ARTYKUŁ
The Muslim Brotherhood and the Crisis in the GCC:
Roots, Issues and Implications
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Data publikacji: 30-06-2016
Stosunki Międzynarodowe – International Relations 2016;52(2):355-365
SŁOWA KLUCZOWE
STRESZCZENIE
After the Arab Uprisings of 2011, the position of the Muslim Brotherhood in the
Middle East changed dramatically, especially in the Persian Gulf subregion. For
decades, the Muslim Brotherhood was a close ally of the Gulf monarch families
because it provided a common narrative against Naser’s Pan-Arabism. The Muslim
Brotherhood was also legitimising the monarch families’ right to rule. In the
post-Arab Uprisings era the organisation is seen as a rival of those families and
a challenge for their legitimacy to rule as it calls for political changes.
The only exception was Qatar, which supported the Muslim Brotherhood
financially, militarily and politically in Egypt and elsewhere. Because of that
Qatar found itself at odds with the other Gulf Cooperation Council members,
most notably Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain. Furthermore, the Qatar-based
Al-Jazeera network spread the Brotherhood’s agenda, which was based on the call
for changes due to the fact that the three abovementioned states deemed the Muslim
Brotherhood a terrorist organisation. All these incidents led Saudi Arabia, the UAE
and Bahrain to recall their ambassadors from Doha.
Not only the Muslim Brotherhood was under pressure. It became clear that
other Islamist organisations in the region had suffered from some setbacks that had
affected their overall stance and performance throughout the Middle East (i.e. Hizb
an-Nahda in Tunisia, Hamas in the Palestine Autonomy, the Muslim Brotherhood
in Egypt). What is emphasised by analysts is that this conflict between Qatar and
Saudi Arabia was a battle for regional leadership, not the first one and surely not
the last (the war in Syria, the Islamic State, etc.).
The aim of the paper is to present the history of the mutual relations between
the Muslim Brotherhood and the Arab Gulf states, describe causes which led to
the conflict, the divisions created by the conflict and the consequences of the crisis
for the organisation.