Reporting on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

My Sun News colleague Ezra Levant this morning chides mainstream media journalists like me for the work we did from Tahrir Square in Cairo (left) over the last two weeks:

“As always, this revolution was about them — just ask them. More media attention was given to the fact that CNN's dreamy anchor, Anderson Cooper, was roughed up by protesters than was given to investigating the anti-women, anti-secular, anti-Semitic, anti-western ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, though they're the likely victors of any “election” that might be held in coming months. Most of today's journalists are too young to have covered the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, so this was their moment. So they are weepy cheerleaders, not reporters. And they are only too happy to say “ditto” to whatever Al Jazeera tells them is happening.”

Jack Kelly, writing in the PIttsburgh Post-Gazette this morning, also gives us reporters the gears in a column that, like Levant's, warns of the danger of the Muslim Brotherhood:

Our news media have been of little help in understanding what's going on. The networks sent their big names to Cairo though none spoke Arabic, knew the culture or knew the players.

“Their being in Cairo was adding zero news value other than making the plight of Western reporters the focal point of the story, which was not the point of their being in Cairo in the first place,” said Rich Galen, who had been press secretary for House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Few journalists have mentioned the protests were sparked by a doubling of food prices in the last year. But the greatest disservice they have done is to misrepresent the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Actually, I thought Cooper was restrained, if anything, in his coverage of the two assaults he and his crew came under and actually spent much more time on his shows from there and since then exploring the concerns Levant and others have that secular Egypt will be dominated by radical Islamist fundamentalists. (And many CNN's reporters on the ground in Cairo, by the way, spoke Arabic and at least one Al Jazeera reporter was an American-Egyptian and as a result knew both cultures. Most Western agencies there — Reuters, BBC, etc. –  all have Arabic-speaking reporters on the ground in Cairo.)

Levant and Kelly allege that Western reporters have missed the big story, that the Muslim Brotherhood is about to install radical Islamist rule in place of the secular autocracy that is now crumbling. Levant says:

Congratulations to the Muslim Brotherhood. As their name suggests, they're fundamentalists who want the world to live under Sharia law, with the Qur'an as the constitution. In 1981, they assassinated the last Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat. They didn't have to go to the trouble to get rid of Mubarak this time.

I, for one, found it difficult to report conclusions like this while I was in Cairo or since my return for I can find no evidence to back up these statements. During my five days on Tahrir Square,  I could find no visible or other evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood was using these events to foment jihad and radical Islam among the protestors. In fact, that was one of the many remarkable things about the events in Egypt: There were no politicians or “movements”  leading the protest. There was no Martin Luther King or Lech Walesa or anyone who was giving speeches, organizing protests or anything like that. It was just the people, hard as that may be to believe.

Anthony Sadid, reporting in the New York Times today, writes, “Egypt’s was a revolution of diversity, a proliferation of voices — of youth, women and workers, as well as the religious — all of which will struggle for influence. Here, political Islam will most likely face a new kind of challenge: proving its relevance and popularity in a country undergoing seismic change.” Based on what I saw while I was there, I would tend to agree with Sadid.

Like many reporters in Cairo, I saw Muslims and Christians praying together on Tahrir Square. (The country is about 10 per cent Christian). Christians would stand guard on the square around groups of praying Muslims and Muslims would return the favour. This is not to say all is happy and well between Christians and Muslims in Egypt. Indeed, just as with any religious minority in any part of the world, there is great concern in post-Mubarak Egypt that Christians will be under threat from radical Islamists. But the example on Tahrir Square is, one hopes, an encouraging sign for religious pluralism.

But I — again, like many reporters — also reported from Egypt there were many there who were as worried about radical Islamists taking over the country as they were keen to see Mubarak go. Many Egyptians themselves, like Levant, Kelly, and many Western democracies, fear a radical Islamist state. I was accused of filing news stories that supported the oppressive Mubarak regime whenever my copy contained accounts of shop owners, hotel owners, factory employees, and so on who supported Mubarak when he first promised to leave by September. While these people wanted change, they craved the secular stability that was, at the end, the only thing Mubarak had to offer his people.

