The shift of the Muslim brotherhood's ideology : from 25 January to the achievement of the presidency

Abstract

Since the revolts in Egypt broke out three years ago, on 25 January 2011, the Egyptian political landscape is still changing. Whilst Hosni Mubarak was overthrown by the popular uprising in Tahrir Square, regular and fair political elections took place in the country (both parliamentary and presidential), which ratified the Muslim Brotherhood’s success. After less than a year in power, Muhammad Morsi was also overthrown by amilitary coup supported by millions of Egyptians. Abd el-Fattah al-Sisi is the new president of the country. The Brotherhood, founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, is today depicted as a terrorist organization, politically sidelined and entirely excluded from the country’s daily life. Before Mubarak’s fall, the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, published a study titled Egypt’s Muslim Brothers: confrontation or integration?1, which analyzed whether the Muslim Brotherhood would have continued the confrontation with Mubarak and its integration within the social and political system. This paper aims to briefly reconstruct, as suggested by Nathan J. Brown, the MB passage from “participation” to “domination”, to show the potential changing nature of this subject from 2011 to 2013, to illustrate the split between haraka and hizb, and to understand, through the analysis of their political program, the reasons behind their winning of the elections.