Egypt's Wanderings No. 6: The Muslim Brotherhood

National History of China

2024-04-10 18:03Posted on the official account of Jiangsu "National History of China".

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One of the topics I was most interested in Egypt was their Muslim Brotherhood.

Because when writing biographies of various bigwigs in the Middle East in the past, the organization of the Muslim Brotherhood often appeared, many bigwigs have joined the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Muslim Brotherhood in the biography of the bigwigs is quite contradictory, like bin Laden disliked the Muslim Brotherhood not fiercely enough, Mubarak was more tolerant of them, and the current President Sisi beat the Muslim Brotherhood to death.

Hamas, who is now fighting with Israel, used to be the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Founded in 1928 by a primary school teacher named Bana, the Muslim Brotherhood opposes Westernization and secularization and advocates the promotion of Islam. Beginning in 1936, they developed into an armed force against the British colonizers, and were relatively tightly organized, which can be understood as a religious version of the Heaven and Earth Society.

The British were annoyed by the Muslim Brotherhood and their puppet was the Farouk dynasty, who killed the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Chen Jinnan, in 1949...... Oh no Bana, the 2 million brothers of the Muslim Brotherhood have sworn to bloodied the Farouk dynasty and avenge the Ba master.

In 1953, the military was the mainstay, supplemented by the Muslim Brotherhood, and together they overthrew the Farouk Dynasty, and the Muslim Brotherhood negotiated the distribution of benefits with the military before the operation, but after the success of the matter, the actual head of the military Nasser wanted to monopolize it, and in 1954 arrested a large number of Muslim Brotherhood owners, forcibly banned the Muslim Brotherhood, and other members of the Muslim Brotherhood were angry, intending to do Nasser, but they did not expect Alexander's assassination to fail, Nasser turned around and arrested more than 1,200 backbones, and the Muslim Brotherhood had to secretly engage in underground development.

After Nasser's death in 1970, Sadat was in power, and the Muslim Brotherhood originally had a good relationship with Sadat and began to re-engage in online development, but Sadat couldn't beat Israel and decided to negotiate peace with them, the Muslim Brotherhood was particularly stubborn, thinking that Sadat had undermined the unity of the Arab world, and turned against Sadat, Sadat arrested 800 of their backbones, but Sadat was established by the former extremist members of the Muslim Brotherhood during the military parade in 1981 One of the lieutenant officers, in front of the live television broadcast, threw a grenade and fired a submachine gun and killed him.

When Sadat died, Vice President Hosni Mubarak sat next to him and took over his shift, and Mubarak reorganized the Muslim Brotherhood, purged all the radicals, and the Muslim Brotherhood began to enter parliament and peacefully fight for power.

In 2010, the Arab Winter broke out in the Middle East, Mubarak was overthrown in 2011, Egypt began to hold direct elections, the Muslim Brotherhood was supported by the grassroots people, and the leader Morsi became president in 2012 by vote.

When Morsi came to power, he went so far as to amend the constitution, advocating that Egypt become a theocratic state based on the Qur'an and the Hadith and reviving Islam in modern society.

As a result, the military was furious, Morsi was dismissed from his post by the military, declared the Brotherhood a terrorist organization, and sentenced 528 members to death in 2014.

When I went to Egypt, the Brotherhood was once again underground.

A Chinese who has lived in Egypt for more than ten years, has been dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood since 2013, he said that the Muslim Brotherhood has a special social soil, where the government organization is difficult to go down to the grassroots level, the rural areas form an autonomous system, and the more remote the place, the more rely on their own people to govern, and a manager of their company was kidnapped in Ismailia, which was solved by local elders with a Muslim Brotherhood background, and these things are not easy for the government to solve, and the kidnappers sell the face of the Muslim Brotherhood, not the government.

Many of the Muslim Brotherhood members he has met are businessmen and lawyers, who are doing good deeds, welfare and running schools in rural and urban slums, and are very popular with the people at the bottom, so Morsi can come to power by election.

I said, isn't that the result of the military-controlled Egyptian government's abandonment of grassroots governance?

He said yes, Egypt's big companies, big industries, gas stations are the property of the military, and the Muslim Brotherhood has various mosques, schools, grocery stores, billions of dollars in donations from the Gulf countries every year, etc.

The military has taken the lion's share of the country's economic income, and even the income from the gray customs is Mubarak's brother-in-law Sufy, but there is a recent shortage of foreign exchange, and the gray customs are not allowed to do it. The Muslim Brotherhood, on the other hand, took a small share of the financial income, as well as donations from overseas. The military controls Egypt's main economy, but does not penetrate into the grassroots level, while the Muslim Brotherhood controls Egypt's marginal economy, but it does not penetrate into the grassroots level.

The situation in Egypt is very close to that of Iran, and both countries are actually controlled by the military.

The Chinese brother complained that he had met Chinese officials who came to Egypt and that they often only communicated with the elites, not the grassroots, and that their information about Egypt was wrong.

In the 2009 Egyptian elections, the research team thought that the Muslim brothers would not come to power, but the results were wrong, and this was the result of only investigating the elite, not the grassroots.

I said yes, so all over the world, I run more at the grassroots level, and the global elites all look the same, and the grassroots have their own sufferings.

From what I have learned, Egypt is vague and unclear about the direction of its historical development.

The elite class, built by the military, has not known which direction the country should develop in since the Arab winter, and has been torn between China and the United States.

The grassroots of the Muslim Brotherhood, simple and ignorant, often wanted to bring the country back to the ancient world of theocracy, and when it came to power, it had even more destructive power on the country.

The whole of Egypt has not yet figured out its own direction of development, and there must be a powerful figure to complete the integration of ideas and power, and then determine a clear direction of development, otherwise Egypt will always be in circles.

Tang

Every time I talked to him about the Muslim Brotherhood, my Arab guide in Egypt and came from a civilian background, he would tell him all kinds of stories about the Muslim Brotherhood in a sympathetic tone, and that the country's failure to develop was caused by the government's corruption.

He was also very devout about Islam, and whenever I talked about where Islam was lagging behind the modern world, he was in a very nervous and sensitive state.

He also told me that they are very religious and need it every day, and that many Egyptians will make pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, and each pilgrimage costs 300,000 Egyptian pounds, but everyone rushes to sign up, and they have to draw lots to qualify to go to Saudi Arabia.

When I was about to finish my trip to Egypt, he suddenly asked me, what kind of country do you think Egypt is?

I said do you want to hear the truth?

He said yes.

I say that Egypt is what it is today because you didn't industrialize, and both Turkey and Iran did a lot better than you.

He said how to achieve industrialization?

I said that the people in your country have not thought it through, some of you are busy with pilgrimage, some are busy seizing power, some are busy surviving, you are trying to build a broken house, this house is leaking on all sides, you just want to stabilize the house, you don't want to build a new house.

Finally, I asked him, you Egyptians have not figured it out, how can I, a Chinese, think about it?

(This article only represents the author's point of view and does not represent the position of this number)