Mysteries have surrounded the Muslim Brotherhood since its founding, in 1928. Nobody knows how many members there are, or how much money the organization receives, or where it all comes from. The chain of command is murky; the goals and the guiding philosophy are not clearly stated. The Egyptian revolution, which has rolled and lurched and staggered along for nearly two years, and which included Brothers among its original protesters, has failed to answer these basic questions. But the past year has solved one mystery: we now know how the Muslim Brotherhood behaves when it gets a taste of power.

Illustration by Tom Bachtell

The Brothers did give advance warning. The organization has never recognized the State of Israel, and it denies that Al Qaeda carried out the attacks of 9/11. In May, when Mohamed Morsi was campaigning for President as the candidate from the group’s Freedom and Justice Party, he stood on a stage outside Cairo University and shouted, “I swear before God and I swear to you all, regardless of what is written in the constitution, Sharia will be applied!” A day earlier, at another Morsi rally, a speaker declared, “Yes, we do want everything! We want the parliament! We want the President! We want the cabinet and the ministries! We want everything to be Islamic! We want the drainage systems to be Islamic!” But such messages were leavened by more moderate fare. Yasser Ali, a Party spokesman, emphasized the desire “to form a truly national coalition” with other political groups. “We feel that to be alone in the sea is not good for Egypt,” he said, in March. “It would be a domestic problem, and bad for the region.”

Those words proved to be prophetic. Ever since November 22nd, when President Morsi issued a declaration that granted him broad powers above the reach of any court, Egypt has become increasingly tense and politically fractured. After Morsi’s declaration, a Brotherhood-dominated constituent assembly rushed to finish a draft of a new constitution. More than a quarter of the assembly members resigned in protest, and there were clear violations of protocol, but the document was rammed through in a sixteen-hour voting session. Despite months of work, some articles were introduced only in that final session. The result is a slippery foundation for the future: a number of basic rights—including freedom of the press, due process for justice, and equality for women and minorities—aren’t adequately protected.

But the most revealing moment of the crisis occurred a week and a half ago. With protesters camped outside the Presidential Palace, in Cairo, Brotherhood members led a group of men who attacked peaceful demonstrators and tore down their tents. The violence kicked off an evening of escalating counterattacks; in the end, nine people died and more than a thousand were injured, with both sides sustaining heavy casualties. Some protesters, women among them, were detained and tortured by civilian groups that included members of the Brotherhood. Morsi, in a clumsy and dishonest speech to the nation, blamed it all on “thugs” and a “fifth column” organized by the remnants of Hosni Mubarak’s regime. But there was no question who had started the fighting. It was the first clearly documented case of political violence in more than fifty years of Muslim Brotherhood activity in Egypt.

Nonviolence has always been a point of pride for the organization. Some of its offshoot groups, like Hamas, have engaged in terrorism, but the Brotherhood never endorsed acts of violence in Egypt, despite decades of oppression under Mubarak that included the imprisonment of most of its leaders. That restraint, however, like the talk of coöperation, seems to have evaporated with the first taste of power. Sometimes an organization is nonviolent on principle, and sometimes it is nonviolent simply because it finds itself in a position of weakness.

For many Egyptians, it’s been a depressing month. The military seems to be aligned with Morsi, at least for the moment, and the country lacks a strong and coherent political alternative to the Brotherhood. Nevertheless, there are some reasons for optimism. The public response has been impressive, with tens of thousands of peaceful protesters surrounding the palace on many nights. These crowds are largely middle class, but they comprise people from all walks of life, including many who identify themselves as former supporters of Morsi. There are more women than usual. And expectations have changed since the beginning of the revolution. For almost two years, the media have operated with a freedom that never existed under Mubarak, and Egypt has held essentially fair elections for both parliament and the Presidency. Such progress remains fragile, but at least certain demands are being established.

Meanwhile, the Brotherhood has failed to evolve in the wake of the revolution. Traditionally, the organization’s strengths have been local religious training and charity work, which have made it effective at mobilizing grassroots support for elections. But for decades it was banned from full participation in Egypt’s government, so it has never been tested in the more subtle and complicated aspects of national politics. The leadership is dominated by people from technical fields: of the eighteen members of the Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau, fifteen are doctors, engineers, or scientists. Their careers may not have taught them the arts of negotiation and compromise, and Morsi, an engineer by training, has shown no real flexibility in response to the unfolding crisis. Eight of his advisers and aides have resigned in the past three weeks. From the outside, it’s hard to distinguish between calculation and incompetence. On Sunday evening, the government suddenly announced major tax increases for a wide variety of goods, including gasoline, electricity, cooking oil, cigarettes, and alcohol—hardly a savvy move in a country with a ravaged economy and an ongoing political crisis. Later that night, after the decree had inspired a mad rush on Cairo liquor stores, Morsi cancelled it with a message posted on his Facebook page at 2:13 A.M.

The Brotherhood has “a huge ability to withstand negotiations that never reach anything,” Gaber Gad Nassar, one of the most prominent members who quit the constituent assembly, said last week. Nassar is a professor of constitutional law at Cairo University, and his analysis could be seen as either deeply pessimistic or perversely optimistic, depending on the tone of your inshallah. “They are extremely keen to take over power and use it,” he said. “However, the biggest problem they face is the lack of talent qualified to do that.” Critics have always made this point—that the worst thing that could happen to the Brotherhood might be a rise to power, because then their weaknesses would be exposed. But this is small consolation in Cairo. The world is full of bad regimes that survive just because they hurt others more than they hurt themselves. ♦