Ikhwanweb :: The Muslim Brotherhood Official English Website

One more item from yesterday's Muslim Brotherhood hearing in Heliopolis: According to El-Shorouk, Essam el-Erian promised that the Brotherhood will participate in all coming elections (عربي).

Someone should tell Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, who last month proposed a 20-year boycott of Egyptian elections (عربي) in order to focus on building the Brotherhood internally.

This isn't a new division within the Brotherhood (Marc Lynch and Shadi Hamid, among others, have written about it previously). Electoral participation yields few benefits for the Brotherhood, and it has a steep downside -- increased arrests, greater repression. There was some hope that the Brotherhood's internal election this winter would resolve the debate. It didn't -- and the division is likely to deepen as Egypt draws closer to parliamentary elections this fall.