Salah Abdel-Haq appointed acting guide of Muslim Brotherhood
The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt announced the election of Dr. Salah Abdel-Haq as Acting General Guide, to succeed the late Ibrahim Mounir, who died last November in the British capital, London, in a move rejected by another front of the group led by Mahmoud Hussein.
And the “Muslim Brotherhood” website said in a statement, today, Sunday: The Muslim Brotherhood announces the election of Dr. Salah Abdel-Haq as acting General Guide, Dr. Muhammad Badie, to succeed Professor Ibrahim Mounir, may God Almighty have mercy on him. A new leader for the blessed call of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Who is Salah Abdel Haq?
- According to the “Muslim Brotherhood” website, the new Acting General Guide was born in Cairo in 1945, and joined the Brotherhood in 1962.
- Abdel-Haq was arrested at the age of 20 in the military prison for about nine years from 1965 to 1974, then he went out after that to practice his activities through student Islamic work in Egyptian universities in the seventies, and he graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at Ain Shams University in 1976, and worked as a dermatologist. .
- During his imprisonment in the sixties, he accompanied Dr. Muhammad Badie, the general guide of the Brotherhood; and Dr. Mahmoud Ezzat, who are currently detained in Egyptian prisons.
- Salah Abdel Haq traveled to Saudi Arabia in 1985 and worked there as a dermatologist.
- He married the daughter of Dr. Abd al-Rahman Raafat al-Basha. Professor of Literature and Criticism at Imam Muhammad bin Saud University, one of its founders, and author of the books “Images from the Life of the Companions” and “Images from the Life of the Followers.”
- He took charge of the “International Islamic Education Forum” for more than fifteen years.
- He was chosen as a member of the General Shura Council of the Brotherhood, and as a representative of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Association abroad – during the period when the late Ibrahim Mounir acted as the General Guide.
Since 2013, the Brotherhood has faced a harsh crackdown, and many of its leaders and thousands of its supporters are in prisons and exiles. It also suffers from a division, the second side of which is represented by a front led by Dr. Mahmoud Hussein, the former Secretary-General of the group.
For its part, the front led by Hussein denied the validity of the “allegations” regarding the election of Abdul Haq as Acting General Guide.
And it said in a statement on its official website today, Sunday: “The group confirms that this news is false, and that the pages it published do not express the Brotherhood in Egypt in any capacity.”
The statement added: “The group confirms that the renewed attempts to create entities parallel to the official institutions of the Brotherhood, or to designate people with alleged tasks and names far from the legitimate institutions of the group under various pretexts, will not impose a fait accompli and will not work.”
The period of Mounir’s assumption of responsibility for the group witnessed the emergence of internal disputes between the Brotherhood’s leaders to the public, and at the end of his first year in charge, Mounir issued, on October 10, 2021, a decision to suspend 6 of the group’s leaders and refer them to investigation, headed by Mahmoud Hussein.
The statement confirmed that the group “has a general shura council from inside and outside, and Dr. Mahmoud Hussein was chosen as acting general guide, and he formed a new administrative body in December 2022, according to the approved rules and regulations of the group.”
The group opposing him issued a statement announcing that the “General Shura Council” had withdrawn confidence from him and relieved him of his duties as Chargé d’Affairs and Deputy Supreme Leader.
Mounir responded at the time by recording a video in which he accused a number of the group’s leaders of trying to control it through the media, without understanding the group’s internal regulations.
Mounir had ruled out, in statements in July 2022, that the group would engage in a new struggle for power in any way after its ouster from power in 2013.
