In Egyptian Hard-Liner’s Surge, New Worries for the Muslim Brotherhood
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: April 1, 2012 112 Comments
CAIRO — Hazem Salah Abu Ismail is an old-school Islamist.
Asmaa Waguih/Reuters
Supporters of Hazem Salah Abu Ismail displayed his image on posters on Friday in Cairo, where they delivered his formal application for candidacy.
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He wants to move toward abolishing Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel and cites Iran as a successful model of independence from Washington. He worries about the mixing of the genders in the workplace and women’s work outside the home. And he promises to bring extraordinary prosperity to Egypt, if it turns its back on trade with the West.
He has also surged to become a front-runner in the race to become Egypt’s next president, reconfiguring political battle lines here. His success may help explain why the United States offered signs of tacit approval over the weekend when the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest Islamic group, broke its pledge not to field its own candidate.
With a first round of voting set for late May and a runoff in mid-June, the first presidential race here since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak last year is shaping up as a battle among Islamists.
The Brotherhood, which leads Parliament, had pledged not to seek the presidency for fear of provoking a backlash from the Egyptian military and the West. But Mr. Abu Ismail’s surge raises the prospect that the winner might not be a more secular or liberal figure, but a strident Islamist who opposes the Brotherhood’s pragmatic focus on stable relations with the United States and Israel and free-market economics.
Mr. Abu Ismail poses a subtler threat, too, challenging the Brotherhood’s status as the main voice of Islamist politics in Egypt and threatening to undermine its campaign to set aside Western fears of political Islam. The Brotherhood is taking a considerable risk in running its own candidate against him, since its victory is by no means assured.
And so, in a remarkable inversion, American policy makers who once feared a Brotherhood takeover now appear to see the group as an indispensable ally against Egypt’s ultraconservatives, exemplified by Mr. Abu Ismail.
American diplomats — surprised by the success of ultraconservative, populist Islamists known as Salafis in parliamentary elections — have watched Mr. Abu Ismail with growing alarm.
On Sunday, speaking on condition of standard diplomatic anonymity, State Department officials said they were untroubled and even optimistic about the Brotherhood’s reversal of its pledge not to seek the presidency. The Brotherhood’s candidate, Khairat el-Shater, a millionaire businessman considered the most formative influence on the group’s policies, is well known to both American diplomats and their contacts in the Egyptian military. Though in and out of prison, he was the Brotherhood’s main point of contact with Mr. Mubarak’s security services and is now its main conduit for talks with the council of generals who took power at his ouster.
Mr. Shater has met with almost all the senior State Department officials and American lawmakers visiting Cairo. He is in regular contact with the American ambassador, Anne Patterson, as well as the executives of many American companies here, and United States officials have praised his moderation as well as his intelligence and effectiveness.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Istanbul on Sunday for a meeting on Syria, declined to comment on the Brotherhood’s reversal on fielding a candidate or on Mr. Shater. Instead, she said that the United States was watching all the candidates for their commitments to uphold basic rights. “We want to see Egypt move forward in a democratic transition, and what that means is you do not and cannot discriminate against religious minorities, women, political opponents,” she said. “There has to be a process — starting in an election — that lays down certain principles that will be followed by whoever wins the election. That is what we want for the Egyptian people.”
A new poll set for release on Monday by the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a state-financed research group, offered the first measure of Mr. Abu Ismail’s growing popularity. In a randomized survey of 1,200 Egyptians in recent weeks, Mr. Abu Ismail had jumped to second place from fourth or fifth place in polls taken last year, said Diaa Rashwan, a researcher at the Center.
The poll did not include Mr. Shater or any Brotherhood candidate. Amr Moussa, a former diplomat under Mr. Mubarak and political celebrity with high name recognition, remained the front-runner, with the support of about 33 percent of the respondents. But Mr. Abu Ismail was gaining on him, with about 22 percent. A liberal Islamist, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, won the support of about 8 percent, and another Islamist moderate, Mohammad Salim al-Awa, had about 4 percent.
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Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting from Cairo, and Steven Lee Myers from Istanbul.
The plan for a runoff increases the Islamists’ chances. If no one wins a majority in the first vote in May, the top two vote-getters will enter a June runoff. And any relatively secular candidate such as Mr. Moussa will have a hard time beating any of the Islamists then, given that the Brotherhood and other Islamists won about three-quarters of the seats in Parliament.
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The plan for a runoff increases the Islamists’ chances. If no one wins a majority in the first vote in May, the top two vote-getters will enter a June runoff. And any relatively secular candidate such as Mr. Moussa will have a hard time beating any of the Islamists then, given that the Brotherhood and other Islamists won about three-quarters of the seats in Parliament.
Related
Islamist Group Breaks Pledge to Stay Out of Race in Egypt(April 1, 2012)
Readers’ Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
A spokesman for Mr. Abu Ismail’s campaign said Sunday that Mr. Shater’s entry into the race would help Mr. Abu Ismail by taking votes from Mr. Aboul Fotouh, a former Brotherhood leader still popular with its rank and file.
But Mr. Rashwan of Al Ahram predicted a hard-to-handicap face-off between Mr. Shater and Mr. Abu Ismail. While Mr. Shater has the backing of the Brotherhood’s formidable political machine, Mr. Rashwan said, Mr. Abu Ismail is more charismatic. And in addition to his support from those who favor his conservative religious ideas, Mr. Abu Ismail also benefits from populist appeals to Egypt’s poor and marginalized. Mr. Shater, in contrast, is a wealthy businessman and politician. “He is part of the elite,” Mr. Rashwan said.
He also noted that the Brotherhood’s members have benefited from sympathy and admiration as victims of the Mubarak government’s repression when they were its main opposition. But the Egyptian media usually refers to Mr. Shater as the Brotherhood’s “strongman,” and Mr. Rashwan said he inspired “fear,” not “sympathy.”
Mr. Abu Ismail’s campaign posters already blanket the walls and car windows of Cairo. Last Tuesday, he was mobbed like a rock star at Cairo University. On Friday, busloads of his supporters staged a parade to deliver his formal application for candidacy, stopping traffic across the city.
“American and Israel pay enormous sums of money to control the whole society,” he declared at a rally last week. “We can’t be preoccupied by the issues of daily life rather than stand up to them.”
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