FACEBOOK
TWITTER
Muslim Brotherhood Breaking Free of Nasser’s Long Ban on the Group
Decades of political repression of dissent in Egypt has created an iceberg out of the Muslim Brotherhood group -MB- with seven-eighths of its actual size under the surface.
Dr. Ashraf Ezzat / Veterans Today
Egyptian President, Gamal Abdel Nasser
it was really the best of times, it was absolutely the worst of times, back in the sixties. President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s time in Egypt when he reigned like some legendary knight as if he was sultan Saladin, the epitome of Arabic chivalry, who united the Arabs and fought back the western medieval crusaders.
Whenever Nasser addressed the Egyptians and their Arab brethren the Arabs all over were all ears. They believed in him and he believed in his dream of a united and one Arab nation from the Persian Gulf in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west.
Nasser ruled Egypt in 1956 after the Egyptian army had overthrown the royal Egyptian monarchy and forced the last English soldier out of the country, thus ending a long era of foreign colonialism and embarking on a new quest for anti-imperialist nationalism and pan-Arabism
Nasser has led a military coup d’etat in July 1952 to be followed by a popular uprising that paved the way for a domino effect of a series of anti-colonial and anti-monarchial movements in other Arab countries like Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Iraq, and Libya.
It was the prime time of cold war and Egypt was actually leading the Arab world by virtue of its historical and geo-political influence.
Nasser and his fellow officers of the “free officer’s movement” who carried out the military uprising in 1952 were supposed to reinstitute pluralism and democratic election to the political theater in Egypt but they didn’t. Nasser and his comrades thought that authoritarianism, or what they called the “just dictatorship” was the suitable rule for the country and that Egyptians or the Arabs were not ready yet for democracy and this was Nasser’s grave and historical sin that kept the whole Arabic world straining under dictatorship for decades to come.
The crackdown and the iceberg
In a failed assassination attempt in 1954, the Muslim brotherhood movement tried to murder president Nasser in Alexandria while he was delivering a speech. Once they were certain of Nasser’s intention to exclude the opposition and political parties out of the game and to keep the rule of Egypt to his socialist totalitarian regime based on a secular constitution the MB didn’t hesitate to try and eliminate him.
Sayid Qutb behind bars.
Following that failed assassination, and which added to the rapidly growing popularity of Nasser, he declared the MB outlawed and ordered the largest crackdown on its members with the execution and inprisonment of the leading figures of the group including its prominent member, sayyid qutb, whose books and writings shaped the ideology of a lot of today’s Islamist groups all over the world.
From then on, the Muslim Brotherhood group has been officially banned but under the surface it kept growing as grassroots movement all over Egypt and some of the Arab countries. Back then in the sixties the group never really enjoyed that much popularity amongst Egyptians and if they were allowed to practice politics in a free and democratic environment, it could have revealed their actual influence and popularity which was bound to decline with the growing secular nationalism and the unprecedented Nasserite mania on the Egyptian and the Arabic street .
Decades of political repression of dissent in Egypt has created an iceberg out of MB with seven-eighths of its actual size under the surface.
Nasser has been known for his defiant policy to the west and the United States and their imperialist ambitions in the region. that made him America’s boogey man in the Middle East especially after he had sided with the Soviet Union which he depended on for armament and technological support of his megaproject of the High Dam on the river Nile at Aswan.
America saw in Nasser’s project of pan-Arabic nationalism a direct threat to its interests in the Middle East and she was willing to abort that project by any means. This is where Israel, the new Zionist enclave in the Arab world came to fit in. The tide of Arab nationalism did not come to a halt except after Israel had conquered the Egyptian army in the swift and sneaky aggression in June 1967 and which also marked the beginning of the unbreakable strategic bond between the United states and Israel.
Six-day war and the end of the Nasserite dream
The drastic setback or what is known in Arabic as – Naksa- following the defeat of Arabic armies in Egypt, Jordan and Syria has been enough a blow to inflict a deep crack in the pan-Arabic Nasserite edifice that was to be later on almost shattered by the visit of Sadat, Nasser’s successor, to Tel Aviv and signing a peace treaty with Israel.