In the end, though, the people of Egypt were willing to gamble that they could create a stable secular future without Mubarak.

Still, given the fact that the Brotherhood is the single largest opposition movement in Egypt, it seems inevitable at this point that a stable, legitimate democracy in that country will evolve without the Brotherhood participating in some way.

And the Brotherhood knows that it is under intense scrutiny in Egypt to prove that it can be a responsible partner in a democratic coalition. Notably, the Brotherhood issued a statement yesterday saying that it will not run a candidate in the presidential elections and it will not seek a majority in parliamentary elections.

Ok. Fair enough. But there is still a great deal of suspicion about the MB because the group has a long rap sheet when it comes to jihad and violence. “The Brotherhood's original mission [at its creation in the 1920s] was to Islamize society through promotion of Islamic law, values, and morals. An Islamic revivalist movement from its early days, it has combined religion, political activism, and social welfare in its work. It adopted slogans such as “Islam is the solution” and “jihad is our way.”,” writes Jayshree Bajoria, a senior staff writer at the Council on Foreign Relations, in excellent annotated summary of the Muslim Brotherhood's history.

The Brotherhood was believed to be behind a series of bombings in the 1940s and 1950s in its fight against British colonial rule. When Gamal Abdul Nasser became Egypt's first post-colonial president, the Brotherhood initially supported his government, then soured on him and then, in 1954, tried to assassinate him.

It was shortly after this that Sayyid Qutb, a leading member of the Brotherhood at the time, began developing the radical ideas he would set down in his 1964 book “Milestones”. It was this book that, according to experts that study  radical Islam, that contained the seeds of the twisted philosophy that would spawn groups like Al Qaeda. Qutb believed there was justification for jihad and armed insurrection to overthrow the Egypt's secular government and other non-Islamist governments.

It was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood that killed Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar Sadat, in 1981.

But there are a considerable number of experts who believe that, despite a past where violence was at the core of its agenda, the Brotherhood in Egypt, at least, could help bring stability and democracy.  Ed Husain, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, was once a member of the Muslim Brotherhood but left the group after being “disillusioned by their conspiracy theories”. He has spent years now warning of the potential dangers of radical Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood. But Husain, writing in the Financial Times, says of the Brotherhood

“we must engage them, initially on the role of Islam itself. Islamists and western observers too often agree that sharia equates to state law, rather than a body of legal opinion. The Brotherhood repeats the absurd doctrine that “the Koran is our constitution”, but the vast majority of Muslims disagree, seeing the Koran as a divine, not political document. With discussion and political incentives the Brotherhood can be persuaded to follow the lead of mainstream opinion. There are other encouraging signs. Mohammed Badie, the Brotherhood's leader, comes from it conservative wing. But he recently scoffed at the notion of an Islamic state, saying his aim was to be part of a civilian administration. Another relative hardliner (and my former teacher) Kamal ElHelbawi, said this weekend: “Islamists would not be able to rule Egypt alone.” He argued for co-operation with secularists. Mr ElHelbawi has been a Brotherhood stalwart for half a century. If he and Mr Badie want to talk, we have cause for optimism.”

The Muslim Brotherhood has evolved into separate branches — there are more than 300,000 members in Egypt, apparently — and there are, among its current leadership, many who we might describe as “moderates”. In Egypt, as recently as last week, the MB was rejecting and denouncing Al-Qaeda and calls for jihad. And as Haroon Moghul, a blogger at Religion Dispatches, points out, there are some important differences between the Shi'a Islam behind Iran's revolution and the Sunni Islam dominant in Egypt. “That difference in dynamics between Egypt and Iran needs to be stressed,” Moghul writes.

All of which is to say: Journalists reporting on the situation in Egypt would be fools to ignore the Muslim Brotherhood. But journalists on the ground in Egypt have no reason, at this point, to come to the conclusions that Levant and Kelly have arrived at, that the Brotherhood should be condemned as violent fundamentalists. The reality, for now at least, is much more complicated.