Thursday, July 28, 2011

Defections Threaten to Crack Muslim Brotherhood




By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani

"CAIRO, Jul 28, 2011 (IPS) - For the last 40 years, the Muslim Brotherhood's united front has been the envy of Egypt's political opposition. But in the six months since the fall of the Mubarak regime, the Islamist group has been racked by unprecedented internal divisions.....

This assertion is borne out by the new parties' leaders, who are all highly critical of the Brotherhood's management style.

"The Brotherhood won't survive if it doesn't reform its administrative practices," Riyada Party founder and Brotherhood veteran Khaled Dawoud told IPS. "Egypt's recent revolution, which saw protesters rejecting authoritarianism and dictatorship, still hasn't reached the group's leadership."

"Even after the revolution, the Brotherhood continues to behave like a secret organisation," PDP founder Hamid al-Dafrawi told IPS. "This has inevitably led much of its rank and file to engage in activities outside the group."

In 2005 legislative elections, Brotherhood members captured one-fifth of the national assembly, temporarily making it Egypt's largest opposition bloc. But whether the group will be able to match that performance in the country's first post-Mubarak parliamentary polls - given its apparent state of dissolution – is uncertain."

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