The Muslim Brotherhood and Political Islam

In recent decades, Arab governments have lost a lot of confidence from their citizens. Their failure to liberate occupied Arab lands and eliminate the Zionist entity, is a huge disappointment to Arabs everywhere. The Arabs have become discontented with nationalism and with the spread of corruption in their countries, and with their governments’ inability to achieve social justice and a decent standard of living for all. This has opened the way for Islamist parties to emerge as an alternative to Arab nationalism. People began, more and more, to believe that the only way forward was to restore the glories of the Islamic nation and to turn to Islam to build their society. The slogan "Islam is the solution" intentionally combined politics and religion.

In the opinion of Indian professor Aijaz Ahmad, political Islam, since the days of the Truman Doctrine, has been considered a great force to counter all insurgent-like nationalist and communist groups in the Middle East. One of the prominent leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as other members of the group, were invited to the White House by Eisenhower. The co-operation between the White House and the Muslim Brotherhood goes back that far. And it is that same process that brought Jihadis to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. The Americans believed that Islamists would fight both Arab nationalism and Communism. However, imperialist powers defeated the nationalist and communist groups one after another, by means of this co-operation with the Islamists, and now Syria is seen as being the last one left that is yet to be defeated.

Specialists in Syrian affairs, ruled out the arrival of the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamist organization to power, Patrick Seale, in an interview w...

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...d said that the sense of political Islam is growing by the day among young people and especially in the rebellious cities. Who refuse the Brotherhood or even Salafist trends; he has to support the emergence of moderate Islamic movements which fit the complexity of the situation in Syria. There is a huge vacuum, if not filled by suitable trends there is no doubt that there are those who will fill the void, whether we felt it or not.

Finally, to return what Patrick Seale earlier said, the Egyptian experience remains fresh in the minds of many Syrians, despite the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood, was favored by less than 15% of the support of the Egyptian people, but they got +49% of the votes of parliamentary elections, so can the Syrian Brothers repeat the political victory since they are the most organized regionally and internally according to many observers?