The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: A Gramscian re-examination

Abstract

Regarded as Egypt’s most influential oppositional force, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) was analysed from a Gramscian lens that projected it as a counterhegemonic force par excellence. Its all-sufficient Islam, cohesive organisational structure and ability to wage a war of position were considered to represent parallels to Gramsci’s revolutionary methodology. This article contests this narrative by focusing on the MB’s inability to deal with state coercion, its intellectual inertia and failure in governance, and its passive revolutionary and neoliberal tendencies. Against the backdrop of resurgent authoritarianism and the MB’s downfall, it has become imperative to rethink our dominant understandings of (counter)hegemony and resistance. The article concludes by arguing that the MB’s failure to fundamentally challenge the hegemonic order and instigate social change should not deter other movements from continuing to do so. Instead, lessons from the MB’s limitations must be heeded with Gramsci remaining key in aiding such endeavours.

Introduction

Between 2011 and 2013, Egypt witnessed the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) not only into power, but also into intense debates surrounding its role in shaping Egypt’s future. The elections that followed Mubarak’s fall resulted in a parliament comprising an Islamist majority and the election of Egypt’s first civilian president, the MB’s Mohamed Morsi, in 2012. Morsi’s tenure did not last long as he was ousted by a coup d’état led by Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and supported by an array of groups ranging from the beneficiaries of Mubarak’s old regime to numerous pro-democracy movements (Asad and Cubukcu, 2013). In response, MB supporters organised two large sit-ins in Cairo, the largest being in Rab‘a al-Adawiya Square, to denounce the coup and call for the re-instatement of Morsi. The sit-ins lasted for two months and were violently dispersed by the police and military forces leading to the death of over 1,150 protestors in which is now known as the ‘Rab‘a Massacre’ (Human Rights Watch, 2014). This crackdown also included the outlawing of the MB, the imprisonment of many of its members and leaders, and culminated in Morsi’s death during his trial in July 2019.

The MB’s rise to power after the Egyptian uprisings of 2011 was not surprising. The MB was for decades considered to be Egypt’s most organised and influential oppositional force. According to Bayat (2007: 137), through its commitment to socio-religious change, associational work, and engagement with wide sectors of society, the MB was able to pose challenges to various ruling regimes, particularly Mubarak’s (1981–2011). Islam, especially that associated with the MB, was therefore viewed as a credible vector for popular grievances against authoritarian regimes and poor economic conditions (Wickham, 2013). Moreover, it was considered as a method of producing, practising and popularising alternative ideas, institutions and values capable of enforcing social change from below. As a result, by the early 1990s Egypt was argued to have been going through an Islamic ‘revolution by stealth’ (Bayat, 2007: 138).

This ‘revolution’ signified numerous Gramscian concepts and consequently encouraged a plethora of studies to utilise Gramscian frameworks to examine the MB. The MB’s all-sufficient Islam, its cohesive and disciplined organisational structure, and its ability to wage a war of position were used to argue that it represented a counterhegemonic force par excellence. Against the backdrop of a resurgent authoritarian regime and the feebleness of Egyptian oppositional forces, it is imperative to rethink our dominant understandings of (counter)hegemony and resistance more generally. In this case, arguments surrounding the MB epitomising a counterhegemonic force.

By focusing on the MB’s inability to adequately deal with state coercion, its intellectual inertia, failure in governance, and its neoliberal and passive revolutionary tendencies, I argue that its hegemonic project was never capable of truly challenging the ruling one, nor of obtaining the widespread consent of Egyptians. I conclude by arguing that the MB’s downfall should not deter future efforts aimed at challenging the hegemonic order. Instead, lessons from the MB’s limitations must be heeded with Gramsci still remaining a crucial part of our efforts to transform society.

First, a disclaimer surrounding this article’s scope and intention is required. This article is concerned with critiquing a specific Gramscian reading of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Therefore, it does not aim to offer an analysis of Islamism or Islam, more generally. Moreover, it is not concerned with questioning whether the MB considers itself to be a counterhegemonic force or not, but it interrogates the literature that does. Crucially, my arguments are not based on findings obtained from conducting fieldwork in Egypt. ¹ But, similarly to Kate Crehan (2020: 63), I ‘take a number of arguments from a wide range of scholars and assemble them in a perhaps novel way’ (see also Crehan, 2016: 85–86) to re-examine how Gramscian concepts have been used to make sense of the MB, and the limitations of doing so.

Contextualising the Muslim Brotherhood

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hassan Al-Banna (1906–1949), an imam and schoolteacher, and has long been enmeshed in Egyptian politics and society. For Al-Banna, the MB represented ‘a Salafi call, a Sunni way, a Sufi truth, a political organisation, an athletic group, an intellectual and scientific association, and economic company, and a social idea’ (Al-Anani, 2020: 64–65; Arafat, 2017: 67). Since it viewed Egypt’s predicaments as being the result of cultural and religious ‘foreignness’ (De Smet, 2015: 151), the MB propagated a utopian vision of an Islamic past that it sought to replicate (El-Ghobashy, 2005: 376). To achieve this, the movement had to target both state and society and make them more Islamic (Al-Anani, 2020: 46).

