Spring, then fall: a weakened Muslim Brotherhood

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1:12Rosie Blau:Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Bloor.

1:21Rosie Blau:Today on the show, Elon Musk says Europe is overrun with crime. Is it really? And the power, potential and puzzling popularity of paddle.

1:36Rosie Blau:First up though.

1:49Rosie Blau:In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, one group seemed to come out ahead. The Muslim Brotherhood, the world's oldest Islamist organization. Its members were instrumental in the uprisings of Syria, Libya and Yemen. Its affiliates won numerous parliamentary seats in Tunisia. And in Egypt, its candidate became the country's first democratically elected president. But that upsurge in power didn't last. In the past decade, autocrats in the region have reasserted their grip. The Muslim Brotherhood, if you look across the region from Egypt to Tunisia, Syria to Jordan, is probably weaker and more divided than it's ever been.

2:37Rosie Blau:Gareth Brown, our Middle East correspondent, is currently in Beirut. Throughout the Middle East, it's facing a raft of challenges and problems. Some of these are internal party politics. Some are external, coming from Washington, D.C., coming from Europe. And this is an organisation that's been around nearly 100 years and it's really facing a set of challenges that it's never had to deal with before. Gareth, before we come to the current challenges, just remind us who the Muslim Brotherhood are and why they've been so important in the region. I think it's best to look at the Muslim Brotherhood as a political, social movement that has a foundation based on Islamic values in society.

3:22And it was born out of Egypt, a cleric called Syed Qutb, who travelled to the US in the late 1940s and was basically disgusted by what he saw in Western civilisation and culture. and he came back, wrote about the need for the Arab and Muslim world to rekindle Arab and Islamic dignity in the Middle East and indeed beyond the Middle East. And I think since then it's been quite an important political force throughout the region. And that's not just in terms of winning power and playing politics, but as a social movement, running social welfare programs, businesses, supporting communities, which really have been neglected by many of the autocratic governments in the region.

4:03So even when it's not been in power, it's been very organised and very disciplined. And I think it was really after the Arab Spring where it became a political movement that was to be reckoned with. You know, that's what barely 15 years ago, but things are very different for them now.

4:18Rosie Blau:So what's going on now? Why the challenges and why the apparent weakness? Well, I think there was a very severe autocratic backlash to the brotherhood after they gained power in Egypt and made gains in places like Jordan and in Tunisia. We had this autocratic sledgehammer from Abdel Fattah al-Sisi who launched a coup in Egypt. And so what you have left of the Brotherhood's coherent political and ideological leadership is either dead, in prison, or exiled. And this is in almost every country in the Middle East. So you have the Brotherhood on a Sharia or ideological level essentially being run out of Turkey, London, parts of Europe.

5:01so it's splintered, it's discombobulated, there's a lot of infighting and really it's hard to believe that just 15 years ago it was seen by many Arabs across the region as the answer to this fundamental question of Arab dignity and governance.

5:18Rosie Blau:So what really is it about the Muslim Brotherhood that governments find so threatening? My sense is that, and this is true in the West as well as in the Middle East that there's this feeling of subversiveness about the Brotherhood and that they're only interested in democracy or playing politics until they get power and then they can impose some sort of Islamist governance model. And people look at the case of how the Brotherhood acted in Egypt and they see evidence of that. There's this general feeling that the Brotherhood can't be trusted by non-Brotherhood governments, actors, officials, both in the Middle East but across the region.

5:57Rosie Blau:And Gareth, outside the region, the Muslim Brotherhood was actually often viewed with suspicion. How has that perception changed? That suspicion has undoubtedly hardened as time has gone on. And I think President Trump is the best case of that. Now, in the last year or so, he's directed the White House to really go after the Brotherhood. So we've seen several chapters of the Brotherhood being designated as terrorist organizations. The last US counterterrorism strategy actually placed the Muslim Brotherhood alongside ISIS and Al-Qaeda as this wellspring for terrorism, for jihadism. So there's a sharpening of rhetoric and then Washington actually going after various chapters of the Brotherhood very, very severely and that giving encouragement to regional governments to also go after them.

6:46And I think even more interestingly in Syria where we saw the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, the Brotherhood was weirdly absent from that victory and remains to be strangely absent from the new system, which undoubtedly has its roots in a sort of Islamist jihadist worldview. And yet the Brotherhood is really nowhere to be seen.

7:08Rosie Blau:How has the Brotherhood actually responded to all those external pressures? It's struggled to, to be honest. There's been bickering, particularly in response to the Trump administration's moves. We've seen Muslim Brotherhood leadership in Turkey saying one thing and the leadership in London saying contradictory things. So it's not clear that there's this coherent leadership structure to the Brotherhood anymore. It is under such relentless assault in the Middle East on so many levels, not just at a top tier leadership level, but all the way down to the grassroots. I don't think it really has any space to breathe unless its members go into exile in various countries.

