Rift escalates as young Muslim Brothers seek leadership

Cairo - Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is seemingly staggering under a hot internecine crisis that is pitting its youth against its elders. Since February 2015, MB is shrinking as many youth have defected, and/or rebelled against their elders’ politics and methods, calling for a re-election or a reshuffle that has always been met with rejection from the group’s movers and shakers, historically known as “MB’s top brass or elders” such as Mahmoud Ezzat, the Brotherhood’s acting leader.   

“Albawaba News Portal” has managed to obtain a leaked, top-secret document titled: “The Youth-led Front”, led by Mohamed Kamal, Guidance Office Leader, whose first step was exercising constant pressure to transfer the group’s Guidance Office from Turkey to Qatar, lobbying for a re-election and for dismissing some leaders such as Muhammad Muntasir, media spokesman for the group, in addition to proposing new regulations to make Qatar’s office in control of all the group’s affairs.

This leaked document has been written in June 2016 shortly before the death of Mohammed Kamal, and was to be sent out to all the Brotherhood youth leaders who lambasted Mahmoud Ezzat and his fellow elders, both in Egypt and abroad, for their miserable failure and wrong decisions.
The document demands, “It is the ripe time that old top brass to step down, and let the ‘youth’ take the helm. The old leadership has outlived its purpose.”
This is what exactly happened in Turkey last year when a number of MB top leaders announced their resignation from the Guidance Office, opening up the space for an alternative younger leadership.
The document recommends leading foreign mediation initiatives—despite its futility—that aims at improving the tainted picture of the Brotherhood abroad, allowing it time to recover and re-organize.
The document stresses on the confidentiality of its content, and that internal communication should be “under all circumstances” kept private within the front members so that Ezzat and his camp won’t find out about these secret arrangements.
The document concluded with recommendations that the Front has to operate in media behind the veneer of the Brotherhood’s Supreme Administrative committee, to sideline Ezzat and his fellow elders, and to seek the support of the large number of MB youth through direct communication and interaction with them and also through employing a sugar-coated, revolutionary language hinged on youth empowerment.