Beyond its deplorable beliefs and goals, why do so many Egyptians support the MB

[cali]

and who are those supporters? Well, a lot of them are poor and yes uneducated. In other words, the downtrodden. I've seen a lot of people claiming that the people of Egypt support the military coup. It's true that a lot do; maybe the majority, but a good chunk of the population supports the MB. Short of massacring thousands and imprisoning tens of thousands more, the Islamists and supporters of the MB aren't going away. Will al-Sissi go that far? Who knows, but it if he feels he has enough support, it wouldn't shock me.

I wouldn't deny for a second that the beliefs and goals of the MB are despicable, but people support them for reasons extending beyond those beliefs or goals. They support them because for a long time the MB has been the most effective charitable organization in a nation with a lot of poor people. The MB runs charitable hospitals, schools and provides support for the poor.

In Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood’s charitable works may drive political support
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-04-08/world/35262222_1_freedom-and-justice-party-muslim-brotherhood-independents

Between Piety and Politics: Social Services and the Muslim Brotherhood

Beyond its political wing, the Muslim Brotherhood has garnered support among Egypt's population for its decades of experience providing social services to the poor. In 2009, as a graduate student, Nadine Farag researched public health in Cairo's slums -- here's her first-hand account of what she saw.

By Nadine Farag

In Ezbet-el-Haggana, a slum on the outskirts of Cairo, residents struggle daily to survive. Staggering unemployment, inflated food prices and problems securing housing make life here both difficult and uncertain.

I was in Haggana in the summer of 2009, conducting research on how social issues, such as unemployment and gender inequality, impact public health in slums. In conversations with residents, I quickly learned that their biggest problem was the inadequacy of basic social services. Many homes lack running water, and power shortages occur frequently during the night. There is no police presence to protect residents and they are chronically fearful for the safety of their families, especially at night. One man told me, "The youth know that there are no repercussions for what they do." The roads are unpaved and lined with trash, although residents pay a monthly sum to the local government authority for their garbage to be collected. There is only one government medical clinic in the area, with a single doctor. One young mother complained that she waited two hours for the government doctor to see her sick baby, but he left the clinic before seeing the child. "Doctors don't have hearts," she said.

The outlook of the residents was infused with a sense of hopelessness. They told me that the government doesn't care about them because they are poor, and they voiced their deepest fears that life will never get better for them as a result. But while the former Mubarak government seemed to have forgotten these people, Islamic organizations around Egypt -- particularly the Muslim Brotherhood -- have not.

Social service provision has been a core activity for the Muslim Brotherhood since the early 1930s, predating the group's political mobilization. The Brotherhood has long viewed social outreach as a way to demonstrate its ideological commitment to alleviating poverty, reducing inequality and increasing social responsibility.

<snip>
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/revolution-in-cairo/inside-muslim-brotherhood/piety-and-politics.html

Profile: Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12313405

21 May 2013 – Poverty and food insecurity in Egypt have risen significantly over the last three years, according to a joint reports released today by the United Nations food agency and partners.

An estimated 13.7 million Egyptians or 17 per cent of the population suffered from food insecurity in 2011, compared to 14 per cent in 2009, according to the report by UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the Egyptian Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS).

“This increase in food insecurity, malnutrition and poverty rates has not happened overnight, during this year or even during the past year,” said WFP Egypt Representative and Country Director GianPietro Bordignon.

“People’s inability to have adequate and nutritious food is largely attributed to rising poverty rates and a succession of crises from 2005 - including the avian influenza epidemic in 2006, the food, fuel and financial crises of 2007–09 and a challenging macroeconomic context in recent years.”

<snip>

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=44961#.UhDNn6yBp5U

[arely staircase]

1. a lot of fundies in Egypt

fundies suppor fundies. keeping the women folk in their place is popular in those circles, even among a lot of uneducated women.

[cali]

2. but what about the facts in the op?

do you understand that decades of providing relief through charitable organization has garnered substantial support for the MB among the large and growing population of the poor?

[arely staircase]

3. sure, same with Hamas in Gaza

they have been able to obtain some support from non-fundies by providing aid to the poor who have been ignored by corrupt governments (Fatah in Palestine and Mubarak in Egypt.) No argument. But one should not be fooled as to what their real purpose (mission statement if you will) is. That is to clamp down hard on the rights of women, liberals, more secular muslims and Christians. Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing. And that is what gets them most of their support. There are a lot of fundies in Egypt.

[bemildred]

4. Yeah, they want a religious state. That's what they are about.

However, it is not hard to see why those "downtrodden" might prefer, or think they would prefer, a religious state which feeds all its people without fail. It is a quite old and successful political model, however reactionary socially in our view, and very congenial to muslim cultural values, as those case you mention demonstrate. That is how Hezbollah came to rise too, and al Sadr in Iraq.

[MADem]

5. The overwhelming majority of people in Egypt do not support the MB.

They do, however, have overwhelming confidence in the military, and they also think USA should keep their noses out of their business:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-zogby/egyptian-attitudes-in-the_b_3736890.html


http://www.npr.org/2013/08/17/212862415/despite-violence-many-egyptians-support-military
Despite Bloodshed, Many Egyptians Support Military


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/16/egypt-nationalism-muslim-brotherhood-crackdown

Egypt: resentment towards Brotherhood fuels crackdown support
State media portrays Islamist movement as 'terrorists' fomenting sectarian divisions with support of western-led conspiracy

Even in the MB's birthplace, before this latest round of violence, people had had enough of their incompetence: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23312478


It's a curious situation; many of the people who were in Tahrir Square, demanding the ouster of Mubarak, are the same people who are supporting the military's actions against the MB.

