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Egyptian Court Bans Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian Court Shuts Down the Muslim Brotherhood and Seizes Its Assets
(about 5 hours later)
CAIRO — An Egyptian court on Monday ordered the dissolution of the Muslim Brotherhood and the confiscation of its assets, sharply escalating a broad crackdown on the group in the three months since the military ousted its ally, Mohamed Morsi, from the presidency. CAIRO — An Egyptian court on Monday issued an injunction dissolving the Muslim Brotherhood and confiscating its assets, escalating a broad crackdown on the group less than three months since the military ousted its ally, President Mohamed Morsi.
The court ruling formalizes the suppression of the group, and comes after mass shootings of more than 1,000 pro-Morsi demonstrators and the arrest of thousands of Brotherhood members and almost all of the group’s leaders. Even before Mr. Morsi was overthrown, the police watched idly as a crowd of anti-Brotherhood protesters methodically burned down its gleaming headquarters, capping weeks of attacks on its officers around the country. The ruling, by the Cairo Court for Urgent Matters, amounts to a preliminary injunction shutting down the Brotherhood until a higher court renders a more permanent verdict. The leftist party Tagammu had sought the immediate action, accusing the Brotherhood of “terrorism” and of exploiting religion for political gain. The court ordered the Brotherhood’s assets to be held in trust until a final decision.
The Brotherhood, Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group, sponsored the political party that won the most votes in recent elections. So the court’s formal prohibition of the Brotherhood makes it harder for the new government appointed by Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi to fulfill its promises of a new, inclusive democratic process — one that would be open even to Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters. Instead, the ruling pushes the Brotherhood back underground, where it was for most of its 85-year history before the 2011 revolution that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak allowed the group to operate in the open. If confirmed, the ban on the Brotherhood — Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group — would further diminish hopes of the new government’s fulfilling its promise to restart a democratic political process that would include Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters. For now, though, it effectively formalizes the suppression of the Brotherhood that is already well under way.
The decision was issued by the Cairo Court for Urgent Matters. Some Islamist lawyers questioned the court’s jurisdiction, and vowed to appeal. The court ordered that all the Brotherhood’s assets, including real estate it owned or leased, be held in trust until the appeals were resolved. Since Mr. Morsi’s ouster, the new government appointed by Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi has killed more than 1,000 Brotherhood members in mass shootings at protests against the takeover and arrested thousands more, including almost all of the group’s leaders. Security services have closed offices of the group and its political party in cities around the country. Members are now sometimes afraid to speak publicly by name for fear of reprisals.
But the appeals seemed unlikely to settle the matter, because the Brotherhood faces similar litigation in other jurisdictions as well. And even before Mr. Morsi was overthrown, the police watched idly as a crowd of anti-Brotherhood protesters methodically burned down the group’s gleaming Cairo headquarters — a symbol of its emergence after the 2011 revolution from decades underground. The destruction capped weeks of attacks on its offices around the country.
Monday’s ruling addressed a lawsuit filed by the leftist party Tagammu, which accused the Brotherhood of being a terrorist organization and of “exploiting religion in political slogans.” Laying out its decision, the court reached back to the Brotherhood’s founding in 1928, when Egypt was ruled by a British-backed monarchy, and argued that the organization had always used religion as a cover for its political goals. Some Islamist lawyers said Monday that they would appeal the injunction, but the Brotherhood’s legal status is likely to remain uncertain for some time. Amid the anti-Islamist fervor after Mr. Morsi’s ouster, the group now faces several similar legal claims seeking to rescind its license or prohibit its work, and it is unclear how long it might take to resolve them.
The state newspaper Al Ahram gave its own rationale for the ban, saying Monday that since winning power at the polls the Brotherhood had “violated the rights of the citizens, who found only oppression and arrogance during their reign” until the public had risen up to protest “under the protection of the armed forces; the sword of the homeland inseparable from their people in the confrontation with an unjust regime.” In a statement issued from an office in London — out of reach of the Egyptian police — the Brotherhood called the verdict “an attack on democracy,” arguing that the court overstepped its jurisdiction and failed to allow the group to present its side of the case. “It is clearly an attempt to ban the Muslim Brotherhood from political participation,” statement said, accusing the military leaders of “throwing Egypt back into its darkest days of dictatorship and tyranny.”
The court’s ruling, which banned “all activities” organized, sponsored or financed by the Islamist group, was unexpectedly sweeping. “We have existed for 85 years, and will continue to do so,” it continued. “We are part and parcel of the Egyptian society, and a corrupt and illegitimate judicial decision cannot change that.”
The Brotherhood, which began as a social and religious revival movement, was tacitly tolerated for years despite being outlawed, growing into Egypt’s largest philanthropic organization, with a national network of clinics, schools and other charities helping to provide a partial social safety net below the rickety Egyptian state. Laying out its reasoning, the court reached back to the Brotherhood’s founding as a religious revival group in 1928, when Egypt was in the last tumultuous decades under a British-backed monarchy. From its beginning, the court argued, the Brotherhood has always used Islam as a tool to achieve its political goals and adopted violence as its tactic.
It sponsored legislative candidates, who formed a minority bloc in Parliament for more than 20 years, and in 2011 spun off a closely allied but ostensibly autonomous political unit, the Freedom and Justice Party. The party won nearly half the seats in Egypt’s first parliamentary election after Mr. Mubarak’s overthrow, and its candidate, Mr. Morsi, won about a quarter of the vote in the first round of the presidential race; he later won a runoff. The state newspaper Al Ahram elaborated further, declaring on its Web site that the court found the Brotherhood had “violated the rights of the citizens, who found only oppression and arrogance during their reign” — until fatigued citizens had risen up this summer “under the protection of the armed forces, the sword of the homeland inseparable from their people in the confrontation with an unjust regime.”
More than a million dues-paying members are believed to attend weekly local Brotherhood meetings, according to scholars who study the group, and hundreds of thousands of “sisters” belong to its women’s auxiliary. Despite the tone of the official news media, it was hard to discern whether the court’s ruling was part of a plan by the generals now leading Egypt or a more ad hoc judicial decision, said Michael Hanna, a researcher who studies Egypt at the Century Foundation in New York. “It could be part of a broader strategy with respect to the Muslim Brotherhood, or it could be that people in the military were as surprised as anyone,” he said.
If enforced, the court’s ruling would prohibit all of those meetings and functions, eradicating a major component of Egyptian civil society. In a sweeping injunction, the court banned both the Brotherhood itself and “all activities” it organized, sponsored or financed. It immediately returned the Brotherhood to the outlawed, underground status it occupied for most of its 85 years, including the long decades from President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s 1954 crackdown on the group until the 2011 revolt that ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
Ibrahim Moneir, a Brotherhood official who is still at large, called the ruling “totalitarian.” In an interview with a satellite news channel, he said the group would survive “with God’s help, not by the orders of Sisi’s judiciary.” If enforced, the ruling could take a toll on communities across Egypt where the Brotherhood has often played a philanthropic role. For decades, the Brotherhood has also played an open role in political life by sponsoring candidates who formed a minority bloc of the Parliament.

Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.

Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.