Muslim Brotherhood sources denied a popular magazine's claim that the group was contemplating "military training" and "the overthrow of the government". Omayma Abdel-Latif investigates Controversy erupted this week over whether or not the Muslim Brotherhood was considering a drastic readjustment of its political strategy. A source from the outlawed group described claims made by the weekly magazine Rose El- Youssef about the Brotherhood contemplating the overthrow of the government and wanting to provide its members with military training, as "fabricated". The magazine, which made the allegations based on what it said was "an internal Brotherhood survey conducted in secrecy among the group's rank and file", is generally perceived in press circles as bring both pro- government and sensational. The alleged questionnaire -- which the magazine claimed was produced by Brotherhood members who are political science professors -- consisted of five main questions. The two most important, according to the magazine, had to do with whether or not the group should undergo radical structural and doctrinal changes, and the manner in which political change in Egypt should occur. The results -- if true -- would certainly serve to complicate the already turbulent relationship between the government and the group. Rose El-Youssef reported that 38 per cent of those polled saw a need to re-instate the Brotherhood's Al-Tanzeem Al-Khas (the military wing of the group, purportedly defunct since the the Brotherhood's come-back during the '70s), while 26 per cent supported the idea of providing group members with military training. Furthermore, reported the magazine, 17 per cent of the Brotherhood members who were polled insisted on the need for change to be imposed from above. "Their opinion," the magazine concluded, "is that the group has been working -- from below and via social means -- to bring about change for the past 70 years, but that this has not yielded adequately positive results. Thus, a movement like the Brotherhood should instead attempt to change the political system from above by overthrowing the government." The magazine further claimed that a growing faction within the group espouses the use of violence, and will eventually commit "acts of violence if it is not reined in by the group's moderate wing". Khayrat El-Shater, a senior member of the group whom the magazine claimed was one of the co-signatories of the survey results that were allegedly distributed to members, told Al-Ahram Weekly that Rose El-Youssef's story was fabricated. "There has never been such a poll," an angry El-Shater said. "The Brotherhood is the one political movement most monitored by the security apparatus, and if this report had a grain of truth to it, the security forces would have crushed us by now." Osama Salama, the Rose El-Youssef journalist who broke the story told the Weekly on Tuesday that the questionaire papers had been handed over to him by what he described as 'Brotherhood members who are disgruntled by the state of affairs within the group'. He declined, however, to name any of those members. "I am not surprised that the Brotherhood denied it. I was expecting them to do so because such behaviour is in conformity with the state of secrecy with which they handle the group's affairs," Salama told the Weekly. El-Shater and others in the group, however, consider the article part of a recent "smear campaign" targeting Brotherhood figures and aiming to undermine the group. El-Shater also referred to a series of articles in weekly newspaper Sawt Al-Umma, which alleged that the Brotherhood's Supreme Guide is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. "The message here," El-Shater said, "is that the Brotherhood's leadership is no longer functional, and the group has lost faith in its own doctrines and will resort to violence." Doctors' Syndicate Secretary-General Essam El-Erian, a member of the group's Guidance Council, acknowledged that the Brotherhood is going through "a continuing process of doctrinal revision", but insisted that the magazine's suggestion that the group is undergoing a more radical change couldn't be further from the truth. According to El-Erian, the group's "fundamental" principles cannot be altered under any circumstances. "One such 'fundamental'," he said, "is that we believe in a peaceful approach to political change, and we still think that society, not the state, is the ultimate agent of change." El-Erian said the latest accusations were part of a broader campaign targeting the region's "moderate Islamist groups". A number of independent analysts echoed El- Erian's views, saying the Brotherhood has long shunned violence. "From the 1970s onward, the Brotherhood took a strategic decision to shun violence as a means to achieve political change," said Amr El-Choubaki of Al-Ahram's Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. El-Choubaki, whose academic research has focussed on the Brotherhood, said "the real controversy within the ranks of the Brotherhood today is not about whether or not to use violence against the system, but rather about the group's 'politicisation'." According to El-Choubaki, the group's younger cadres want to see the Brotherhood become "a political party whose platform is subject to criticism". El-Choubaki dismissed the talk of the group allegedly wanting to provide its members with military training as ridiculous. "The generations of young professionals who represent a majority of the group's rank and file have never contemplated violence as a means of achieving political change. Their real dilemma is how to reconcile the group's fundamentalist wing with visions of more political openness." The Rose El-Youssef story coincides with a period of particular political turbulence between the outlawed group and the government. It also appears amid fresh calls by some observers to integrate moderate Islamist groups within the political system. In last Friday's Al-Ahram, Nabil Abdel-Fattah, editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram's State of Religion report, explored Egyptian Islamist groups' potential futures. His conclusion was that the partial integration of moderate Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood into the political system was the most likely scenario. "There is a political and pragmatic inclination on the part of the current ruling elite to deal with all opposition forces including the outlawed Brotherhood [by] allowing them leeway to function politically. Besides, Egypt is facing external pressure to provide all political forces with more space, and the integration into the political system of the Islamist movement's moderate elements will revitalise the political system's legitimacy" in general. El-Choubaki sees things differently. The partial integration scenario is highly unlikely, he said, because "it would require a radical change in the way those groups are perceived in the minds of the powers that be. They have to cease to see them as a security threat, and deal with them as political entities, and we are a long way away from that."
