Echoes of Nasser

This article was originally published here on ForeignPolicy.com on Tuesday, July 16.

Nasser used the “Manshiya incident,” as it came to be known, to justify repression of the Brotherhood. Three days after Abdel Latif missed him, Nasser denounced Supreme Guide Hassan al-Hudaybi; the press, meanwhile, warned darkly that the Brotherhood’s paramilitary organization -- al-jihaz al-sirri (“the secret apparatus”) -- sought to topple the regime.

For the remainder of the Nasser era, the Brothers were either underground or imprisoned. This rendered the Islamists a non-factor in Egyptian politics for the next two decades -- but the showdown in 1954 between Egypt’s generals and the Muslim Brotherhood would have a profound impact on Egyptian politics for decades to come.

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