INTERVIEW: Muslim Brotherhood leader on prison, belief, and Mubarak

By Pakinam Amer
Jul 9, 2007, 4:59 GMT

Cairo - 'I used to say to myself, tomorrow I will meet the beloved ones, Prophet Mohammed and his companions,' recounts Mohammed Mahdi Akef of his time in prison awaiting his execution.

Akef is the political leader of the Society of Muslim Brothers, also known as Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement which since its inception in Egypt in 1928 has become the driving opposition force in many Arab countries.

A source of ideological inspiration to many of the world's Islamist movements, the group officially rejects violent means to achieve its aim of an Islamic state but is nonetheless accused of links with extremist groups and of fomenting armed action.

Speaking to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in Cairo, Akef recalls how in 1954 he was charged with involvement in an attempt on the life of former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel-Nasser. Sentenced to death, the sentence was later commuted to life with hard labour.

Akef was number seven on the state's execution list at one point. 'They executed six Brotherhood leaders one day,' he remembers, 'but postponed the rest until the next.'

While he was lying in a narrow military cell waiting for the sentence to be carried out, a guard came in and told him he had received a phone call. It was his mother's voice on the other end, telling him that 'there would be no execution.'

'I was certain that this was the end, and I was ready for it,' Akef says. The death sentence concentrated his focus so much that he 'did not waste a single minute while in prison.'

'I had a vision for the future that I wrote during that time,' Akef says, adding that he has always refused to publish his 'vision.'

Akef was eventually released from prison in 1974 following Nasser's death and during the rule of his successor Anwar Sadat. Shortly after his release he left the country, first to Saudi Arabia then to Germany.

He returned to Egypt in the 1980s, and was arrested in 1996 on charges of leading the Germany-based international wing of the Brotherhood. He was released in 1999.

If anything, such experiences of prison have made him stronger, Akef claims. 'Prison does not break those who have belief. Not even torture can do that. No force on Earth can conquer the bearers of religious traditions,' the 79-year-old says.

Today, the General Guide, or Murshid, of the Muslim Brotherhood says the group are engaged in an 'open war' with the Egyptian regime that has reached new heights.

The situation today is 'worse than that in the prisons of Nasser,' Akef says.

Egypt's current president, Hosny Mubarak, has slammed the Brotherhood for its desire to bring religion onto the country's political stage, and Egypt's state-owned newspapers refer to the group simply as 'the banned one' despite its parliamentary representation.

Mubarak was recently quoted by the press as saying that the group constituted 'a danger to national security.' If the Brotherhood ever came to power, Mubarak said, the Egyptian economy would be wrecked, and the country would be isolated internationally.

Hundreds of members have been rounded up during the past year on charges of belonging to an illegal organization, while Brotherhood journalists have been harassed, and a group-affiliated newspaper closed down.

The group is fiercely attacked in the state-controlled media. 'What we are facing now is worse than during any other period we have passed through,' Akef says, 'not only because of what is happening to us, but because of the calamities hitting the entire ummah (Muslim nation).'

Akef was born in 1928, the year of the Brotherhood's founding, joining the movement's ranks when he was just 12 years old and when the group's founder Hassan al-Banna, who was assassinated in 1949, was at the height of his influence.

'Freedom reigned' in those days, Akef remembers. 'Everyone, whether good or bad, was left to do what he wanted. No one spied on you or asked what you were up to.'

Akef dedicated his life to the movement. Today, he is as serious as he was when a young man. Asked about his attitude towards the cinema and other forms of entertainment, Akef says that while young he used to love the movie 'Gone with the Wind,' but today he is a Brother above all else. 'I understand politics,' he comments, 'not the arts or entertainment.'

Upon joining the group, Akef was told that the Brotherhood's para- military wing, since dissolved, needed trainers. He was more than happy to comply, thus enrolling at the school of physical education, rather than the school of engineering which he had originally wanted to join.

While he has seen many trials and tribulations over the years, Akef is today more troubled than ever about the future.

The ummah is under threat, he says, and 'losing the ummah would be worse than jail or physical torture. We have been able to handle the latter as long as it was in the interests of the ummah. We have been persecuted for over 50 years now.'

Through speeches that draw on the life of the Prophet Mohammed and other Muslim figures, the Brotherhood has tried to draw attention to events in the Palestinian Territories, Iraq and Lebanon and to developments that they claim are leading to the disintegration of the Islamic ummah.

The Palestinian situation has long been at the top of the group's agenda, with the Brotherhood holding consciousness-raising campaigns about the Arab-Israeli struggle, which they term 'an Islamic nationalist cause.'

For Akef, the former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat had 'abandoned the Palestinian cause,' when he signed the Camp David peace accords with the Israelis and Americans. He however now claims that 'Mubarak has abandoned it even further.'

'The only hope we have is hope in God Almighty,' says the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood.

'If our lives were not based on belief in God and in his prophets, then there would be no meaning in any other belief. The reality is that religion holds the keys to the future.'

© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
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