The MB’s popularity was built upon its da‘wa (the proselytisation of Islam), which not only aided in recruiting members, but tapped into people’s grievances and ‘portrayed Islam as the means to fundamentally transform the conditions in which they were rooted’ (Wickham, 2002: 160). This was evident throughout the 1970s and 1980s where the MB’s popularity reflected what Bayat (2007: 35) describes as the ‘rebellion of the impoverished and morally outraged Middle Class’ who suffered from few prospects for economic success and were considered the losers of Egypt’s neoliberalisation process (Beinin, 2005: 113).

Nonetheless, De Smet (2015: 180) argues that it is important to differentiate between the MB as a popular mass movement that ‘advanced revolutionary national-democratic demands’ and that was heavily repressed under Gamal Abdel Nasser (1954–1970), and the MB as an elite organisation that became part of Anwar Sadat’s (1970–1981) ‘new hegemonic bloc’ in the 1970s. Given its support for Sadat’s infitah and its drive for privatisation and neoliberalisation (alongside its hostility towards left-wing opposition), the MB gained the implicit approval of Sadat’s regime and became one of its main political and economic beneficiaries (De Smet, 2015: 186). Importantly, Sadat’s economic liberalisation helped fund the MB’s welfare services, enriched its bourgeois members, and provided the financial means to contest both Sadat’s and Mubarak’s regimes (Kennedy, 2017: 67). Accordingly, the MB’s ideology represented ‘both those who were included and excluded from Sadat’s new hegemonic bloc’ (De Smet, 2016: 164).

Under Hosni Mubarak (1981–2011), the MB was able to further expand its influence. Aware that it was tolerated by Mubarak’s regime (as long as it did not challenge the political status quo), the MB was able to expand its welfare services by establishing hospitals, schools, banks, day-care centres and cooperatives which benefited millions of Egyptians. Moreover, it gained influence in many professional unions and participated in parliamentary elections which comprised a key part of the MB’s efforts to recruit members and disseminate its ideology (Al-Anani, 2020: 68). As a result, the MB’s popularity was manifested in its success in parliamentary elections where notable gains were achieved in the 2000 and 2005 elections (winning 17 and 88 seats respectively), making the MB the largest opposition bloc (Wickham, 2013).

Given the MB’s growing influence and Mubarak’s toleration of its Islamisation process (Kandil, 2011; Manduchi, 2020a), the 2011 uprisings offered the MB an unprecedented opportunity to play a vital role in Egyptian politics. Despite not being ‘a forerunner nor even an unequivocal supporter’ of the uprisings (Wilmot, 2015: 385), the MB helped shape the transitionary period that followed Mubarak’s fall. This transitionary period was dominated by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which presented itself as Egypt’s ‘revolutionary arbiters or even leaders’ (De Smet, 2016: 205). The MB sought to engage with the SCAF as it viewed itself as a power broker between the military and the protestors (De Smet, 2020: 12) and deemed that a successful transition to civilian rule necessitated the military’s support (Wickham, 2013).

Accordingly, the SCAF and MB had a ‘conspicuous marriage of convenience’ based on power-sharing arrangements (Abul-Magd, 2018: 205). In exchange for protecting the military’s political and economic interests as well as the generals’ privileges, the military would allow the MB to manage the state. What followed was what De Smet (2020: 11) describes as a ‘top-down process of “democratisation” which was based on military-supervised elections, plebiscites, and constitution-making, which were deployed as weapons of restoration and state rebuilding’. Consequently, the MB was able to found its own political party in April 2011 (Freedom and Justice Party [FJP]) winning five consecutive elections and referendums culminating in its candidate Mohamed Morsi becoming Egypt’s first elected civilian president.

This marriage of convenience was short-lived as Morsi’s capacity to govern was constrained by crippling military decrees and judicial rulings, pushing him to issue a decree in November 2012 that ‘fired the prosecutor general, made the president immune from judicial oversight, and immunised the Shura Council and the Constituent Assembly from dissolution by court order’ (Lesch, 2017: 142). On the one hand, this increased political assertiveness, Wilmot (2015: 391) argues, ‘must be understood in the context of intrusive institutional continuities with the former regime’ that sought to undermine the MB’s authority. On the other hand, by asserting such powers, Morsi ‘abruptly cancelled his electoral legitimacy’ (Lesch, 2017: 142) thereby setting in motion his ouster in July 2013, the subsequent crackdown and illegalisation of the MB, and the dissolution of the FJP.

Although the military played a decisive role in deposing Morsi (once again demonstrating its role in shaping political transformations in Egypt), this is not enough to explain the MB’s rapid downfall. Instead, the seeds of its downfall were already in place before it even assumed power; the military coup under Al-Sisi only hastened it. In short, I argue that the MB was not counterhegemonic enough to truly challenge the Egyptian state in any radical sense.

