The dramatic death of the former president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, on June 17th, reignited debate about the future of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and political Islam across the region. A range of reactions from Islamist groups region-wide have followed after Morsi’s passing.
Five experts offer insights into these reactions and explain their domestic implications. Please join the discussion by sharing your own views in the comments section.
Morsi’s Death Throws the Brotherhood into Further Turmoil
Mohammad Affan
Mohammad Affan is a researcher and training director at the Al-Sharq Forum.
The tragic death of the ousted president Mohammed Morsi in a courtroom cage elicited minimal reaction inside Egypt. Apart from small confrontations between angry protestors and police forces in his hometown and social media campaigns mourning his loss, there was little else. Egyptians seem to be politically fatigued, withdrawn, and ambivalent under President Abdel-Fattah Al Sisi’s fiercely authoritarian regime.
For the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, this shocking event was an opportunity to shed light on the agony of the political prisoners suffering all sorts of maltreatment. In its official statement, the group blamed the Egyptian regime for Morsi’s death, held it fully responsible criminally and politically, and demanded an international investigation into his death.
Furthermore, the group aims to iconize the late Mohammed Morsi as “the Martyr President,” in an effort to to reunify its members behind the leadership and galvanize their loyalty in an organization where the leaders’ sacrifice is an essential part of their legitimacy. However, these endeavors are doomed to fail. It is highly unlikely that their call for an investigation will be taken seriously. The international community is currently neither willing nor capable of putting pressure on the Egyptian regime to improve its human rights records.
Most importantly, Morsi’s death will not mend the broken bonds within the organization. Instead, it will further deepen its crisis. Internal voices calling for holding the leaders accountable for their failure to deal with the coup have become louder. Since the 2013 coup, the Brotherhood has called for Morsi to be restored to power as both a moral claim and a strategic goal, despite it being controversial and unfeasible. No longer a possible rallying call, the Brotherhood leaders urgently need to develop a new narrative, mission, and strategy to keep the unity and functionality of their organization.
Ennahda and Morsi’s Eulogy
Youssef Cherif
Youssef Cherif is an observer and analyst of Tunisian affairs.
Since its return to Tunisia in 2011, Ennahda has tried to distance itself from the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). The trend increased since 2013 as the influence of the Islamist network dwindled, when the MB-backed groups fighting in Syria and Libya mutated into violent extremist movements, and after the military toppled the MB-led government in Egypt.
Ennahda’s PR strategy of purposeful distance reached its climax in 2016 when Ennahda’s leader Rached Ghannouchi announced that his party was no longer an Islamist party, but rather a Muslim Democrat party. Yet, the rebranding campaign has faced occasional setbacks. The first was during the Gulf crisis of 2017, when many Ennahda leaders expressed their support for Qatar, the besieged peninsula. Moreover, Ghannouchi and other senior members of his party continued their regular pilgrimages to Doha and Istanbul, the MB regional strongholds.
Morsi's death was another one of these challenges. The supporters of nonintervention in international politics (and of the “Muslim Democrat” rebranding in general) inside the party were temporarily sidelined. Ghannouchi called Morsi a “martyr” on Al-Jazeera during the live coverage of the aftermath of Morsi’s death. Ennahda’s bloc conducted a prayer (Fatiha) for the Egyptian president during a parliamentary session, provoking the anger of some secular anti-Ennahda groups. Ennahda’s social media exploded with eulogies of Morsi and condemnations of his foe Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Electoral politics and regional alliances help explain Ennahda’s position. Faced with decreasing popularity, and in preparation for the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in fall 2019, the party is trying to please its largely pro-Morsi constituency. Also looking to secure its external support (from Qatar and Turkey) as the elections get closer, and fearing the ongoing hostility of the Riyadh-Abu Dhabi-Cairo nexus, Ennahda embraced Morsi’s case.
However, a series of recent crises—President Beji Caid Essebsi’s illness, and two suicide attacks—have complicated Tunisia’s political scene. Ennahda’s position, in this regard, was diluted and quickly forgotten.
In Morocco, Islamist and Leftist Sympathy, Official Silence
Maati Monjib
Maati Monjib is a Moroccan political analyst and historian.
Moroccan Islamists’ reactions to Morsi’s death varied according to their proximity the regime. Prime Minister and Secretary-General of Morocco’s Islamist party, the Justice and Development Party (PJD) Saadeddine Othmani was the most cautious, not volunteering any reaction. When journalists asked him about Morsi’s death, he appeared embarrassed before hastily offering a generic expression: “May God have mercy on him and on all of our deceased.”
The PJD leadership, particularly those within the government, were also belated in offering condolences, clearly cautious not to criticize the Egyptian regime. The government is hesitant to step on the toes of the Egyptian regime and its Gulf backers, who are known to be highly sensitive on the topic of the Muslim Brotherhood, with the implied threat to switch their support away from Rabat on the Western Sahara issue. However, the PJD leadership’s watered down reaction will no doubt only fuel the anger of the party’s rank-and-file youth, who are increasingly alienated from their own leaders.