Nasser virtually died on the day his armies were defeated by the Israeli aggression in June 1967 in what the world and history now knows as the six-day war after which Israel occupied the Egyptian Sinai peninsula, the Jordanian west bank in Jordan and Palestine and the Golan heights in Syria. The MB and the Islamists viewed the Naksa as a divine warning for Arabs to get back on the righteous track and abide by the rule of Islam as they have been highly critical of Nasser’s socialist political system in Egypt.
The whole world has been captured by the dramatic scenes of millions of Egyptians taking to the streets and calling for Mubarak to step down. Well, the world would have been stunned by the never seen before anywhere crowd of people in the millions who swarmed almost every street in Cairo as they marched in Nasser’s majestic funeral and mourned him in tears while his flag-draped coffin slowly proceeded through the town.
People all over the Arab world loved Nasser, despite of all the drawbacks throughout his reign, for the simple fact that he was the one who took pride in being an Arab and he insisted in return that every Arab feel the same way. Nasser was for Egyptians like Nehru was for Indians or Kennedy for the Americans.
The average Arab people never really cared if he was the one to allow the authoritarian rule to prevail in the modern Arab world for decades now. If history was to repeat itself again, the Arabs would rally again behind Nasser and his dream of a united Arab nation.
Democracy or theocracy
Sixty years since Nasser started his 1952 military revolution and the Arab people are out in the streets again revolting against years of lost freedom and unbearable legacy of oppression. Popular uprisings are hitting almost all Arab capitals leaving no regime immune from its strong domino effect.
Arabs want to restore their self respect and freedom; they want to be proud Arabs as Nasser always wanted to. But to do that, they have to succeed where Nasser failed. They have to settle the score with Israel’s aggression in 1967 and reevaluate the shortcomings of the peace treaty that allowed the Israeli side to subdue the Egyptian pioneer and potent influence over the Arab-Israeli conflict.
People in Egypt and the Arab world are trying to start over again but this time with the democracy that the free officers movement thought they were not ready for 60 years ago, the Arabs are mature enough now to decide for themselves and walk down that path of democracy.
But democracy is never an easy game; it’s not a free ticket to political paradise, it is the rule of the majority whom could easily be misled or deceived. And when the silent majority in Egypt and the Arab world speak out, will the water around the gigantic iceberg recede exposing the true colossal threat of MB that could well be the start of another cycle of decades of political abuse in the modern Arab world but this time in the form of theocracy?
Now that they have broken free of a long endured ban that first started by Nasser, will the Muslim Brotherhood movement come back with a vengeance? And the more important question is whether the people in Egypt and the Arab world will yet to miss on another historical opportunity to live in a true and democratic civil society.
For more articles by Dr. Ashraf Ezzat visit his website.
Related posts:
- ARAB UPRISINGS: Time-Out For Israel Is Over
- DR. ASHRAF EZZAT: The Egyptian Torah
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=90965
Posted by Dr. Ashraf Ezzat on Mar 27 2011, With 0 Reads, Filed under World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
COMMENTS
To post, we ask that you login using Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail in the box below.Don't have a social network account? Register and Login direct with VT and post.
Before you post, read our Comment Policy - Feedback
Article more than wonderful Dr. Ashraf
“Open up, Doctor… stick your tongue out, and say ‘ah-h-h-h-h-h!’”
Wow!!!! That was a mouthful.
Now, witticisms aside, and back to what the good Doctor has to say….
Wow! Is right!!!!
No Westerner, or Dr. Ashraf for that matter, can accurately predict where the future will lead an organization such as the MB, Hamas, or Hezbullah, once they have gained legitimate political status and have been relievedof the labels “Terrorist.,” “Fanatic,” “Thug,” and such associated terms, and legitimized or had ther illegitimacy as viable political oganizations recognized and acknowledged.
Of course they have had to operate as theological groups… when you are the most popular movement in your “country.” and your own political leaders have banned and illegitimized you as a political organization, punishable by imprisonment or death, then you must find some other umbrella to wak under. Religion is the next and most obvious for a Jew, a Christian or a Muslim. Recall, the movement which popoulated North America with white people was a dash for religious freedoms of a number of people who called themselves Puritan Pilgrims? At least that is what the mythology of “America” tells us?
I will leave it up to the reader to decide whether America has become a theocratic dictatorship or not. I shall also recommend that the reader study Thucydides, The Peloponnesean War, for his warnings about the fragility and dangers of Democracy, and its vulnerability to the slick spoken rhetoric of split tongued, slick and suave professional politicians.
