The Lines of Differentiation Among the Egyptian Islamist Organizations

In Egypt, the Islamist field is largely pluralized, since different religious organizations gave birth to different political families. In addition, within these different Islamist trends, some splits happened along two lines: independence/subordination of the politics vis-à-vis the religious realm, and acceptation/rejection of the violence. From the 1930’s, however, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) had largely dominated the Egyptian Islamist field. But the 1970s witnessed the development of powerful independent Islamist movements, such as the Salafist Call (Da`wa salafiyya) and the Islamic Groups (Gama`at Islamiyya). This emerging external competition sharpened the internal oppositions between different political trends within the Brotherhood (namely reformists against conservatives). At the beginning of the 1980s, the Islamic Groups faced a harsh repression from the state, driving some of its members to choose the path of violence and terrorism, when some others joined the MB, where they gained prominent positions, reinforcing the reformist wing of the group. In 1996, some of these young leaders tried to create an independent political organization, the Wasat party. They quickly lost the support of the Guidance Office of the MB, and left the group, trying during 15 years to obtain a legal recognition from the state for their independent political party. Meanwhile, the violent insurrection of the Islamic Groups lead them to an impasse, most of their militants being jailed at the end at the 1990s. They decided to reject the use of violence, and tried also to create a political party. The political opening following the 2011 revolution created a new context allowing the independent Islamist movements to exist in the political realm (creation the Nur Party, by the Salafist Call, and of the Construction and Development Party (CDP), by the Islamic Groups, but also official recognition of the Wasat Party). This new context also gave an opportunity to the minorities within the MB (mainly from the reformist trend) to gain their organizational autonomy (creation of the Egyptian Current Party and of the Strong Egypt Party). The MB created for the first time an official political party representing the organization, and firmly controlled by it, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). The first free parliamentary elections of 2011-2012 showed the respective weight of all this different trends. The FJP attracted slightly more than 35% of the votes, and the Nur Party (in a coalition with the CDP and smaller Salafist party) 25% of the votes (almost 4% for the Wasat Party). During the following presidential elections (May-June 2012), the MB candidate Muhammad Morsy ranked first with 25%, while Abul-Futuh, supported by almost all the other Islamist movements. During the presidency of Morsy, a split occurred within the Nour Party, some leaders of this party contesting its submission to the Salafist Call. They then created an independent political organization, the Watan Party. Lastly, since the repression following the fall of the MB in July 2013, this movement, but also the Islamic Groups, are facing strong internal dissents between proponents of violence and advocate of the normalization.