Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood was swift in its rejection of reports that its leader resigned after a row with conservatives, but the crisis exposed a profound rift among the Islamists, analysts said.
The Brotherhood was reacting to front page reports in the Egyptian press on Monday that Supreme Guide Mohammed Mahdi Akef stormed out of a meeting at the weekend, saying he quit.
Akef reportedly clashed with conservative leaders over the appointment of senior member Essam al-Erian, who is associated with the Islamist group's reformist wing, to the Brotherhood's politburo.
The dispute has been brewing since the recent death of Mohammed Hilal, which opened a seat in the group's politburo. The conservatives reportedly blocked Erian when he was nominated.
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'There was a conflict, that was for sure' On the face of it, analysts said, it was a mere power struggle, pitting an old guard that survived the harsh crackdown by former president Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1960s against relatively new and moderate newcomers such as Erian.
"There was a conflict, that was for sure," said Diaa Rashwan, an expert on the Brotherhood with the Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
"It is an organisational conflict. There is a group that does not want newcomers, and there could be an ideological aspect as well," he said.
But it fed into a widespread discontent among a younger generation that complains of rigid, antiquated command that stifles views differing from the conservative's austere political vision.
"There's a problem of ideas. There's a conservative tendency that controls the leadership and does not believe in opening up to society in political work," said Abdel Moneim Mahmud, a journalist associated with the reformist wing.
'There's a conservative tendency that controls the leadership' Mahmud said reformists want to see the Brotherhood, which controls a fifth of seats in parliament after it ran independent candidates to get around a ban on the movement, to take on more political action in alliance with the country's leftist and liberal opposition.
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