Source: Russia Today
The rulers of several major Arab nations have accused the
Muslim Brotherhood of ambitions to seize power illegitimately. Several
governments branded the organization a major threat to stability as the party’s
influence grows steadily.
After the Muslim Brotherhood legally took power in
Egypt’s elections, with Brotherhood member Mohamed Morsi becoming President,
several Arab Gulf states expressed concern. Monarchies that narrowly escaped
the Arab Spring were taken aback when a popular Islamist party suddenly became
a key player in the region.
United Arab Emirate Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah
urged Gulf states to deal with an alleged Muslim Brotherhood plot to undermine
regional governments. "The Muslim Brotherhood does not believe in the
nation-state. It does not believe in the sovereignty of the state," Sheikh
Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan said at a press conference.
The Brotherhood is banned in the United Arab Emirates,
and Abdullah claimed his country’s security forces had arrested some 60 people
this year belonging to the local group Al Islah (‘Reform and Social Guidance
Association’), a nonviolent political association advocating greater adherence
to Islamic precepts.
The Sheikh claimed that Islamists – some of whom are
connected with the Muslim Brotherhood – were planning to stage a coup in the
UAE.
Al Islah shares a similar ideology with Egypt’s Muslim
Brotherhood, though it does not have direct links to the organization. The
group claimed that it only supports nonviolent reform.
The accusation came the same day Kuwaiti lawmaker Saleh
al-Mulla said that the Muslim Brotherhood is putting pressure on his country’s
rulers by taking part in demonstrations “after losing their typical
alliance with the government.”
Earlier, Saudi Arabian Interior Minister Prince Ahmed bin
Abdulaziz denounced the Brotherhood, saying the organization is guilty of “betrayal
of pledges and ingratitude” and is “the source of all problems in the
Islamic world,” the Washington Post reported.
That followed Dubai's outspoken police chief Dhahi
Khalfan’s claim in July that the Brotherhood was carting out an
"international plot" against Gulf Arab states.
The UAE Foreign Minister’s statement came one day after
thousands took to the streets of Jordan's capital of Amman over King Abdullah
II’s decision to dissolve the country’s parliament. The move was seen as an
attempt to compromise with the country’s Muslim Brotherhood branch, Jordan’s
main opposition party.
The Jordanian wing of the Brotherhood urged the country’s
leadership to undertake reforms that would result in the monarchy losing
political power. Abdullah II conceded, allowing changes to the procedure by
which the country forms a government, with more privileges granted to the
electoral winners. The Brotherhood criticized the move as insufficient, and
called on their supporters to protest.
Egypt – where the Muslim Brotherhood took power after the
ouster of Hosni Mubarak last year – sought to reassure Gulf Arab states that it
will not push for political change outside of the country. President Morsi said
that the country has no desire to "export the revolution."
Most Arab Gulf states are hereditary monarchies with
limited political representation, with only Bahrain and Kuwait having popularly
elected legislatures. Their main sources of revenue come from oil and gas
exports, which exist in abundance in their territory. Strong social welfare
systems have largely shielded the monarchies from the Arab Spring unrest that
has ousted rulers in other majority Muslim countries.
“The Muslim Brotherhood's primary goals have been
expressed through welfare programs, and it’s a reason for its continuing
popularity in places like Egypt, Jordan, Syria,” author and journalist
Eric Margolis told RT.
The Arab Spring revolutions, most of which started as
political rather than economic protests, demonstrated to the Gulf’s monarchic
regimes what political Islam can do when it is supported by a mass popular
uprising.
“Certainly the advent of the Muslim Brotherhood
government in Egypt has made people nervous there,” Margolis said. In his
opinion, the Brotherhood is little threat to the status quo in the Gulf, since
the organization became very conservative over its long history.
The bloody civil war in Libya and overthrow of longtime
dictator Muammar Gaddafi served as an example to the Gulf monarchies that
sponsored the uprising, who now see that “terrorist activity has drastically
increased after the Gaddafi regime was removed by terrorist groups,” Ekaterina
Kuznetsova of the Center for Post-Industrial Studies told RT.
“This is often the case with totalitarian regimes and the
vacuum that remains after they’ve been eliminated,” Kuznetsova said.
Egypt’s new constitution – drafted by the Islamists who
now dominate the parliamentary assembly – is expected to be finished in
November.
However, the current draft does not meet basic human
rights standards, Human Rights Watch said on Monday. The key problem areas
mentioned by the New York-based group are the lack of full bans on torture, the
trafficking of women and children and discrimination on the grounds of sex.
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