The Muslim Brotherhood, the outlawed Egyptian Islamist opposition group is plagued by rifts between young and old, reformist and hard-liner, and between big city deal-making politicians, and conservative rural preachers. Charles Levinson explains. 
 
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 CAIRO—Moaz Abdel Karim, an affable 29-year-old who was among a handful of young activists who plotted the recent protests here, is the newest face of the Muslim Brotherhood. His political views on women's rights, religious freedom and political pluralism mesh with Western democratic values. He is focused on the fight for democracy and human rights in Egypt. 
 
 A different face of the Brotherhood is that of Mohamed Badi, 66-year-old veterinarian from the Brotherhood's conservative wing who has been the group's Supreme Guide since last January. He recently pledged the Brotherhood would "continue to raise the banner of jihad" against the Jews, which he called the group's "first and foremost enemies." He has railed against American imperialism, and calls for the establishment of an Islamic state. 
 
 Enlarge Image Close Guy Martin for the Wall Street Journal Activist Moaz Abdel Karim in Cairo 
 
 After Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down on Friday amid the region's most dramatic grassroots uprising since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Brotherhood became poised to assume a growing role in the country's political life. The question for many is: Which Brotherhood? 
 
 It was Mr. Karim and his younger, more tolerant cohorts who played a key role organizing the protests that began on Jan. 25 and ultimately unseated a 29-year president. But it's the more conservative, anti-Western old guard that still make up by far the bulk of the group's leadership. 
 
 Mr. Badi, the current leader, wrote an article in September on the group's website in which he said of the U.S. that "a nation that does not champion moral and human values cannot lead humanity, and its wealth will not avail it once Allah has had His say." 
 
 He wrote in that same article that "resistance is the only solution against the Zio-American arrogance and tyranny, and all we need is for the Arab and Muslim peoples to stand behind it and support it... We say to our brothers the mujahideen in Gaza: be patient, persist in [your jihad], and know that Allah is with you..." 
 
 On Monday, meanwhile, Mr. Karim stood shoulder to shoulder at a press conference with youth leaders from half a dozen mostly secular movements, to lay out their vision for how Egypt's transition to democracy should proceed and to praise the Army for cooperating. Their top demand: a unity government that includes a broad swath of opposition forces. 
 
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 The Brotherhood, whose leaders Mr. Karim butted heads with in recent weeks, put out a similar message on Saturday calling for free and fair elections. Seeking to allay fears that it would make a power grab, the Brotherhood also said it wouldn't run a candidate in presidential elections or seek a majority in parliament. 
 
 Both Egyptians and outsiders, however, remain wary. They are unsure about how the group will ultimately harness any newfound political gains and whether its more-moderate wing will, in fact, have lasting clout. 
 
 "It's never entirely clear with the Brothers," says Josh Stacher, a political science professor at Kent State University who spent years in Egypt studying the organization. "It's a big group, with lots of different points of view. You can find the guy always screaming about Israel and then you got the other guys who don't care about Israel because they're too busy worrying about raising literacy rates." 
 
 Israel, which shares a long and porous border with Egypt, fears that if a moderate wing of the Brotherhood exists—and many in Israel's leadership are skeptical that it does—it could be shoved aside by more extreme factions within the group. 
 
 The Brotherhood's conservative wing has for years put out anti-Israel comments and writings, and helped fund Hamas, the Palestinian militant group. It has also spoken out in support of attacks against U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
 
 "If the Muslim Brotherhood comes to power, through elections or some other way, that would be a repeat of 1979 in Iran," when moderate governments installed after the shah gave way to the ayatollahs, says a senior Israeli official. "It's something we're looking at with great caution." 
 
 Enlarge Image Close Associated Press Mohamed Badi, from the Brotherhood's conservative wing, pledged the group would 'continue to raise the banner of jihad' against the Jews. 
 
 The U.S. appears to be taking a wait-and-see approach, with officials saying in recent days it should be given a chance. President Barack Obama, in an interview with Fox News, acknowledged the group's anti-American strains, but said it didn't enjoy majority support in Egypt and should be included in the political process. "It's important for us not to say that our only two options are either the Muslim Brotherhood or a suppressed Egyptian people," he said. 
 
