Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘Supreme Guide’

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By Stephanie McCrummen

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Mohamed Badie, the so-called Supreme Guide of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood,… (Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters )

During a recent night of opposition protests, people chanted against Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and decried the draft constitution he was pressing. But the angriest and most fervent chants of all were aimed at a 69-year-old veterinarian, who many are convinced is secretly ruling Egypt.

“Down, down with the Guide!” they yelled.

The reference was to Mohammed Badie, the so-called “Supreme Guide” of the Muslim Brotherhood, the spiritual leader of the powerful if insular Islamist organization that is the dominant political force in post-revolutionary Egypt.

In the nearly two years since the popular uprising that ousted longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak, Egyptians have rallied against what they have seen as a succession of threats to their revolution. But with the Brotherhood consolidating its power for the long term — electing one of its own as Egypt’s president and approving a new constitution that opens the door to an Islamist state — Badie may be the most lasting symbol of the polarized nation Egypt has become.

To the Brotherhood, the man known as “el Morshed,” Arabic for “the Guide,” is simply the modest and devout spiritual leader of millions of members who feel free at last to express their conservative religious identity and exert political power. The Brotherhood, whose credo is “Islam is the solution,” was banned for decades for being an alleged threat to the state.
“Badie is a very quiet man who can repeat the verses of the Koran by heart,” said Essam el-Erian, a Morsi adviser and Brotherhood party official who scoffed at the idea that Badie somehow directs Morsi’s decisions. “If you saw him in the streets, you could not distinguish him.”

To many seculars, Christians and moderate Muslims, however, Badie is the dark prince of a coming Islamist tyranny, the symbol of their worst fears and most far-flung conspiracy theories about how the Brotherhood operates. During street protests, it is common to see images of Badie, who usually wears a suit and wire-rim glasses, depicted as an Iranian ayatollah or as Satan. A popular YouTube video casts him as Marlon Brando’s don in “The Godfather.”

“The Guide is the true ruler of Egypt,” said Radwa Badawi, 59, among the protesters one recent night who described what they believe are Badie-led plots to bring militias from Gaza or establish an Islamist caliphate across the Middle East and North Africa. “Morsi, the president, has nothing to do with any of it. He just executes the orders of the Guide. ”

The reality of Badie’s influence is more complicated and difficult to know. According to analysts, he is a relatively uncharismatic figure who was chosen for the top position in 2010 partly for that reason: Over the years, he distinguished himself by being indistinguishable from more powerful members of the Brotherhood.

“He is easy to control, and ideologically and intellectually, he is in harmony with the Guidance group,” said Ashraf el-Sherif, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo, referring to the powerful 19-member body that sets policy and has supplied key officials in Morsi’s cabinet. “Badie is in the position first and foremost because they trusted that he is ‘one of us.’ ”

A ‘faithful’ young man

Born in Beni Suef, south of Cairo, Badie married the daughter of a first-generation Brotherhood member. He is a “patient man” who quotes Koranic verses “even when he talks about soccer,” according to the Brotherhood’s official Web site.

Badie rose through the ranks working in roles focused on education while eschewing more outwardly focused political work. In 1965, Badie was arrested along with thousands of others in connection with the trial of Brotherhood leader Sayyid Qutb, an influential intellectual who laid the groundwork for many modern Islamist radicals. Qutb was hanged for allegedly plotting against the state. Badie and several others were released in 1974 and went on to become the modern power center of the movement.

“We were tortured by dogs, by whips, by tools,” said Diaa el-Tobky, a retired airline pilot and Brotherhood member who met Badie in prison and said he was almost certainly tortured as well. “They would pull out our beards with pliers.”

Tobky recalled Badie as a “faithful” young man who went from cell to cell attending to prisoners’ ailments. He said prison only strengthened their religious commitment.

“We like to say that the Muslim Brothers are like nails,” said Tobky. “When you hammer this nail, it only goes deeper into the wood.”

After Badie was released, he worked as a Brotherhood official in Beni Suef until he was elected to the Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau in 1993.

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UN: Syria Toll 60,000

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By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Tom Miles

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Men bury bodies of people what activists said were killed by forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad at a cemetery in Daraya, near Damascus December 28, 2012. Picture taken December 28, 2012.

REUTERS/Kenan Al-Derani/Shaam News Network/Handout

AMMAN/GENEVA (Reuters) – More than 60,000 people have died in Syria’s uprising and civil war, the United Nations said on Wednesday, dramatically raising the death toll in a struggle that shows no sign of ending.

In the latest violence, dozens were killed in a rebellious Damascus suburb when a government air strike turned a petrol station into an inferno, incinerating drivers who had rushed there for a rare chance to fill their tanks, activists said.

