Declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization as Egypt's interim government did on Wednesday, may have seemed logical given the rising tide of terrorist violence directed against the police and army. It is, however, a strategy that is not without risk, which threatens to undermine the drive to legitimize a newly-elected Egyptian government. It is clear that the decision to label the Brotherhood as a terrorist body was prompted by the suicide bombing this Tuesday at the central police office in Mansoura in which 16 people died and at least 120 were injured, some of them very seriously. In September, an Egyptian court formally banned the Brotherhood and all organizations connected with it. This meant that the Brotherhood's political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, was also proscribed. The risk lies in the math. Ousted president Mohamed Morsi won the presidency with a small majority of the vote. The incompetence and partiality of his year-long rule caused many of those who had originally supported him to despair and desert him. The illegal demonstrations by Brotherhood supporters undoubtedly contained activists who approve of and indeed may even be involved in the terror campaign that has now started. Yet equally, there will have been many, maybe the majority, that while protesting Morsi's ouster and the banning once again of the Brotherhood, regard the notion of terrorist violence with considerable alarm and disgust. Maybe the declaration of the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization will cause these moderate, middle-of-the-road supporters to decide to break their links with it. But equally it could work the other way. Men who still sympathize with the Brotherhood, hearing that their organization has been branded as “terrorist” could respond by saying: “OK. So now we are terrorists.” The Brotherhood was first banned in 1954, but managed to survive in semi-secret by keeping a low profile and avoiding head-on confrontations with successive governments in Cairo. Meanwhile, it developed an effective welfare program among the poor, an astute political move which laid the foundations for the Freedom and Justice Party's electoral support after Mubarak's overthrow. Egyptian society currently has deep divisions. Egypt's economic and social recovery will only truly take place when both sides are, to some degree or another, reconciled. That can only come about through dialogue and consensus. At some point it has to happen. Unfortunately, the furious reaction to the Mansoura bombing, in labeling Brotherhood members “terrorists” is inevitably going to make it harder, not easier, for that dialogue to begin, because moderates who deplore violence now find themselves lumped in with the brutal butchers of Al-Qaeda. The Egyptian people deplore violence and bloodletting, which is why the interim government should make every effort to keep the door open for dialogue and consensus in the country.