Gramsci and religion

Solle (1984: 21) argues that religion must be understood as ‘apology and legitimation of the status quo and its culture of injustice on the one hand, and as means of protest, change, and liberation on the other hand’. Accordingly, Gramsci’s theorisations offer unique sociological insights to help understand this peculiar role played by religion (Grelle, 2017). Gramsci considered religion to be part of popular culture, a conception of life that can be in conflict with ‘official’ conceptions. Religion also represented the principal sources of common sense (Chambers, 2012: 104), which is a type of consciousness internalised by people that is not:

. . . a single unique conception, identical in time and space . . . it is a conception which, even in the brain of one individual, is fragmentary, incoherent and inconsequential, in conformity with the social and cultural position of those masses whose philosophy it is. (Gramsci, 1971: 419; Q1§65, 1992: 173)

Religion, as an aspect of common sense, can help influence modes of thought, political participation and the organisation of society and hence ‘turn itself into “life”’ (Q8§213, Gramsci, 2007: 360; Green, 2019: 536). However, Gramsci believed that common sense is not something rigid or static ‘but is continuously transforming itself, enriching it with scientific ideas and with philosophical opinions which have entered ordinary “life”’ (Gramsci, 1971: 326, n.5). By distinguishing between philosophy (as a coherent concept of the world) and common sense (as the popular mentality of the masses), Gramsci alludes ‘to the radical implication of his investigations, which is the political and pedagogical project of changing common sense and creating “a new common sense”’ (Green, 2019: 533). In short, common sense must be the starting point when aiming to transform it, or rather, when making it ideologically coherent (Gramsci, 1971: 421). In this sense, religion can comprise an active element of any social dynamic when bringing about revolutionary change (Maduro, 1977: 366).

Interestingly, Gramsci’s introduction to the Arab world in the early 1970s took place against the backdrop of sweeping political, economic and socio-cultural changes (exacerbated by the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War in 1967) which witnessed a declining Arab Left that was heavily weakened by Islamism. ² Gramscian theorisations, particularly on hegemony, were therefore employed to analyse this conundrum (Manduchi, 2020a: 234; 2020b: 9–10), with some scholars even suggesting similarities between Gramsci’s revolutionary methodology and Islamist politics, particularly that associated with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. ³ On the one hand, this narrative includes a strand which views the MB as epitomising a counterhegemonic force par excellence due to its all-sufficient Islam, cohesive organisational structure, and ability to wage a war of position. This is best exemplified by Butko (2004), Simms (2002), and to a lesser extent Merone (2020). On the other hand, there is a strand that acknowledges the limits of the MB’s counterhegemony such as Kandil (2011, 2015), Kennedy (2017), Bayat (2007) and De Smet (2015, 2016). This article contests the first strand and builds on and takes further the arguments presented by the second.

All-sufficient Islam (shumuliyat al-Islam)

Hassan Al-Banna advocated for a movement capable of shaping an Islamic worldview and that provided Muslims with an alternative system able to solve Egypt’s political, economic and social predicaments (Al-Anani, 2020: 54, 56). This worldview promulgated an all-sufficient and comprehensive (shumuli) Islam that encompassed ‘every aspect of life’ (Maréchal, 2008: 194), and represented ‘a complete divine system with a superior political model, cultural code, legal structure, and economic arrangement – in short, a system that responded to all human problems’ (Bayat, 2007: 7). According to Meijer (2014: 298), this shumuliyya signified one of the MB’s most distinguishing characters and one of its main mobilising concepts.

A worldview that claims to be able to address all of society’s problems can additionally help create an awareness of an alternative conception of the world that is distinct from the one promulgated by the rulers (Butko, 2004: 51; Merone, 2020: 6–7). Since the MB viewed Islam as the one true religion capable of guiding human affairs, this represented:

. . . the indisputable centrepiece of their counter-ruling class ideology when interpreted in the light of Gramscian thought . . . the Brothers, as counter-hegemonic ideologues, created a politico-religious Islamic worldview that formed the philosophical substructure for the liberation of their nation through a cultural revolution. (Simms, 2002: 573)

Developing such an alternative worldview can ‘expose the contradictions between the views of the rulers and those of the ruled in order to diminish the former’s legitimacy and force it to reveal its ugly face’ (Kandil, 2011: 47). To popularise this worldview, the MB had to expose to Egyptians their incorrect perception of Islam as a religion that separates between private belief and public practice. A fallacy that was viewed to be a consequence of the secular worldview promulgated by the Egyptian state. The MB, therefore, employed this to undermine the credibility of the ruling regime by painting it as one that accepted secularism and where rulers represented obstacles to achieving the ‘correct’ version of Islam (Kandil, 2011: 48).

