Muslim Brotherhood leaders on the run

McClatchy:

Television preacher Safwat Hegazy was arrested earlier this week as the military-installed government moved to crack down on its Islamist opponents.

He was rounded up while fleeing toward Libya, supposedly captured while dressed in women’s clothing and his once-lengthy beard trimmed.

“I am not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Hegazy reportedly told authorities.

In fact, Hegazy was a prominent voice in the organization that elevated Mohammed Morsi to the Egyptian presidency, and that has been on the run since his recent ouster.

The Brotherhood, a hierarchical movement that commands hundreds of thousands of faithful, had lost another leader. Hegazy was one of roughly a dozen senior figures — including spiritual leader Mohammed Badie and several provincial chiefs — detained in the last month.

The manner of Hegazy’s arrest — fleeing when the organization is facing its biggest crisis in its 85-year history — was another embarrassing blow to the Brotherhood. With roughly two-thirds of its leaders under arrest or on the lam, the crackdown prevented the movement from mobilizing massive nationwide protests on Friday.

First, Mohammed Morsi was booted from the presidency. Then hundreds of his supporters died this month when the government rousted protesters from their prolonged sit-ins. Now much of the Brotherhood leadership is absent, their organization essentially in retreat.

Brotherhood members told McClatchy they didn’t get the call to take to the streets in the way they once did. Many said that even if they had, they couldn’t respond because they were too busy.

Some were burying friends and family killed in clashes with security forces in the last week. Others were pleading with international human rights groups to help them release their loved ones from jail.

Still more said they were too afraid to go down to the streets and confront the security forces or ordinary Egyptians who hold the Brotherhood responsible for the country’s political crisis.

A Brotherhood-led coalition of mostly Islamist groups called the National Alliance to Support Legitimacy called for “Friday of Martyrs” protests. But Egyptian media reported feeble turnouts in Cairo and other cities and towns.
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The Muslim Brotherhood made a strategic error after the general uprising that toppled Morsi's incompetent government.  Instead of going back to its Mubarak era posture of peaceful opposition it opened fire on the army and gave it an excuse to crackdown on the Islamist religious bigots who make up the leadership of the fascist organization.  That has allowed the army to crush even peaceful efforts to protest.  There organization will be disrupted and their social network will be under attack in the coming months.