Muslim Brotherhood: from underground resistance to ruling party

When analysing the crisis currently facing Hamas, it is crucial to examine the history of the Muslim Brotherhood as an ideological-politicalmovement, its place in the Arab world and what its downfall reveals about the political climate in Palestine and the Middle East.

The Muslim Brotherhood was established in Egypt as an ideological movement of political Islam in 1928, and in 1987 it officially founded the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, after years of activity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. For much of its existence, the Brotherhood has operated as a secretive underground movement due to severe restrictions of many Arab nation states, including Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria. Muslim Brother members were frequently arrested and until recently the organization was generally suppressed throughout the region.

In many ways, it was this suppression that helped garner support for the Brotherhood and, through its steadfastness and philanthropic works, advance its political legitimacy amongst sympathisers. Popularity for the movement steadily grew as the Muslim Brotherhood presented a radical alternative to the oppressive dictatorships of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and the authoritarian monarchies of the Gulf. In the face of these regimes, and their pandering to liberal Western interests, political Islam came to represent a true opposition to both external imperial forces and internal socio-economic disenfranchisement.

Much like other radical underground political movements, the Muslim Brotherhood focused its energy on ideology, discourse and slogans rather than national socioeconomic strategy. As a global movement, the structure of the organisation dictated that the various branches of the Brotherhood owed their loyalty first and foremost to its centralised leadership. The leadership contended that the agenda and strategy of the organisation were to take precedence over local needs interests, and that any power gained should be used to promote the Muslim Brotherhood agenda. The state was perceived as a tool to impose their wider political ideology. Ultimately, it was this focus on the interests of the organisation over the needs of the people that much like the communist movement - created the greatest challenge to the Muslim Brotherhood's legitimacy as it gained regional power.

As the Brotherhood stepped further into the public eye following events of the Arab Spring, it wished to present itself as a viable alternative to the toppled regimes. In order achieve this, the movement needed to transform almost 100 years of radical Islamist ideology into practical national strategy that could pull states out of postrevolution social, political and economic crises.

Downfall of Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas

Although the Brotherhood formed strategies for transition from underground party to national government, some key errors and assumptions would sow the seeds of their downfall: firstly, the governments of Egypt and Gaza sought to serve the broader agenda of the global Muslim Brotherhood movement before the needs of the peoplethey were elected to represent, sometimes even in direct contradiction with the needs of their populations.

Secondly, the religious discourse they employed to unite the movement in its abstract and ideological form did not translate to the reality of societies with large and diverse populations. When faced with this diversity, instead of expanding their discourse to attract a broader base of support, they sought instead to forcibly homogenise society by making their ideology compulsory.

These strategies were characterised by, for example, the re-writing of the constitution in Egypt, and it was here that the Muslim Brotherhood revealed a fatal flaw in their understanding of the role of the state and national constitutionsinsociety. The fundamental principles of national constitutions are envisioned as sacrosanct laws that represent the long-term needs and aspirations of a society in its entirety. These laws do not concern themselves with and are not subject to the changeability of everfluctuating national and global political frameworks, but are instead established to safeguard the very nature of that society.

According to traditional norms, a constitution bestows power upon the people by superseding any and all statutory laws that a government could impose upon the population it governs, thereby protecting their inviolable constitutional rights from political tyranny. After their election in Egypt however, the Muslim Brotherhood misunderstood this basic tenet, and demonstrated its belief that the role of a national constitution was to protect the government, the structures of political power, and to bestow authority upon the governing party.