 The outlawed Islamist opposition group is plagued by rifts between young and old, reformist and hard-liner. There are big city deal-making politicians, and conservative rural preachers who eschew politics in favor of proselytizing Islam. 
 
 Egypt's government has long highlighted the group's hard-line wing as a threat to the country. Yet its selective crackdowns have historically empowered the very hard-liners it has sought to undermine, analysts and Brotherhood members say. 
 
 The conservative leadership's autocratic leadership style within the movement, its lack of tolerance for dissenting opinions and its preference to conduct business behind closed doors have all contributed to deep skepticism among outsiders about the Brotherhood leadership's stated commitment to democracy. 
 
 In recent years, meanwhile, the group's pragmatic wing has forged a historic alliance with secular opposition activists. Their role in the unseating of Mr. Mubarak appears to have given them a boost in a struggle for influence with the Brotherhood's fiery old guard. 
 
 "The Muslim Brotherhood as a whole doesn't deserve credit for this revolution, but certain factions within the movement absolutely do, generally those that have more modern views," says Essam Sultan, a former member of the group who left in the 1990s to form the moderate Islamist Wasat, or Centrist, Party. "That wing should get a massive bounce out of this." 
 
 Enlarge Image Close Guy Martin for the Wall Street Journal Muslim Brotherhood youth leader Moaz Abdel Karim helped organize demonstrations against Mr. Mubarak. 
 
 Whether that bounce will be enough to propel the more-moderate Brothers to a permanent position of influence—or what their legislative agenda would actually be—is one of the key unknowns in Egypt's political evolution. 
 
 In many ways, this faction resembles conservative right-of-center politicians elsewhere in the Arab world. They espouse a view of Islam as a part of Egyptian heritage and argue that democracy and pluralism are central Islamic values. They are pious and socially conservative, and reject the strict secularism that is a feature of most Western concepts of liberal democracy. 
 
 On Wednesday, when it was still unclear whether Mr. Mubarak would step down, Essam el-Eryan, one of the only reformists currently on the group's 12-member ruling Guidance Council, said in a statement that the group didn't seek the establishment of an Islamic state; believed in full equality for women and Christians; and wouldn't attempt to abrogate the Camp David peace treaty with Israel—all tenets espoused by Brotherhood leaders over the decades. Mr. el-Eryan said those Brothers who had suggested otherwise in their writings and public comments in recent days and years had been misunderstood or weren't speaking for the organization. 
 
 Founded in the Suez Canal town of Ismailiya in 1928 by a 22-year-old school teacher, the organization used violence to battle the British occupation in the 1940s. 
 
 The group allied with some young officers to overthrow the king in 1952 and bring Gamal Abdel Nasser to power, only to become implicated in an assassination attempt on Nasser two years later. He responded with a fierce crackdown, sending the group's leadership to prison for years, and its membership ranks into exile. 
 
 The Muslim Brotherhood abandoned violence in the years that followed, formally renouncing it as a domestic strategy in 1972. But some of its offspring have taken a bloodier path. Some former members established the group responsible for the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Al-Sadat in 1981, and others have allied with Al Qaeda. 
 
 In the late 1970s and early 1980s, an older generation of leftist and Islamist student activists battled each other violently on college campuses. Egypt's opposition grew increasingly ineffective, partially as a result of those rifts. 
 
 "We saw three successive generations of Brotherhood leaders fail to bring change, and we learned from their mistakes," says Mr. Karim, one of the leaders of the group's youth wing. 
 
 Brotherhood and secular leaders say the seeds of the cooperation that drove this year's protests were planted in the early 2000s when Israel's crackdown on the second Palestinian uprising and the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq brought secularists and Islamists alike into the streets to protest a common cause. 
 
 Then, in 2005, the Brotherhood struck a key victory in the parliamentary elections, winning an all-time high of 88 seats. Though officially banned, the organization is tolerated and allowed to put up candidates as independents. 
 
