On August 24th Hurriyet Daily News published an article by John Lloyd headlined "The Muslim Brotherhood is on the run."
"Its leaders, including its Supreme Guide, Mohamed Badie, are in prison. Badie’s deputy, Mahmout Ezzat replaced him, and is apparently free for now, but others are imprisoned or sought for arrest. Its protestors have been scattered by police and the army, losing hundreds of lives in the process. The cancellation of its legal status is now being discussed by the military-backed government," the article reads.
"The loss is still visible in the streets around Rabaa al-Adawiya Square in Cairo, where the Brotherhood and their supporters camped for weeks before the military moved in last Friday."
"In Egypt, nearly all but the Brotherhood and its supporters accept it as a necessary act. In an interview, the former presidential candidate and co-leader of the National Salvation Front, the leftist politician Hamdeen Sabahi, said that the revolution had gotten rid of Mubarak’s secular dictatorship only to find it replaced by the Mursi’s Muslim dictatorship. The army “stood with the people” to get rid of the latter: Egypt “would never return” to a dictatorship," the author writes.
"The Brotherhood had seen Egypt as a bulwark in the attempt to Islamize the Middle East. It wanted to make Egypt, the region’s biggest state with its largest military, a model Islamic society. The problem was that Egyptians Muslims felt patronized by the Brotherhood’s attempts to tell them about how best to be a Muslim," he believes.
According to the author there are now three options. "First, it could continue its strategy of inviting martyrdom, in the hope that further bloody repression will stir the consciences of more than just foreigners. (...) Second, it could develop a strategy of terror, which it has so far claimed to avoid. Terrorist movements — the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland is the classic case — can, if determined to carry on the struggle for years, attract enough support to force the governing power to compromise with it, and bring it again into the political arena. (...) Third, the party could remember its origin and pose as the savior of the rural and urban poor."
"Alternatively, the Brotherhood may simply disintegrate. The group misread its fellow Egyptians, who seem to be determinedly moderate," he writes.
