By an Egyptian Court Order, the Muslim Brotherhood "BUND" is Disbanded: WHY?

In German, the Bund is a collective, a cabal that is secretive, exclusive and/or ideological.  Within the meaning of that term, the Muslim Brotherhood has been, since its creation in 1928, a veritable Bund.  After huffing and puffing, the Brotherhood has, for the third time blown its house down..  The Brotherhood's house, though based geographically in Egypt, has never been an Egyptian house.  It has been a seat for a complex mix of pan-islamism cum force.

Now disbanded by an Egyptian court order, issued on September 23, the Muslim Brotherhood had reached the summit of ensconcing its agent, now deposed President Morsi, at the Presidential palace for one very long and painful year.  Then came its downfall through a judicial ban, thus epitomizing the saying: "from riches to rags."  The reasons for that ban lie within their ideology, within their actions, and within their insistence on "my way or the highway."

The Brotherhood ideology can be seen in their symbol: Two raised swords held aloft criss-crossed, with the holy Quran on top, and the ominous belligerent and provocative term "Be Ready" (Aaeddou) between the handles of the two swords.  So what is wrong with that Brotherhood symbol?  Many things: (1) The Quran, the primary source of Islamic law and practice, advocates peace and tolerance, not combat, except to counter aggression; (2) The term "Muslim" means the submission by the individual to the will of God, not to the pronouncements of the Brotherhood's Supreme Guide; and (3) "Be Ready,"  in Islamic Law, and in the general context of the 6400 verses of the Quran, connotes readiness for coexistence, interaction, and acceptance of the other through Islam's universalistic concept of DIVERSITY.  In the Quran, diversity is asserted in many verses including: "If God has so willed, He would have made you a single people, but HIS plan is to test you in what He hath given you: so strive as in a race in all virtues."  (Chapter 5, verse 48).

The counter-thesis of diversity is exclusiveness.  The Brotherhood's exclusivity is a doomed ideology, especially in the 21st Century.  It collides head on with faith, logic and changing circumstances.

As to Brotherhood's actions which prove their rejection of diversity, the expose must perforce consist of a factual review of why those repetitive bans were imposed by the State over a period of 66 years within an 85 year period of Brotherhood existence.  That expose, based on facts, demonstrates the constant tension between pan-Islamism and Egyptian nationalism with the latter coming invariably and instinctively on top.

The Muslim Brotherhood had shown itself very capable of mass organization at the village level.  Their relentless process of Islamization is a cottage industry which took advantage of the natural tendency of the Egyptian people, regardless of faith, to be religious.  As a kingdom until 1953 and as an authoritarian dictatorship until the fall of Mubarak in 2011, the Egyptian masses have endured repression of their freedom of speech.  Politics which were expressed in opposition to the Ruler were to be avoided.  But religious freedom was largely immune from such restrictions.  Thus religious freedom became the only safe vehicle for freedom of speech.

The Brotherhood found in that open door its access to the organization of its adherents.  And because Islam is both a faith and a way of life, the Brotherhood's bus could accommodate a broad spectrum of Islamic religious views.  With demographic expansion came also a division of interpreting the Brotherhood mission: Is it Islamic advocacy combined with charity alone, or is it also advocacy combined with political action?  Their mission definition was never decided upon, giving rise to "the secret wing," and the diversion to the back alleys of enforcement.  The two swords became a symbol in action.  Advocacy combined with charity acted largely as a smoke screen for the objective of exclusive political power, with Egypt acting as a launching pad.

The ban of September 23, 2013 of the Brotherhood and all its formations and the seizure of all their assets was the direct result of a series of actions directed against a historically secular Egypt.  It was the third of a series of such bans.

The first ban came about in 1947.  It resulted form a confrontation between the monarchical system in Egypt and the Brotherhood under the leadership of its founder, Hassan Al-Banna.  At that time, the Brotherhood, insulted by a case against one of its members, was caught red-handed in the assassination of Judge Ahmed Pasha Al-Khazendar who was assigned that case.  This act of violence, especially against the judiciary, prompted Prime Minister Al-Naqrashi to declare the Brotherhood an illegal organization.

In a tit-for-tat reaction by the Brotherhood, which fancied itself as ruling the Egyptian street, the "Secret Wing" of the Brotherhood assassinated that Prime Minister in 1947.  Not since 1910 has Egypt lost a prime minister to political assassination.  That was when Prime Minister Boutros Ghali, a Copt, was fatally ambushed.

Reacting to Al-Naqrashi's assassination, and with the feud between the Brotherhood and the Royal Palace reaching its fiery zenith, government agents killed Al-Banna in 1949.  That took place even after Al-Banna had distanced himself from the murder of Al-Naqrashi by saying: "Those who killed the Prime Minister were neither Brothers nor Muslims."  By now, the battle for the soul of Egypt between the Islamists and the secularists was in full swing.

Yet secular Egypt was more forgiving than the Brotherhood.  That latter saw its face on the two sides of the Egyptian coin: on one side was Islam, and on the other was Islam as the ladder to power.  In the same year of 1949, the Brotherhood, under a new Guide, Mamoun Al-Hodheiby, using the Egyptian Constitution of 1923, applied to the Supreme Administration Court for lifting of the ban.  The Egyptian judiciary, being one of the main pillars of modern Egypt, decreed the lifting of that ban in accordance with the constitutional right to peaceful assembly.

