Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood enters 'uncharted waters' in new parliament
It's a triumph that's been 84 years in the making and, despite a concerted effort by all involved to stay humble and on-message during their movement's finest hour, few members of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood can hide their exhilaration.
"These elections are a historic milestone for us and they are a historic milestone for Egypt," said Amr Darrag, secretary general of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party in Giza. "We've not had such free elections since 1952, so it's a great moment for the nation," he said. "The Egyptian people really intend to seize this moment and secure the position for Egypt that it so clearly deserves."
The FJP will be the largest force in the country's new parliament when it opens for business on 23 January, almost exactly a year on from the beginning of the revolution that would eventually topple the Brotherhood's tormentor-in-chief, Hosni Mubarak.
After decades of having to play by the rules of your oppressors, it's a giddying feeling to start writing them yourself. Seham al-Gamal, a Muslim Brotherhood activist who ran unsuccessfully for parliament in 2010, remembers the old game only too well. "Politics was based on corruption, and only groups that accepted this corruption flourished in the political arena," she said in an interview with one of the Brotherhood's slick, regularly updated, bilingual websites this week.
full: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/12/egypt-muslim-brotherhood-parliament-seats
