The Brotherhood in limbo

The success of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, inspiration for much of political Islam, is forcing it to answer questions about its direction, writes Mary Fitzgerald in Cairo

Nothing about the drab riverside building on Cairo's Roda Island gives the slightest clue that its walls house the headquarters of Egypt's largest opposition party. No sign, no doorbell, nothing but a small faded and peeling sticker on a doorframe two flights up a grubby stairwell. Al Ikhwan Al Muslimun, it reads in Arabic script - "the Muslim Brotherhood".

There is good reason for the low-key setting. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organisation with a violent past, exists in a strange political limbo, officially banned but grudgingly tolerated. In Egypt that can mean having your offices raided and members arrested one week, while holding press conferences with elected representatives the next. Despite these restrictions, Brotherhood candidates - running as independents - clinched a fifth of parliamentary seats last year, all but routing the secular opposition in Egypt's freest election in years.

The group's move deeper into mainstream politics after decades as maligned outsiders is being watched closely and not without trepidation not only in Egypt, choked for decades under Mubarak's authoritarian regime, but also across the Muslim world, as an increasing number of Islamist political parties participate in elections and experiment with democracy.

Inside the warren of rooms that make up the party's headquarters, photocopiers hum next to a TV tuned to Al Jazeera. Framed depictions of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock hang alongside the Muslim Brotherhood symbol - a Koran over two crossed swords.

In his small office, dominated by a huge world map with varying shades of green marking out the spread of Muslim populations, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, "Supreme Guide" of the Muslim Brotherhood, does not look happy. There is some misunderstanding - he thinks I am a Danish journalist come to grill him on the recent cartoon controversy.

When I correct him, he throws back his head laughing and says in Arabic: "You are Irish? That means we are relatives."

Akef, a sprightly septuagenarian who has spent about a third of his life behind bars, is animated one minute, gruff the next. He pulls out his jacket pockets when asked how the Muslim Brotherhood is funded. "From our own pockets," he bellows. "Under no circumstances would we accept funding from any other source." Later a question on whether greater political participation may require difficult ideological compromise elicits a firm no and he slams a file down on his desk for extra emphasis.

Akef is quick to offer his own explanation for the success of Islamist groups in nearly a dozen parliamentary elections - from Lebanon and Turkey to Egypt, Pakistan and Palestine - over the last five years.

Many of these groups are among the estimated 70 Muslim Brotherhood affiliates worldwide, the best known being Hamas. Though the Brotherhood in Egypt formally renounced violence more than a generation ago, it provides vocal support for Hamas's militant campaign against Israel.

"When there are free elections, Islamists will rise. They rise because they are the conscience of the people," Akef says. "In this country we have never been absent from the Egyptian street, with our activism in social, cultural, educational and economic areas. Our success was not a surprise because the Egyptian people are a religious people and they know we believe Islam is the solution," he adds, making sure to squeeze in the party's well-worn slogan.

It is a slogan that has proved useful in many ways, from emotionally powerful rallying call to conveniently vague political platform. For many of Egypt's poor it's not just a campaign catchphrase but the credo underpinning the movement's long-standing provision of desperately needed social services, including clinics, schools and welfare offices. But now, as the Brotherhood slouches towards more political participation than many ever imagined, it is under pressure to define exactly what it stands for.

Al-Ahram, the leading government newspaper, was scathing in an editorial: "The Muslim Brotherhood has never put forward a political programme that deals with today's problems or tomorrow's aspirations. Instead, it resorts to emotional slogans about heaven to deal with the problems of reality. When will the Brotherhood . . . catch up with the spirit of our time?"

Even in places like Cairo's Imbaba district, where acute poverty has long pushed people into the arms of Islamism, there are sceptics among those who many would consider part of the Brotherhood's natural constituency. In between grumbling about police harassment of locals, Raouf (54), a retired printer, wonders what Al Ikhwan would bring. "They talk about Islamic rule but that can mean so many things to so many people. It can take many paths," he says. "They need to explain clearly what they intend to do."

An initiative launched by the Brotherhood in 2004 called for political and economic reform, the lifting of emergency laws and an end to the corruption that has atrophied Egypt's progress for decades. So far, so familiar, countered critics who pushed for specifics.

Akef bristles at the suggestion his movement maintains a deliberate ambiguity on key issues. "We are not lacking in plans or programmes," he retorts.