 Many of the Brotherhood lawmakers were pragmatists compared to the hard-line members of the group who preferred to stay out of politics. They were more open to working with other groups to forge compromises, and won plaudits from secular opposition leaders by focusing their legislative efforts on fighting an extension of the country's emergency law. 
 
 They also stood up for the independence of the judiciary and pushed for press freedoms, and didn't work to ban books or impose Islamic dress on women—moves many critics had feared. 
 
 "In the past, Muslim Brothers in parliament sometimes made noise about racy books or the Ms. Egypt beauty pageant, and it made a lot of us uncomfortable," says Osama Ghazali Harb, head of the National Democratic Front, a secular opposition party. "They didn't do this in the last five years." 
 
 The regime responded to the Brothers' newfound parliamentary prowess with one of the most brutal crackdowns in the group's history. Instead of coming down on the organization's hard-line leaders, it focused on the movement's moderates. 
 
 "The government wants them to be secretive, hard-line, because it makes them fulfill the role of the bogey man that they're propped up to be," says Kent State's Mr. Stacher. "You don't want soft and squishy huggable Islamists, and you don't want sympathetic characters. You want scary people who go on CNN and rail against Israel." 
 
 Eighteen Brotherhood legislative staffers drafting education and health-care reform bills were among hundreds arrested. So, too, were the leading pragmatists on the movement's 12-man leadership bureau. 
 
 The power vacuum was quickly filled by conservatives, who in 2007 put out a platform paper walking back many of the group's more-moderate views. 
 
 It stated, for example, that neither women nor Christians were qualified to run for president. Casting further doubts on the organization's commitment to the separation of church and state, the paper called for a religious council to sign off on laws. 
 
 Rifts between conservatives and reformers in the group began to flare into the open. The group's moderates argued that the paper was only a draft and never officially adopted. 
 
 In the 2008 elections to the Brotherhood's Guidance Council, hard-liners nearly swept the field, according to people familiar with the group. Only one seat on the leadership council is held by a consistent reformist, say these people, as well as one of the two alternate members who would step in should someone be arrested or die. 
 
 During this same period, Mr. Karim, from the Brotherhood's youth wing, says his relationships with activists in other groups were being cemented through online networks. "The new media allowed me to connect with the other" activists in Egypt, he says. "And I realized that there are things we agree on, like human-rights issues and political issues." 
 
 Past partnerships between the Brotherhood and secular parties had been top-down short-lived agreements born of political necessity. 
 
 This latest alliance formed more organically, say several young activists who are working with the Brotherhood. 
 
 "We just got to know, trust and like each other, even—believe it or not—the Brothers," says Basim Kamel, a 41-year-old leader in Mohamed ElBaradei's secular movement. 
 
 As conservatives were gaining influence within the Muslim Brotherhood's leadership ranks, Mr. Karim and his fellow youth cadres were growing impatient. 
 
 He says they began arguing with their superiors, saying the group was losing credibility in the street because they weren't out protesting for democracy like the secular activists were. 
 
 In November 2008, the Brotherhood's then-leader Mahdy Akef called for "establishing a coalition among all political powers and civil society" to challenge the "tyranny that Egypt is currently witnessing." 
 
 Mr. Akef couldn't be reached for comment, but those familiar with the group's inner workings say the shift came as the leadership realized they risked losing their youth cadres, particularly after a series of high-profile defections by young Brotherhood activists. 
 
 When Mr. ElBaradei returned to Egypt in February 2010 to lead an alliance of opposition groups, many of them youth-driven, the Muslim Brotherhood backed him, formalizing a partnership that had already gelled among the rank and file. 
 
 The alliance was uneasy at times. When other opposition groups voted to boycott November's parliamentary elections, for example, the Brotherhood broke ranks and ran. 
 
 After the uprising in Tunisia in January, Brotherhood youth, including Mr. Karim, met with the leaders of other youth movements and decided to plan a similar uprising in Egypt. 
 
 A group of about 12 youth leaders, including Mr. Karim, met secretly over the course of two weeks to figure out how to plot a demonstration that would outfox security forces. 
 