By simply requiring Egyptians to ‘re-examine their religiosity for a possible discrepancy between what they believe themselves to be (devout Muslims) and what they actually are (violators of Islam)’ (Kandil, 2015: 51), a potential contradiction was laid bare which represented a Gramscian strategy since counterhegemonic movements require people to consider how the:

. . . contrast between thought and action, i.e., the co-existence of two conceptions of the world, one affirmed in words and the other displayed in effective action, is not simply a product of self-deception . . . In these cases the contrast between thought and action cannot but be the expression of profounder contrasts of a social historical order. (Gramsci, 1971: 326–327)

Propagating this worldview has to rely on a disciplined and cohesive organisational structure. As Gramsci (1971: 328) argues, a fundamental issue that faces any new conception of the world, ‘a “religion”, a “faith”, any that has produced a form or practical activity or will . . . is that of preserving the ideological unity of the entire social bloc which that ideology serves to cement and unify’. The MB’s organisational structure, norms and regulations served to help cultivate this distinctive and unified Islamic worldview (Al-Anani, 2020: 101).

Cohesive organisational structure

The MB’s organisational structure represents its ‘most notable feature’ (Brown, 2012: 66), which is characterised by its well-connected divisions and branches, a strong chain of command and leadership, and clearly defined norms and regulations (Al-Anani, 2020: 103). Such a structure can help develop a unified worldview, generate collective action, survive governmental repression, recruit and socialise members, and maintain internal coherence. In other words, for Butko (2004), this represented a key aspect of the MB’s counterhegemonic strategy due to its correspondence to Gramsci’s Modern Prince.

The Modern Prince epitomises a different conception of political and social organisation where it is not just an institutional apparatus, but:

. . . a totalising process of civilization reformation and refoundation . . . conceived as party-form, [The Modern Prince] represents only the tip of the iceberg of a broader process of collective political activation of the popular classes throughout the society, in all its instances of deliberation and decision making. (Thomas, 2020: 31)

Gramsci (1971: 152–153) outlines three fundamental components as part of this organisation: the ‘principal cohesive’, ‘intermediate’ and ‘mass’ elements. These correspond to the MB’s three levels of ‘leadership’, ‘vanguard’ and ‘individual’ members. In terms of leadership, Butko (2004: 52) argues that ‘like Gramsci, the principal Islamic theorists focus on leadership as the single most important criterion in determining the cohesiveness and, hence, potential success of their “revolutionary” movements’. One only has to consider how Hassan Al-Banna embodied this type of leadership, and the influence subsequent General Guides have had on the MB. The vanguard represents a small inner circle of members who are ‘willing to lead the movement in all facets of its ideological teachings, organisational structure, and strategic planning’ (Butko, 2004: 53). This vanguard is central in maintaining the internal cohesiveness of the leadership, and ensuring the participation of individual members as a ‘necessary condition for the Islamist revolution to achieve its goals’ (Merone, 2020: 9).

As for the individual members (the masses), their significance in counterhegemonic struggles is emphasised where self-dedication and discipline are tantamount to the movement’s success (Butko, 2004: 54). Under this understanding, there is an active relationship between the masses and the leadership whereby members ‘have been going through a subjective critical process of awareness of the new vision of the world’ enabling them to participate and interact with the leadership to create environments conducive to revolutionary activity (Merone, 2020: 7–8).

In order to sustain such an organisation, a cohesive structure that is able to discipline and preserve a degree of homogeneity (organic unity) is required. As Gramsci (1971: 158) succinctly puts it:

. . . in building a party, it is necessary to give it a ‘monolithic character’ rather than base it on secondary questions; therefore, painstaking care that there should be homogeneity between the leadership and the rank and file, between the leaders and the mass following.

Consequently, socialisation (tarbiyya) is vital in maintaining the MB’s cohesiveness and building solidarity as it ‘reformulates members’ worldview, perceptions, and behaviour to align with the Brotherhood’s norms and regulations’ (Al-Anani, 2020: 66). Nonetheless, to truly instigate any radical change, the MB had to go beyond its ranks to target the rest of Egyptian society. It had to engage in a war of position since ‘every revolution is usually preceded by a long process of intense critical activity, of new cultural insights and the spread of ideas’ (Gramsci, 1994: 10). Without the prior success of the war of position, the ‘seizure of state power would only prove transitory if not disastrous’ (Femia, 1975: 34).

War of position

The war of position is a struggle that aims to ‘conquer one after another all the agencies of civil society’ (Femia, 1981: 51). It constitutes a multidimensional cultural battle that takes place across various political and social levels (Fontana, 2010: 349) and helps to ‘culturally prepare the ground for the revolutionary movement’s assault on hegemonic dominance’ (Butko, 2004: 57). The MB’s commitment to associational work and its engagement with wide sectors of Egyptian society illustrated the MB’s engagement in a war of position. As discussed earlier, Sadat’s economic liberalisation (infitah) did not only enable the MB to gain leverage under his regime, but it also helped fund the MB’s welfare services, which proliferated (especially under Mubarak) to cover education, healthcare, housing and employment services (Kennedy, 2017: 127). I particularly focus on education given its importance for both Gramsci and the MB.

Gramsci (1971: 350) believed that hegemony and education are interlinked, where every relationship of hegemony is necessarily an educational one. Consequently, education plays a significant role in any war of position whereby any counterhegemonic movement must influence the curriculum, restructure the education process, and encourage teachers (as part of the intermediate/vanguard) to utilise their positions of authority to turn students against the ruling worldview (Gramsci, 1971: 26, 35–36). The MB considered education to be a battlefield for controlling (religious) knowledge and for acquiring ideological influence through discursive and institutional means (Asik, 2012; Cook, 2001; Herrera, 2006; Starrett, 1998). It viewed education as a method of recruiting members, expanding its support, and importantly, as a ‘lever to gain a political foothold in the public sphere’ (Hatina, 2006: 182).

The MB sought to infiltrate formal education since schooling was considered to be a medium through which it could encroach on the state domain (Bayat, 2007; Herrera, 2006) and develop a religio-political counterhegemony (Simms, 2002). Since the 1980s, most Arabic and religion teachers were affiliated with the group. ⁴ The MB also dominated Dar al-‘Ulum (Teachers Training College) whereby classes were argued to have often turned into indoctrinating sessions to produce schoolteachers who would ‘wave the flag of Islamism in their classrooms’ (Bayat, 2007: 45, 170–171; Kandil, 2011: 51). Moreover, the MB established and funded Islamic private schools and adult learning centres, as part of its ideological battle, to offer a ‘decent education – which, it was believed, could not be obtained from the feeble and “morally misguided” national education system’ (Bayat, 2007: 45).

Based on the above arguments, one could understand why the MB is deemed to be a counterhegemonic force. It promulgated an Islamic worldview that clashed with the ruling one; it communicated, socialised in and obtained support for this worldview through a cohesive organisational structure; and engaged in a war of position to ‘conquer’ civil society. The MB was able, on paper, to prepare the ground culturally and politically to challenge the ruling hegemony. However, its short-lived rule in 2012–2013 and subsequent downfall and crackdown by Al-Sisi proved otherwise. To reiterate, although the military played an influential role in deposing Morsi, this is not enough to explain the MB’s rapid downfall. Nor is it enough to justify arguments calling Morsi’s ouster a missed opportunity for democratic transition and of building alternatives. In the next section, I argue that the seeds of this downfall were already in place even before the MB assumed power. In other words, I argue that the MB was never counterhegemonic enough to truly challenge the Egyptian state in any radical sense. I focus on three arguments to develop my claim: the MB’s inability to deal with state coercion, its intellectual inertia and failure in governance, and its passive revolutionary and neoliberal tendencies.

Inability to deal with state coercion

Prior to the MB assuming power, Kandil (2011) argued that it was waging a war of position that was never transformed into a war of manoeuvre ⁵ to directly challenge the Egyptian state. Although this perpetual war of position helped advance the MB during periods of societal stability, it challenged its political premises during periods of crisis (De Smet, 2015: 152):

By playing the long game in its bid for political power, staying faithful to its founder’s plan to forge a new type of (Islamic) man to reform society from below . . . the movement seems to have become something of a Gramscian zombie, condemned by its own devices to wage an endless cultural ‘war of position’ without ever shifting to a regime-changing ‘war of movement’ strategy. (Letourneau, 2016: 302)

Accordingly, three implications resulted from the MB waging an endless war of position under a repressive Egyptian state. First, since the MB was relatively tolerated under Mubarak (on the condition that it did not challenge the political status quo), Mubarak’s regime ended up absorbing ‘the requests for the Islamisation of society [which] allowed the regime to continue its rule by making changes to some of its policies’ (Merone, 2020: 5). In other words, without having to completely undermine its popularity, Mubarak’s regime was still able to restrain the MB by making some concessions without ceding political power (Kandil, 2011: 56).

Second, when the MB assumed power, they failed to transform ‘the structures of dictatorship’ (De Smet, 2016: 214) and, instead, aimed to capture positions of power in the cabinet, ministries, state unions and professional associations by placing its own members (Pioppi, 2013: 63–64). Finally, and building on the previous point, Morsi’s regime failed to restructure and radically reform Egypt’s security apparatus, which ended up playing a critical role in repressing the MB. In other words, regardless of how wide-reaching and effective its war of position may have been, it was consigned to fail given the Egyptian state’s coercive capabilities:

While a culture-oriented counterhegemonic strategy might not lead to the conquest of political power, it could secure social support for a new regime, should it succeed in coming to power through other means. A counterhegemonic strategy could perform the important function of uniting opposition and carrying it to the brinks of political power – though it will not shift the balance of power between the opposition and the rulers . . . the dominance of those who control the state – stripped from all pretensions – ultimately rests on brute force. (Kandil, 2011: 58)

Daniel Egan (2018: 115) summarises this conundrum by arguing that failing to adequately address the state’s coercive power risks limiting our understanding of hegemonic power. This is pertinent given that coercion is not only employed to dominate those groups that do not consent to the ruling regime, but it is key in constructing and maintaining the hegemonic bloc to begin with. In short, a ‘counterhegemonic strategy that does not prepare to challenge and defend itself against state repression will come to naught’ (Egan, 2018: 116). By inadequately addressing the Egyptian state’s coercive power and failing to radically reform it, the MB was unable to truly challenge Mubarak, and capitulated under the SCAF and Al-Sisi’s regime afterwards.

