Street hawkers with garlands of Hello Kitty balloons amble near a new monument honoring the police. Schoolgirls weave through traffic at the busy crossroad. The damaged mosque and buildings around it are repaired, save the odd bullet pockmark missed by fresh stucco.
As for the once-mighty Islamist group, tens of thousands of its members and sympathizers remain behind bars—including former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and most of the Brotherhood’s leadership.
The continuing effort by the country’s new president, Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, to wipe out the Brotherhood as a political and social force is the most determined and comprehensive since the group was established in 1928. It is also a risky gambit: though much weakened after its year in power in Egypt, the Brotherhood still represents a major thrust of public opinion in the Arab world’s largest country, and in the wider Middle East.
“We fought against these people because they were doing exactly what we are now doing to them today. This is not the right way,” says Naguib Sawiris, an Egyptian billionaire and politician who helped lead the mass protests that led to Mr. Morsi’s ouster by the army last year. “There will have to be a solution. They have one or two million people, very militant and very active. What are you going to do with these people? You cannot put two million people in jail.”
Yet, Mr. Sawiris adds, no such solution is likely soon: “This is not something anybody is going to accept right now.”
The Brotherhood undoubtedly didn’t distinguish itself during Mr. Morsi’s rule, excluding other political forces and flashing an authoritarian streak. A genuine protest movement that also included non-Brotherhood Islamists ushered in the takeover by Gen. Sisi. The Brotherhood lost even more support in the immediate aftermath of Mr. Morsi’s ouster, as its supporters attacked Egyptian churches, angered by the prominent role that Christian Egyptians—such as Mr. Sawiris—had played in the protests.
Yet, the Brotherhood still professes nonviolent resistance and, albeit with caveats, embraces elections and democracy. And, while the Egyptian government and its allies now paint all Islamist groups as terrorists, the Brotherhood’s relatively moderate ideology provides a stark alternative to the totalitarian bloodlust of Islamic State, which consolidated power in parts of Syria and Iraq since Mr. Morsi’s ouster and views the Brotherhood’s engagement in democratic politics with contempt.
Egyptian authorities say that the Brotherhood’s renunciation of violence is insincere and accuse the group of involvement in bombings and other attacks that have kept Egyptian cities on edge. A much bloodier Islamist insurgency persists in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, led by a group that recently pledged allegiance to Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
The Brothers blame all this violence on the regime. “Any kind of dictatorship will result in extremism. Sisi and ISIS are two sides of the same coin,” says the Brotherhood’s London-based spokesman, Abdulla al Haddad, whose father, a senior adviser to Mr. Morsi, and brother, a former spokesman for the organization, were imprisoned following the army takeover.
Egyptian rulers have tried to destroy the Brotherhood in the past—and Mr. Haddad predicts it will survive the latest crackdown, too. “This is what we’re good at,” he says.
In the 1950s, President Gamal al Nasser imprisoned thousands of Brothers, prompting many of them to flee to Saudi Arabia, other Arab nations and Europe. His successor, Anwar Sadat, tried to co-opt the Brothers as a bulwark against leftists—to be assassinated by a radical splinter of the organization in 1981. Under President Hosni Mubarak , the Brotherhood was technically outlawed but permitted to field candidates in elections, to run charities, clinics and schools, and to control syndicates of lawyers, doctors and engineers.
Under Gen. Sisi, who solidified his power after winning the May presidential elections with 96% of the vote, all this tolerance is gone. Cairo has designated the Brotherhood as a terrorist group and placed its assets and the businesses of its members—from builders to supermarkets—in state custody.
“I don’t see any political future for the Muslim Brotherhood now. It took them 60 years after the 1950s to reappear as a political force, and it will take them even longer this time. There is a true public rejection of them,” says retired Maj. Gen. Ahmad Wahdan, the former head of operations of the Egyptian Army who once served as Gen. Sisi’s superior. “People now know that the goals of the Muslim Brotherhood are contrary to the best interests of the people. The Muslim Brotherhood wants to establish an Islamic empire, which is exactly what ISIS wants, too.”
While the Brotherhood long maintained a secretive structure that allowed it to operate under repressive regimes, Mr. Morsi’s yearlong rule exposed its networks around the country. After his ouster, that opening up made it much easier for Egypt’s security forces to dismantle the organization, carrying out mass arrests.
Egypt’s human-rights abuses today are much worse than under Mr. Mubarak, says moderate Islamist politician Abdel Moneim Aboul-Foutouh, a former senior member of the Brotherhood who quit the organization and ran against Mr. Morsi in the 2012 presidential election, winning nearly one-fifth of the national vote. “This is a republic of fear, based on oppression and terrorizing,” he says.
There is little respite for the Brothers outside Egypt, either. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are pushing a regional campaign to destroy or weaken the Brotherhood and its affiliates in other countries, with the U.A.E. also designating it a terrorist group this month. This past week, Jordan arrested the deputy head of the Brotherhood’s local branch for his criticism of the U.A.E.’s move. With onetime patron Qatar expelling exiled Brotherhood leaders in September, Turkey remains the group’s only major ally, providing refuge for hundreds of its political exiles.
In Cairo’s working-class Embaba neighborhood, once a Brotherhood stronghold, pro-Brotherhood graffiti these days is quickly covered with pink paint while slogans calling the Brotherhood members hypocrites and liars remain on the walls. Talking to a journalist, residents are quick to condemn the banned organization.
“The Muslim Brotherhood is hated now because they have betrayed us and our trust,” said Mohammed el Ali, a worker at an Embaba clothes store. “They fooled us and took advantage of us,” echoed Issam Adel.
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