The Egyptian Army and the Muslim Brotherhood (Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Democratization and Government) by Sara Tonsy

Author:Sara Tonsy [Tonsy, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POLITICAL SCIENCE/General, POLITICAL SCIENCE/World/Middle Eastern, SOCIAL SCIENCE/Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781000509281
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2021-11-29T08:00:00+00:00

The political opening of 2011: rejuvenation and renegotiation

January 28, 2011, marks the fixed or exact date of the official participation of the army and the MB in the 2011 uprisings, each as their respective entities: “opposition” or “state institution.” The acknowledgment of this participation was initiated on the part of Mubarak and his regime when SCAF and the MB were invited to the same table of negotiations on January 31, 2011.38 Badei, then the MB's supreme guide, said in an interview in January 2012 that the MB did not accept SCAF's call to negotiate unless there was the “presence of other political forces.”39

There are various aspects to highlighting the presence of a “political opening” that could result in some form of political change. The first is the horizontal and non-leader-motivated uprising. Despite the appearance of several activists and groups at the forefront of the uprising, such as Wael Ghoneim – the administrator of the We Are All Khaled Said page on Facebook and cyber activist living in Dubai who was present and got arrested during the 2011 uprising, the April 6 Youth Movement, Asma Mahfouz, or “We Are Khaled Said” – these activists insisted on not being on “top” of the uprising. They insisted on not leading the uprising. The political opening of 2011 presented itself through the horizontality of the events and the ability of the political activists – as scattered and varied as they were – to gather quickly, as the events escalated, under one umbrella to attempt to outpower the MB, Egyptian army, and ancien regime.

Furthermore, this opening was not only in the political and institutional aspects of governance but also in the patriarchy within the society that enabled and dictated sociopolitical structures. In other words, the internal governance of opposition movements from the Mubarak era provided this patriarchy, and the “father figure” was not only a social dilemma but also an internal, sociopolitical problem within institutional structures. For example, in Sadat's address to the nation following the bread riots in 1977, he mentioned, “children gone astray,” which is a vision that was not absent from Mubarak's 2011 speeches referring to how he was not only the president but also a “father figure.” In a televised interview for a local Egyptian television channel, Badei stated before January 25, 2011 – in April 2010 – that the president should be a father-like figure for all Egyptians.40 Ex-president Mubarak, in his three speeches following January 25, had a recurrent term, which in turn was – and still is – used by the media: al-shabab (youth).41 In Mubarak's first speech on January 28, 2011, the reference to youth as a separate segment of society and apart from “regular citizens” was apparent. However, the term's recurrence in his speech of February 1, 2011, and the elaboration in the speech of February 10 made the intent of his use more manifest. In the February 10, 2011, speech, Mubarak used these phrases:

the children of Egypt from its young men and women [youth] …

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