Foreign Policy.com has published a new report on the current situation facing the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya which concludes that the Brotherhood organization does not have high levels of public support..The article begins:
Justice & Construction Party
MAY 1, 2014 Tripoli, Libya — As the brass band struck the opening notes of the national anthem, the crowd gathered for Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Justice and Construction Party (JCP) congress rose to their feet. Television cameras scanned the strikingly diverse crowd of more than 500 people that packed the conference hall at a luxury Tripoli hotel. Everyone from turbaned Tuareg from Libya’s southern belt to Amazigh from the western mountains was in attendance. JCP members showed off their new insignia — two hands joined together in the party colors of blue and yellow — along with their motto, written in Arabic and Amazigh: ‘Together we strengthen democracy and consensus.’
Prominent non-Islamist figures were there, mixing openly with their Brotherhood rivals. Giuma Atigha, a liberal-leaning lawyer and former vice president of Libya’s national congress, sat in the front row between JCP chief Mohammed Sawan and Abdelhakim Belhadj, former leader of the defunct Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and now head of the Watan political party. A speaker welcomed members of the JCP’s main opponent in congress, the more liberal National Forces Alliance, before giving the podium to the leader of the small, non-Islamist Taghyeer (‘Change’) party.
The GMBDW reported last week that according to media in the UAE, dozens of Muslim Brotherhood leaders were deported by Qatar and have arrived in Libya.
For more background on the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood, go here and here.
