useful article on the Brotherhood and its possible political limits

I strongly recommend THIS ARTICLE from Ahram Online, about the Muslim Brotherhood’s plan to become a political party.

It’s useful in a couple of ways.

First, it gives the reader direct contact with the leaders of the movement and their rather candid expressions of their views about Sharia law, Israel, etc. So, instead of their being a bogeyman in the shadows as is usually the case in Western media, you can size them up directly for yourself and decide how dangerous you think they really are. And opinions will vary.

However…

Second, political scientist Dina Rashwan argues later in the article that the Brotherhood will steeply decline in popularity now that they’re no longer the only Plan B in the country. It’s my sense as well, within the limits of my knowledge of how Egypt really functions, that they’re not going to take over the country. The upper estimate I’ve seen is that they’ll get 30% of the vote in a fair election. Mohamed ElBaradei thinks 20%. Others say 10%.

Initially, when the protest movement insisted that elections should be delayed as long as possible to give them time to organize, it was suggested that this was from fear of the Brotherhood’s organizational clout. But now it’s sounding more like protestors are worried that NDP people will resurface under a different party name and stay in charge. So, we have the somewhat surprising situation of the more liberal protestors wanting a longer period of military rule.

In any case, this is a very informative piece.