Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood has once again demonstrated its capacity for popular mobilization and thus its position as the most important opposition group in Egypt—even though it remains illegal. The occasion was the sudden death of the Brotherhood's leader, Supreme Guide Mamoun Al Hodeiby, on January 9. The death occurred too late at night for the morning newspapers to report it. Yet, the next day the Brotherhood brought nearly twenty thousand mourners to Cairo's Rab'a Al Adawiyyah mosque and convened a condolence ceremony that was attended by representatives of all the country's political forces. No other group in Egypt is capable of attracting such large-scale, voluntary mobilization.

The Brotherhood has managed to survive waves of repression since its 1928 founding—by far the most severe occurred in the Nasser era—thanks to religion's important role in Egypt's political culture and the decline of secular political movements, such as the Wafd, the Nasserists, and the Communists. The Brotherhood's longevity also owes much to its cell-based organization, its involvement in social services, and its leaders' ability to adapt to changing conditions. In particular, this has meant transforming the Brotherhood from an organization aiming to create an Islamist state by overturning the Egyptian government to a movement seeking to achieve this goal through elections and other peaceful methods.

This transformation began in the 1970s, when President Anwar Al Sadat released thousands of Brothers from prison (though he did not lift the 1954 ban on the organization). In 1977, Sadat re-introduced the multi-party system and offered the Brotherhood limited political space. The Brotherhood accepted pluralism, but contended that Egypt's secular parties were vastly inferior to organizations like the Brotherhood that were inspired by the word of Allah. Brotherhood members began to compete under Islamist slogans in elections for student government, professors' clubs, and professional associations, and they won massively.

In the 1980s, the Brotherhood renounced armed struggle definitively. It fielded individual candidates in parliamentary elections by forging coalitions with the New Wafd party in 1984 and the Socialist Labor and Socialist Liberal parties in 1987, and had a strong showing both times. But the leadership remained reluctant to become a political party. In the 1990s, some younger members were expelled when they tried to introduce ideological and organizational adjustments that would enhance the group's chances of qualifying as a party (they went on to found the Wasat, or Center, Party, which the Egyptian government refuses to legalize).

The Mubarak regime sometimes allows the Brotherhood limited room to operate, but fearing the organization's electoral popularity, represses it by vetting all candidates in university elections, suspending elections in the most influential professional associations, and regularly arresting its leaders. Now the Brotherhood would like to become a legally recognized party, to put an end to the continuous harassment of its members and to carry out political activities legally. The Brotherhood for the first time has joined opposition parties in calling on the government to grant all Egyptians full civil and political rights. But the Brotherhood has not renounced its original goal of establishing a state ruled by the principles of Sharia. Brotherhood members also continue their long-standing opposition to any settlement of the Palestinian question that maintains a Jewish state on the land that was Arab Palestine before the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Nor does the organization renounce its leadership of an international Muslim Brotherhood.

In mid-January the Brotherhood's Guidance Office elected Mohammed Mahdi Akef, age seventy-six, as its new Supreme Guide. Akef is truly part of the old guard: he joined the Brotherhood in 1950, was imprisoned under Nasser, and spent time in exile in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s and in Germany in the 1980s, where he was instrumental in activating the international organization. He is likely to be the last leader selected from this older generation. The Guidance Office elected as Akef's deputies two relatively younger and presumably reform-minded Brothers, Mohammed Habib, a geology professor, and Khayrat Al Shatir, a computer engineer.

The new leadership has begun preparing for the 2005 parliamentary elections by engaging in dialogue with major opposition parties. The leadership's strategy seems to be to seek partners for joint electoral lists, as the Brotherhood did in the 1980s when a party list system was in effect. (In the 1995 and 2000 elections, held under a single member district plurality system, Brotherhood candidates evaded the ban on the organization by running as independents.) Adopting a coalition strategy would enable the Brotherhood to field ample numbers of candidates in the likely event that the government reinstates a proportional representation system in which half the seats would be reserved for party candidates.

The central issue in political reform in Egypt is the government's recognition of the Brotherhood as a legitimate political party. If the Mubarak regime persists in denying the Brotherhood legal status, not only would any move towards reform lack credibility, but the stability of the country itself could be jeopardized.

Mustapha Kamel Al-Sayyid is professor of political science and director of the Center for the Study of Developing Countries at Cairo University.