The political scene triggers many questions about the future as to whether the current conflict would end with the state ‘defeating’ the Islamists or vice versa, or if both would lose the battle.
The Brotherhood insists on demonstrating in the streets, while the government has declared it a terrorist group, which bodes more violence in the country.
Instead of limiting the combat to the Interior Ministry, everyone now encourages violence, whether it is the Islamists or the state institutions.
And calling it a terrorist group did not solve the problem nor did it trigger any positive response from the Arab countries.
I am not defending the Brotherhood. This would immediately send me to jail. I believe the group incited violence in the streets and provided cover for jihadist insurgents.
It did not denounce the terrorist operations carried out by the Ansar al-Bayt al-Maqdis group or other organizations since the ouster of President Mohamed Morsy on 3 July of last year, although it has denounced the bombing of the Mansoura Security Directorate. Yet the denunciation came from the group leaders who are not in prison, which means it was not really official.
The group did not respond, although those who carried out these operations filmed them on video and said they were done in the defense of the Brotherhood, whereas it had officially denounced operations carried out by several terrorist groups against the state in the 1990s.
Does the group now favor violence?
We must admit that the Brotherhood did not exercise organized violence or arm its members. However, it did provide a climate for violence to use it intentionally or unintentionally, especially as it lives the same conditions experienced by previous jihadist movements that once wore the mantle of preaching and later became violent, such as the Jamaa al-Islamiya.
The group exercised verbal and political violence when it was in power. Now it is practicing criminal violence, albeit to a limited extent. Yet this may escalate if all the group leaders are arrested, leaving the scene to an enthusiastic and frustrated youth.
Such frustration had prompted other Islamist movements in the past to resort to violence and justify it with verses from the Qur'an and examples from the Sunnah.
This is gradually happening now but the group leaders fail to see it. And this may transcend the group violence from suspicion to proof.
