Muslim Brotherhood Celebrates
9-Year Anniversary of Arab Spring
Multiple Terror Attacks,
Extensive Ties To ISIS Fail To Dissuade Brotherhood
Loyalists
The Muslim
Brotherhood is celebrating the nine-year anniversary of the Arab
Spring this year. Despite coordinating and executing terror attacks
against fellow Egyptians, support for the Brotherhood has remained
resilient across Egyptian society. This is in large part due to its
investments the Brotherhood has made over decades to develop a robust
infrastructure and social support networks that have ingratiated
millions of Egyptians to its leadership.
It was this infrastructure and social support that helped propel
the Brotherhood to political power during the Arab Spring of 2011. In
the midst of shifting political landscapes in Egypt and elsewhere in
the Middle East and North Africa, several Brotherhood chapters formed
political parties and performed well in their respective countries’
elections. None performed better than the Egyptian Freedom and Justice
Party, which ran senior Brotherhood official Mohammed
Morsi as its candidate for president, and the Tunisian Ennahdha,
which won the first elections after former President Zine El Abidine
Ben Ali’s ouster.
Morsi served as president of Egypt
between June 2012 and July 2013, though his government alienated much
of the population due to perceptions that it governed poorly and
overreached, including through the group’s attempts to rush through
changes to the Egyptian constitution. In July 2013, after months of
mass protests against the Brotherhood-led government, the Egyptian
military overthrew Morsi and seized power, calling for new
presidential and parliamentary elections and arresting Morsi and
hundreds of Brotherhood officials and members on various charges.
Egypt outlawed the group later in 2013, designating it a terrorist
organization.
Egypt’s military-run government, led by President Abdel Fattah
el-Sisi, has sought to uproot the Brotherhood entirely. And since its
ouster from power, the Brotherhood has been implicated in multiple
terrorist attacks carried out against Egyptian forces. For example,
the Brotherhood has been blamed, in conjunction with Hamas,
for a June 2015 car bomb that killed Egyptian Public Prosecutor Hisham
Barakat. The following month, security forces raided a Cairo apartment
in which they believed the Brotherhood was planning terrorist attacks.
Nine Brotherhood members, including a former parliamentarian, died in
the raid. The Brotherhood, in turn, called the incident a “turning
point” and called for a country-wide revolt.
The Brotherhood’s ties to ISIS have also been a point of
contention. While the Brotherhood and ISIS have traded accusations
amid disagreements on tactics and strategy, elements within each group
have found common ground and readily cooperate logistically and in
other ways. ISIS has also capitalized on Egyptian violence to lure
younger Egyptians to its cause. As violence mounts in Egypt, some
Brotherhood members are turning to jihadist groups to exact revenge
against the government and the army. According to former Brotherhood
activist Mustafa el-Nemr, more than 100,000 families have reason to
seek retaliation against Sisi.
To read CEP’s Muslim Brotherhood resource, please click here.
To read CEP’s Hamas resource, please click here.
To read CEP’s The Muslim Brotherhood’s Influence on Al-Qaeda, ISIS,
and Iran resource, please click here.
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