The Brotherhood, he explains, favours a democratically based civil society anchored on a "correct Islamic basis" with "no distinction between Muslims, Christians and Jews as they are all Egyptians subject to the rule of law and the constitution."

What they mean by rule of law is another controversial issue. Since 1980, the Egyptian constitution has stipulated that sharia - Islamic law drawn from the Koran and Sunna - is the "principal source" of legislation, something resented by secular liberals and the Christian minority. Apart from divorce, inheritance and other family issues, however, Egypt's laws are predominantly secular.

Although some Brotherhood members say they want sharia to be the only source, Akef appears to lean more to the middle ground. "Under a Muslim Brotherhood government, sharia would be the main reference but not the only reference," he says. "Because in sharia, traditions, location and circumstances are also sources of legislation."

Regarding the implementation of hudud, the sharia laws of punishment that include amputating a hand for theft and stoning to death for adultery, Akef insists such penalties would be rare to non-existent because of the rigorous preconditions they require. "Hudud under sharia may not be applied except with the existence of certain conditions that are not entirely present today," he says.

Across the city in the dusty, rubbish-strewn district of Basateen lies the modest resting place of Hassan Al Banna, a school teacher who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. "Oh you believers, remember God and remember he is watching," reads some graffiti next to the grave, along with references to "al shahid" - the martyr.

Al Banna's vision was of an Islamic order with sharia at its heart, something he hoped would be achieved gradually as a "spiritual awakening" rather than by force. "Islam is a faith and a ritual, a nation and a nationality, a religion and a state, spirit and deed, holy text and sword," he declared.

The movement's motto put it in even starker terms: "The Koran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our way, death for the sake of God is our most valued hope."

With its rejection of secularism and Westernisation, it was a message that resonated strongly with the burgeoning middle class of Egypt's cities and towns. Engineers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, students and civil servants formed the bedrock of its support and still do.

But there was another side to the Muslim Brotherhood that continues to haunt it today. Al Banna flirted with militant rhetoric, later forming a paramilitary wing. After a Brotherhood member killed Egyptian Prime Minister Fahmi Nokrashiin 1948, Al Banna was shot dead by government forces.

Five years later, the Brotherhood was declared illegal and thousands of its members jailed following a failed attempt to assassinate Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. For the next 50 years the movement and its members would be shaped by periodic arrests, lengthy prison spells, torture, harassment, and exile. Among those imprisoned in 1954 and later hanged was Sayyid Qutb whose death row treatise outlining a radical ideology based on armed jihad was to inspire violent Islamist groups including al-Qaeda, but also led to his denunciation by the Brotherhood.

The Egyptian government continues to paint today's Muslim Brotherhood as dangerous subversives linked to terrorism. Nevertheless, the movement has been severely criticised by militant extremists in Egypt and elsewhere including Bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi before his recent death. They consider the Brotherhood's non-violent approach and participation in elections heretical.

Lingering memories of its violent and radical past make many wary of the Muslim Brotherhood's promises today. Critics accuse it of duplicity, recalling its candidates' previous parliamentary record, marked by calls for gender segregation in schools and the banning of alcohol, books and films, as proof its moderate election platform is just a smokescreen.

Ahmed Thabet, a politics professor at Cairo University, believes the real test for the Muslim Brotherhood would be to allow them enter politics as a legal party.

"They have gained a lot through this image of persecuted martyrs battling the government but there are many fears regarding their real intentions," he says. "Legalise them, give them the right to prove themselves a genuine political force. Then we can test their promises and commitment to political pluralism, minority rights and human rights."

Watching the Brotherhood's next moves will be those that support it not because they endorse an Islamist agenda, but because they consider a vote for the movement to be the only way of protesting against Mubarak's repressive regime.

People such as Sherine, a mother of three from Cairo's affluent Mohandiseen area. She didn't vote in the last election but says she would support the Brotherhood in the next one. "My parents see them as terrorists from the old days and would never vote for them," she says. "I see it differently. They are the only real opposition we have. Yes, in many ways it's a step into the great unknown but it's getting to the stage where anything is better than what we have now."

• Mary Fitzgerald is the winner of the Douglas Gageby Fellowship for her project on the faces of Islam. Her reports will appear weekly in Friday's Irish Times