7:46And what we're seeing is when they do go into exile, they end up spending most of their time playing internal politics and bickering rather than trying to answer these big questions that the Brotherhood often pitched itself as the answer to.

7:57Rosie Blau:And yet the founding ideals of the Brotherhood, the idea of connecting with Arabness, seems to be as strong and as necessary as ever. So can the organisation recover from this? I think you can never rule the Muslim Brotherhood out. The fundamental reasons that have led to their success and popularity at various points in recent decades exist. There is economic stagnation and regression in many states, Egypt, Tunisia. And I think there is also bigger questions about Arab dignity when it comes to Israel's war in Gaza over the last few years. So you absolutely cannot rule them out as a political movement.

8:36Rosie Blau:Gareth, thank you very much. Thank you, Rosie.

8:55Rosie Blau:In America, a dark vision of Europe is building on social media, of a continent overrun with violence, knife crime and grooming gangs, and ordinary people terrified to walk down the streets. Yet in Europe, you can see equivalent depictions online of an America teeming with guns, gangsters, rogue immigration agents. Last month, when The Economist's editor-in-chief, Zannie Minton-Bedos, interviewed Elon Musk for our video show, The Insider, they had a robust exchange on the subject. There are many parts of Britain and Europe which are not safe. You can't just walk around. But there are far more in this country.

9:42Far more. No, I don't think so.

9:44Rosie Blau:All right, let's go and get my fact checkers to check then. Yeah, I don't think that's true. So, who's right? Elon Musk likes to paint a grim picture of Europe as a kind of lawless place. James Fransham is a data correspondent. Similarly, the stereotype of America is that of a country where rogue ICE agents will gleefully shoot you dead. And so it does beg the question, you know, which continent, Europe or America, is safer? And in practice, that's a really tricky question to comprehensively answer from a statistical standpoint. Why is it so hard to answer that? I think for three reasons, really.

10:24First, because the definitions of reported crime vary from country to country. Secondly, the propensity of people to report those crimes also varies massively from place to place. And then thirdly, cities across the world are not kind of all born equal size. So those with large hinterlands, for example, Staten Island and New York City, they will tend to appear to have lower crime rates than cities that don't have those hinterlands.

10:49Rosie Blau:But surely you must be able to measure crime and say which one is safer? There are criminologists that have attempted to do this. And there's a novel data set from a chap called Matt Ashby. He's based at the University College London. And along with colleagues, he has attempted to smount some of those issues that I've outlined. So their process was this. Basically, first, they selected 20 global cities with a population of at least 2.5 million people, importantly, that publish annual crime statistics because not all cities do. And next, they adjusted those city boundaries so they all had similar population densities.

11:24So you kind of overcome the New York City comparison problem. So Paris, for example, its city is actually quite small. And so they've included the areas on the outskirts of Paris. And then finally, what they did was basically harmonize definitions. So the categories of crime were broadly similar because, you know, robbery in one city is not the same robbery in another city, for example. And so they're basically all on the same comparable basis to Britain. So that was kind of their benchmark.

11:50Rosie Blau:And so what is the answer? Europe or the US? Which is more dangerous? The findings, I think, are kind of more nuanced than you might expect. The kind of average keyboard warrior, Elon Musk, for example, might expect. And so homicide, which includes, for example, manslaughter or other comparable crimes. That's the most comparable crime statistic across international borders because, you know, basically a dead body is a dead body. And so on this basis, Chicago appears to be by far the most dangerous city in the 20 cities in the data. So in 2024, it had 587 homicides, 22 per 100 ,000 of its city's residents.

12:26And that's over twice the next worst offender, which is Los Angeles. And so if you contrast that to European cities in the data set, so the average rate among the 10 European cities was 1.7 per 100 ,000 populations. So Chicago, yes, far, far higher murder rate. But on the other side of the ledger, New York City paints a much better picture of America. So the number of homicides in the city has fallen by 90 % over the past 35 years. And in 2024, its murder rate was just a little above Barcelona's.

12:55Rosie Blau:But on average, what you're saying is that you're more likely to be murdered in the US than in Europe. What about other crimes? So this study looked at eight different crimes. And for the other crimes, actually, the rosy narrative for European cities is somewhat muddied. Personal robberies with use of force happen about as often in both regions. But in London and Paris, they do seem especially bad. Domestic burglaries, another category of crime, they seem to be more common in Europe. And robberies of businesses, particularly like shoplifting with force, for example, that's really shot up in London too.

