Even today, there have been no concrete links made between acts of terrorism and anyone who might be construed as an official of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood does not deny, however, that members of the organization have committed radical acts. Just because the Brotherhood shares the same long-term goal as radical groups does not necessarily mean there is any overlap in their short-term methods, and at this point there is no evidence to undermine the Brotherhood’s peaceful rhetoric.

The most important message for policymakers is that the centrist Islamist movement in Egypt has shown no sign of abandoning the philosophy it has followed for 20 years and that the distinction between “Islamist” and “radical Islamist” is as significant as the distinction between “reformer” and “revolutionary” in the contemporary United States. Few of the vices the Western world seeks to combat in the Middle East apply to the Brotherhood, but many of them do apply to the Egyptian regime, which has unquestionably failed to deliver meaningful economic relief to an extremely poor population, remains undemocratic, and uses violence in an arbitrary fashion. In this light, the gap between Western and centrist Islamist interests seems significantly less difficult to close.