How did the Muslim Brotherhood Fail?: The Process of Polarization in the Egyptian Revolution

When the Egyptian Revolution began in January, 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood, as the most organized and influential political group in Egypt, was generally considered the most likely alternative for the Mubarak regime. However, they were designated an illegal organization again at the end of the revolutionary episode. Relying on Resource Mobilization theory and the theoretical paradigm of contentious politics, the main aim of this paper is to show how the process of polarization, that is, the changes in relations between the Islamists, secular groups, and the military, set the ground for the Muslim Brotherhood failure. According to the findings, the revolutionary episode went through three stages. In the first stage, the Mubarak/revolution polarization and in the second stage, the polarization of stabilization/continuation of the revolution took place in the political sphere. However, what made failure of the Muslim Brotherhood possible was Brotherhood/anti-Brotherhood polarization in the third stage in which the secular parties whose youth had a lot of influence in social networks, the armed forces, as the organization that controls the weapons, and Al-Azhar and the most important Salafi parties as the very important centers having the authority to speak on behalf of Islam, were on one side and the Muslim Brotherhood alone on the other. Hence, in addition to the mistakes of the Brotherhood which have occupied the center of literature, the role played by the armed forces, secular parties, Al-Azhar organization and Salafi groups were decisive in the Muslim Brotherhood failure.