According to analysts from the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Muslim Brotherhood is abandoning its hierarchical system of decision-making and is more open to its lower-level advocates of confrontation with the state, since it has been enduring an unprecedented crackdown on behalf of the Egyptian authorities following the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi in 2013.
“There is no mistaking that the Brotherhood is now at a turning point every bit as challenging and far-reaching in its implications as that following its clash with the regime in the 1950s and 1960s. And it is clear what kind of shifts are under way”, the analysts concluded, adding that “as some observers note, a Muslim Brotherhood that is no longer so hierarchical, disciplined, cautious, and rigid is simply not the movement that existed previously.”
“The question is not so much whether these trends are real; they are unmistakable and the movement’s leaders make no attempt to deny them. The question is how far they will go”, the analysis pointed out, commenting on the widely-observed indignance by young Brotherhood members towards their leaderships’ abstention from violence.
“Another Islamist who is not a member but a close observer of the Brotherhood said that “no leader has moral authority now; no one can say ‘trust me.’ The base questions everything.”
According to the analysis, Brotherhood leaders are anxious not to lose the allegiance of the organization’s younger generation, who are at the forefront of street activism against the ruling regime, to the favor of more radical groups.
“While the Brotherhood’s official position remains largely one of nonviolent resistance, what members and leaders say in public and private is more ambivalent, and several Brotherhood statements have endorsed retribution”, Carnegie analysts Michelle Dunne and Nathan J. Brown wrote.
