CAIRO -

Months after the birth of one of the largest Islamic groups around the world, fate was shaping the features of a young contemporary man in the throes of founding, who lived through great ordeals, sailing on a ship seeking to cross the mighty waves to the shore of empowerment.

After decades of political rounds and people’s revolutions, the old dream of “power for the Brotherhood and professorship on the way” appeared, but the “ship” hit waves of rebellion and demonization that killed its passengers between exile, pursuer, prisoner and murdered, and among them was the man who occupied a unique place in the ranks of the group and its leadership.

He is Muhammad Mahdi Akef, who was born on this day, July 12, 1928, in a village in Dakahlia Governorate. He is the former General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, who lived through the group's stages from its inception until its great ordeal in recent years.

Akef is known as “a prisoner of all times.” He passed away from his illness in his prison cell in a Cairo prison on September 22, 2017, and he is the seventh general guide of the group, and he was the first to bear the title of “former guide” while alive, when he chose to leave the position he He took over in 2004 to succeed Mamoun al-Hudaybi, to be satisfied with one term and leave the leadership to his successor, Muhammad Badi, who is currently imprisoned, who has held the position since the beginning of 2010.

In the Sakakini neighborhood

His birth was the same year in which the Brotherhood was founded, and with his stranded arms, he grew up conscious at a time when his country was suffering from the repercussions of the controversy of belonging and whether it was national or religious. When he reached his age of 12, he plunged into the hands of the first generation, coming to the messages of the group’s founder, Hassan al-Banna.

From Mansoura to Cairo, Akef moved to the popular neighborhood in the Sakakini area, studying the Tawjihi certificate (high school) until he joined the Higher Institute of Physical Education, until he graduated in 1950, to work later as a teacher of physical sports.

He became famous when he headed the camps of Ain Shams University in Cairo (formerly Ibrahim) after he joined the Faculty of Law. He was one of the leaders of the Brotherhood’s organization in the years preceding the July Revolution of 1952, which overthrew the monarchy and established the republic.

According to the Brotherhood’s literature, the “special regime” was established as a secret military regime in 1940 to fight the British in Egypt and Zionism in Palestine.

Smuggling, execution, and then life

Akef rose to internal positions in the Brotherhood, where in 1954 he headed the student department, which was supervised by Al-Banna himself, the same year in which a ruling was issued to dissolve the group and announce the arrest of its leaders.

His accusation at that time was to smuggle Major General Abdel Moneim Abdel Raouf, one of the leaders of the Egyptian army and a prominent Brotherhood figure, who was being pursued at the time when Gamal Abdel Nasser began to get rid of his opponents and competitors, even from within the Revolutionary Command Council.

In late 1953, the Revolutionary Command Council decided to refer Abdel Raouf to retirement, and after about a month decided to arrest him, and a military council was held for him to try him, due to suspicions in the ruling organs at the time that things were preparing to overthrow the regime, orchestrated by some senior and junior army officers who belong to the Muslim Brotherhood In agreement with the leaders of the group.

During the trial of Abdel Raouf, his brother managed, with the help of the Brotherhood, to smuggle him out of prison, according to media reports, before the former managed to leave Egypt, only to return again during the Sadat era in 1972.

In a military court called by Nasser's comrades the "people's court" and its judges were the officers Gamal Salem, Hussein Al-Shafei and Anwar Al-Sadat, the death sentence was issued for Akef before being commuted to life with hard labor, in contrast to dozens of other sentences that affected other leaders and members.

According to identical historical information, the wave of arrests and trials against Brotherhood leaders dates back to the beginning of the era of Abdel Nasser, claiming that the latter was subjected to an assassination attempt in the incident known as “Manshiya” in Alexandria, which the authorities at the time blamed for the Brotherhood, which the group denied on more than one occasion.

It is strange that Akef returned half a century later to host al-Shafei - one of the members of the court that issued a death sentence against him - in a mourning pavilion set up by the Brotherhood for the memorial of the Palestinian fighter Ahmed Yassin, and sat him close to him, according to the Egyptian researcher Muhammad Affan.

Although Akef was imprisoned several times during the royal era, those periods of imprisonment were characterized by the palace, while he was imprisoned throughout the Nasser era for 20 years, starting from 1954 until 1974.

One year after his release, he married the sister of Mahmoud Ezzat, who held the position of acting Brotherhood guide in recent years until months ago, before his arrest by the authorities.

Shuttles

In 1975, Akef traveled abroad, when he worked in Saudi Arabia as an advisor to the World Assembly of Muslim Youth and responsible for its camps and international conferences. In 1980, he settled in Munich, Germany, as director of the Islamic Center there.

