders appealed to the conservative middle class, which was hungry for stability, to gain their votes in the March 2011 constitutional referendum and the November 2011 parliamentary elections. Only a few months later, Brotherhood leaders targeted Islamist voters during the first round of the 2012 presidential elections, calling on them to vote for the “Islamist candidate” Morsi. Shortly thereafter, they began courting anti-old-state revolutionary factions to gain revolutionary legitimacy and secure this badly needed constituency in the second round of the 2012 elections against the Mubarakist contender, Shafiq.

While Morsi was in power, the Brotherhood engaged other Islamists (including some of the most outspoken radical Salafists and jihadists) to build a solid base of support with which to counter rising anti-Islamist sentiment. At the same time, however, the group, in its executive and legislative decrees, decisions, and draft legislation, caved to the demands of old-state institutions, such as the military, police, and business elites. When viewed together, the Brotherhood’s actions seemed incoherent. Its attempts to appeal to different political factions at different times appeared opportunistic and satisfied no one. Moreover, other factions saw nothing in the Brotherhood’s actions except arrogance, self-serving behavior, and ideologically driven bids for exclusive domination. The end result was the alienation of all possible allies and mounting hostility toward the Brotherhood from all corners. In this context, it became easy for the old state to turn against the Brotherhood since it could count on the support of the non-Islamist opposition, Gulf patrons, and, most importantly, wide segments of the population exhausted by three years of instability and deteriorating economic conditions.

Admittedly, many non-Islamist elites would have remained avowedly anti-Islamist and lent their support to the old state regardless of any attempts the Islamists made to build confidence. Nevertheless, it was the Brotherhood’s responsibility, given its sheer power, to either lead the Islamists toward the acceptance of ideological concessions or opt for a gradualist approach instead of rapidly seeking political domination. While the first option was not feasible in light of ideological intransigence among Islamists (particularly Salafists), the second would have been possible had Brotherhood leaders not badly misread the situation.

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