Broken Bonds: Quitting the Brotherhood

Published: March 7, 2023, 7:14 p.m.

Members have fled the Muslim Brotherhood in droves since its ouster from power in Egypt in 2013, frustrated that the organization can\u2019t take care of them, or provide meaning for their lives. Will the Brotherhood learn the lessons of its failures before its next, inevitable, comeback?\nIn this final episode of Broken Bonds, Amr ElAfifi explores the Brotherhood\u2019s crisis of membership and the implications for policy.\xa0\nSome have left the Brotherhood because they\u2019ve lost trust in the leadership; others, because they say the organization \u201cis not being brotherhood enough.\u201d The Brotherhood\u2019s fractious trajectory after the Rabaa massacre of 2013 makes clear that there is no single Brotherhood path during a period of unprecedented violent repression.\xa0\nThe Brotherhood\u2019s scattered grassroots have followed divergent paths, some embracing militancy, some withdrawing to the private sphere, and others abandoning faith altogether.\xa0\nThe Brotherhood tried to claim the mantle of Islamist politics, but found itself beset by contradictions and crises. \u201cIslamism,\u201d like the Brotherhood, is not a clearly defined or monolithic movement.\xa0\nBroken Bonds is a five-part special season of the Order From Ashes podcast. The first episode charted Abdelrahman Ayyash\u2019s personal coming of age in a Brotherhood milieu. In the second episode, Ayyash, Noha Khaled, and Amr ElAfifi mapped how the crises of identity, legitimacy, and membership simultaneously explain the organization\u2019s weaknesses, and staying power. In the third episode, Khaled dissected the identity crisis that has defined the Brotherhood since its establishment. In the fourth episode, Ayyash sketched the leadership vacuum and power struggles that have hobbled the Brotherhood since 2013.\nBroken Bonds explores the evolution of Egypt\u2019s Muslim Brotherhood from the apex of its power, when it won Egypt\u2019s presidency in 2012, to the organization\u2019s disarray and marginalization today.\nThe podcast season is a companion to a new book, Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt\u2019s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013\u201322, published in February 2023 by TCF Press. Broken Bonds is part of \u201cFaith and Fracture,\u201d a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.\nParticipants:\nAmr ElAfifi, PhD candidate at Syracuse University; research manager, Freedom Initiative\nThanassis Cambanis, director, Century International