On the idea of ​​the international organization of the Brotherhood, Akef wrote in his memoirs, "It was the beginning of the implementation of my plan, which I put in prison to spread the da'wah around the world (...) and I believe that most of the current Islamic leaders, some of whom are in power and some of whom lead Islamic groups, were the result of these high-end Islamic camps."

After the shuttle years that the former leader lived through between the various capitals of the world, the year 1987 had a special momentum in his life, in which he returned to Egypt, and took over the youth and students department again within the group, before he was chosen as a member of the Guidance Office, and he was one of 35 members who represented the Brotherhood bloc in the General Parliament. same.

Akef says of his first parliamentary experiences, "I saw that the Brotherhood achieved success in this session because they always spoke about public interests and government monitoring as a primary goal for the council."

In the mid-nineties of the last century, the winds of the regime brought what Akef and the Brotherhood did not want. At that time, he and about 80 other leaders of the group appeared before the military court in a case known in the media as “the international organization of the Brotherhood and an attempt to overthrow the regime,” to sentence him to 3 years in prison.

But Akef said in his memoirs that the tension with the regime of President Hosni Mubarak, at that time, was due to the chaos and fraud of the parliamentary elections, in addition to the issue of launching a party called "Al-Wasat", an idea launched by a group of Brotherhood youth.

Signs of change

In 2004 Akef (Brotherhood Guide) succeeded al-Hudaybi, to become the group's seventh guide, noting in his memoirs that he was surprised by his choice by members of the Guidance Office, and that he told them to leave the position as soon as he reached the age of eighty (he was 76 years old at the time), but harsh circumstances forced him to complete his term ( 6 years) for the man to announce in early 2010 that he had left the position in a historical precedent, as his predecessors remained at the head of the group until their death.

Akef's mandate was a witness to the harbingers of change in Egypt, which culminated in the January 2011 revolution and the overthrow of Mubarak and his regime.

In 2005, the Brotherhood participated in a popular movement that demanded political reform, and then supported the April 2008 demonstrations (the first large-scale protests).

In parliament, the group's candidates occupied, in an unprecedented achievement, 20% of the seats in the People's Assembly (currently deputies).

With the rise of the Brotherhood's shares after the January 25 revolution, the man did not completely disappear from the scene, but remained an active Islamic and political symbol. He was among those who refused to push for a Brotherhood candidate in the presidential elections, but according to his statements, he "came down on the group's shura."

The Great Tribulation

Akef was at the head of those arrested in the massive campaign of arrests that targeted the leaders of the Brotherhood and other Islamist groups following the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi of the group, in the summer of 2013.

In one of his trial sessions in mid-2014, he came out wrapped in his turban in a scene in which his loved ones compared him to the late Libyan leader Omar Al-Mukhtar. Later in 2017, he was diagnosed with cancer in his prison cell, before he was placed in intensive care in a Cairo hospital.

Akef, who was acquitted of the charges of "insulting the judiciary", passed away on September 22, 2017, before the final ruling was issued against him in the case known as the "Guidance Office Incidents" on charges - which he denied - of murder and incitement to violence.

After his death, his lawyer, Abdel Moneim Abdel Maksoud, revealed, in press statements, that the deceased had “recommended that a funeral pavilion not be established for him, and that his funeral be carried out from a mosque near his home in the Fifth Settlement area in Cairo.”

However, security reasons prevented the will from being implemented, as his funeral was limited to a small number of his family who buried him in cemeteries called the cemeteries of former Brotherhood guides, east of Cairo.

However, many Muslims performed the absentee prayer for Akef in a number of capitals and cities of the world. Akef left in silence, leaving behind a truncated account of a man who led the largest Islamic groups in the world, defining periods in the history of Egypt.

What the prison administration handed over to the professor’s family # Mahdi_Akef is a


copy of the Qur’an and his glasses are


like the Mujahid Omar Al-Mukhtar.


Actions are similar and endings are similar.


Yes, legacy and inheritance, sir. pic.twitter.com/Fhw2EJ3wZp

— Abdülaziz (@abdalaziz83) September 24, 2017

The #Sisi_Regime prohibits the funeral prayer


for #Mahdi Akef, and the


endowments warn the imams of mosques


against praying in absentia!


To Dayan on the Day of Judgment we go..


and with God the opponents meet.

pic.twitter.com/mTioln28r7

- Dr.

Mohammed Al Sagheer (@drassagheer) September 23, 2017

#beyond_the_news |

#Egypt.. Why was the absentee prayer forbidden for Mahdi Akef?


Link to the full episode: https://t.co/PKMRazSX7c pic.twitter.com/6j0Cm5KbyQ

— Al Jazeera (@AJArabic) September 24, 2017