What Path Will Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Choose?
Note: On September 23, the Cairo Court for Urgent Matters issued a preliminary injunction ordering the shutdown of the Brotherhood. Yet, dissolving or legally banning the group will have only a very partial effect in practice. As long as the Brotherhood maintains its core constituency of supporters, networks, and ideological believers, it can survive intact as a social movement and organization despite its official illegal status as it did for decades under Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood faces a tremendously difficult but crucial choice about what role it will try to play in Egypt’s political future. The organization is reeling from the stunning reversal of power it experienced this summer, when massive popular protests against the serious governance failures of the government led by then president Mohamed Morsi, a senior Brotherhood figure, prompted the Egyptian military to overthrow Morsi and install a caretaker government. Since then, the new autho...