Some countries, such as the UK and Canada, appear to be taking their cue from Egypt and some Gulf countries which have declared the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organisation. The question is how this will affect Muslim Brotherhood members abroad if other western nations take this route. To answer this, we should first consider the position of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, where the response to its being branded a terrorist movement has been a series of bombings. The Brotherhood does not carry out such operations directly, but rather does so through jihadist organisations that have entered into an undeclared alliance with it. After their political shield was eliminated with the removal of the Brotherhood from power, the members of this alliance stepped up their offensive against the state and shifted to a more belligerent takfiri stance that regards not just the state but also the majority of society as being heretical. The result is that Egypt has been the victim of increasing waves of terrorist attacks, especially with the beginning of the second phase of the post-3 July roadmap, namely the presidential elections. At the same time, student sympathisers of ousted former president Mohamed Morsi and some Brotherhood members who remain outside prison have been continuing their demonstrations on university campuses. Turning to the West, Ibrahim Mounir, the most prominent Brotherhood leader residing in the UK, has warned that a ban on the Brotherhood there would make Britain more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. His remarks were a response to British Prime Minister David Cameron's recent announcement that the British government would undertake an inquiry into the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in the country and the group's possible links with extremism and terrorism. The Brotherhood leader's statement is significant at many levels, according to Ali Bakr, a researcher on Islamist movements at the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies. Mounir's remarks were inappropriate and harmful to the interests of the Muslim Brothers themselves, he said, since they implied a direct correlation between Brotherhood activities and violence and led everyone to connect the Brotherhood with terrorism. Moreover, the statement was an explicit admission either of the existence of an alliance between the Brotherhood and the jihadists, with the latter serving as the wing that carries out terrorist operations, or of the fact that the Brotherhood itself performed these operations. “It is as if Mounir wanted to affirm that the Muslim Brothers were the key to the safety of any country. If they remain unharmed, the host country will remain unharmed,” Bakr commented. The Brotherhood leader's statement had also paved the way to laying the blame on the Muslim Brotherhood for any terrorist crime, Bakr added, just as had been the case in Egypt following Brotherhood official Mohamed Al-Beltagui's remark during the Rabaa Al-Adawiya sit-in that terrorist acts in Sinai would come to a halt the moment that Morsi was restored to power. As a result of Mounir's statement, the Brotherhood had helped to “tighten the noose” around its own neck, Bakr said. After the clampdown on the group in Egypt, its arms abroad were becoming paralysed, leading to its entire defeat. “Unlike the crisis the group underwent in the era of former president Gamal Abdel-Nasser, when some Gulf countries offered its members asylum, today we find that a number of Gulf countries have turned against the group and some western countries have begun to do likewise.” Conditions on the ground indicate that the Brotherhood does not now have the luxury of choice regarding its future direction, and a succession of political or security blows could cause the total collapse of the international organisation. As a result, the Brotherhood's only realistic option would be to accommodate itself to the new situations in the countries in which it operates and where it enjoys a measure of legal, intellectual and political freedom. This will entail accepting the host countries' conditions, chief among them being to cooperate with the security and intelligence agencies of these countries. That the Brotherhood may have already chosen to pursue this “accommodation option” is suggested by a recent statement by their UK chapter. “The Muslim Brotherhood will cooperate with the authorities with full transparency in the review ordered by Prime Minister David Cameron,” the statement said. “However, it will pursue any inappropriate attempts to restrict its activities through the courts. It is important that the British government does not bow to pressures from governments that are worried by their people's quest for democracy.” Bakr dismissed the possibility that the Brotherhood would call on the services of militant jihadists in the event that its activities were hampered in the UK, in spite of Mounir's remarks. However, it is doubtful whether the cause of the Brotherhood's branches abroad has been aided by his warning that a ban on its activities would open the door to other possibilities and drive it to pursue other methods. Mounir left little room for speculation about these methods when he alluded to the invasion of Iraq that some Muslim societies had regarded as a war against Islam. “What happened in London in 2007? And in Madrid,” he asked in ominous tones, referring to the terrorist attacks in these two European cities. The Brotherhood owns and operates a number of media outlets in the UK, such as the Muslim Brotherhood Website, Islam Online and the Middle East Monitor. The group also operates a number of rights advocacy organisations, such as the Arab Human Rights Organisation-UK. According to uncorroborated statements, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry has learned that 13 Brotherhood leaders have applied to the UK for political asylum following the Saudi government's decision to class the group as a terrorist organisation and after the Kuwaiti and Saudi authorities arrested Brotherhood leaders and handed them over to Egypt. Many analysts believe that the British governments move to order an inquiry into Brotherhood activities has been prompted by mutual interests with Egypt and the Gulf countries that support the post-3 July roadmap. Regardless of the motives, the question remains of whether other European countries will now follow the British suit, especially after the presidential elections in Egypt. Faced with such a possibility, the Muslim Brotherhood abroad will most likely work to accommodate itself to the new conditions in the host countries.
