Summary: If violent jihad arises in Egypt in the coming months, it will likely rest upon four pillars: police clashes at mosques, the Muslim Brotherhood's young male supporters, Syrian refugees, and the Salafis and other small Islamist groups.
The Pillars of Egyptian Jihadism
When the Egyptian Army stepped in and removed President Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood earlier this month, they shattered not only Egypt's first democratically-elected government, but also likely the belief of tens of thousands of Islamists in the power of the ballot box over the bullet. This has raised the spectre that some of the Brotherhood's supporters may now turn to jihadi violence to restore Islamist rule in Egypt.
If this occurs, it will probably not be due to a conspiracy or central plan by existing jihadis, but rather much like the two Egyptian 'revolutions' seen in the past few years: as an outgrowth of mass unrest and anger on the streets. The constituency for this anger will not simply be the members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Rather, it will likely be specifically the young men of the organisation, in concert with members of Egypt's Syrian refugee population and the Salafi and other smaller Islamist groups. The spark for the transition to violence may be provided by provocative security operations against mosques and other religious sites like those the Brotherhood are currently organising from.
The Brotherhood
Probably the most unfounded fear Western fear about the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood is that the organisation will turn to violence and the way of jihad now that democratic means to power have seemingly been denied to it. Make no mistake -the Muslim Brotherhood is sincerely committed to non-violence and achieving power though lawful means. This is not due to an inherent pacifism or profound desire to be law-abiding, but rather a hard-learned lesson of experience. The Brotherhood has faced three serious government crackdowns since it was founded in 1928, including the assassination of their founder (Hassan al-Banna) and the torture and execution of their leading cleric (Sayyid al-Qutb), and it has disavowed violence (at least in Egypt) since the 1970's.
The leadership has also not forgotten the failure of the violent Islamist insurgency in Egypt during the 1990's. Freedom and Justice Party (the political wing of the Brotherhood) leaders may have called for "an uprising by the great people of Egypt against those trying to steal their revolution with tanks", but they mean "uprising" in the fashion of those which brought down Mubarak and now Morsi -through mass protest. To the leadership, this is just one more government crackdown on their long road to what they believe will be their eventual irresistible victory.
The 'Little Brothers'
However, there is risk that the rank and file of the Brotherhood may be more susceptible to jihadi ideologies and tactics in the wake of the coup. This would be especially true of younger members born too late to remember the failed violent campaigns or the harshest government crackdowns, and thus less wedded to non-violence. These 'little Brothers' are also far more likely to be unemployed and face poorer prospects than their older brethren. With Morsi and so much of the senior leadership arrested, they lack clear leadership and will act more on their own initiative.
Most importantly, the youth of the Brotherhood are disproportionately likely to be involved in the wave of sit-ins and protests that their organisation has vowed to paralyze Cairo with until Morsi is restored. These protests are the most likely sites fat which violent confrontation with the police or their opponents will emerge. Almost sixty people have been killed and hundreds more injured in just two such clashes since the coup. Most significantly, the Brotherhood has been holding many of its sit-ins around mosques and organising communal prayers at its protests. Several of the Brotherhood's leaders currently hiding from arrest warrants are believed to be near the sit-in at the Rabaah al-Adawiya Mosque in eastern Cairo.
This creates the explosive potential for scenes of Egypt's police violently dispersing men at prayer or storming into barricaded mosque compounds -images which would almost instantly be beamed across Egypt and around the world. Such scenes would fit perfectly into the narrative that some Islamists are already spreading: that el-Sissi is no more than the head of a "militia" that is seeking to annihilate Islamists, just as al-Assad is doing in Syria. And even if the Brotherhood will not adopt this 'civil war' stance, there are smaller and more extreme Islamist groups, including jihadism who will be far more open to it.
Egypt's Embattled Syrians:
There may be as many as a hundred and forty thousand Syrian refugees in Egypt today, with almost all having fled the Syrian government's crackdown. President Morsi welcomed them warmly, allowing them to travel without visas and extending the use of state hospitals and schools to them. He also spoke loudly in support of Syria's rebels and his senior officials stated that they would not stop Egyptians from going to fight in Syria. All this created a great deal of support for Morsi and the Brotherhood in the pockets of Cairo and other major cities that quickly became dominated by Syrians setting up shops and homes.
