For the Muslim Brothers, No Profit From Equating Between Themselves and the Prophets

The Quran in Chapter 21, verses 68, 69 and 70 relates the suffering of Abraham until saved, by the grace of God, from burning by fire.  These verses depict the power of the Almighty over those of his creatures who have flung Abraham into a raging fire.  Their purpose was to get rid of his persistent calls for the worship of God as one, to replace idolatry.  The text reads as follows: "They said, 'Burn him and protect your gods, if ye do anything at all.  We said, "O Fire! Be thou cool and a means of safety for Abraham.  Then they sought a stratagem against him: but We made them the ones that lost the most."

How does this fit in with the campaign being waged today by Egypt's transitional government against the leadership of the now banned Muslim Brotherhood?  Plenty.  From behind its prison bars, the Brotherhood's leadership is still allowed to publish and vent its grievances against the Second Egyptian Revolution of July 3.  Calling that massive popular uprising against the Morsi Islamist regime "a coup," that leadership finds in the Quran what it fancies as parallels between the Prophets of old and themselves.

The lives of the Prophets are related throughout the Quran to prove God's power over those who wished in vain to defeat monotheism, for which Islam strongly stands.  In their collectivity, these verses provide a message of eternal hope to all those who suffer injustice.  It is the pre-destined victory of good over evil.

Now here is an irony: The Muslim Brotherhood, through its extensive reliance in its public campaign against the removal of Morsi as President, and the measures that followed in its wake against its leadership, is evoking the story of David and Goliath.  Its extensive use of the Quran does not stop there.  Through one of its imprisoned leaders, Dr. Silah El-Din Sultan, a professor of Sharia, the Muslim Brotherhood fancies its imprisoned leaders as the new Prophets.  That professor expounds on this theme in the Brotherhood's newspaper: "Freedom and Justice."

Ibrahim (or Abraham) in the Quran is one such Prophet.  Joseph (in the Quran: "Yusuf") is another, with the twist that Joseph, from a prisoner of Pharaoh, to Joseph becoming a Prime Minister of Egypt, ushering into it his entire family.  In this connection, the Brotherhood quotes heavily from Chapter 12 entitled "Yusuf" with emphasis on the verse describing the historic triumph of Joseph, especially as that Prophet welcomes his whole family into Egypt by the Quranic phrase: "Enter ye Egypt, all in safety, if it pleases God." (verse 99).

What follows that verse is on point as regards the Brotherhood's expectation of their release from prison and resumption of power once more.  Using Joseph as a parallel for their return to the governance of Egypt, their articles in "Freedom and Justice" quote the Quranic verse no. 100, as Joseph says: "God hath made it come true!  He was indeed good to me when he took me out of prison."

The sad part of that scenario is that the Brotherhood manifests a desperate attempt to use the Quran as an instrument of their aspirations for a political come back.  Ignoring the repeated injunctions in the Quran regarding the necessity, under Islamic jurisprudence, of the removal of injustice by all available means, as the Egyptian masses did to the Morsi's exclusivistic Islamist rule, the Brotherhood now appeals to the Quran as a predictor of their return to the halls of power.

Judging these utterances on their merit, how can an analyst escape the following conclusions: (a) the Brotherhood's conviction that they have a divine mission, not at all different from "the divine right of kings;" (b) their record of one year of Islamization under Morsi has nothing in it to justify their impossible quest; (c) they see their road to power, tortuous as it might be, can only be paved by Islamic holy texts; (d) their appeal to their supporters is so narrowly tailored to the ethos of an Islamic State, indeed a Caliphate, with Egypt as a mere launching pad; and (e) the severe lessons of their populist ouster from power, in spite of their limited self-blame, have not yet sunk in.

This is a hopeless quest, a quest which is solely focused on regaining power through the Brotherhood's own interpretation of Islam.  From their prison cells, the Brotherhood is, in effect, telling secular Egypt: "We shall be back to pursue our manifest destiny: An Islamic Emirate in Egypt."  

It is not going to happen.  Reasons: The Brotherhood is frozen in time.  To them, nothing has changed for the past 1434 years when Islam became a community, not a State, through the Hijrah (flight) of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca, to evade persecution, to Medina. 

So, Brothers, dream on!!  Islam has declared that Muhammad is the last Prophet.  Your mission is foreclosed.  No profit for you from equating between yourselves and the Prophets.  Sorry!  You are late by nearly 15 centuries.  GET REAL!!