13:31Rosie Blau:I'm still surprised that it's not simpler just to be able to look at official statistics and say crime is greater in one place than another. Matt Ashby, who spent a long time compiling this data, he said these stats are basically the least worst attempt to make the data comparable. And, you know, very aware of looking at something and go, well, surely this is apples for apples. And it rarely is with crime data. And these numbers were developed with funding from the Met Police. So policymakers, he said, could answer more detailed questions about crime trends between countries. And the important thing is the trends.

14:03Having said that, you know, the extensive efforts to standardise the data, numerous problems remain. So if we look at rape, for example, so reported case of rape in England and Wales have doubled in the past 10 years. But we have a crime survey of England and Wales. And actually, when it's reported in that crime survey, confidentially, cases of rape look like they've held steady. So that appears to be caused by better reporting effectively. And then second, if you look at instances of personal robbery, it's unclear whether the differences are owed to actual levels of crime increasing or simply artefacts of citizens preemptively to call the police, for example.

14:38And that may be true of phone snatching or snatching where you're threatened, for example. You could adjust some of these figures further, for example, like if you look at vehicle crime. So a better apples to apples comparison wouldn't just contrast it with population, but it would control for the number of vehicles in that city. And if you look at Rome, for example, in the data, so Rome has very high vehicle theft rates. And that's probably explained by Italians' preferences for scooters, which are easy to steal.

15:05Rosie Blau:So James, let's start with what we talked about at the beginning. Elon Musk gave the impression that Britain and Europe are getting more and more dangerous. Is that true? Well, no. So, I mean, comparison between cities, as we've established now, is really, really, really difficult. But actually, what I would say is that time gives you the best comparison of all within a city. And actually, that provides a really stable base in which to be optimistic about what's going on on both sides of the Atlantic. If you look at murder rates, so in London and New York, they're lower now than they've been at any time since record keeping began.

15:44Clearly, getting safer. Personal robbery in Paris, yes, it looks high comparatively to other cities, but it's almost halved over the past decade. So I think what we can establish is that, yes, comparison is difficult between cities, but the broad trend across almost every city we look at is that they're becoming safer, friendlier, and I would say more fun than they were a generation ago. So I think that's something that we can celebrate on both sides of the Atlantic.

16:12Rosie Blau:James, thank you very much. My pleasure.

16:37Around the world, 35 million players from 150 countries are picking up rackets. It's called paddle or padel depending on where you come from. It has a cult following and is one of the fastest growing sports in the world.

16:53Rosie Blau:Hamish Clayton writes for The Economist. I've come out to West London, pretty close to Wimbledon, which is the home of British tennis, to see the London leg of the premier paddle tournament. I'm loving the atmosphere in here. It doesn't feel like tennis, that's for sure. So this is the professional circuit funded by Qatar. And London was just one of 26 elite tournaments in the calendar this year. And it's the first elite professional tournament to be held in Britain. Padalistas from 15 different countries, the leading players are all Spanish and Argentine, are competing for a share of the$550 ,000 prize pot.

17:32That's pretty good, but when you compare it to somewhere like Wimbledon, Wimbledon this year had a prize pot of£64 million. pounds so paddle's got some way to go before it catches up to those levels of tennis

17:47paddles under arm serve forgiving rackets and small courts make it a much easier sport to learn than something like tennis or badminton or squash so it means you can get rallies easier and it's easier to pick up as a new player uh oh yeah my name's adam i'm a paddle man uh wearing a t-shirt of why I lose at paddle. And the top one I got on here is me paddle mate, and that's it right there. Well, it's just friendly, isn't it? You meet so many people. It's really good for confidence, I think, and quite a nice social game. I've had too many beers today. I'm currently having a coffee, striving myself around.

18:26But I am leading the agility test in the Premier Paddle London P1. So get yourself down and try to beat it. Got a picture if you want.

18:36About five years ago in Britain, there were only 87 courts and about 15 ,000 players. But fast forward to today and the Lawn Tennis Association, which governs paddle in Britain, estimates there are about 1 million players and over 2 ,000 courts in the country. Well, I actually compete in some LTA tournaments and I'm not the best, but I would say even going to those, all of the ladies are so inclusive and friendly. I think just the vibe the game gives off. I mean, the fast-paced game and the enjoyment. And I think the social side. Definitely the social side. So, yeah. Paddle started in Mexico in 1969.

19:17And pretty shortly after, a few courts were developed in Spain and then in Argentina. So Spain and Argentina became the two centres of paddle. From there, it spread throughout Europe and spread throughout South America. but now the International Paddle Federation are looking to grow the game in Asia and in North America. They're also hoping it will become an Olympic sport, potentially in time for the 2032 Games in Brisbane. And they see as that a great opportunity to help the visibility of the sport internationally and help establish it as a leading global professional sport. There's always been a big debate who make the better paddle players, tennis or squash players.