Since 2013, the Muslim Brotherhood Organization (MBO) entered a multilevel series of crises1: legal, organizational, intellectual, political- locally, regionally, and internationally. These crises contributed to a process of uncovering of the organization’s structure. With an MBO structural division occurring after 2013, questions have been raised about MBO’s internal conditions, effectiveness, and the effects left on the conditions of its bases.

How does the organizational structure of Muslim Brotherhood look like since 2013?

Mohammed Morsi’s ousting statement on the 3rd of July 2013 formed the early features of an initial shock phase of the Brotherhood, leading to an internal division that resulted in 2 independent groups. At the first moments following the statement, the focus was on plans to face the event by mobilizing masses to the streets to form a political pressure on the leadership of the emerging scene.

Symbolic pressure points concentrated in Rabia Al Adawiya and Al Nahda Squares, where the number of sit-inners has been growing. The thinking of MBO leadership, at the time, revolved around two intertwined matters; the first was related to ways for preserving the organization in case the security forces disperse the sit in, with the Brotherhood’s “Shura Council” deciding to create a committee for “crisis management”; and the second was related to the best path for, as they put it, resistance against the new political scene: “non-violence” or “violence”?.

With MBO bases angry over the old leadership’s management of the conflict, generational differentiations started to appear due to the disagreement over how to manage and react. In an attempt to contain such anger, internal elections were made in February 2014, which ended up with the following:

Keeping the Brotherhood Guide, who was in jail at the time, in office,

Appointing an Acting Guide, and new General Secretary and Spokesman,

Creating a committee for crisis management and a technical administrative office for management of the affairs of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood abroad; and

Approving “special action by MBO Shura Council in 2014 and forming what has been described as a Sharia committee- to regulate it, which was approved by the Guidance Office members who were in Egypt at the time, including Mahmoud Ezzat who then renounced his position after the Guidance Office members were detained and after the removal of Mohammed Kamal, head of the higher committee for management of the inside, who had resigned from leading the first committee”2.

What are the features of the conflict inside the Muslim Brotherhood Organization during 2015?

With the attempt to run the organization, the internal disagreements3 among its higher leadership circles were accumulating with an increasing frequency behind the scenes, before the conflict surfaced publicly since March 2015. The disagreements were about: who runs the organization? And which resistance path is best for the Brotherhood? This was translated into 2 teams:

The first team: the group of Mohammed Kamal4, who headed the first administrative committee and resigned form it, then was removed from the second committee, and took the responsibility of engineering the Brotherhood’s special action, with motives towards violence actions increasing; with this group later known as the “General Office”; and

The second team: a committee for management of the affairs of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood abroad, led by Mohammed Abdel Rahman, who was supported by Mahmoud Ezzat; representing the old generation and claiming to stick to non-violence.

As an attempt for reformation and transcending this division, the idea of making an election was suggested, but the disagreements continued over how it will be made, with the first group wanting it to be comprehensive, and the second group wanting it to be complementary. With each group insisting on its position, there exists practically 2 parallel organizational entities, each with a leadership, a website, and a spokesman5, in a situation where “no one can remove anyone of the other party”6.

What are the conditions of the Muslim Brotherhood Organization inside and outside Egypt on the level of individuals?

MBO inside Egypt

Parallel to the leadership conflict, the conflict consequently extended to the bases, which became divided between the two groups. The historical leadership tried to make financial discrimination against the supporters of the General Office as a pressure tool to bring them back under their command, but it couldn’t practically control the course of internal finance. With the continuation of the conflict, and with the strategies of the Egyptian Security for penetration of the networks of active young people and dismantling the violent cells, the organizational weight for most of the bases at the current time moved towards the old office, with the General Office -Mohammed Kamal group- unable to resolve the conflict with the Egyptian State. This was strengthened by the fact that the old office organizationally controls most of the solid base of the Brotherhood, whether inside or outside Egypt- with the actual administration of the organization’s affairs being at the hands of the leaders residing outside Egypt, so, the financial and legal support for the internal bases remained largely regular.

MBO outside Egypt

The view of the conditions of the Brotherhood members abroad is relatively different, as they live according to “class” hierarchies that have produced different living conditions between individual members, with levels of support provided to members directly proportional to some main factors:

Their position towards the two parties of the administrative conflict, with the priority for support given to the supporters of the old leadership and no support is given to the antagonists.

How close they are to the leadership or the circles close to this leadership, creating internal lobbies or coteries around some key leaders and preventing similar support for many members outside such coterie.

