Brooking’s fellow Omar Ashour has published an article titled “Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood Faces the Future” in which among other things, he makes the interesting claim that the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood was born in the United States in 1980. The article begins:
“The Muslim Brothers established this party. We are a national civil party with an Islamic reference…we have Islamists and nationalists,” said Al-Amin Belhajj, the head of the founding committee for the newly announced Justice and Construction Party. With the March 3 announcement, Libya seems set to follow the electoral path of Islamist success seen in Egypt, Tunisia, and other Arab countries. After decades of fierce repression of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) by the regime of Muammar al-Qaddafi, the formation of a political party in Libya is a heady experience. What does it mean for Libya’s future? The Muslim Brotherhood’s presence in Libya goes back to 1949. But their first clear organizational structure was developed in 1968 and quickly froze in 1969 after the coup of Colonel Qaddafi. The Brotherhood was never allowed to operate openly, and suffered extreme repression. Indeed, when State TV did broadcast something about them, it was the bodies of their leaders hung from street lampposts in the mid 1980s. Qaddafi’s media called them “deviant heretics” and “stray dogs.” Fleeing repression, the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood was reborn in the United States, where members established the “Islamic Group – Libya” in 1980 and issued their magazine The Muslim. In 1982, many of the MB figures who were studying in the United States returned to Libya to reestablish the organization in the country but ended up in prison or were executed. The Libyan Muslim Brotherhood made a comeback in 1999, and entered into a novel dialogue with the regime. Its rebirth was bolstered in 2005 and 2006 by Saif al-Islam Qaddafi’s initiatives, which aimed to coopt and neutralize opposition groups, particularly Islamist ones. This led to doubts about their motivations during the 2011 revolution, charges which Brotherhood leaders reject. “No, we did not plan the revolution and we weren’t playing a double game with the regime,” says Fawzi Abu Kitef, the head of the Revolutionary Brigades Coalition in Eastern Libya and the former deputy defense minister in the National Transitional Council (NTC). Abu Kitef was a leading figure in the Brotherhood who spent more than 18 years in Qaddafi’s jails, including Abu Selim. Indeed, from the outset, the Brotherhood was supportive of the NTC, with some of its icons joining it, such as Dr. Abdullah Shamia, who was in charge of the economy file in the NTC. The Libyan Muslim Brotherhood modeled its new party after Egypt’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). It is much smaller than its Egyptian counterpart, however. In 2009, Soliman Abd al-Qadr, the former General Observer of the Libyan MB, estimated the numbers of MB figures in exile to be around 200 and inside Libya to be a few thousands, mainly concentrated in the professional and student sectors. While those cadres will be critical for the movement and its party, they can hardly compare to the hundreds of thousands of the Egyptian Brotherhood.
Read the rest here.
A previous post recommended Israeli analyst Jonathan D. Halev’s article titled “Did The Libyan Leadership Deceive the West” in which he writes:
Qatari involvement is likely to produce a regime in Libya that follows the political orientation of Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, thereby giving the Muslim Brotherhood an open door in the new Libya. The political debate in Libya will be within an essentially Islamist universe, with different leaders distinguished by the degree to which they seek to implement their Islamism. It seems that the strategy of the democratic states that trusted the promises of the rebel forces to adopt and implement the principles of democracy has collapsed, and that Western aid to overthrow Gaddafi’s tyrannical regime prepared the groundwork for the establishment of an Islamic state, which eventually may become hostile to the West.
Read the rest here.
A post from December 2011 reported that a delegation of Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi’s International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), headed by Qaradawi himself, was on a four-day visit to Libya at the invitation of the Transitional Council. The post also reported that two individuals tied to the U.K. and European Muslim Brotherhood were part of the delegation. Another previous post recommended Israeli analyst Jonathan D. Halev’s article titled “Did The Libyan Leadership Deceive the West” in which he writes:
Qatari involvement is likely to produce a regime in Libya that follows the political orientation of Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, thereby giving the Muslim Brotherhood an open door in the new Libya. The political debate in Libya will be within an essentially Islamist universe, with different leaders distinguished by the degree to which they seek to implement their Islamism. It seems that the strategy of the democratic states that trusted the promises of the rebel forces to adopt and implement the principles of democracy has collapsed, and that Western aid to overthrow Gaddafi’s tyrannical regime prepared the groundwork for the establishment of an Islamic state, which eventually may become hostile to the West.
Read the rest here.
A post from September 2011 reported on what the New York times called the “growing influence of Islamists in Libya”, identifying Qatari Muslim Brotherhood figure Ali Sallabi (aka Ali Salabi), already known to be the Revolution’s “spiritual leader and a close associate of Qaradawi, as well as for the first time Abel al-Rajazk Abu Hajar who is said to lead the Tripoli Municipal Governing Council and is described as a “Muslim Brotherhood figure.” An earlier post had reported on Ali Sallabi and his association with Qaradawi.