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Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood creates political party

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The Muslim Brotherhood, the popular Islamic movement long banned from politics by former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, announced Saturday that it has formed a political party.

“This party will be independent from the Brotherhood but will coordinate with it,” Mahmoud Hussein, the Brotherhood’s secretary-general, said at a news conference announcing the formation of the Freedom and Justice party.

Mohamed Morsy, a member of the Brotherhood’s politburo who will lead the new party, quickly moved to allay fears that it would be dominated by religious ideology and Islamic conservatism: “The party will not be Islamist in the old understanding,” he said.

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The Brotherhood said the new party would put forward candidates in parliamentary elections scheduled for September. The group has already said that it would not field a candidate in the presidential election, which is expected two months after the new parliament is selected.

Mubarak’s regime often referred to the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization that threatened the country’s democracy. But it has long had widespread appeal for its grass-roots social programs.

In 2005, with its members running as independents, the Brotherhood stunned the nation by winning 20% of the seats in parliament. But in elections last year, its members won only one seat in balloting widely regarded as having been rigged by Mubarak’s ruling party.

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Hassan is a news assistant in The Times’ Cairo bureau.

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