RECOMMENDED READING: “Among the Muslim Brothers, The Contradictory Faces Of Political Islam In Post-Mubarak Egypt.”

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The Wall Street Journal has posted an article titled “Among the Muslim Brothers, The Contradictory Faces Of Political Islam In Post-Mubarak Egypt.”. The article begins:

Cairo
Two months after Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, Egyptian politics are a dervish of confused agitation. Each day, it seems, a new party forms to fill liberal, Nasserist, Marxist, Islamist and other niches. A joke has it that 10% of Egyptians plan to run for president. “All Egyptians now think they are Che Guevara, Castro or something,” says Essam el-Erian, a senior leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, bursting into laughter. “This is democracy.” Amid this political ferment, the Brotherhood is an exception: a well-funded, organized and established force. Founded in 1928, it’s also the grandaddy of the Mideast’s political Islamist movements. The Brotherhood was banned from politics 57 years ago and focused on business, charity and social ventures. But the secretive fraternity always aspired to power. Now free elections due later this year offer the Brotherhood their best opportunity. The group says it believes in “Islamic democracy,” but what does that really mean? I spent a week with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and it turns out the answers are far from monolithic, though often far from reassuring.

Read the rest here.

It should be noted that the Muslim Brotherhood today has become a global network and that the Egyptian mother branch is not necessarily the most important part of the movement. Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi, close to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, is often referred to by the GMBDW as the most important leader of the global Muslim Brotherhood, an acknowledgement of his role as the de facto spiritual leader of the movement. In 2004, Qaradawi turned down the offer to lead the Egyptian Brotherhood after the death of the Supreme Guide.

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