The Ban on Muslim Brotherhood Will Backfire

With today’s ruling by the ‘Cairo Court for Urgent Matters’, banning the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood and ordering a confiscation of its assets by the government, the Egyptian regime is taking the crackdown against its political opponents to the next level. While it is unclear what the decision means for the future of the Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, the government has committed itself to disbanding an organization which counts between 300,000 and 1 million members and which has been in existence since 1928.

That is unlikely to work. The Brotherhood was banned during Nasser’s presidency. In Syria, Brotherhood membership was a capital offence between 1980 and 2011. If anything, these and similar bans strengthened the organization’s narrative of victimhood and enabled it to reemerge strengthened and relying on broader popular support. In a recent paper, I show that the electoral success of the Muslim Brotherhood in the aftermath of Arab Spring was foreseeable and resulted from the fact that the group had been actively involved in the provision of social services, particularly to poorer segments of the Egyptian population, and possessed a well-recognized brand name. Over time, this electoral advantage would have dissipated, particularly as the Brethren proved to be rather inept policymakers.

Alas, with the crackdown on the organization, the current leadership of the country seems to be determined to drive the organization underground and to radicalize it. At this moment, Alan Krueger’s characterization of terrorism sounds as an ominous warning of what is to come unless the Egyptian military relinquishes its grip to power:

[t]errorists and their organizations seek to make a political statement; terrorists arise when there are severe political grievances with no alternatives for pursing those grievances.