Meanwhile, Islamists unaffiliated with the government, like al-Adl Wal-Ihsan (Justice and Charity), strongly condemned those responsible for Morsi’s death. Ahmed al-Raysuni, an Islamic jurist and the former president of the Unity and Reform Movement, issued a strongly worded statement: “For six years, they have been killing him bit by bit. For six years, the state of Dr. Mohammed Morsi has been a disgrace for all Egyptians, except for the treacherous gang ruling Egypt, because those murderous traitors have no shame and have no honor left to lose; they are a disgrace to Arabs, Muslims, and humankind.” Al-Raysuni did not stop at harshly criticizing the Sisi regime, but also lashed out at the Gulf States backing it since 2013. Al-Raysuni’s statement is significant both because he is a moderate Islamist, and because of his previous opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood entering the Egyptian presidential elections in 2012 which Morsi won.
On the Moroccan streets, Islamists and leftists chanted slogans against the Sisi regime and commemorated Mohammed Morsi during a demonstration in Rabat on Sunday, June 23, to protest the Trump Middle East peace plan and the Bahrain conference. A large number of the protestors affiliated with al-Adl Wal-Ihsan also organized an Islamic prayer service in Morsi’s memory.
Morsi, A New Symbol of Sacrifice in Jordan
Tariq Al Naimat
Tariq Al Naimat is a Jordanian journalist and researcher specializing in Islamist movements.
The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has long been a source of inspiration for its Jordanian counterpart, making the death of former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi an emotional blow to the Jordanian Brotherhood.
The short-lived Brotherhood experiment in Egypt had major repercussions for the Jordanian Brotherhood. With the coup in Egypt in 2013, the Jordanian Brotherhood was wracked by internal arguments over which political course to follow, as the early hopes of the Arab Spring were crushed. Several moderate leaders who would later break off to create the Zamzam party were quick to point to Egypt’s coup as a turning point with valuable lessons which the Brotherhood needed to learn.
The initial reaction to Morsi’s death among the Brotherhood ranks in Jordan was to see the event as another sacrifice by a Brotherhood leader. The heavy political toll paid by Brotherhood leaders over the past 80 years has long been part of the Brotherhood’s internal rhetoric on the importance of self-sacrifice while spreading its message. The names and pictures of figures like Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Ahmed Yassin, Abdul-Aziz al-Rantissi, Abdullah Azzam, and now Mohammed Morsi have always been prominent in Muslim Brotherhood headquarters, not only as founding fathers or leading theorists, but also for the price which they paid for their ideas, from the Brotherhood’s point of view.
The sympathy with which the Jordanian public met news of Morsi’s death could give the Brotherhood a bump in popularity, particularly at a time when the Brotherhood is already under attack by several Arab governments.
However, it seems unlikely that Morsi’s death will have wider repercussions other than immortalizing his name in Brotherhood lore and reemphasizing the focus on self-sacrifice. The Brotherhood’s historical course does not give much reason to believe that the group is successfully learning from its own political mistakes, as it has devoted little attention to studying its own historical experience.
After the founding of the Zamzam Party in 2016 and the Partnership and Rescue Party the same year, the Brotherhood’s drive to ideologically diversify lost momentum and its internal debates quieted down. Morsi’s death is unlikely to push the Jordanian Brotherhood to make deeper self-revisions, especially as the Brotherhood’s mother organization in Egypt is fragmented, with its leaders either in prison or in exile. Nonetheless, there is a youth movement within the Brotherhood taking on a growing role, which gained political awareness by taking part in the popular protests calling for reform in Jordan, and which will be a force pushing for organizational reform and change.
The Yemen Element in the UAE’s Anti-Brotherhood Fight
Eleonora Ardemagni
Eleonora Ardemagni is an associate research fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI).
In the Gulf States, governments have publicly exploited Mohammed Morsi’s death to support their strategies and bolster their positions on political Islam.
Reaffirming his pro-Brotherhood stance, the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, expressed his condolences quickly on Twitter. The Doha-based Egyptian theologian Yusuf Al Qaradawi similarly called Morsi “a martyr.” As did the Kuwaiti MP Osama Al Shaheen from Islamic Constitutional Movement (ICM or HADAS, the Kuwaiti Brotherhood), which currently holds three seats in the National Assembly.
On the other side of the divide, the Emirati authorities and media used the occasion of Morsi’s death to rebalance domestic and external threats. Through various media outlets, the government reiterated their claim that the Brotherhood is an extremist organization spreading radicalization and sedition. UAE’s television channels and the state agency featured an interview with a former member of the Emirati Ikhwan, Islah, jailed and then pardoned by the UAE president. The former member declared to have “found [his] true country” after leaving the Brotherhood, which he claims is struggling with “a wave of defections.”
Furthermore, the containment of the Brotherhood is an important dimension of UAE’s engagement in Yemen. The Abu Dhabi-led rhetoric reflects the government’s ongoing support for the verbal and military showdown between UAE-backed Yemeni militias and the Islah party-aligned groups supporting the internationally recognized government in Hadhramawt and Shabwa. Emirati-backed groups have repeatedly threatened to seize the oil-rich areas of Wadi Hadhramawt and Shabwa, which Islah-linked forces continue to control. Powerful UAE-supported Yemeni groups are already deployed in Hadhramawt and Shabwa coastal areas.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s strong regional alliance is on a collision course in Yemen largely due to the Brotherhood. Riyadh still supports president Hadi who is mainly backed by Islah forces. The presence of Emirati soldiers on the Yemeni soil has limited clashes so far, but the reported start of a UAE’s troop drawdown could ignite local players’ rivalries, especially in cities like Aden and Taiz, divided between pro-Emirati Salafi separatists and pro-Islah militias.