The Importance of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egyptian Policy and the Events of the 2011 Arab Spring

Abstract

This paper presents the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in 20th century Egyptian politics and analyzes its position and influence on the 2011 Arab Spring events. Since the establishment of the Brotherhood, in 1928, the Muslim Brothers have been connected with the Muslim trend of political thought defined as Islamism. From the beginning of the Brotherhood, the Brothers an Islamic ideology as the foundation of its socio-national program. They also used it for their political struggle. Till the end of the
1940s, the Brotherhood, headed by its founder Hassan al-Banna, operated legally. After his death in 1949, the Brotherhood was forced to withdraw into deep conspiracy by the Egyptian government. This resulted in the radicalization of the Muslim Brothers’ doctrine, which in the 1950s became revolutionary and anti-Nasser in character. This took place while the Brotherhood was headed by one of the main ideologists of Islamic fundamentalism - S. Kutb. Though the Brotherhood was an underground organization during the administrations of A. Sadat and H. Mubarak, it left its mark on the internal politics of Egypt. In the 1980s it became the main opposition force in this country. The Muslim Brotherhood was surprised by the sudden outbreak of the social protest in Egypt in 2011 and initially, as an organization, it did not participate in this protest, supporting the idea of operating within the parliamentary opposition. However, when the Muslim Brotherhood saw a chance for political change in Egypt, it joined the
anti-government protests and supported the basic demand of the protesters, i.e. the resignation of the Egyptian President H. Mubarak. Though the Muslim Brothers joined the Arab Spring’s events late, they
acquired very strong social support which made it possible for them to return to legal politics and finally to seize power in Egypt. However, two years of their rule in Egypt did not improve the socio-economic situation in this country, and the political actions of ex-president M. Mursi headed towards the introduction of dictatorship. This resulted in a coup d’etat organized by the Egyptian army in 2013, which caused the removal of the Muslim Brothers from power again.