 The Brotherhood's senior leadership refused to endorse their efforts at first. They ultimately agreed to allow members to participate as individuals—and to forgo holding up religious slogans that the Brotherhood might have used in the past, such as "Islam is the solution," or waving Korans. 
 
 —Summer Said in Cairo and Richard Boudreaux in Jerusalem contributed to this article. 
 
 Write to Charles Levinson at charles.levinson@wsj.com ||||| Story highlights Renewed street demonstrations could be in Egypt's near future, experts say 
 
 High court ruling dissolves new parliament, further empowering the military 
 
 Events amount to a "soft coup" for the military, often seen as a bulwark against Islamists 
 
 "Egypt is entering into a very dangerous stage," analyst says 
 
 Confusion reigns in Egypt after stunning court rulings threw the country's awkward transition toward democratic rule into turmoil. 
 
 The decision sparked cries that Egypt's military leaders have engineered a "soft coup" to thwart their longtime foes -- Islamists who just four months ago captured a majority of seats in the Egyptian parliament in the first election in Egypt in generations. The court's decision dissolves parliament, and the military was quick to say it now controls legislative affairs in Egypt, actions that raised the prospect of renewed mass street protests. 
 
 The dizzying developments sent shock waves across Egypt just 16 months after a popular uprising toppled former President Hosni Mubarak and two days before Egyptians go to the polls to elect a new president. They also raised fresh questions among many about whether the military -- long the most powerful force in Egyptian life -- would ever yield power. 
 
 "Egypt is entering into a very dangerous stage, and I think a lot of people were caught by surprise," said Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center. "We knew it was getting bad, but we didn't think it was getting this bad." 
 
 He called the court rulings the "worst possible outcome" for Egypt and said the transition to civilian rule was "effectively over." 
 
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 In one ruling Thursday, the Supreme Constitutional Court found that the rules governing January's parliamentary elections were invalid, triggering the dissolution of parliament. 
 
 In the second, the court rejected a law barring former regime members from running for president, clearing the way for Ahmed Shafik, the last prime minister under former Mubarak, to run in this weekend's runoff election. He faces Mohamed Morsi, an Islamist candidate favored by many in the Muslim Brotherhood and their allies and supporters. 
 
 The military leadership, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, also announced it would name a 100-strong panel by Friday that will draw up a new constitution for the country. 
 
 The moves came only hours after a decree was issued giving the military extended powers of arrest over civilians. 
 
 That decree ushered in de facto martial law, observers said, just two weeks after many Egyptians celebrated the demise of a decades-old emergency law that gave authorities broad leeway to arrest citizens and hold them indefinitely without charge. 
 
 Eric Trager, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, characterized the situation as a "soft coup in Egypt." 
 
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 The military leadership's action "really signals it's moving very sharply against the political process," Trager said. Its actions are also piling on the pressure on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group whose political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, is headed by Morsi, he said. 
 
 "The question is whether that's going to lead the Muslim Brotherhood to up its own confrontation with the military or whether the Brotherhood will use it as an opportunity to seek some kind of accord with the military," he said. 
 
 Right now, the military and the Muslim Brotherhood have ongoing conversations, but it is not yet clear what they may produce, Trager said. 
 
 The Brotherhood could seek a deal where Morsi is made prime minister if Shafik wins the presidency, he said. 
 
 But if the Muslim Brotherhood commits itself to confrontation in the form of street protests -- thereby threatening a second revolution -- that could be a game-changing situation, Trager said. 
 
 Experts are watching to see whether the decision reignites the huge street demonstrations that drove Mubarak from power in February 2011. 
 
 It's not yet clear whether ordinary Egyptians, many of whom are exhausted by the long months of uncertainty, will consider the ruling an attempt by the ruling elite to snuff out the promise of democracy fought for in Tahrir Square. 
 
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 Analysts say the Supreme Constitutional Court is considered partial to the regime headed by Mubarak, in which the military played a pivotal role -- and its perceived failure to maintain judicial independence could spark renewed anger. 
 
 "Essentially, no, the court is not neutral," said Steven Cook, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. "It is very much part of the old regime. I think you are going to see people pouring into the streets and demand change." 
 
