The Peninsula Newspaper
Wednesday, 11 April 2012 03:57
The Statements of Dubai’s police chief accusing the Muslim Brotherhood of conspiring against the Gulf States in order to access to power saying they will start by dominating Kuwait in 2013 and other Gulf States in 2016, had raised many reactions in the political, media and public circles.
These statements have marked the beginning of an open confrontation where the political movements that carry religious trends in their programmes and agenda (like Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi trend) have come to power in countries where the repressive regimes were changed and controlled the legislative and executive powers.
(1) The clear mention of Muslim Brotherhood in the Gulf, especially in Kuwait, in the statement above had triggered various pro and anti reactions and criticisms. The Member of Parliament Jamaan Al Herbish, one of the most prominent MPs of Islamic Constitutional Movement (Hadas) that represents the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait questioned the Kuwaiti foreign and internal ministers about those statements calling the Kuwaiti government to clarify its position, taking into consideration that according to Dubai’s police chief that information was based on reports by Western intelligence.
In a newspaper article, Mubarak Duwailah, former MP for the Muslim Brotherhood in the Kuwaiti National Assembly, pointed out that the political programme of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gulf is based on political, economic, social and judicial reforms. He said, “This issue is well known to everyone. We look to make reforms through the applicable legal and constitutional bodies in the Gulf States.”
Duwailah denied that the Brotherhood’s political draft aims to have access to power in the Gulf region, saying: “Those who talk about this scenario do not know the ABC of the Muslim Brotherhood’s policy and ignore the private characteristic of the Gulf States based on good and respected relationship between the ruler and the public.
Duwailah confirmed that the Gulf society did not comment on the reports saying Muslim Brotherhood’s plan to have access to power in the region because he knows that they are false. He said: “Those reports did not trigger reactions in the Gulf region because they are baseless as our goal lies in only reforms. Renowned Islamic preacher Aaiz Al Qarni had fiercely attacked those statements saying they serve third party (they are Arab parties) that response to the promoted conspiracy theory by linking it to other conspiracy…Iran, remnants of the previous Egyptian regimes and Israeli Mossad”, according to “Al Ahram gate” website. The Israeli intelligence might support issuing such statements in order to cause a crisis in the Arabian Gulf to prevent the Western countries from providing assistance to the countries of the Arab spring.
(2) Is the fear from the Muslim Brotherhood movement justified more than the fear of the Salafis, Shia or Sunni movements or other political trends including liberalism and secularism? Can the Muslim Brotherhood control the Gulf States, change the regimes and dominate power as it did in other Arab countries? The studies and thorough scientific and academic reports about the size, diversity of the religious trend, its impact, agenda and spread based on figures and statistics in the Gulf countries are still limited and inaccurate and do not give a comprehensive and detailed view. With the exception of Qatar, where the group dissolved itself, the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gulf is still active and contributes on the scene and has supporters as well. Our colleague Abdul Aziz Al Mahmoud dealt with the security aspect of the decision to dissolve the Muslim Brotherhood in Qatar. He said that at the end of the nineties a group within the Muslim Brotherhood began to think seriously to dissolve the group and dismantle it. Though the Muslim Brotherhood was not organised as a known organisation, but the many concerned on the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood ideology on the group for fear of what might happen, especially as some governments in the Gulf States began a campaign to arrest young people influenced by the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and fired them from their jobs. That step was attributed to the presence of some Egyptian security officers, who were recruited as security advisers, and began to influence some Gulf leaders who used to accuse the Muslim Brotherhood, without evidence. Therefore, some people took the decision to revoke the group and dismantle it in 2003.
Dr Abdullah Al Nafisi in his article “the Islamic case in Qatar” dealt with the intellectual and theoretical aspects. He pointed out that in the middle of the eighties the serious questions began to rise within the group: Who are we? Where are we going? Have we a specific programme to carry out? Is this what we want? What is the community’s interest in this? Does the idea of (dogma) have consequences in the future? It is interesting to see that the group seriously dealt with these questions and firmness and delegated some of its members to study these questions in detail. After all this effort they decided in 1999 to dissolve the organisation and the (international body of the organisation) was informed about this resolution. Nafisi said that the experiment of the Brotherhood in Qatar was not (normal), for it was not controlled by Islamic passion , political utopia, (implementing regulations) or laws or formalities like the experience of the Muslim Brotherhood in the UAE or Kuwait or perhaps to some extent the experiments of Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia or Oman and Bahrain.
Many researchers said Muslim Brotherhood cannot dominate power in the Gulf in general and Kuwait in particular.
The Kuwaiti researcher and specialist in Islamic movements Khalil Haider Ali said constitution, democratic heritage, multiplicity of Islamic groups and religious diversity are the main obstacles for Muslim Brotherhood. Haider said, “The Muslim Brotherhood does not play the same role in all six Gulf countries. They play a secret opposition role in Oman, a balance force between urban and tribes and the non-confrontational opposition group in Kuwait, an isolated group between the Salafi and the Shias in Bahrain, a mixture of the political opposition and the Brotherhood trend in Saudi Arabia and in the UAE a movement that is trying to achieve some of the gains achieved by the Muslim Brotherhood in other places”.
Haider ruled out that Brotherhood as a group or party can have a control on Kuwait, Bahrain or Saudi Arabia and perhaps even others, because of the conservative and religious nature of these countries and their regimes, and the presence of the competitors such as Salafis and because of the level of income, education and societal openness. The Muslim Brotherhood even in the same country has different streams, wings, leaders and cultures……there is no similarity between the Syrian, Jordanian, Egyptian and Tunisian Muslim Brotherhood. The researcher explained that the problem of the Muslim Brotherhood lay in the fact that is that it is a political and cultural underground movement as they enter one phase and come out of the other without self-criticism or interpretation or explanation. The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria supported “socialism of Islam” while the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt stood against it.
He said the future work of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gulf region is not homogeneous due to the difference in the policy frameworks, margin of freedoms and the experience of these movements.
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