One year of President Mohamed Morsi's rule in Egypt has led to placing the group he is affiliated to, the Muslim Brotherhood, before the greatest danger it has had to face in its history since its establishment in 1928. The issue goes far beyond confronting a regime, hunting down leaders and prominent figures of the Brotherhood, the exile of its members, the movement of its members and affiliates being restricted, the freedom of its supporters, young and old, being limited, or the activity of businessmen and merchants affiliated to it being restricted. Indeed, these are matters that were continuously taking place for decades, following a graph that rose and fell according to the regime that would be in power, and to the guide who would be in control! The scene in Egypt yesterday summed up a whole year of the Muslim Brotherhood ruling Egypt, and revealed what they had always feared the Egyptian people might think. But the Brotherhood has awoken from the sleep of power to find that what had become entrenched in people's minds and had turned into a reality makes the group – and in fact forces it to – change a great deal of its policies, ideas and methods, in hopes of returning to what it had been before: a thread within the fabric of Egyptian society, not a single rope devoid of all other threads. Yes, the Muslim Brotherhood has classified itself among the Egyptian people and turned its members from a movement to a class, from a faction to a "kind", and from a group to a chosen race. Despite all of their talk, interviews, speeches, and smiles, a year has passed with Egypt under a President from the Brotherhood, under the hegemony of the group's political party, and under the control of its Guidance Bureau. This year has ended with the majority of Egyptians convinced that members of the Muslim Brotherhood have become a "kind" of Egyptian, and not merely a group, a party or a movement. The president could leave his seat at the Heliopolis Palace and the Muslim Brotherhood could leave power, due to popular pressures or to the loss of the public sympathy it had obtain in all previous elections, as a result of the West and the Americans abandoning it or of the army intervening to save the country from the repercussions of its rule. Or Morsi could remain in place, and the storm could pass without the walls of the Brotherhood and of the palace collapsing. Yet the truth that cannot be questioned is that a deep wound has been opened in the body of the Muslim Brotherhood, despite its cohesion, and that it has committed blatant mistakes as a result of its obstinacy and stubbornness. Indeed, returning to the point at which it had been at the start of the January 25 Revolution would require a different Brotherhood than the one that has for a year ruled the greatest Arab country after a revolution that amazed the world. It would require different leaders for this group, to which Egyptians had been sympathetic even if they opposed its ideas and its principles, before it became at odds with every other group. And it would require a different way of dealing with segments of the population that had seen in the group's clerics and prominent figures decent and godly men, until they came to power and were found not to be much different from those who had preceded them. The problem of classification is not limited to President Morsi losing his seat or remaining in it without popular support and amid rejection from opposition forces, in a climate that would never allow him to complete any achievements or fulfill any promises. Rather, the problem is that the Muslim Brotherhood, which practiced the exclusion of others throughout the past year, has itself become the target of exclusion! The scene in Egypt's public squares yesterday confirmed that Morsi, his party and his Brotherhood have even lost the sympathy of many who had supported and backed him during the phase that preceded the Revolution. It also showed the difference between, on the one hand, the crowds of Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters, who were restricted to Rabia Al-Adawiyya Square, and on the other the diverse strands of the Egyptian people across the spectrum, which were spread out over the different provinces and gathered in public squares. The significance of what started yesterday is that the people are now being led by groups of young people, after they have grown weary of the failure of both the Brotherhood and the opposition. Yet those who have lost the most are Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood – not just in terms of the possibility of leaving the palace and losing power after the fall of their regime, but also in terms of the obscurity that surrounds the future of a group which for decades continued to broaden, grow, branch out and spread, before finally reaching a situation in which the President is moving secretly from one residence to another, and the group's members and supporters are talking but... only to themselves.
