Muslim Brotherhood Chooses Candidate For President In Egypt

The political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood has nominated its longtime strategist and financier Khayrat el-Shater for president, breaking a previous pledge to stay out of the race and upending the political dynamics of Egypt’s transition after the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak.

El-Shater immediately becomes a leading contender for the presidency because of both the popularity and grass-roots organization of the Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest Islamist group. Its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, won nearly half the seats in the first post-Mubarak parliamentary election and now leads the Parliament.

Founded eight decades ago, the Brotherhood became the wellspring of political Islam around the world but remained illegal here until Mubarak’s exit. Its leaders, including El-Shater, initially vowed not to nominate a candidate for president for fear of provoking a military backlash against the sudden prospect of an Islamist takeover. They cited the example of the crackdown in Algeria 20 years ago after an Islamist victory there, which started a decade-long civil war.

But in recent weeks the Brotherhood has grown more confident in its power. It showed success at convincing the Western powers that it was more moderate than some had feared. And it also began to see a field of presidential front-runners dominated by Islamists who could be specially troubling to its status and position.

One of them is Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a liberal Islamist and former leader of the Brotherhood who the group led by El-Shater expelled for violating its vow not to run a presidential candidate. The Brotherhood has since redoubled its opposition to his candidacy, warning its roughly 1 million members they would be expelled for supporting him. The prospect that he might win or perform well despite its opposition could splinter the Brotherhood’s ranks and undermine its credibility and discipline. But its continued opposition to his candidacy for violating a pledge that the group itself has now retracted may now be difficult to explain.

Another top contender is Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, an ultraconservative Islamist. Such conservatives performed unexpectedly well in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, winning about a quarter of the seats. But Abu Ismail has embraced conservative ideas about the application of Islamic law as well as a hostility to the West that could also undermine the Brotherhood’s efforts to portray Egypt’s Islamists as both moderate and unthreatening.

El-Shater has long been considered a voice for modernization and democracy within the Brotherhood and in Egypt. He is a wealthy businessman and associated with support for limited government and free trade. But he has more recently alienated some in the group, especially among its youth, by opposing their calls for allowing more pluralism in the group’s political expression. He has stood for the idea that the group and its members should fall in line behind the decisions of leaders about how best to apply Islam to public life.