What Does the Brotherhood Want?
As the majority of Egyptians suffer through the slumping economy, the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood continues demonstrating for the reinstatement of deposed president Mohammed Morsi.
A number of youths from the Muslim Brotherhood met with Ahmed al-Muslimani, media adviser for interim Egyptian President Adly Mansour, to discuss how to “contain” and socially and politically engage Brotherhood youths.
After the meeting, Islam El Katatni, a Brotherhood dissident and creator of the Think and Come Back initiative, announced that the ball was now in the presidency’s court to implement the cultural and economic ideas he proposed as an alternative to sole reliance on a security approach for drawing in young people defecting from the Muslim Brotherhood and integrating them into society to take advantage of what he called their “tremendous human potential.”
Amr Emara, coordinator of the Brotherhood Youth Alliance, had withdrawn from the meeting after Muslimani refused to give participants what he considered to be sufficient guarantees. He said that out of the 20 people invited by the president, only six attended. Emara shed light on the conundrum faced by his group, which defected from the Brotherhood and, according to him, was the first such group to ask the Brotherhood’s leadership to disperse the Rabia al-Adawiya and al-Nahda sit-ins as well as the first to demand that the Brotherhood leaders responsible for the spilling of blood in the Ittihadiya and Republican Guard incidents be “sentenced to death.”
As a result of its positions, Emara's group now finds itself threatened with death by the Brotherhood’s leadership because of its defection and, at the same time, is hounded by the community that, according to him, does not want to see any Brotherhood affiliates engage in political activity. Furthermore, he feels his group is being marginalized by a government that only seeks to create a “media show” through the reconciliatory meetings it holds with young Islamists. It is worth noting that 200 Brotherhood youths signed the founding statement of Emara's “alliance,” which was formed on August 1, two weeks before the dispersal of the Rabia sit-in. The alliance is now trying to establish a political party under the banner Youth for Egypt and has so far collected more than 7,000 signatures in the effort.
