THERE is no better way to take the tempo of Arab politics than to examine the state of the Muslim Brotherhood, the most powerful religiously organised opposition movement in Egypt and the Arab world. With branches in several Arab and Muslim countries, the Muslim Brothers portray themselves as a more authentic, viable alternative to secular authoritarian rulers and religious extremists of the Al Qaeda variety.

But the recent election of a new leadership has discredited those claims and exposed a rift within the 81-year-old Islamic organisation. After weeks of internal turmoil and infighting, the Brotherhood announced that it has chosen Mohammed Badie, an ultra-conservative, as its eighth supreme leader.

The old guard — like Mahmoud Izzat, secretary general and gatekeeper of the Brotherhood's finances and secrets, and Mohammed Akif, former supreme leader, who oppose opening up the organisation and democratising its decision-making — gained the upper hand. Ignoring the wishes of many younger members who called for transparency and respecting electoral rules, Izzat, Akif and their cohorts shoved the secretly arranged results down the throats of opposition.

Resigning in protest, former deputy leader Mohammed Habib accused the old guard of violating the Brotherhood's regulations and illegally engineering Badie's selection. “The future of the movement is at stake,” said Habib in the Egyptian newspaper al-Masry al-Youm.

Habib's complaints put on display a deepening power struggle between the old guard — conservative men in their '70s and '80s — and a younger 1970s generation with reformist tendencies similar to its Turkish counterpart. Badie's election shows the dominance of the old guard — a coherent but dwindling ideologically inclined group of Muslim Brothers, most of whom were members of the late Sayyid Qutb's 1965 paramilitary network. Qutb, master ideologue and theoretician of jihadism, was executed by the Nasser regime in 1966. The Brotherhood renounced violence in the late '60s.

Many of Qutb's followers like Izzat, Akif, and Badie spent about a decade in Egyptian prison camps, and since their release in the mid-1970s have exercised a stranglehold over this influential social movement. Badie possesses no intellectual and political vision to lead the outlawed Brotherhood in an open and inclusive fashion. His claim to fame is absolute obedience to the powers-that-be within the organisation.

The reformist wing — which calls for transparency and joining ranks with the small but active secular opposition — suffered a major setback. Reformist-minded heavyweights like Abdel Moneim Abul Futouh and ex-deputy Habib lost their seats in the Guidance Bureau.

Futouh is the most forward-looking voice on whom progressive young Muslim Brothers and outsiders pinned their hopes for change. His removal shifts the balance of power further in favour of hardliners.

— The Guardian, London

The writer is a professor of Middle Eastern politics and international relations at the London School of Economics.