Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood adopting caution on economic matters/as it confronts its most serious threat: an exhausted, evaporating economy.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood adopting caution on economic matters


By Stephen Glain, Updated: Tuesday, January 24, 5:00 PM

CAIRO — A year after the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the dominant party in a new parliament, has a clear mandate to lead Egypt as it confronts its most serious threat: an exhausted, evaporating economy.

And so far, the Islamist group appears willing to respect a secular status quo, emphasizing accommodation over conflict, working with international bankers to help restore economic growth, and downplaying more orthodox calls for bans on bikinis and alcohol.


“A lot of people don’t appreciate how conservative the Brotherhood is and by that I mean cautious as well as pious,” said a Cairo-based banker who did not want to be quoted discussing political issues. “They prefer conciliation over confrontation, particularly now that they’ll be held responsible for what happens to the economy.”

It remains unclear just how much authority over economic matters the country’s military rulers will permit the new parliament, where nearly half the seats will be held by the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, the victor in historic elections. But the party has moved quickly to assert a leadership role.

Last week, the party announced it would not meddle with the industrial zones jointly managed by Egypt and Israel to promote trade between the two peace partners. The party has held meetings with a delegation from the International Monetary Fund to discuss a $3 billion bailout that was rejected last summer by Egypt’s military-led government. The party also has assured tour operators that it would not support legislation that would prohibit women from wearing revealing swimwear at beach resorts.

What appears to be tactical restraint, however, may be less political calculation on the Brotherhood’s part than a reaffirmation of its mercantilist sensibility. Its members are well represented among Egypt’s white-collar middle and merchant classes and many hold senior positions among the country’s professional guilds, or syndicates. (By contrast, the hard-line Islamist Salafis, who won a quarter of parliament seats as members of the Al Nour Party, draw their support largely from rural and lower-class Egyptians.)

Though admired for its patronage systems that provide food, education and health care to Egypt’s poor, the Brotherhood’s economic agenda is informed by an ancient laissez-faire tradition that has more in common with the values of America’s Tea Party than it does with, say, the more heavily regulated economies of Europe. In the 1950s, for example, the group struggled against President Gamal Abdel Nasser as much for his decision to nationalize the Egyptian economy as for his fierce secularism.

Brotherhood members trace their capitalist conceit to the birth of Islam and tend to associate one with the other. “Islam endorses the market economy and free trade,” said Abdel Hamid Abuzaid, a Muslim Brotherhood member and economist at Cairo University, in an interview before his death last year. “It is part and parcel of Islam as a complete way of life.”