DUBAI (AlArabiya.net)
The Muslim Brotherhood is getting a wake up call from within, with the young generation of Brothers using their blogs to call on Egypt's most powerful opposition group to change.
One young member of the banned Islamist movement even called on the group's leaders to scrap the slogan, "Islam is the Solution," according to a report in Wednesday's "Egypt Today" newspaper.
"Why is it about an ideology?," asks young Muslim Brotherhood member Magdi Saad on his blog, called "Yalla, mish muhim," which translates roughly as "Whatever!"
"Why not send a message to reassure everyone that the group can widen its horizons and be flexible enough to lead all peoples in a state the size of Egypt?," he wrote recently, calling on the Brotherhood to extend its current Islamic focus to include Egypt's Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
But Brotherhood leaders have refused calls to open a debate about the slogan -- used by group since its inception in the 1920s -- in what is seen as a widening gap between the leaders and youngsters in the group.
For instance, while more conservative members avoid the cinema or pop music, today's youth see nothing wrong with watching the latest movies.
One Brotherhood blogger, who goes by the name "Strangeness," recently wrote about watching the movie "Free Time," despite its "inappropriate" language and suggestive scenes. "I watched it and I liked it," he wrote.
Another young Brother wrote on his "Yalla-lalli" blog that if the Brotherhood's founder Hassan al-Bunna were alive today, he would probably be wearing jeans and learning photography, strikingly at odds with the severe image modelled by the conservative elders in the group.
There is no indication that the calls for change by the group's younger members will be heeded by its leaders. But some observers predict a split in the movement if its superiors do not heed the needs of the new generation of Brotherhood members. |