And, when you have been attacked by violence, policed by violence, incarcerated and executed by violent means, then is it really surprising that some of them respond with violence… it is called “self defense” on one side of the street, “terrorism” only on the other.
Too many people in the world who now celebrate “Founders Days” and honor their national “Founding Fathers and Mothers,” too easily forget that in their own countries, under the leaderships against which they “founded” the nations in which so many of us live, those very founding heroes were once branded rebels, insurgents, criminals, “thugs,” and “terrorists… illigitimate and subject to imprisonment, drawing, quartering, and hanging in many cases, as a great many of them were if and when they were caught.
George Washington, who went uncaught, became a “founder” and a Father… Nathan Hale, who was caught, was hung as a criminal. How many Premiers and Presidents of Israel were once on Terrorist and “Most Wanted” lists? Which raises a question too complex to go into at this moment in this venue, of whether they still belong on such a list or not?
Who is to say what the leaders of Hezbullah, The Muslim Brotherhood, or Hamas will become in history, after the cards have been dealt, all the bets and bluffs called, and the cards shown face up on the table? Do not people have a right to the governments they elect or select and support?
They might well be the founders and Fathers of an entirely new and perhaps worldwide and workable “Democratic” movement which will sweep a great part of the world, and sweep up and out a great many tyrants, despots and dictators.
And, yes, they may turnout no better,or worse, than the founders of Israel, however you may judge them.
Yes, I am sure it will not be easy, clean or tidy… we all make mistakes, and there are a number of un and not-so-very-nice persons involved who will mess up the game as much as they can for their own gains… but, who knows?
But, should we count anyone out, or down simply because of what some tyrant or authoritarian despot labeled him or her some years ago?
Lets get the cards on the table face up before we decide who rakes in the pot, who gets shot or hung for crooked dealing, who gets to buy the drinks, and who gets to go upstairs with the choicest of the ladies in the chorus line, or the handsomest of the boys waiting tables in the dining room.
Earlaiman
WOW! WOW! Well said Earlaiman.
And I might add a great piece of work by Dr.Ashraf.
Thank you Debbie and Earlaiman.
[...] works with a variety of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propagandists, that does not matter that they praise the obvious political base of al-Qaeda, as if al-Qaeda acts as an unofficial armed wing of the [...]
The Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimun), though banned as a political party in Egypt – is the largest and most organized religious and political Islamic movement in both Egypt and Jordan. It also carries significant influence in Occupied Palestine (Hamas) and Syria.
Muslim Brotherhood, though the oldest Islamic movemnet in the Middle East – has totally failed to bring democracy, justice, gender and financial equality into Egypt, because like the later date Islamic movements in Pakistan, Tunisia, and Morocco – it has tried to establish Islamic governance by participating the same post-colonial secularist system created by the anti-Islam West to keep Islam out of politics.
In March 1928, Imam Hassan al-Banna along with six other Islamic activists established Ikhwan, a halaqa (group) as a welfare and Da’wa group. He was invited by British ambassador in Cairo on tea and praised al-Banna for his good character and his social activities. Ambassador even offered him British assistance for his work. The Imam listened patiently, then told the Ambassador that Egypt and all its money is the property of the Egyptian people and that Britain’s time in Egypt was coming to an end. Al-Banna was exiled to Upper Egypt in 1948. On the 12th of February 1949, on a sunny crowded market in Cairo Imam Hassan al-Banna was martyred by an assasin. No one was ever charged with the murder by the British occupation authority.
The Muslim Brotherhood has since the martyrdom of Hassan al-Banna survived all attempts to stifle it. Not only did it grow even stronger in Egypt, but it created branches in all the Arab countries. The Islamic resurgence manifest in the Arab world today owes its origin directly or indirectly to the Muslim Brotherhood Organisation. MB was dissolved in Egypt in 1948. After 1952 military coup, MB was banned and its members persecuted. Among those were Sayyed Qutb and Zainab al-Gazzali. Muslim Brotherhood entered Egyptian politic during the 1980s by fielding independent members. In 2005 election, 45 MB-supported members won Parliament seats. Getting a signal from Washington-Tel aviv, Mubarak cracked down the MB.
