MB: "Confrontation with the regime a red line we won't cross"

Shourouq ran a long article on Saturday where prominent Muslim Brotherhood figures Mohamed Habib and Essam El-Erian among others discussed the future of the movement - should it become a political party, or retreat from politics and focus on propaganda and social work, and so on. The usual questions, and the headline sums it up pretty well: "Al-Ikhwan: Confrontation with the regime is a red line we won't cross."

Habib and El-Erian both mentions threats from government officials that it would respond like a "bulldozer" or put "tanks in the street" if the banned opposition group tried to form a political party or grabbed too many seats in parliament - which is actually not impossible to believe, especially after the new Obama administration made clear that there will be no more conditions on aid to Egypt.

The efforts put into defending the current careful strategy of the movement clearly shows that the MB leaders feel the pressure from within its ranks and from other opposition groups to push harder for internal reform in Egypt. And the article ends with El-Erian dismissing some of this pressure as intended to push the MB and the NDP into a deadly confrontation which would annihilate them both: "Some opposition figures said: 'I wish I could close my eyes and open them again and there would be no Brotherhood and no NDP.'"