On revisions, reconciliation and the jails

News about junior members of the Muslim Brotherhood proposing a new initiative for reconciliation with Egyptian authorities usually spreads like wildfire even if it is not true or correct. Dozens of sites copy this news very quickly, without verifying it.

The same sites contact experts and specialists to comment on this news. Some of these experts even claim that they had expected these reconciliations from the very beginning and that they go for containing the Muslim Brotherhood and its members and their integration into society.

The al-Jazeera Mubasher Masr site published news about one of these initiatives last week. Almost all news sites copied the same news. We tried to verify it, but we discovered that some of the former members of the Muslim Brotherhood were the source of this news. By making it, they aim to gain presence on the media and political stage. They also try to rescue the Muslim Brotherhood in a pragmatic manner.

Some people believe that containing the Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood, is a necessary matter. But these people are dangerous. The problem is that they are capable of making their voice heard to the media.

Some other people rule out the need for integrating the Islamists into society. Nonetheless, they think the Brotherhood can be reformed by reproducing in a suitable manner.

A third group of people believes the Brotherhood needs to be uprooted from the political stage, for some time at least. They think the group can then be allowed to return to this stage, provided that it stays away from violence. But this is very dangerous as well.

A fourth group of people believes that strong states should not allow the formation of such groups inside it. They call on state institutions to prevent the presence of these organizations by imposing intellectual and ideological revisions on their members.

The sorry thing is that the number of people believing this is very small. They do not have support either.

The security apparatus believes that the organization is stronger inside the Brotherhood than the ideology. In the past three years, the Muslim Brotherhood turned into pieces as an organization. Rifts emerged inside the organization over everything from leadership to action plans.

The belief is that even if it is allowed to be present on the political stage in its current form, the Brotherhood will not pose any threats to the Egyptian state.

In this, the Brotherhood is different from militant groups that are usually founded on an ideology. This is why they are dangerous and the only way to deal with these groups is to fight them and end their presence.

The fact is that none of those propagating the idea of reconciliation between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian state has asked himself about what the Brotherhood can offer the state in return for reconciling with it. Will the Egyptian people accept the presence of this group on the political stage even after all the violations it had committed in the past few years?

The sure thing is that the Brotherhood benefits the most from the presence of debates about its possible reconciliation with the state. This is why those propagating this reconciliation serve the best interests of this group whether they mean it or not.