US media is reporting that Egyptian authorities have arrested Mohamed Badie, the Supreme Guide of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. According to a UPI report:
Mohamad Badie
August 20, 2013 Cairo (UPI) — The Muslim Brotherhood said Deputy Supreme Guide Mahmoud Ezzat will be the Egyptian group’s spiritual leader after its supreme guide was arrested Tuesday.
Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie, 70, was arrested Tuesday in Cairo’s Nasr City during a crackdown by Egypt’s army-backed government on the group and its followers, which includes ousted president Mohamed Morsi, Ahram Online reported.
The announcement Ezzat, 69, would be the temporary spiritual leader was posted on the website of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party.
Badie was the latest of the Brotherhood’s senior leaders to be held by security forces. Six Brotherhood leaders have been charged with inciting the murder of protesters at the group’s headquarters in the Cairo in June.
Morsi has been detained by the military since his ouster 3 July.
A report by a London-based Arabic news provides some biographical detail about Dr. Mohamed Badie who it says is considered one of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders most loyal to the thought of Sayyid Qutb, one of the most important and most radicalideologues in the history of the Muslim Brotherhood:
Muhammad Badi (67 years old) has been able to keep his membership of the Muslim Brotherhood Guidance Bureau for 17 years as he is considered to be one of the most loyal leaders to the organization of Sayyid Qutb. According to the Arab Scientific Encyclopedia issued by the Egyptian State Information Service in 1999, Badi is one of “the greatest 100 Arab scientists.” Badi is the founder of the High Veterinary Institute in the Arab Republic of Yemen. Badi was born on 7 August 1943 in Al-Mahallah al-Kubra (in the Nile Delta), attended the Veterinary Medicine College in Cairo in 1960, graduated in 1965, and was appointed a lecturer at the Veterinary Medicine College in Asyut University in the same year. In 1959 Badi met Dr Muhammad Sulayman al-Najjar, member of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, who invited Badi to join the Muslim Brotherhood, and Badi agreed. The new general guide was sentenced in a number of cases, the most famous of which was a 15-year imprisonment in 1965 in the military case that included among the sentenced the fundamentalist leader Sayyid Qutb; Badi spent 9 years in prison on the basis of that sentence, and then he returned to his post at Asyut University, after which he was transferred to Al-Zaqaziq University, and then he traveled to Yemen, and from there he returned to Bani-Suwayf University.
(Source: London Al-Hayah Online in Arabic — Website of influential Saudi-owned London pan-Arab daily. URL: http://www.daralhayat.com)
An Al-Jazeera report confirms that Dr. Badie was a follower of Qutb:
Born in 1943 in the Nile Delta town of Mahalla el-Kubra, Badie was jailed for nine years in the 1960s after being accused of membership of a Brotherhood paramilitary cell that allegedly planned the overthrow of the government. He later became responsible for ideological education in the group. In the case for which Badie was jailed, thousands of Islamists were convicted and imprisoned while influential radical Islamist thinker Sayid Qutb was executed. Although disowned by some Brotherhood members for his radical views, Badie and others in the movement continued to embrace Qutb, who advocated armed struggle to impose Islamic law.
Some of Dr. Badie’s exxtremiost statement have included:
