EGYPT: Government rounds up Muslim Brotherhood leaders

In another attempt to tighten its grip on the  Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian government  detained a number of the group's members last week, including Guidance Bureau official Abdel Moneim Aboul-Fetouh.

Aboul-Fetouh, who is also secretary general of the Union of Arab Doctors, was among detainees facing various charges, including conspiring with international terrorist organizations against the country and money laundering.

The prosecutor's report alleges that those detained were responsible of forming terrorist cells inside Egypt and funneling Muslim Brotherhood members to be trained in the Gaza Strip under the supervision of Hamas. The report also alleges connections between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Lebanese Hezbollah party.

"Aboul-Fetouh led a cell that received instructions from Hezbollah. The orders focused on staging streets protests in Egypt and other Arab countries," the report read.

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SYRIA: Signs that Assad is warming to opponents

A number of recent reports and events suggest signs of a rapprochement between the Syria's ruling Baath Party and its biggest political opponent, the Muslim Brotherhood.

A report published recently by Stratfor, a U.S. group that collects and analyzes intelligence from around the world, says that Syrian President Bashar Assad and his party has “a plan in progress to mend ties with” the outlawed Sunni Islamist group.

In a predominantly Sunni Muslim country, the Syrian Baath Party has created an efficient police-run regime, enabling the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, to maintain absolute political control of the country for four decades.

In 1982, the Baathists violently quelled opposition by the Muslim Brotherhood, reportedly killing thousands of people in the Syrian city of Hama. Since then, the political leadership of the Islamist group has been operating mainly from European cities.

JORDAN: Attitudes, sentiment shift away from U.S.

The change came about six months ago.

Suddenly, the Jordanian government wasn't as hostile as it used to be toward the Islamic Action Front, Jordan's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Middle East's original Islamic fundamentalist group.

Then-intelligence chief Mohammad Dahabi met with the Action Front's parliamentary delegation. Members of the group were removed from official blacklists, said Zaki Bani Ershid, secretary general of the party.

Jordanian diplomats began reaching out to countries such as Syria and Qatar, rivals of U.S. allies in the region, as described in a story about Jordanian policy during the Gaza offensive in today's Los Angeles Times.

Ershid  speculates that Jordan's government was shifting course after feeling betrayed by the U.S., watching the collapse of the Arab-Israeli peace process and perceiving that Washington was willing to toss its friends under the bus.

Jordanian big shots were perturbed by what they saw as the U.S. betrayal of its allies. They watched Russia overwhelm staunchly pro-American Georgia and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah overpower the U.S.-backed March 14 coalition in Lebanon without Washington taking any decisive action. Jordan feared they also would be betrayed.

EGYPT: Gaza renews tensions with Islamist opposition in Egypt

Protests over the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip have reignited tensions between the Egyptian government and the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's largest opposition group.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which has close ideological ties to the militant group Hamas, has arranged several demonstrations at which hundreds of protesters called on Arab armies to defend the Palestinians, cut off relations with Israel and stop exporting natural gas to the Jewish state.

The government’s response was typical. Hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members were rounded up and several protests were thwarted by the police.

“The regime does not want to embarrass itself,” said Mohamed El-Beltagui, a Muslim Brotherhood member of parliament.  “The Egyptian people are all supportive of the Palestinian people in Gaza and of all resistance groups, including Hamas, and if protests are allowed, millions of Egyptians will participate.”

EGYPT: Sisters want voice in Muslim Brotherhood

The sisters in the brotherhood demand change.

Women in Egypt’s largest Islamic political movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, want to reshape an organization that is heavily patriarchal.

The brotherhood often overlooks or does not reward the accomplishment of its "sisters."

The group's new political platform angered many members by opposing the idea of a woman being elected president of Egypt.

This rumble of discontent comes as bloggers and other reformers are pushing the brotherhood to loosen its religious rigidity and modernize.

Otherwise, they say, the organization will fail to speak to the needs and aspirations of today’s Egyptians.

A report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that “women activists have been at the forefront of the Brotherhood’s political struggle and have become highly visible in key political events, but their role still goes unrecognized.”