I hope they can resolve this situation soon, call for new elections, and move forward. Al-Sisi has said that the military has no intentions of seizing power, so that's a bright spot in this unfortunate mess.

Your point about poverty and social services is salient; probably the best/easiest/fastest way that the Egyptian government could wrest what support remains for the MB is for the government to take a more vigorous role in the whole social services sector. If the government is seen as the provider of, and gatekeeper/caretaker for charitable services and public assistance, AND they provide quality services, that would go a long way towards persuading people to reject the "charity with a dose of fundy hatred" formula of the MB. It would require a paradigm shift, though, as that kind of thing has historically been a faith-based enterprise, by and large. Egyptians are resilient, though--they could make it work.

[cali]

6. that the overwhelming majority currently supports the heinous actions of

the military, doesn't actually justify mass murder and the suspension of all rights.

There is no doubt that sizable minority supports the MB. That number ranges from the high hundreds of thousands to the several million. There is also little doubt that support for the MB decreased over Morsi's tenure. However, as virtually every Egypt analyst and expert points out, it's not feasible to ignore the Islamists.

I agree that an Egyptian government that provided services for the poor would go a long way to winning hearts and minds, but the military (and that is and has mostly been, the government in Egypt) has not shown itself to be at all adept at doing so. I haven't a clue as to why when you consider that its got its fingers in every pie in Egypt.

Al-Sisi is a brutal military strongman and he has given no signs that he'll relinquish power. It's laughable to think he'll restore democracy.

[Igel]

7. The article was a bit misleading.

The poll was in the second half of July, after the coup.

It was taken before the current violence, so doesn't reflect and shifts in attitudes resulting from "dispersing" the protesters.

[cali]

8. agreed.

I looked at the poll itself, but I really don't know enough about reading polls and internals to comment.

[MADem]

14. I honestly do not think that Egyptians are "happy" about the bloodshed.

I also do not think al-Sisi is "bloodthirsty" or "evil" or anything of that nature. He is a pragmatist, and he knows that he's got one "good" shot at putting down the MB, and if he's too weak, he'll leave them in a position to regroup. Conversely, if he's too brutal, he'll alienate. I don't have the source offhand, but al-Sisi was quoted in either an Emirate or Lebanese paper as saying -- quite decisively -- that he wanted to restore a civilian government. He wasn't equivocating in the comments that I saw. So we'll see about that. I think, if he wants to lead the nation and not just the Army, he'll take off the big hat and fruit salad on his chest, and run for office in a suit and tie.

The MB had people up in the minarets of that mosque, picking people off in the streets. There have been other actions, like the slaughter of shi'a (they hate them, think they're satanic cultists) by MB actors, and the church burnings and a few killings here and there, that have pissed people off. Already they were coming from a place where over seventy percent of the country was "unsympathetic" to their demonstrations, before the violence.

The reason that the government doesn't get into social services is simply because it is not the paradigm. Part of the reason for the tithing is to support those sorts of charitable programs, as well as masjid schools and salaries for imams, maintenance of facilities, etc. It's like an insurance policy, in a way.

When you think about it, welfare payments, subsidized housing, food aid, etc. were not the paradigm here in USA, many many years ago, either. If you were destitute, you went to your church and they gave you charity and made you feel like shit, too. Or you went to some philanthropic organization that was established by a robber baron to ease his guilt. Or you ended up in the work house, where you worked until you died.

The ME needs to adopt more western models in this regard if they want to break the back of these reactionary and rabble rousing fundamentalists. Hopefully, someone will clue them in that it's time to shift the picture and approach this issue a new way. I do think that this could be the start of a new "Arab spring" -- one where the fundies take a back seat, for a change. That might be wishing-n-hoping at play, too, but I hope it comes to pass.

[msongs]

9. gee maybe out of control heterosexual baby making causes a lot of these problems nt

[cali]

10. undoubtedly, but that doesn't change the realities on the ground.

[cthulu2016]

11. "In other words, the downtrodden"

Will we be consistent in this characterization?

Will be start describing Mississippi's most violent racists as the down-trodden vis-a-vis well-heeled, educated New York liberals?

They are, of course.

There is always a reason to find ill in hundreds of people being shot.

But if one one jummps the humanitarian rails and starts defending the MB he becomes one of what Orwell called, "useful idiots."

[kelliekat44]

12. "Christianity" does both good and evil in the name of GOd. Thus it is with the Islamic religion.

Have you seen the dean bodies stacked up inside the mosque where hundreds of muslims were taking refuge from the murdering Egyptian military? Does that raise any questions in your mind about why so many people are still supporting this blood lust military and why the US continues to send them aid?

[mick063]

13. The democracies within the Middle East

are largely a convergence of Democracy and Theocracy. The Muslim Brotherhood fits into this well.


President Bush sold a vision of American style Democracy in Iraq. After discovering that the people of this region would rather dictate policy through mosques instead of state houses, we should give up the notion that we might see a form of easily identifiable Democracy with in any nation of the region.

Nation building worked in countries we utterly destroyed (Japan and Germany). History has shown, however, that it typically doesn't work otherwise.

Moral of the story:

The American people should never agree to nation building unless we plan to completely destroy it first.

This is where the famous saying from Vietnam comes to play. "We had to destroy the city to save it". Sounds ludicrous at first, but it is actually a tried, true, proven method in a political context.