Muslim Brotherhood Raises Its Sights in Egypt

Good news: Osama Bin Laden is dead. Prayerfully, that will be the beginning of the end of Al-Qaeda.
Bad news: The Muslim Brotherhood is set on getting political power in Egypt which worries my brothers and sisters in Christ.

5/2/2011 Egypt (Wall Street Journal) – The Muslim Brotherhood said it will increase the number of seats for which it plans to field candidates in this fall’s parliamentary elections, in a sign of the increasing confidence of Egypt’s Islamists against a thin field of political competitors. The Freedom and Justice Party, the Brotherhood’s new political party, will field candidates in about 45 to 50% of voting districts in elections scheduled for September. Brotherhood leaders previously said they were hoping to contest about a third of the seats.

The party appears to be holding to an earlier decision not to participate in presidential elections, which are supposed to take place before the end of November. The decision to field more candidates may be a sign of the organization’s increasing confidence in the Egyptian public’s appetite for political Islam following generations of largely secular, one-party rule.

But the move is also an indication of the group’s fitness as a political organization compared with its competitors. Other than the unpopular former ruling National Democratic Party—which was renamed the New National Party last month—the Brotherhood remains one of the only experienced, organized and powerful political parties in post revolutionary Egypt.

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In an effort to confront the Brotherhood and other Islamists’ popularity at the polls, a group of mostly secular parties are forming a “joint list” of candidates. Such a list would divide the field of competition among parties, decreasing the possibility that like-minded politicians will compete against each other.

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“We are targeting 30-35%, we are not targeting a majority,” said Essam El Erian, a senior Brotherhood leader. “If you are targeting 30-35%, you maybe double that.” Such an explanation is unlikely to convince political observers and competitors who recall the Brotherhood leadership’s public assurances earlier this spring that they would only field candidates for one-third of the seats and they wouldn’t field a candidate for president. Those statements were widely perceived as aimed at quelling fears of an Islamist takeover.
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Still, in a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, about 75% of Egyptians said they had either a favorable or a very favorable opinion of the Brotherhood.
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So while one terrorist group seems to be dying out, another terrorist group is gaining momentum.