EGYPT: Dissidents in jail and exile

One critic is pardoned, another is left in prison, a third is in exile writing missives and giving speeches that chafe Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

The forgiven critic is Ibrahim Issa, an independent newspaper editor and relentless government detractor who was sentenced to two years in jail for printing stories in 2007 that suggested Mubarak was ill and near death. In announcing the pardoning of Issa earlier this month, the 80-year-old Egyptian president said he wanted to “affirm his concern for freedom of opinion.”

Such concern has not been granted Ayman Nour, the leader of the Tomorrow Party, who has been in jail since 2005. He was charged with forging political documents, but his conviction was widely criticized by human rights groups as a less than veiled attempt to silence opposition to Mubarak’s 27-year-rule.

A jail cell awaits dissident Saad Eddin Ibrahim. The sociology professor was sentenced in absentia to two years in prison for tarnishing Egypt’s reputation and urging Congress to make nearly $2 billion in U.S. aid to Egypt contingent upon progress toward political reform.

EGYPT: Enough with old leaders, Islamist activist complains

Would the old guard of Egypt’s largest Islamist group one day cede power to the younger generation? Mostafa El-Naggar, one the leading young voices for reform within the Muslim Brotherhood, recently startled the group's leadership by raising this controversial question on his blog. The suggestion hit a nerve with the brotherhood's higher echelons, including Supreme Guide Mohamed Mahdi Akef, who turned 80 this year. 

In a satirical post under the title “We Just Received the Following Communique,”  El-Naggar, a 28-year-old dentist, imagined that the Muslim Brotherhood leaders older than 70 issued a statement announcing their resignation from all senior posts, making way for young cadres to "rejuvenate" the organization.   

“With this initiative, we try to give a good example to the aging Egyptian regime, which still insists to lead the country,” reads the fictional statement.

EGYPT: A dissident voice within the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood

 

Driven by a desire to correct misconceptions about the Muslim Brotherhood, Ibrahim Houdaiby, a 25-year-old activist with Egypt’s largest Islamic organization, tapped into the blogsphere almost two years ago. Yet, this is not to assume that his job is restrictively doing public relations for the brotherhood. On the contrary, Houdaiby, along with other Muslim Brotherhood bloggers, has emerged as a critical voice of the group’s conservatism and political shortsightedness.

“This is a very critical moment for the Muslim Brotherhood. The group is going through a new phase as the old leaders are aging,” said Houdaiby, the grandson of the group’s former supreme Guide Ma’moun Houdaiby. “Inside the group, there is a different generation that expresses itself through blogs and seeks to play an active role in changing society.”

“Blogging has paved the way for several positive things inside the group. I think the response to this self-criticism proved and still proves that this is not being widely accepted within the group. Being part of the Egyptian society, the Muslim Brotherhood has the same illnesses of the society including the low level of tolerance.”

The young Islamist, a graduate of the American University in Cairo, is also concerned about building bridges with the West. His fluency in English allows him to promote his opinion pieces in Western publications such as the British Guardian, Common Grounds and the World Politics Review. In less than six months, he attended two cross-cultural conferences in the U.S. that discussed the nature and future of Islamism in the region.

EGYPT: Parliament criminalizes female circumcision

After weeks of heated deliberations, the Egyptian parliament on Saturday passed new pieces of legislation that impose relatively harsh legal restrictions on female circumcision and allow women for the first time to register their babies even if the father’s identity is unknown.

One law imposes a sentence of a maximum of two years and a fine of a maximum of $1,000 for performing female genital mutilation.  This issue has caused much stir in the people’s assembly, especially among the Muslim Brotherhood, which holds one-fifth of the parliamentary seats. Conservatives maintain that Islam condones the removal of a girl’s clitoris to tame her sexual desires and condemn the amendment as a western import. 

Attention-getting opposition to the bill came from an ostensibly secular MP a couple of weeks ago. Mohamed El-Omda, a member of a marginal opposition party, appeared before the people's assembly with his three daughters to protest the ban. One of his young daughters raised a banner reading: “No to any attempt to forbid what is divinely allowed. No to any attempt to allow what is divinely forbidden.”  El-Omda said that two of his daughters were already circumcised.