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EGYPT: Islamist Draft Manifesto Stirs Controversy

Posted on January 4th, 2008 by .
Categories: ISIM/RU Research, Religious Movements.

EGYPT: Islamist Draft Manifesto Stirs Controversy

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani

CAIRO, Dec 7 (IPS) – For the last several months, politicians of all stripes have awaited release of the Muslim Brotherhood movement’s political party manifesto. According to spokesmen for the group, the document is intended to clarify the positions of the Muslim Brotherhood — Egypt’s largest opposition force — on a range of issues.

“The party programme aims to explain the Brotherhood’s reform project,” Saad al-Din al-Kitatni, leader of the group’s bloc in parliament, was quoted as saying in late October. “It will serve to clarify the Islamic basis on which we hope to eventually establish an official political party.”

The Muslim Brotherhood was first established in the 1920s but has been officially banned since 1954. While the group remains formally outlawed, its members can run as nominal independents in parliamentary elections.

In late 2005, the Brotherhood scored a surprise victory in a hotly contested parliamentary race. Despite widespread electoral fraud by the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) of President Hosni Mubarak, the Islamist group captured a total of 88 parliamentary seats — roughly a fifth of the otherwise NDP-dominated assembly.

Over the course of the last year, however, the Muslim Brotherhood has become subject to an ongoing campaign of arrests by police and vilification in the official media.

In December of 2006, a small rally held by Brotherhood-affiliated students was depicted by the state press as the advent of an “Islamic militia”. Since then, more than 300 of the group’s members have been arrested on various charges.

Early this year, 40 of the movement’s leaders were referred by presidential decree to a military tribunal where they currently face charges of “financing the activities of a banned group.” The move came in tandem with constitutional changes granting the President broad powers of arrest, including authority to refer suspected “terrorists” to military courts.

Along with threats of incarceration, the Muslim Brotherhood also faces mounting criticism from civil society and secular opposition figures. They claim that — despite the group’s significant parliamentary presence — its political agenda remains largely unknown.

In August, under pressure to provide a degree of insight into its policy orientations, the group’s leadership distributed a preliminary draft of its official party manifesto. Hoping to avoid unnecessary controversy, only a select handful of academics and civil society figures received copies of the document.

Despite this precaution, however, contents of the draft were soon leaked to the local press. In the ensuing debate, critics seized upon two aspects of the document, which, they claimed, confirmed the “undemocratic” nature of the Islamist movement. (more…)

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