“I counted at least 30 bodies. They were either burnt or dismembered,” said Abu Saeed, an activist who arrived in the area an hour after the 1 p.m. (1100 GMT) raid in Muleiha, a suburb on the eastern edge of the capital.

In the north, rebels launched a major attack to take a military airport, and said they had succeeded in destroying a fighter plane and a helicopter on the ground.

U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay said in Geneva that researchers cross-referencing seven sources over five months of analysis had listed 59,648 people killed in Syria between March 15, 2011 and November 30, 2012.

“The number of casualties is much higher than we expected and is truly shocking,” she said. “Given that there has been no let-up in the conflict since the end of November, we can assume that more than 60,000 people have been killed by the beginning of 2013.”

There was no breakdown by ethnicity or information about whether the dead were rebels, soldiers or civilians. There was also no estimate of an upper limit of the possible toll.

Previously, the opposition-linked Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group had put the toll at around 45,000 confirmed dead but said the real number was likely to be higher.

FATAL RUSH FOR PETROL

Video footage taken by activists at the scene of the air strike on the petrol station showed the body of a man in a helmet still perched on a motorcycle amid flames engulfing the scene. Another man was shown carrying a dismembered body.

The video could not be verified. The government bars access to the Damascus area to most international media.

The activists said rockets were fired from a nearby government air base at the petrol station and a residential area after the air raid.

“Until the raid, Muleiha was quiet. We have been without petrol for four days and people from the town and the countryside rushed to the station when a state consignment came in,” Abu Fouad, another activist at the scene, said by phone.

President Bashar al-Assad’s forces also fired artillery and mortars at the capital’s rebellious districts of Douma, Irbin and Zamlaka, activists living there said.

After nightfall there was shelling in the Jobar and Assali districts, and fighting occurred in the northern suburb of Harasta, on the highway leading north, Syria’s main artery.

Assad’s forces control the centre of the capital, while rebels and their sympathizers hold a ring of southern and eastern suburbs that are often hit from the air.

The Observatory said a separate air strike killed 12 members of a family, most of them children, in Moadamiyeh, a southwestern district near the centre of Damascus where rebels have fought for a foothold.

The rebels hold wide swathes of the north and east of the country, but have been unable to protect the areas they control from Assad’s air power. Their main targets in recent months have been air bases, with a goal of preventing the government from using its jets and helicopters.

The rebels launched a major attack on Wednesday on Taftanaz, a northern air base which they hope to seize. A statement by the northern rebel Idlib Coordination Committee said they had battled their way to the airport’s main command building but were not yet in control of the site.

The statement said the rebels had detonated a car bomb inside the Taftanaz airport grounds and destroyed a helicopter.

A rebel speaking from near the airport told Reuters the base’s main sections were still in loyalist hands but rebels had destroyed a fighter jet as well as the helicopter.

The family of an American freelance journalist, James Foley, 39, said on Wednesday he had been missing in Syria since being kidnapped six weeks ago by gunmen. No group has publicly claimed responsibility for his abduction.

Syria was by far the most dangerous country for journalists in 2012, with 28 killed there.

The conflict began in March 2011 with peaceful protests against four decades of Assad family rule and turned into an armed revolt after months of government repression.

Both sides have been accused of committing atrocities in the 21-month-old conflict, but the United Nations says the government and its allies have been more culpable.

In the latest evidence of atrocities, Internet video posted by Syrian rebels shows armed men, apparently fighters loyal to Assad, stabbing two men to death and stoning them with concrete blocks in a summary execution lasting several minutes.

Reuters could not verify the provenance of the footage or the identity of the perpetrators and their victims. The video was posted on Tuesday but it was not clear where or when it was filmed. However it does clearly show a summary execution and torture, apparently being carried out by government supporters.

At one point, one of the assailants says: “For God’s eyes and your Lord, O Bashar,” an Arabic incantation suggesting actions being carried out in the leader’s name.

The video was posted on YouTube by the media office of the Damascus-based rebel First Brigade, which said it had been taken from a captured member of the shabbiha pro-government militia.

The perpetrators show off for the camera, smiling for close-up shots, slicing at the victims’ backs, then stabbing them and bashing them with large slabs of masonry.

Syria’s civil war is the longest and deadliest conflict to emerge from uprisings that began sweeping the Arab world in 2011 and has developed a significant sectarian element.

Rebels, mostly from the Sunni Muslim majority, confront Assad’s army and security forces, dominated by his Shi’ite-derived Alawite sect, which, along with some other minorities, fears revenge if he falls.

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