Civil parties welcome banning of Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic powers object

Most parties welcomed the ruling issued Monday to ban the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood and all its affiliates. Islamic parties have criticized the ruling, worried that it is propagating a culture of exclusion that could expand to the entire Islamic current.

Refaat al-Saeed, head of Tagammu Party, said in statement to the media that the party considers the ruling a victory in the war against terrorism. Since the ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi the anti-Islamist campaign has been framed in terms of fighting terrorism.

General Secretary of the Wafd Party Fouad Badrawy said that the ruling is legal as the group had drifted from its original social mission and adopted a violent approach.

Heba Yassin, the spokesperson for the Popular Current Party, also welcomed the verdict, but she added that it is insufficient and needs to be followed by work on the ground to eliminate the origins of extremist thought in society.

Abul Ezz al-Hariry, a leading member of the Tagammu Party said that the group deserved this painful fate and asserted that there is no political motivation behind the verdict. 

In the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice newspaper, which was still printed on Tuesday despite the verdict, Judge Walid Sharabi, the head of a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated judiciary group, said that the verdict will not create any real effect. He said that is because was already a crackdown against the group that includes arresting its members and freezing its assets before the verdict was issued.

Jama’a al-Islamiya released a statement Tuesday saying that the verdict is vindictive and aims to exclude the whole of the Islamic current that calls for the return of Morsi. The statement said that such verdicts increase polarization and division in the country.

The group criticized the ruling as politicized and unjustified, raising concerns that it is a violation of the freedoms to practice activities that are allowed by law.

The Nour Party is still studying the verdict before issuing a formal reaction, but it announced that it is in principle against the exclusion of a political current that has a heavy weight in the Egyptian scene.