Intellectual inertia and failure in governance

The MB’s intellectual stagnancy is argued to be one of its key weaknesses, which hindered its ability to gain widespread support for its worldview (Arafat, 2017: 66; Kennedy, 2017: 161). By failing to present itself as a leading intellectual, political and economic force, the MB was unable ‘to secure universal allegiance for its ideology’ (Kandil, 2015: 84). In order to establish hegemony, a prospective ruling class has to take into account ‘the interests and the tendencies of the groups over which hegemony is to be exercised, and that a certain compromise equilibrium should be formed’ (Gramsci, 1971: 161). Moreover, it has to present itself as a leading force that is able to resolve societal problems, whose particular interests are represented as the general good, and that is ‘capable of absorbing the entire society, assimilating it to its own cultural and economic level’ (Gramsci, 1971: 260).

According to Kennedy (2017: 45), the roots of the MB’s failure could be traced back to Sayyid Qutb, ⁶ whose emphasis on jahiliyya ⁷ represented an ‘exclusionary hegemonic project’ from the start. Even so, the MB was unable to capitalise on Qutb’s radical critique by translating it into a viable project, or ‘reconcile the Islamic legal and political corpus with modernity per Al-Banna’s vision’ (Abdel Meguid and Faruqi, 2017: 280). In other words, the MB represented ‘an ideology without intellectuals . . . without those capable of formulating new ways of being and doing in a systematic manner’ (Kandil, 2015: 42); it also struggled to devise a way of thinking pertinent to contemporary contexts where even its ‘theoretical elaborations appear to be insufficient, irrelevant, even incoherent’ (Maréchal, 2008: 311).

Although the MB’s organisational structure represented its key strength, its hierarchal nature and quest for organic unity came at the expense of ‘internal vibrancy and vitality’, and reduced the chances of promoting an environment where dissenting opinions and opposition to the leadership were accepted (Al-Anani, 2020: 115–116). Instead, it helped create a large number of subservient members with an unquestioning obedience to the organisation and its leadership (Arafat, 2017: 71; Gerges, 2018: 357). This was compounded by the MB’s socialisation process (tarbiyya) in which Al-Banna’s teachings and commands comprised the main source of socialisation. Those who violate it, risk being reprimanded and censured (Al-Anani, 2020: 66).

This tarbiyya therefore discourages the independent pursuit of knowledge so as not to ‘poison the peace between Brothers’ (Kandil, 2015: 19–20), and imposes the will of the group’s leaders who demand absolute obedience and refuse ‘to accept transparency or scrutiny, and brooking no dissent or free thinking’ (Gerges, 2018: 349). Fatefully, this socialisation process failed to completely immunise the MB from internal dissent as its younger members started contesting the leadership, especially after the Rab‘a massacre (Al-Anani, 2019). In short, despite arguments surrounding the MB’s emphasis on the active relationship between the members and the leadership to develop environments conducive to revolutionary activity, this has not been entirely the case.

In terms of its governance and ability to resolve societal problems, Al-Anani (2020: 157) argues that the MB’s performance in power was ‘astonishingly poor and disappointing’ as its ‘leaders and cadres demonstrated a lack of key governance skills and failed to adopt a consensual model of government capable of including other political forces’. This was unsurprising, as Kandil (2015: 83) argues that the MB’s ideology does not provide an all-inclusive criminal code, nor a complete economic philosophy, nor is it coherent enough to warrant a viable alternative political project (Maréchal, 2008: 33; 2014: 108; Meijer, 2014: 296). Although its grassroots welfare services did help garner support from marginalised communities, this was still not sufficient as it did not represent a comprehensive economic programme capable of addressing Egypt’s socio-economic predicaments (Kennedy, 2017: 158). Failing to devise coherent, concrete and practical plans to govern and provide Egyptians with immediate economic returns, meant that, apart from its most devout followers, the MB quickly lost support when it was in power.

The MB’s attempts to ‘infiltrate’ formal education have also been limited both before and after it assumed power. For example, in her study of private Islamic schools, Herrera (2006) argued that instead of challenging the authoritarian status quo and hierarchal classroom relations widespread in the education system (Mirshak, 2020a), these schools reproduced the same authoritarian relations that encouraged uncritical submission, total obedience to authority (similar to the MB’s tarbiyya), and which promoted a conservative Islamic agenda conducive to teaching submission and obedience (Cook, 2000; Neill, 2006). Consequently, the MB failed to transform the curriculum or restructure the education process. As opposed to utilising education to promulgate its conception of the world to highlight the contradictions between the views of the rulers and those ruled and expose the ‘universal truths’ (Gramsci, 1971: 423), it merely contributed to reproducing the same authoritarian structures and behaviours that reinforced people’s subordinate positions.

