The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s powerful Islamist opposition movement, will launch its own version of the hugely popular social networking website Facebook within the next several months, its members say.
IkhwanBook, which is already up, running and accepting members at www.ikhwanfacebook.com, borrows many of the same social concepts — such as image and video sharing, live chatting and online “friendships” — that attracted some 400 million users to the original Facebook after only six years.
Yet given the Brotherhood’s goals of recruiting new members and popularising its relatively moderate conception of political Islam, the new site seems somewhat counter-intuitive, say some of the movement’s followers and observers.