Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood will not launch a new struggle for power with authorities which toppled it from government nine years ago, even though the movement still claims wide support, its acting leader said.
The once formidable Islamist movement won Egypt’s first free presidential election in 2012, but was overthrown by the military a year later after mass protests against its rule and endured a fierce crackdown by authorities since then.
Many of its leaders and thousands of its supporters are in jail or have fled Egypt, and the group has been excluded from a political dialogue to be launched soon by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who as the army chief deposed the Brotherhood in 2013.
Cairo has designated the Brotherhood a terrorist organization, but acting leader Ibrahim Munir reiterated the group’s long-standing rejection of violence.
He also appeared to rule out challenging for power through the ballot box – something the group is unable to do directly while it remains banned in Egypt, although it did field independent candidates in parliamentary elections in the past.
“We completely reject (violence) and we consider it outside the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood – not only the use of violence and arms, but to have a struggle for power in Egypt in any form,” Munir told Reuters in an interview.
“We reject the struggle for power even if between political parties through elections organized by the state. This is totally rejected by us.”
Munir, 85, who was twice jailed in Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s and has lived in exile for most of the last 40 years, said the Brotherhood had survived difficult times before but was now experiencing the toughest period since it was founded more than 90 years ago.