The limitations outlined above are argued to be a result of the MB’s comprehensive Islam which paradoxically encompasses an element of religious determinism. Kandil (2015: 85) argues that this has influenced the MB’s political and economic strategy since it ‘maintains that realising certain religious conditions prompts historical change – specifically, that producing a godly community triggers a divinely ordained transformation of that community’s material situation’. Under this understanding, the MB aimed to nurture people who would realise these religious conditions and bring about change. In essence, as long as a devout Islamic community existed, success in every field was to be guaranteed therefore discouraging its leaders and members from locating solutions to existing political, economic and social problems (Kandil, 2015: 107, 176; Meijer, 2014: 296). Facing brutal repression, growing marginalisation and lack of intellectual reinvigoration meant that placing faith in divine deliverance embodied the MB’s only hope: if historical laws are to be abided by, then the accomplishments of early Islam were bound to be repeated.

Gramsci (1971: 337) argued that fatalistic beliefs comprised the ideology of dependent groups where ‘one should emphasise how fatalism is nothing other than the clothing worn by real and active will when in a weak position’. Considering its history of repression and struggles against the Egyptian state, the MB was always in a subservient position that strengthened its belief in the inevitability of divine deliverance. Nonetheless, and as argued so far, this failed to win the support and consent of the majority of Egyptians, or provide concrete solutions to transform the status quo. In sum, the MB failed to present itself as a leading intellectual, political and economic force.

A passive revolutionary and neoliberal force

Gramsci never considered civil society to be solely an arena of oppositional politics or a sphere completely independent from the economy or the state. Rather, it is ‘a very complex structure that is very resistant to the catastrophic “irruptions” of the immediate economic factor (crises, depression, etc.): the superstructures of civil society resemble the trench system of modern warfare’ (Q7§10, Gramsci, 2007: 162). Such superstructures can therefore be used against the emergence of spontaneous and autonomous revolts whereby ‘a “good civil society” is mobilised precisely to forestall any chance that a radical militant threat to the state-form . . . will arise, no matter how severe the crisis of hegemony may be’ (Fonseca, 2017: 124). Taking the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) into account, Doyle (2016: 420) argues that:

A Gramscian analysis of the literature on CSOs [civil society organisations] in MENA reveals the structural position CSOs have played in maintaining the political economic status quo, extending the state’s control over its citizens and reinforcing the existing societal power structure.

As alluded to earlier, the MB has helped serve the political interests of various ruling regimes and, in the process, has thwarted opportunities for social change (Abdelrahman, 2004; Beinin, 2014; Wiktorowicz, 2000). The MB’s relationship and collaboration with the Egyptian monarchy, the Free Officers and Nasser are well documented (see Gerges, 2018). However, it was under Sadat that its passive revolutionary and neoliberal tendencies manifested as it comprised a part of Sadat’s new hegemonic bloc. The MB’s support for Sadat’s drive for privatisation and neoliberalisation led to the formation of an Islamic bourgeoisie that embraced a free-market capitalist economy and that defended Sadat’s infitah despite growing economic inequalities and impending economic crisis (De Smet, 2016: 164; 2020: 12; Kennedy, 2017: 102). It was also during that time that this rising Islamic bourgeoisie started assuming senior leadership positions within the organisation (Arafat, 2017: 78). By the 1980s, there were growing ties with Egypt’s rising private sector where 40% of all private economic ventures were connected to the MB (Naguib, 2009: 163).

Mubarak’s relative tolerance of the MB enabled it to further expand its economic influence. The MB, and the business class associated with it, were able to accumulate more capital, establish more businesses, and support Egypt’s growing privatisation and its gradual opening to globalising capital (Arafat, 2017: 78–79). Paradoxically, it was also under Mubarak that the MB expanded its grassroots welfare services. These aimed to help fill the gaps caused by this neoliberalisation process, which witnessed the state unable to provide many of its services. As argued previously, these efforts, although garnering support for the MB, did not radically challenge Mubarak’s regime or his economic policies.

However, it was when the MB entered a pragmatic compromise with the SCAF, and eventually assumed power, that its passive revolutionary and neoliberal credentials were revealed. As De Smet (2016: 213) argues, ‘From a passive-revolutionary perspective, Morsi deflected popular initiative by presenting himself as the prime mover of popular revolutionary demands, without, at the same time, endangering the essential interests of the military and the Brotherhood’. As a result, his presidency signified a ‘counter-revolution in democratic form’ (De Smet, 2016: 214), that, on the one hand, failed to transform the structures of dictatorship (particularly the security apparatus), and on the other hand, proceeded with the neoliberal accumulation process unabated.

