Quotes of the Day

A little over a year ago, Hoda al-Ghania, a member of the banned but popular Muslim Brotherhood, was busy waging a losing battle. In the crowded, industrial towns of the Nile Delta, she campaigned diligently for a parliamentary seat that she knew the regime of President Hosni Mubarak would most likely never allow its Islamist opposition to win. But the daughter of a long and respected line of Brotherhood members was used to it. "That was our way to make a positive connection with the institutions of this country," she says. "And we insisted on participating in the political life to assure [Egyptians] that our creed is a peaceful one and to pull the veil from the fraud of the ex-regime and all its corruption — to expose their practices in the elections."

The new year in Egypt has ushered in a new system with a new set of power players, and in the past 12 months, al-Ghania has seen her fortunes change dramatically. Mubarak and his sham electoral system are gone, swept away by the uprising of young Egyptians. Now the once thankless perseverance of al-Ghania and the Brotherhood is paying off with the group's quick and almost methodical ascent to the top.

After the first reasonably free election in Egypt's history, which ended Jan. 11, Islamists now control the majority in the country's parliament, and the Brotherhood snagged the lion's share with just under 50% of the seats. Able to campaign out in the open, speaking from public podiums instead of in private living rooms, al-Ghania won one of the seats she once thought impossible. The results have stunned many of Egypt's liberal youth, who led months of intermittent street battles with the military and somehow expected electoral victory as a reward.

But the Brotherhood's win was a long time coming. The group had spent years disciplining its membership, fine-tuning its message and learning the pulse of the Egyptian street. It funneled money and volunteers into health and social services, filling the public-sector void left by the Mubarak regime's corruption. "The Brotherhood is an 80-year-old organization. It has the capacity. It has the resources," says Shadi Ghazali Harb, a liberal youth activist and party leader. The group also had experience working with the old regime, he adds. "And all that allowed them to have an advantage over all of the other forces, especially the liberal and leftist forces." Indeed, when the opportunity for legal political participation came with Mubarak's ouster last February, the Brotherhood moved quickly and efficiently for the goal.

Dancing with the Military
All indicators at the start of 2012 are that the Brotherhood is still moving, still strategizing and navigating a newly fluid though residually opaque political scene. Now dealmaking is the word at the tip of many a political analyst's tongue. Mubarak has fallen, but the powerful military he left behind has not. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), a shadowy group of generals once appointed by him, is ostensibly running Egypt's transition to civilian governance but wants to keep its own power largely intact. That includes the military's vast economic empire and its network of special clubs, residences and hospitals — all part of a privileged subculture, impervious to scrutiny, that Mubarak spent years building to reward a loyal and obedient officer corps.

Since Mubarak's ouster, Egyptians have called the military's entitlement into question. And some observers predict that a violent confrontation will ensue between the military and the Islamist bloc, as a tug-of-war for power and influence, particularly in the drafting of Egypt's new constitution, convulses the months ahead. They say the newly empowered Islamists will push forward with the total implementation of Shari'a — Islamic law — as well as legislation to curtail the military's power and immunity. (Shari'a is already one of the foundations of the current Egyptian constitution.) Any military efforts to stop them would spell disaster. "This would give us a new Algeria," says Islam Ahmed Abdallah, a follower of the ultraconservative Salafi interpretation of Islam, who runs a center geared toward combatting "Christian evangelism."

However, recent weeks of politicking suggest that the Brotherhood has little intention of forming an absolute Islamist majority by throwing its lot in with the extremist Salafis in a coalition. Indeed, other analysts say a Brotherhood power play against the generals simply isn't in the cards. Rather, argues Kent State University political scientist Joshua Stacher, the dynamic has already established its rhythm, and it has little to do with extremists like Abdallah, who, embodied in the Salafi al-Nour Party, now control an estimated 20% of the seats in parliament. "The real negotiations will happen at the top of the regime between the Muslim Brotherhood and the SCAF," he says.

Indeed, the Brotherhood has trod cautiously over the past 12 months of Egypt's transition, often abstaining from the youth-led confrontations with the military in Tahrir Square in favor of keeping its eye on the prize: the parliamentary elections. Now their dominance in parliament is solidified, and the players who matter in charting Egypt's future are down to just two: the Brotherhood and the military. Stacher is hardly the only observer to speculate that the two actors are already deeply engaged in closed-door negotiations over Egypt's future distribution of power. Conspiracy-minded Egyptian liberals have long warned of such a scenario. Many suggest cynically that the Brotherhood played Mubarak's game for years because it was the only group he approved of — the necessary scarecrow to buttress the legitimacy of his authoritarianism. In recent months, liberal activists alleged that a negotiated partnership between the military and the Brotherhood yielded the latter's support of a military-backed referendum on Egypt's constitution and election timetable and, more recently, the group's abandonment of its calls for a full parliamentary system — implicitly agreeing to the military's appointment of Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri.

Harb predicts the dealmaking will determine the outcome of Egypt's forthcoming presidential election, slated for June, as well. In exchange for the military's having tolerated the Islamists' smooth ascent to parliamentary control, he says, "the Brotherhood will support whoever the SCAF supports." The group's leaders have already said they would be willing to offer immunity to the generals after the transition — a move that would be deeply unpopular with the liberal youth. On Jan. 15, Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei pulled out of the presidential race, alluding to no group in particular but citing a process that was already rigged and unfair.

Islamists vs. Islamists
In recent weeks, the brotherhood — through its Freedom and Justice Party — has reached out to U.S. and European diplomats and assured both domestic constituents and international partners of its commitment to moderate and inclusive policies. In early January, Brotherhood leaders attended the Coptic Christmas Mass at Cairo's main church as a gesture to the country's increasingly wary Christian minority, even as Salafi groups lambasted Christmas celebrations as haram — or un-Islamic. "My sense is that the Brothers feel the Salafis are politically immature," says Stacher, who notes that the two Islamist blocs also have very different visions of an Islamic Egypt. And the Brotherhood, which as an organization is better acquainted with regime heavy-handedness than the rookie Salafi parties, also knows the military still has the upper hand when it comes to arms and resources. "The Brothers have never really gone for broke, and they're not going to go for broke now," Stacher says. "Now that the Muslim Brotherhood has had their little taste of freedom, they're not going back to prison."

The rise of the Brotherhood to political prominence doesn't necessarily write the smaller players out of the scene; it merely marginalizes them. Perhaps anticipating as much, the Salafis' al-Nour Party met with the two largest liberal parties — their ideological opposites — to discuss the possibility of forming a coalition. Some predict that violent clashes between isolated groups and the military, as well as a little military-manipulated political competition, are far more likely. A number of Egyptians foresee the military playing the Islamists against other groups — and then against one another. Mina Habib, a student in Cairo, says that if the Brotherhood ever allies with the Salafis, it will be only to demolish the liberals. "Then," he says, "they will turn against each other."

All along, the Brotherhood has categorically denied any backroom deals with the military Mubarak left behind. "The best interests of the country are what we are all trying to get to. Nobody is trying to form their own private agendas," al-Ghania says. "The SCAF, for us, is now the guarantor of the transition of authority to a civilian government. And as long as they're going to deliver it, we support them." Indeed, as far as the Muslim Brotherhood is concerned, everything is going according to plan. "As for the people who say there are private deals," al-Ghania adds, "those are things we shouldn't pay attention to. We have better things to think about."
— with reporting by Sharaf Al-Hourani / Cairo

• Abigail Hauslohner / Cairo
• Banned by Hosni Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood persisted with politics. Now the Islamist group is a primary factor in Egypt's new power equation