 One young Cairo woman outside the court expressed the frustration felt by many protesters. "SCAF has been suppressing our protests, suppressing the youth movements on the ground, they have been arresting thousands of us," she said, referring to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. 
 
 But Amre Moussa, who was a foreign minister under Mubarak, was chief of the Arab League, and most recently a presidential candidate, played down the impact of the ruling on parliament. 
 
 "It is not a political move or a decision by the SCAF, it is a legal matter that has been referred to the tribunal, by individuals, by other parties," he told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. 
 
 As for the wrangling over who will write the new constitution, Moussa said it is not of crucial importance. 
 
 "The current constitutional declaration is enough to give the president the powers he needs," he said. "I believe that the president, once elected, knows exactly the powers he will use." 
 
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 Following the court decision, Egypt's interim military rulers declared full legislative authority, creating anxiety and uncertainty about the country's future. 
 
 It was just on January 23 -- two days before the anniversary of the birth of a revolution that eventually toppled Mubarak -- when the military surrendered legislative powers to the first parliament in the country's history to be dominated by Islamists, whose two parties won about 70% of the seats in the lower house. 
 
 The military is considered by many to be a bulwark against the power and influence of Islamists in Egypt. 
 
 And some who fear the Muslim Brotherhood has gained too much strength may welcome this knock to the confidence built from its successes in the parliamentary vote. 
 
 "With parliamentary elections, there was this sense that the Brotherhood could now go for broke," Cook said. "They seem to have been outmaneuvered by the military and courts and associated supporters of the old regime. It may be time to make a deal to preserve themselves to fight longer." 
 
 All eyes will be on the conduct and outcome of the runoff this weekend. 
 
 Taken together, the military leadership's actions indicate "there's a high likelihood of Shafik being aided to victory by the military," Trager said. 
 
 But Khaled Fahmy, a professor at American University in Cairo, told Amanpour that people are "very confused" and split over who to back. 
 
 "Ahmed Shafik made a very powerful speech today, he tried to calm many people," he said. "But there is a lot of sympathy I think now for the Muslim Brotherhood -- there's a lot of fear of what Shafik is capable of doing. 
 
 "And because things now have become so clear and the gloves are off, people see what the military is intent on doing. Yesterday's ruling by the minister of justice giving the military police these excessive rights, this is a serious militarization of Egyptian society, that we made the revolution against." 
 
 Fahmy said he believes blunders by the Muslim Brotherhood are partly to blame for its current weakened position. 
 
 The Brotherhood has failed to get results in parliament, where its lawmakers have been "cocky" toward liberal forces, he said, and also failed to realize just how deep the military's influence runs through Egypt's intelligence and security services -- the so-called deep state. 
 
 The "legal coup" pulled off by the military is just the latest front in a long-running battle for dominance between the two sides, he said. 
 
 "This has been in the offing for not only months, but for years and years," Fahmy said. 
 
 "The events of today and indeed the past few weeks have shown very clearly the determination by SCAF to oust the Muslim Brotherhood altogether, and to deny it serious victories that it had won legitimately through by ballot boxes -- and today is the culmination of that struggle." 
 
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– Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood promises not to run a candidate for president in the fall elections, but it made clear today it wants a voice in the new Egypt by announcing plans to form a political party, reports CNN. That's certain to get a charge out of the Brotherhood's worst critics in the West, who fear the rise of a virulent anti-American Islamist party. But as the Wall Street Journal explains, the same kind of youth movement that upended the old guard of the ruling party might have the same kind of effect within the Brotherhood. It contrasts two members of the group, one a 29-year-old pro-democracy activist named Moaz Abdel Karim who worked with other opposition leaders to coordinate the Tahrir Square protests. His focus is on human rights, not jihad. The other is a 66-year-old Brotherhood leader from the group's conservative wing named Mohammed Badi who rails against Israel and American imperialism. The once-banned Brotherhood is destined to play a sizable role in the nation's future. "The question for many," writes Charles Levinson, "is which Brotherhood?"