The MB and its Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) thus continued to support free markets, deregulation, and other policies that were similar to Mubarak’s economic model (Kennedy, 2017: 159). It additionally called for the state’s withdrawal from providing subsidised services as well as encouraging the expansion of private businesses in managing state affairs (Abul-Magd, 2018: 214). In short, the MB and Morsi’s regime were compliant with maintaining the existing economic relations: the same relations that helped prompt the uprisings in the first place.

As Manduchi (2020b: 14) succinctly argues, ‘Incidentally, even the narrative of Islamist leaders, who used to talk about “revolution” to restore a golden age wherein all tensions and contradictions would be resolved (thanks to Islam), can be read in terms of “passive revolution”’, since it did not question or challenge the established economic and social relations. This was to be expected given that ‘The real goal of the Muslim Brotherhood, and of the new middle classes that it represents, is to become the new ruling class, certainly not to transform the dynamics of production’ (Manduchi, 2020b: 14).

The MB’s short-lived rule and its subsequent downfall was certainly accelerated by the military and Al-Sisi. However, this is not enough to explain the MB’s inability to protect its rule or implement the political, economic and social changes demanded by Egyptians in 2011. Moreover, the ouster of Morsi should not be viewed as a missed opportunity for building alternatives or transforming Egyptian society. As I argued above, the MB’s hegemonic project was never capable of truly challenging the ruling one, nor was it able to obtain the widespread consent of Egyptians. The MB’s alternative worldview, institutions and values certainly did contest different ruling regimes in different measures, but considering it as an embodiment of a counterhegemonic force par excellence is not entirely accurate.

Conclusion

The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) represented a vector for popular grievances against existing political, economic and socio-cultural conditions. Regarded as Egypt’s most influential oppositional force, the MB was analysed from a Gramscian lens where some projected it as a counterhegemonic force par excellence. Its all-sufficient Islam, cohesive organisational structure and ability to wage a war of position were considered to represent parallels to Gramsci’s revolutionary methodology. I contested this narrative, as well as those viewing Morsi’s ouster as a missed opportunity to transform Egypt, by arguing that the seeds of the MB’s downfall were already in place even before they assumed power; the coup d’état of 2013 merely hastened it. I focused on the MB’s inability to deal with state coercion, its intellectual inertia and failure in governance, and its passive revolutionary and neoliberal tendencies to develop this claim.

I want to conclude by highlighting the wider implications resulting from my analysis of the MB. Arguably, the MB has underestimated the resilient concentrations of power that have outlived Mubarak’s regime. The MB may have been successful in its strategies to promulgate an alternative worldview, develop a cohesive organisational structure, and even challenge some of the visible forms of power, but it failed to change the existing economic and political structures and key decision-making sites, which hindered its ability to hold onto power. According to John Gaventa (2006: 30), in order to contest the existing power relations, ‘some groups may focus on advocacy approaches, challenging the visible forms of power in visible arenas . . . Others may focus on mobilising and collective action . . . Yet, others may focus more on changing the invisible, internalised forms of power.’ However, and what was missing in the MB’s case, was the ability to understand how these strategies can be linked together to ‘fully challenge these sets of power relationships’ (2006: 30).

The MB’s unsuccessful efforts at this point in Egyptian history should not deter future efforts aimed at instigating social change and challenging the hegemonic order. Instead, lessons from the MB’s failed efforts must be heeded in order to help us rethink our understandings of (counter)hegemony and resistance in Egypt and beyond. A Gramscian perspective is crucial in providing the necessary analytical tools to aid this endeavour. Patrizia Manduchi (2020b: 15–16) argues that ‘the biggest obstacle to democratisation in North African countries is not the Islamist tradition, as often said, but just the absence of an intellectual class seriously working for an alternative political project’. Indeed, any hegemonic project will be bound to fail if it does not truly challenge the multiple forms of power, or offers viable ideological and material alternatives to the established political, economic and socio-cultural structures.

Despite Al-Sisi’s resurgent authoritarianism, a Gramscian perspective indicates that hegemony is never absolute and can be challenged in a myriad of ways. This suggests that no matter how constrained political space can be, it still encompasses the means through which oppositional forces could negotiate hegemonic contestation across multiple fronts. I agree with the credence that the 2011 uprisings were the result of a ‘molecular process of revolutionary subject formation that was already building up in the decade before 2011’ (De Smet, 2020: 4; see also Abdelrahman, 2014; Gervasio and Teti, 2020). It is therefore likely that this molecular revolutionary process is ongoing under Al-Sisi’s regime (Mirshak, 2019, 2020b). However, and in order to avoid the same pitfalls as the MB, oppositional forces must ensure that this process entails strategies that are connected to one another, capable of addressing the Egyptian state’s multiple forms of power (regardless of the regime in power), and are able to form alliances and coalitions to truly achieve transformative social change.