The Freedom and Justice Party in power: Islam is (not) the solution?

Abstract

Chapter 1 outlines the early history of the Brotherhood, from its founding by Hassan al Banna in 1928 to the outbreak of the 2011 Arab Uprisings. It does so to provide a necessary background to the movement’s quick politicisation process that followed Hosni Mubarak’s removal, and to set the bases for the analysis of its political behaviour. It offers an account of the Brotherhood’s participation in the uprisings and examines its implication for the movement’s internal debates, identifying the schisms that emerged over the foundation of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and the members’ grievances that were brought back to the surface. The chapter shows that the Brotherhood was already deeply divided before entering the political arena, as would be reflected in the running of the FJP. It then examines the FJP’s time in government, highlighting the contradictory political choices that fuelled popular discontent against the Brotherhood’s rule and revealed the lack of a concrete political project. It concludes by identifying four main factors that contributed to Morsi’s untimely demise. These are: the lack of a coherent vision of an ‘Islamist project’; the fact that the Brotherhood severely miscalculated the amount of support and legitimacy it actually had; its refusal to adapt to the changing circumstances, which then accelerated internal discontent; and the failure to successfully address the permanence of the deep state across state institutions.