Again the Brotherhood, eager to interject itself in to Egyptian politics, caused some of its members to penetrate the proud Officers Corp of the cohesive national army.  Its opening to that critical penetration was the abhorrence by the clandestinely-formed "Free Officers" of corruption in the Royal Palace.  The "Free Officers" attributed the military defeat in Palestine in 1948-1949 to that corruption.  Nasser, being the prime mover of that group, looked benignly upon the brotherhoodization of segments of the Free Officers ranks.  He needed their fervor and their popular base.  Here was a short-lived honeymoon between secularism and Islamism.

That honeymoon was doomed to ultimate failure. While Nasser recruited clandestinely officers on the basis of loyalty to Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood officers, believing on exclusivity, had a different criterion for that strategic recruitment.  Their standard was the degree of fidelity only to Islam -an early microcosm of the battle for Egypt's identity from 2011 to 2013, with the year 2012-2013 being the Morsi year.

Following the dethroning by the Naguib/Nasser coup of both King Farouk in 1952, and of his son, King Ahmed Fouad II in 1953, Egypt was declared a republic.  Its Revolutionary Command Council, desiring to get rid of a parliamentary democracy based on a multi-party system, dissolved all political parties, including the popular and secular mass party of the Wafd which was led by both Muslim and Christian stalwarts.  But the Muslim Brotherhood, describing itself as a society (Jamaa), not a political party, was spared dissolution.

That historic exception of the Brotherhood from dissolution did not fully accord with the Brotherhood agenda.  For there was "the national project" of Nasser standing in the way of the "Islamic project" of the Brotherhood.  Between the two projects, there could be no compromise.  The stalemate forced the Revolutionary Command Council to issue on January 1, 1954, a ban on the Brotherhood.  That second ban amounted to a new year gift from the armed forces to historically secular Egypt.

Ten months later, namely in October 1954, the Brotherhood again sought its weapon of choice - political assassination.  In that month, members of that BUND attempted to assassinate Nasser as he stood in a public square in Alexandria to address the nation.  The plot failed and massive arrests and prosecution of the Brothers followed.

It took the Brotherhood 20 years from 1954 to 1974 to recover, especially under the Sadat regime which in September 1970 followed that of Nasser.  Under its third Guide, Omar Al-Telemsany, the Brotherhood, again in 1974 tried to have the Egyptian judiciary lift that second ban.  But the case collapsed due to a provision in the Nasserite Constitution of 1964 which immunized decisions of the Revolutionary Command Council from the Courts jurisdiction.  Due to that legal defect in the Brotherhood's case which had languished before the Supreme Administrative Court from 1974 till 1991, the case for lifting the ban was thrown out.

Then came the Arab Spring, resulting in the form of the Egyptian Revolution of January 25, 2011 which resulted in the fall of the Mubarak regime on February 11, 2011.  That revolution was purely secular.  It raised in Tahrir Square both the crescent and the cross reminding the world of Egypt's secularism, inclusiveness, and openness to the 21st century.  The Brotherhood came late to that uprising.  But because of its history of mass appeal to Muslims, its grass-roots organization, and its promises to be a part of the Egyptian whole, its candidate for President Morsi won.

That victory proved to be Pyrrhic -a victory gained at a great cost.  It caused the Brotherhood to fall in the trap of "Egypt was subsidiary to Islamization."  It revealed the bond between the Brotherhood and the terror elements of Hamas; it aggressed against both Al-Azhar and the Coptic church; it called the disruption of both urban and rural Egypt, through sit-ins, a "a peaceful exercise of the right to assembly; it declared the areas of those sit-ins "Islamic emirates;" it attacked the army and the police by various types of weapons from rocks to RPGs; it caused havoc in the two provinces of Sinai which became, since 1906, an integral part of Egypt; it described the Second Egyptian Revolution of June 30, 2013 and its resultant dismissal of the Islamist regime of Morsi as a coup; and it rebuffed all invitations to becoming a part of the transitional government of Hazem Al-Beblawi which it regards as devoid of legitimacy.

The Brotherhood's third ban, declared by the Court of Urgent Matters on September 23, is all inclusive of its organizations and assets.  The ruling by that fast track Court amounts to a preliminary injunction which shall undoubtedly be confirmed by a higher court, the Supreme Administrative Court -the very court which had repeatedly resurrected the Brotherhood from its two previous bans.

The Egyptian proverb says: "The third hit is the most enduring."  So it shall be with the BUND whose returned to an underground existence shall be of no avail to its attempt to subvert secular Egypt.

The reign of the Brotherhood collapsed primarily because that Bund has proved that it does not comprehend diversity within the context of Egyptian nationalism.  And when the European Union asks Cairo to explain why the Brotherhood was banned, it is incumbent upon Egypt, in defense of its sovereignty, not to respond.

It seems futile to guide the Muslim Brotherhood to two pages of history for educational purposes.  One page provides a contemporary lesson in diversity even in the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Though Iran has only 9000 citizens of the Jewish faith, its present Parliament includes an Iranian adherent of that faith.

The other page is from the history of modern Egypt under one of my heroes, namely Muhammad Ali, its viceroy under the Ottoman Empire.  The Empire collapsed for many reasons including the ignorant advice by Muslim scholars to the Sultan not to introduce European expertise for training including that of the armed forces.  Muhammad Ali, a true practitioner of diversity, launched modern Egypt in 1805 supported by French technology.  Within a mere 30 years, the Egyptian armies under the great General Ibrahim Pasha, his son, were at the gates of Istanbul, ready to bring the entire Empire under the poised rulership of Muhamad Ali.  Europe saved the Sultan, and the family of Muhammed Ali got under its hereditary crown until the Nasser coup in 1952.