By Abdel Reheem Ali, IOL Staff

CAIRO, November 15 (IslamOnline) - Tens of thousands of mourners, majority of which are young people between the age of 16 and 25, marched quietly on Friday, November 15, amid heavy security for the funeral of Mustafa Mashhur, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition force in Egyptian politics.

Around 50,000 people, including supporters who had traveled from Brotherhood strongholds in the Nile Delta and Alexandria, thronged around a mosque in northern Cairo for the ceremony.

Mashhur, who died aged 83 in hospital on Thursday following a stroke he suffered in late October, had headed the Brotherhood since 1996.

Fourteen trucks of anti-riot police gathered on the main road by the large Rabea al-Adaweya mosque in Nasr City, and around 10 additional trucks guarding the back streets.

Police also closed off the main roads in the area.

After prayers at the mosque, tens of thousands of mourners marched quietly for more than 10 km through the city streets, some raising the Koran, the Muslim holy book, high in the air, as they headed to the cemetery for burial.

Mashhur's body could not be seen amid the procession, but three large banners waved above the crowd.

One black and one white banner carried the same message -- "This is the funeral of Mustafa Mashhur, the general guide of the Muslim Brotherhood."

Scrawled in Arabic on a large green banner was Al-Ikhwan Muslimeen (Muslim Brothers in English), along with the Brotherhood symbol of a Koran between two swords inside a circle.

Since Mashhur hospitalization, his deputy, Maamoun al-Hodeiby, has been acting leader in line with the Brotherhood's ground rules and is considered most likely to succeed Mashhur.

Hodeiby, son of Hassan al-Hodeiby, a founding member of the movement said that the procedures were underway to chose a new leader.

Hodeiby told the gathering a new leader would be named in a few days, and denied reports of a generational struggle for succession.

"What you heard is not true," said Hodeiby, the son of a founder of the movement who is considered the likely candidate for succession.

Following the burial ceremony, Hodeiby asked mourners not to cause any unrest or shout any slogans and to leave quietly and peacefully.

During the funeral, the Muslim Brotherhood movement was keen to deliver certain messages to the public, as well as to the authorities, the first of which is that 95% of people who attended the funeral were youth between the age of 16 and 25, contradicting those who say that the movement is totally controlled by the elders, leaving no chance to youth.

The second of these indirect messages is that the funeral was quiet, peaceful and disciplined and it ended without any troubles or clashes or even shouting of slogans, which proved the peaceful direction the movement is adopting.

Last but not least, Hodeiby’s statement denying reports of a generational struggle for succession.

Mashhour was born in 1919 in El-Sa'dein village in Sharqeya Goveronrate and in 1942, he graduated from the Faculty of Science, Cairo University.

He joined the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1930s and as a member of the movement's body, resisted the British occupation in the early 1940s.

In 1948, Mashhour was sentenced to a three-year prison term before he was acquitted in 1951.

He was arrested later in 1954 along with scores of Muslim Brotherhood leaders after an attempt on the life of late President Gamal Abd el-Nasser which the president blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood. Mashhour was slapped a ten-year imprisonment term.

He was arrested a few months after his release in early 1965 and remained in prison without trial. He only came out in 1971 after late President Anwar Sadat pardoned all political prisoners.

Mashhour participated in re-building the Muslim Brotherhood after Omar el-Tilmisany was named its Guide-General.

He left Egypt for Kuwait before the arrest of Muslim Brotherhood leaders in 1981.

He then flew to Germany where he spent five years during which he formed the international Muslim Brotherhood group and drafted its bylaws.

Mashhour returned to Egypt in 1986 before the death of Tilmisany.

He was named deputy to then Muslim Brotherhood Guide-General Hamed abul-Nasr.

Following the death of Abul-Nasr in 1996, Mashhour was named the new Muslim Brotherhood Guide-General.

The Brotherhood was created in 1928 by the Egyptian Hassan al-Banna and spread to other Arab countries, including Jordan and Syria where it was severely repressed.

The Muslim Brothers in Egypt, where the movement is officially banned but tolerated, stand for the establishment of an Islamic state while rejecting the use of violence.

The movement is behind 17 deputies in the 454-member parliament, making it the main opposition force in Egypt. They were elected in November 2000 as independents because of the ban on much of the Brotherhood's activities.

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