The last thing the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan needed was a new crack in their edifice in Amman, following the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood-led administration in Egypt and the dramatic decline of the Islamist group’s role in other countries. After a conference held in Irbid on Saturday, attended by 200 Muslim Brotherhood leaders and rank and file, a ‘sequel’ for the Zamzam Initiative – which had split from the parent group months ago – has emerged.
Amman– At the end of a conference that brought together leaders and cadres from the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan on Saturday in Irbid (northern Jordan), two main demands were made: changing the current leadership and banishing crisis-causing figures, as the conferees called them, and bringing in a new leadership to govern the Muslim Brotherhood for the next two years, to be chosen by consensus to ensure it can reform the statute of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood.
Once again, two sides within the movement exchanged accusations, one describing the step as the follow-on to the so-called Zamzam Initiative, which was established by 500 figures led by expelled members of the Brotherhood in October 2013, and another side that sees the move as a domestic reform initiative, which is the opinion of a number of figures behind the conference and others who are still active Muslim Brotherhood members.
The second faction includes Rami Melhem, a member of the group’s Shura Council, who told Al-Akhbar that he was among the first to call for holding Saturday’s conference. Melhem said that he had reached out to the group’s Executive Office, which did not object to holding the reform-themed conference, provided it would be under the auspices of the group. “However, the conference was ultimately held without any official sponsorship,” Melhem said.
The conference was attended by 200 out of 300 figures who had received invitations, and was chaired by the former Comptroller General of the Brotherhood in Jordan, Abdul-Majid Dhunaibat, contradicting previous rumors that he would be unable to attend on account of his presence in Turkey for a ceremony of the Turkish Felicity Party.
Members of the Zamzam Initiative were also present, led by Nabil Koufahi, the man in charge of the Initiative’s political affairs, and Jabil al-Duhaissat, who is in charge of social affairs. However, Arahil Gharaibeh was absent from the meeting, something that observers said was meant to avoid accusations that Zamzam was behind the conference.
Koufahi, who had been expelled from the Muslim Brotherhood, denied that Zamzam had engineered the gathering, citing the presence of Muslim Brotherhood members. He said, “Zamzam has another approach. It is a national initiative involving figures from every spectrum of the Jordanian landscape,” adding, “The reformative conference in Irbid is not just for the Muslim Brotherhood in the north… there was participation from all provinces.”
The conference called for replacing the Comptroller General of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood Hammam Said and his deputy, Zaki Bani Irsheid, providing that the solution would come from within the group’s organization, according to the spokesperson for the conference Zaki al-Bashaira. Bashaira also called for an end to mudslinging between various factions within the Brotherhood, and to allow the Islamic Action Front party to operate independently from the Brotherhood.
Zaki Bani Irsheid declined to comment on recent developments, and instead referred Al-Akhbar to the statement issued by the group in response to the conference, stressing that the demands to sack him carried no value for being “outside the legal-organizational framework.”
The group’s media office had stated that the Muslim Brotherhood in Irbid were expressing their personal opinions in a meeting held outside the longstanding organizational tradition of the group. The statement also said that the leadership will not be dragged to any side preoccupations or quarrels regardless of their source.
At the end of their meeting, the conferees promised to hold more conferences in the future, to be sponsored by the segments in the Muslim Brotherhood that endorsed the event. The conferees said they would submit 15 recommendations to the group’s Shura Council and leadership. However, Bani Irsheid, in remarks posted later on Facebook, revealed that administrative bodies from Irbid’s four branches had met with Secretary Mohammad Aql on Thursday, and relayed to him their adherence to the leadership’s position regarding the conference, writing that the one MP who was present at the conference was there “in his personal capacity, but nothing more.”
Commenting on the new rift within the Muslim Brotherhood, Said Diab, the secretary general of the leftwing Jordanian Democratic Popular Unity Party, said that the Brotherhood’s setbacks and disappointments were the result of its failed confrontation with the Syrian and Egyptian states. Diab said that the Brotherhood must reassess its attitudes especially regarding the Palestinian question, which is now outside the movement’s main preoccupations, he said. Diab also criticized the Muslim Brotherhood’s ongoing clash with nationalist forces, which he said were now spearheading the confrontation with Israel.
For his part, the head of the Supreme Court of the Islamic Action Front, Taysir Fitiani, called on the participants in the conference to stick to “sharia, and the interests of the country and the group.”
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
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