On The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Political Mobilization And Participation

Islamist mobilization and participation has always been an important issueinvolving the approaches and directions of political development of the Middle EastIslamist countries, acquiring wide attention from international community andscholars. Islamists have been rising politically since the Arab Spring, some Islamistorganizations have turned from grassroots opposition to rulers of state. Egypt’sMuslim Brotherhood is just the case. Therefore, exploring Egypt’s MB in theperspective of political mobilization and participation will not only reveals the currentpolitical rising of Islamism, but also be helpful to recognize the political developmentapproaches of the Middle East Islamist countries. From this point, this research hasgreat theoretical and realistic importance.MB’s political practice is on the one hand the outcome of Egyptian particular andpolitical environment, on the other hand, has caused profound influence on theprocess of Egyptian political development. This paper utilizes the “strong party”model by Samuel Huntingdon to analyze and study the outside environment, insidestructures, approach, characteristics and effects of MB’s effects on Egypt’s politicaldevelopment.The first chapter introduces the outside environment of MB’s politicalmobilization and participation which characterizes exclusion of popular mobilization,participation and lacking of extensive social base of support. The second chaptermainly narrates the ideals of mobilization and participation of three MB’s mostinfluential leaders and the MB’s organizing structure which composes of the publicinstitution, the Paramilitary institution and the secret or special institution. The thirdchapter summarizes the approaches and characteristics of MB’s political mobilizationand participation, especially focusing on how MB has gained influence by providingpublic goods and participating parliamentary elections, outlines the dualism of MB’smobilization and participation and the two most important factors that influence thedirection of dualism over different times. Chapter four gives the effects and valuationof Muslim Brotherhood.This paper concludes that there are two sides of MB’s mobilization andparticipation, on the one hand, MB’s success in mobilization and participationsignifies the rise of popular politics and MB’s existence constitutes the basic form ofpopular mobilization and participation, this is the goof side, on the other hand, the MB’s Islam fundamentalist ideology owns Egypt’s every “development crisis” to thedeviation of “true Islam”, purposing “Islam is the solution”, marring the deep roots ofthe crisis, and can’t come up with workable solutions and programs. At the same time,along with the changing of political environment, MB itself has been alwaysexperiencing transition itself, therefore, its flexibility and adaptability has beenimproving dramatically. At present, the institutionalized participation channel hasestablished in Egypt, the most important issue that haunts Egyptians and abroad iswhether the ruling party Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) will be a strong,independent party and commit to democracy but a political arm of MB, and whetherMB will be consent to be an true NGO, this issue needs further study. Therefore, thereare great uncertainties concerning the approaches of Egypt’s political transition andpolitical development.