642 Their Own Worst Enemies

With senior leaders and financiers in prison following a secret, military trial, and the political aspirations of the group checked by perennial arrest campaigns, the Brothers are now proving to be their own worst enemies:

  • Making support for female genital cutting a centerpiece of their opposition to the government in Parliament. On Saturday, the People’s Assembly passed legislation criminalizing the practice, raising the minimum age for marriage, and allowing women to obtain birth certificates for babies whose paternity is not known. Brotherhood MPs opposed all three provisions.
  • Squabbling over leadership and opaque internal administration: Internal “elections” for the Guidance Council, the group’s executive body, at the beginning of the month prompted protest from senior members and young, Brotherhood bloggers. Salah Shalwi, the exiled head of the Libyan branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, resigned earlier this week. In an interview published in the Algerian newspaper Al-Khabar today, he called on Supreme Guide Mohammed Mahdi Akef to do the same.

(As an aside on the uncomfortable subject of female genital cutting, a friend last night shared his theory that Egyptians’ obsession with impotence and Viagra is a result of the practice. I was expecting him to go into a political explanation—something about the humiliation of defeat and the death of the Arab Nationalist project, blah blah blah—but instead he started talking about unresponsive women. I am singularly unqualified to offer an opinion. So talk amongst yourselves.)

(As an aside on the subject of Libya, President Hosni Mubarak is not going there to attend a summit on a Mediterranean security alliance. The president’s office says he’s too busy. An anonymous official says Mubarak’s not going so he doesn’t have to see Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.)

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  1. Eejits. They could score big-time on the look-we’re-so-liberal-meter by taking on FGM as something un-Islamic, while still maintaining their holier than thou credentials, but this is just more evidence that their gut instincts are to favour social conservatism.

    I’ve heard the argument for Viagra-obsessed-men vs unresponsive women before. It makes sense. There was a film on FGM I went to see once that showed a ‘sexologist’s’ clinic in which the ‘doctor’ said a majority of the ‘marital problems’ that people came to him with had their root in women’s low desire for sex because it was never pleasurable for them. He used it to encourage young fathers to not get their daughters cut up. Not sure how well that argument worked.

    Comment by SP — June 12, 2008 #

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