Muslim Brotherhood, like Lebanese Islamic Resistance, doesn’t get financial aid from any foreign country. Both organizations are supported by members’ donations and investment in several fields.
Muslim Brotherhood (MB) spokesman has confirmed on the organization’s official website that the current protests against Hosni Mubarak is not an Islamic Revolution like the 1979 Iranian revolution – but a public uprising against a tyrant regime and that MB is in-league with the secular opposition groups. However, pro-Israeli Jewish leaders, being allergic to anything Islamic, are admitting their MBphobia. For example Isi Leibler, former chairman of World Jewish Congress has commented in Jerusalem Post that though he not a supporter of Hosni Mubarak – he fears the post-Mubarak era. “I think they will practice the same restraint as Hamas practices, because they’re soul brothers, those two groups. They are identical. They have ideological origins and they are extremist fundamentalists, and if they play the game, it will only be temporarily,” said Liebler. I wonder why the Zionazi forgot to include Hizbullah as the third ‘soul brother’!
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/muslim-brotherhood-zionists-and-egyptian-protests/
عزيزي د / أشرف عزت
أسمح لي أن أختلف معك في أن شخص الزعيم جمال عبد الناصر هو أول من تبني وأطلق فكرة القومية العربية ، كيف يقدس هذا الزعيم بأنه وحد العرب ولم شملهم في أتجاة الوحدة العربية وأمة العرب وهو ونظامه قد فشلوا في وحدتهم مع سوريا وهو من حارب أخوانه في اليمن وهو من كان يتهجم ويسخر من النظام السعودي وهو ونظامه قد ألصقوا العار بالعرب في هزيمة 1967 ، أي قومية هذه التي كان ينادي بها ولو قيمنا وضع الثورات المشتعلة حالياً بالوطن العربي لأصبحت تونس هي زعيمة وملهمة ومسيرة ثورات الشعوب بمصر وليبيا واليمن وسوريا ليس هناك زعيم يحرك هذه الشعوب ولكن يا سيدي هي إرادة الشعوب هي التي نزعت الخوف من قلوبهم ليحصلوا على حريتهم وكرامتهم في بلادهم ، وأنت تعرف أن شباب 25 يناير في بداية تخطيطهم للمظاهرات ما كان غرضهم ولا سقف طلبتهم هو قلب نظام الحكم بل كان هدفهم الحد من سطوة النظام الأمني بالدولة ضد الشعب ولكن ألتهبت مشاعر الجماهير في كل أنحاء البلاد وأرتفع سقف الطلبات حتى وصلت إلى تنحي الرئيس مبارك وسقوط نظامه ، هل وائل غنيم هو من خطط لكل هذا ؟؟ وبالتالي هل جمال عبد الناصر هو من خطط لحصول الدول العربية على أستقلالها ؟
بالنسبة للعهد الجديد للشعوب العربية وهذه الديمقراطية الحلم الذي يتمناه كل عربي أن يعيش في رحابه ، أعطيك مثال بسيط وقريب جداً ما حدث بالأمس في القاهرة في مباراة كرة القدم بين أحد الفرق المصرية وأحد الفرق التونسية ، أرجوك لا تقول أنها الثورة المضاده وأنهم أعوان وبلطجية أعضاء الحزب الوطني ، هل هذه تصرفات شعب حارب وأستشهد من أجل الحصول على الديمقراطية ، هل هذا فكر وتصرفات شباب ميدان التحرير !! أن تجربة الشعوب العربية لممارسة الديمقراطية في الوقت الحالي كمن يمسك سلك كهرباء وهو لا يدري إذا كان موصول بالكهرباء أم لا فإذا صعقته الكهرباء ومات فأذن هذا السلك كان موصول بالكهرباء وإذا لم يصبه شيء فالحمد لله والله هو الحامي . إنني أرى يا سيدي إننا سوف نمارس الديمقراطية بناءاً على نظرية السلك إما الموت وإما الحمد لله جات سليمة المرة دي .
ليس هناك علم ولا فهم ولا إستعداد للنظر إذا كان السلك موصول بالكهرباء أم لا ..
وأعتقد أن نداء الشعوب العربية بعد ذلك ( الشعب يريد أرتداء القبقاب ) حتى لا تسعقه الكهرباء .