It is nice for there to be established in Egypt a “third movement", whose members are unaffiliated with either political Islam or the former regime, and include those who call for preserving the secular nature of the state and the independence of its political decision-making from any group on the domestic scene or from parties and governments abroad. Nevertheless, it would be useful for the members of such a movement to recognize the mistakes that were committed by secular forces and led to their fragmentation and to conflicts between them, so as to have a sound beginning. Indeed, the question remains: how many of the prominent figures of such a movement will remain active within its formation if the new President of the Republic, Doctor Mohamed Morsi, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) or the Muslim Brotherhood were to wave the “carrot" of an unoccupied political position needing to be filled by one of those affiliated with this movement?! Does such a third movement have the endurance that would enable it to withstand and continue the “struggle", or is it just a matter of time, as has been the case with most of the formations that have included advocates of the secular state, which have broken down at the first sign of a “carrot", conflict of interest or disagreement over a stance? Our friends in the third movement are certainly well aware of the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood has come to power for many reasons, not just because its members are gathered in a formation. It is therefore imperative for the third movement to have reasons to survive and to get rid of the reasons that would lead to its collapse... and history always provides a moral. The year 1995 represented the peak of the confrontation between Hosni Mubarak's regime and the Muslim Brotherhood. A few days before the start of candidacy nominations for the parliamentary elections that were being held that year, the authorities arrested members of the Muslim Brotherhood Shura Council who were coming out of a meeting held at the headquarters of the Al-Dawa magazine in the center of Cairo, which the Brotherhood had been using to hold meetings and sessions. A military tribunal looked into three lawsuits, in which were accused 83 of the most prominent members of the group, among them current Vice Chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party, Doctor Essam Al-Arian, candidate to the presidency Doctor Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh and others. In the month of November, and on the same day on which verdicts were issued in the three lawsuits, I asked then Muslim Brotherhood Chairman (Supreme Guide) “Hajj" Mustafa Mashhur: when will this confrontation end? He answered: it will continue until the Muslim Brotherhood rules Egypt. It was a strange answer, made even stranger by the fact that the man quickly added: it won't take long – in 30 years the Brotherhood will rule Egypt. On that same day, the military tribunal sentenced to prison more than half of those accused, and ordered that the headquarters of the Al-Dawa magazine be shut down. Thus Mashhur and those present left the place, and looked for an alternative location, finding what they sought in an “appartment" in the El-Manial district, where the previous Chairman Muhammad Hamid Abu Al-Nasr lived, which today is the main headquarters of the FJP. What matters is that Mashhur and the Muslim Brotherhood were subjected to a violent campaign not devoid of sarcasm due to his statement. On the background of the verdicts issued in the three lawsuits, the state media waged a violent attack against the Brotherhood, of which Mashhur received an ample share, on the basis that his words confirmed the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood was seeking after power! This was something the regime considered to be a “crime" deserving of punishment. Some writers ridiculed him in a famous talk, considering the man to be overly optimistic, and his talk of the Muslim Brotherhood rising to power within three decades to be meant to seduce the West and to fool the members of the Brotherhood themselves. Meanwhile, some considered that Mashhur had sought to “provoke the regime", and among those were some affiliated to the Islamist movement who considered the general climate not to allow the Chairman of the group to come out with statements that would incite the regime against the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists, especially as Mashhur was speaking at a time when mutually exchanged violence between the police and radical Islamist movements was continuous, and when the regime was seeking to connect the Muslim Brotherhood to groups that engaged in political violence. Mashhur was the fifth Supreme Guide (Chairman) of the Muslim Brotherhood and one of its most prominent theorists and thinkers throughout history. It was noteworthy that his profession on this ID card stated that he was a “beginner", not in politics, but in meteorology, as he had been an employee of the meteorological bureau before being arrested and jailed for many long years, starting from 1948, on the background of what became known as the “jeep case". He was sentenced to prison for three years and served his full sentence. He was arrested again after the Revolution in 1954 on the background of the Mansheya incident, and then detained without trial in 1965, before being released by Sadat along with the other Muslim Brotherhood detainees. Mashhur passed away in 2002. The days, the months and the years have gone by, and his prediction has come to pass before two decades have gone by. The Muslim Brotherhood has always adopted the policy of long-term endurance, and it has withstood all of the attempts to undermine it and preserved its formation, sometimes even giving it priority. Over its history, many of its most prominent figures have left the group, but the Brotherhood has remained, its formation has survived and its goal has been achieved. And to those of the third movement, who differ intellectually from the Muslim Brotherhood and wish to confront the new regime, we say that history provides a moral.
