Islamist party wants talks with resigning members

AMMAN — The Islamic Action Front (IAF) decided to postpone a decision to accept or reject the resignations by hundreds of its members and called for negotiation with those who have recently left the largest opposition party.

Murad Adaileh, the IAF spokesperson, said the “disagreement” is an internal, rather than political, issue, thus “we would like to solve it instead of simply accepting the resignations”.

On Thursday, 400 members including top leaders and founding members tendered their resignation to the leadership of the IAF, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, in an unprecedented mass move.

Hamzeh Mansour, the former IAF’s secretary general, and Abdul Hamid Qudah and Salem Falahat, who are members of its top authority body, the shura council, were among the leaders who jumped overboard. Before that, they had gathered in a group dubbed the “Partnership and Rescue” committee, which is also known as the “Group of Elders”.

“We have not submitted our resignations to bargain,” Khaled Hassanain, the Partnership and Rescue committee spokesperson, told The Jordan Times, adding that the decision to resign came after “we reached a dead end”.

This move was the outcome of internal strife that started 18 months ago and the failure of attempts to mend fences between two distinct wings: the hawks, who dominate the party’s vital bodies, and the doves, who quit, according to the Partnership and Rescue committee. 

However, Adaileh claimed that the resignations were driven by a dispute over the IAF’s executive office elections that took place more than a year ago.

He said that the other wing wanted to appoint the secretary general of the party without elections and “we rejected that”.

These allegations were brushed off by Hassanain, who stressed that one day before the elections, members of the party agreed on a certain name, and the following day, “they went back on what we had agreed upon”.

This is the only reason for the decision to quit, he said, expecting several resignations to follow “soon”.