The Muslim Brotherhood shows its true self at times of crises. These are the times when the group tends to lie and propagate baseless claims, hoping to make the utmost gains.
This happened soon after
Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood member who ruled Egypt for a year and was
deposed by the general Egyptian public in July 2013, was declared dead on June
17. Morsi died during his trial on charges of espionage.
The fact is that the
Brotherhood stands to gain a lot from Morsi's death. This terrorist movement
used Morsi when he was alive and now seeks to use him after his death.
Morsi was not a president in
the real sense of the word. He was not qualified to rule a country as big as
Egypt. He was nominated by the Muslim Brotherhood to run in the 2012
presidential elections only because the group knew that he would allow it to
rule Egypt from behind the curtains.
When Morsi went to jail, the
Brotherhood exploited this also by issuing statements signed by him. In these
statements, the group encouraged its followers to maintain their protests in
the streets, calling for his return to power. Now, the Brotherhood thinks of
how it can use Morsi's death in making yet more gains.
Morsi's death gives the
Brotherhood the chance to claim that it is an oppressed group, a claim it used
over the years to make others sympathize with it.
The group issued a statement
in which it claimed that Morsi was killed slowly by prison authorities and that
he was subjected to torture. This of course contradicted all realities.
The good thing is that Morsi
died in court and in front of other Brotherhood members who were tried with him
in the same case. This means that nobody can claim that he was killed in jail.
The Brotherhood is always in
the habit of using developments on the ground to return to the political stage.
This is why Morsi's death is a golden opportunity for the group to do this,
especially after it went out of the limelight and its radical nature was made
clear to everybody everywhere.
The Brotherhood will most
likely encourage its members to perpetrate violence in Egypt, using Morsi's
death to justify this. It will also prod other terrorist groups to do this,
even in the presence of minor ideological differences between it and these
groups.
Those following the history
of the Muslim Brotherhood can easily notice that the group had encouraged
violence whenever and wherever it served its own interests. It verbally opposed
the use of violence in Egypt in the 1990s, whereas it encouraged it in
countries like Afghanistan in the same period.
So far, the Brotherhood has
proved success in doing this. It claims to oppose al-Qaeda and ISIS, but at the
same time allows its members to join these groups and even lead them. The
Brotherhood never denounces the actions of these movements.
Difference between the
Brotherhood and other terrorist groups are a mere blur now. It adopts the same
ideologies and thoughts of these groups.
The Brotherhood is now in the
same camp with Salafist Jihadism. It offers logistical and social support to
this current, using radical Islamists in serving its own interests and
destabilizing countries like Egypt.
Morsi's death, at the same
time, puts an end to the legitimacy claim which the Brotherhood used to justify
its violence in Egypt. It never ceased talking about this legitimacy, both
inside and outside Egypt.
