5 - The Mosque and the Market

Summary

Chapter five examines the evolution of Muslim Brotherhood in contemporary Egypt and characterizes the organization as an aspiring fraction of capital. Far from being an anti-capitalist force in Egyptian social and political life, the Muslim Brotherhood has consistently sought to establish an Islamic economy rooted in private property. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, this resulted in the growth of Islamic finance, in the form of both Islamic banking as well as Islamic Money Management Companies. The growth of Islamic finance and the attempts to branch out into manufacturing were met with resistance from the NDP and the dominant fraction of capital that had close ties to the regime. By the late 1990s, a new guard of conservative, business-oriented Brothers ascended to through the ranks of the movement and attempted to replicate the successes of the AKP in Turkey. The deposition of Mubarak in the context of the Arab uprisings opened up space for the Brothers to attempt to expand their economic power beyond their commercial base. The attempt to do so, however, would bring the Brothers into conflict with an emboldened and extremely powerful military that managed to establish itself as the hegemonic fraction of capital in Egypt.