Muslim Brotherhood Gettin’ It On
COMMENT: Although the Egyptian political scene remains in flux, with the elections being delayed (as requested by many secular interests involved in the overthrow of Mubarak), the Muslim Brotherhood is advancing its corporatist agenda. Recall that the Brotherhood’s economic theoretician–the 14th century thinker Ibn Khaldun–is regarded by the World Bank as the first advocate of privatization.
In the For The Record series about WikiLeaks and the Piggy-Back Coups (the “Arab Spring”), the hypothesis was advanced that, when the pinballs stopped bouncing around in the Middle East, the Brotherhood would emerge triumphant in the long run. (It may be that their ascent will take place after the failure of a secular democracy, impaled on the rocks of runaway food prices and global economic turmoil.)
So far, the Egyptian Brotherhood is right on cue.
EXCERPT: Only a few months ago, Khairat El– shater was languishing in an Egyptian prison, put there by the Hosni Mubarak regime. Many of his businesses were shuttered.
Now the deputy general guide, or No. 2 leader, of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s dominant political-Islamic group, El-shater shuttles between meetings at one of his once-closed offices in a grimy building in Cairo’s Nasr City district. His visitors include bankers and investors from the U.S. to Australia, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its July 11 edition.
“They all have many questions about one issue: What impact will the Muslim Brotherhood have on the investment climate?” said El-shater, 61.
Founded in Egypt in 1928, the Brotherhood has helped spawn Islamic groups across the globe, including the militant Palestinian movement Hamas. The Brotherhood’s founder, Hassan al-Banna, preached the adoption of Islamic law as the way to lift the yoke of Western domination. Because of its popular appeal and occasionally violent tactics, the group came into conflict with secular Arab states such as Syria and Egypt, where the Brothers were persecuted intermittently from the 1950s until this year’s regional uprisings known as the Arab Spring. The Egyptian Brotherhood has long since disavowed violence.
Analysts say the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party may well emerge as a power in the Egyptian Parliament once elections are held. The party said it won’t field a presidential candidate or seek more than half of Parliament’s seats. . . .
Nice job as usual, Dave. BTW, are you going to try looking into the attacks in Norway sometime soon? The one known perpetrator is probably a right-wing extremist and so far, at least 80 have died because of this............=(
...and don’t forget one of the other main pillars in their electoral strategy:
So it looks like the MB is simultaneously courting big business and the poor. This would be like something out of a Monty Python sketch if pro-big business fundamentalists Islamist parties weren’t the global norm (in part because MB-affiliates are also the global norm for Islamist parties).
You have to give them credit for very effective electoral theatrics. Just imagine how much electoral good will the GOP would have mustered in the US during the last few years if there was literally an official GOP-charity out there selling discounted goods and services to all the Americans put of out work by their crazy policies. In spite of the in-your-face irony/hypocrisy of if it all, a GOP-charity would probably be able to buy off at least 10% of the vote on a bad year. You also have to hope the Egyptian public notices the inherent incentive for a ruling party to allow a populace to fall into such poverty that it needs charity if that charity boosts the ruling party’s polls. Or if they need some new fangled “austerity” to “fix” their economy. Given the MB’s apparent adherence to free-market orthodoxy and that orthodoxy’s current austerity fetish, there could be quite a bit more “austerity” in Egypt’s future.
There’s no business like war:
So it looks like “preparations for war with Israel” might be Egypt’s new stimulus program after the MB takes charge. I guess that sort of explains the military’s not-very-secret support of the MB.
At least we’ll know why nothing will get done about Egyptian poverty. There are more important priorities.
With MB-run governments popping up across North Africa and the Middle East, there’s probably going to be quite a few new bilateral trade policies between MB-run governments. And that will probably include some direct investments like new manufacturing facilities in fellow MB-run countries. Some of them might be controversial, like this one:
One of the first political rift within the MB appears to be whether or not to impose “sin-free” tourism on the country. That would ban booze, bikinis, and mixed coupled sun-bathing from the beaches. Some MB candidates are calling for such measures while others are asking for a hands-off approach to tourists. The Salafists don’t have that problem (they’re all for it), but they aren’t quite sure about ancient statues of gods Egyptian being on public display. And the MB isn’t quite sure about that either. This should do miracles for the economy:
The voting has yet to be completed and the hangover is just getting started.
@Pterrafractyl: It’s all part of the Establishment plan in my view. I wonder if the same thing could be pulled here in America as well?
Here’s an interesting declaration by Hamas, especially given the rocket production plant they’re building in the Sinai. The Hamas leadership declared a “shift” in emphasis towards non-violence, citing the Muslim Brotherhood as a model of moderate, non-violent resistance. They also cited European countries as those especially likely to appreciate the special, non-radical nature of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas’s leaders appear eager to gain that special non-radical status too. Hmmmm...
Since not completely embracing Wahhabism appears to earn Sunni groups the “moderate” badge of honor these day, Hamas may be right about that last part.