As for the situation of those in disagreement with the historical leadership, who happen to live outside Egypt -according to insider testimonies7-, we find that “the organization’s support does not go beyond its members; as the organizational channels are for regular Brotherhood members and do not extend to others, for the organization’s interest has priority over the individuals, in contrast to the secondary organizations such as the General Office where individual interests rule over the organization’s interest”.

How do Muslim Brotherhood members misappropriate each other’s money?

Despite the long age of MBO and its multiple financing resources, from monthly subscriptions, to donations, to investment returns of its own money, the political contexts in which MBO exists in different countries have contributed to the absence of a strategic vision for regulation, control, and best ways of investment of the Brotherhood’s money. So, the Brotherhood’s money was, and still is, always put in quick investments in consumption fields, which are mainly conducted according to their personal network of relations with those who support it. Accordingly, their partnerships are made with multilevel networks of businessmen who are close to the Brotherhood.

As a result, all MBO projects inside and outside Egypt are registered in the names of individual persons who are entrusted with managing such projects with no real control by MBO, which only contents itself with its leaders’ trust in them and their good reputation and conscience. This exposes MBO to many misappropriations and to the loss of a lot of money over decades, and nothing has changed regarding control over this money till the current time, and it has appeared in two recent incidents:

First: a Yemeni businessman has conned MBO in London and stolen an amount of 2 billion pounds of the money of MBO’s administrative offices, which was left with him as investments provided that he spends its monthly returns on the support files8.

Second: a leak attributed to Dr. Amir Bassam, a former Member of Parliament and one of the Brotherhood’s leaders, in which he talked about MBO leaderships stealing its money and donation money to buy luxury residential apartments and real estates in Turkey and other countries in their names and the names of their sons and daughters9.

Thus, we see a condition in which violence is established as one of the key tools approved by MBO to manage its crisis and achieve some gains. It has also been clear that the disintegration of MBO into two groups is a matter that transcends intellectual disagreements, as meant by “intellectual”, to disagreements over which level of violence to be adopted, and disagreements over personal interests, be it offices or financial gains; in addition to the spread of a “coterie” principle inside the organization, contrary to what is claimed by its traditional literature that MBO has complete solidarity and unity among its members, and contrary to what Hassan Al Banna wrote in his messages that “the Muslim Brotherhood is a pure and transparent movement that is not colored”.

Sources:

1 The Government Announces Muslim Brotherhood A Terrorist Organization, (Al Masry Al Youm, 24 December 2013), on: http://goo.gl/mGd6J4 [in Arabic]. In September 2014, the Court of Cassation has then cancelled this decision, with the preamble of its judgment indicating that the decision of the General Prosecutor, the deceased Hisham Barakat, who personally took the enlistment decision, violated the procedures stipulated by the Law of Terrorist Entities, issued by President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi. See: Egyptian Court of Cassation: Decision Deeming Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Cancelled and Null; Egyptian Law of Terrorist Entities: Two Amendments in 5 Years (Asharq al-Awsat, 29 January 2020), on: https://cutt.us/Y9nqb [in Arabic].

2 A Muslim Brotherhood Leader Confessing Formation of Special Committees in 2014, Veto, 5 June 2016, on: https://cutt.us/LRpeg [in Arabic].

3 For detailed paths of such phase, see: Ahmed Zaghloul Shalata’s Islamists in Power: Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (Beirut: Center for Arab Unity Studies, 2017), pp. 145-154 [in Arabic].

4 Kamal resigned on 10 May 2016 and was killed in a fight with the Security Forces on 3 October 2016.

5 The website, http://ikhwan.site, was launched to express the views of the old leadership before they could reclaim -from their opposition- the original website, http://ikhwanonline.com, with their official spokesman Talaat Fahmy, against the website, http://ikhwanonline.inf, of the new leadership, with Mohammed Montaser as their spokesman, who submitted his resignation to the new council on 20 December 2016, to be followed by Abbas Qabari.

6 Testimony by Brotherhood leader, Dr. Ashraf Adbel Ghaffar (on his personal page on Facebook, 19 December 2016, on: https://cutt.us/kP7Sa [in Arabic].

7 A research interview with one of the young people who preferred to stay anonymous, February 2020.

8 Ahmed Arafa, A Scandal Inside the Brotherhood: 2 Billion Pounds of Subscriptions of Members Outside Egypt Stolen, (youm7, 15 February 2017) on: https://goo.gl/LinQcy [in Arabic].

9 Ashraf Abdel Hamid, a leaked sound recording revealing scandals of Egypt’s MBO leaders in Turkey, (Alarabiya website, 24 July 2019), on: https://cutt.us/U8TMT [in Arabic].