This identification of the Syrians as a constituency of the Brotherhood's, however, was used against the refugees once the anti-Morsi protests began. Morsi's appearance at a mid-June rally where many speakers called for jihad in Syria, shocking many more moderate Egyptians, may even have been the tipping point of his unpopularity leading to the July protests which ousted him. Since the coup, anti-Morsi television networks have used the arrest of six Syrians in violent street clashes to claim that the Brotherhood is paying Syrians to fill the pro-Morsi protests. A popular TV presenter has even warned Syrians that they will be beaten with shoes if they "interfere in Egypt"by protesting the coup. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry has also urged Syrians to stay away from such protests. Syrian children are now being denied access to state schools, and only five days after Morsi was removed from power Syrians without visas began to be turned back at Cairo airport. In the eyes of many coup supporters, both in the government and in the streets, a Syrian is a Brotherhood proxy.
What this means is that Egypt contains a hundred thousand-strong community with affectionate feelings for the Morsi regime, an increasing feeling that the new regime is shutting them out, very raw experiences of another 'secular' state crackdown, and nowhere else to flee to. For the services the Egyptian state previously supplied to them, the Syrians will now have to turn to the Brotherhood's supporters and other Islamists who oppose the new government. This will make it even more likely that their young men will be drawn into the protests, and the combination of their experiences in Syria and their new desperation in Egypt will make them easy recruiting grounds for the most violent Islamist groups, especially if they can provide for their welfare. As witnessed amongst countless other refugee populations, this may mean the Salafis and the jihadis.
The Salafis: The Fighting Man's Brotherhood?
Egypt's leading Salafi (ultra-conservative Sunni) political party, al-Nour, has been something of a wild card so far. While it supported the coup that removed Morsi, after the shooting of over fifty protesters by police last week it withdrew from all talks about forming an interim government and stated that it would not remain silent on the "massacre".
Significantly, al-Nour was only founded after the 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak, and so is eighty-four years younger than the Brotherhood, giving it no institutional memory of the decades of crackdowns that followed past Brotherhood violence. This also places its mentality much closer to that of the Brotherhood's angry youth. It claims eight hundred thousand members (almost as many as the Brotherhood), and has so far rallied members through advocating for a puritanical vision of Islam and public life in Egypt. It has also displayed political sophistication, supporting and then abandoning Mursi in line with public opinion, and leveraging the Army's need for at least some Islamist backing for a new government in search of political concessions.
However, while al-Nour's leadership may want to 'sell out' for political gains, its austere constituents and conservative allies may balk at this and demand confrontation. Already, one of the Brotherhood's hardline allies, Assem Abdel Maged, has declared to crowds that al-Nour's leaders must seek repentance from God for their "betrayal". Images of Egyptian police breaking down mosque doors and apprehending clerics may be too much for the religious rank-and-file of both al-Nour and the (leaderless) Brotherhood, who would easily identify with calls for 'jihad' to defend the practice of their faith. The political avenue may also be rapidly closing for Islamists in general and the Salafis in particular. It is widely believed that in new elections al-Nour will come nowhere near to the twenty per cent of the vote and that the Brotherhood's share may fall to little more than that. Violence may thus become a more attractive and plausible path to power in the eyes of many.
The experience of Russian security forces in the Caucasus in seeing how quickly Salafi groups can militarize and turn to violence in the face of 'attacks on their communities' should give the Egyptian Army pause. So should the growing numbers of young men wearing the white shrouds of "martyrdom" at the Brotherhood's sit-ins, and their declarations that will fight and die if necessary to restore an Islamist President. Whatever party or organisation first declares jihad against perceived anti-Islamic police actions may be able to harness the power of such young men, and for al-Nour and its kind, with no hope that temptation may prove too great
Conclusion
Aggressive security operations targeting mosques, the Brotherhood's leaderless youths, Syrian refugees under siege, the presence of Salafi groups with little attachment to non-violence, and sectarian enemies to 'target' may all combine to provide Egypt's political crisis with a religious edge -and that is all that would be required for jihadis to become major players.
Next time: what an Egyptian jihadi insurgency would look like
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