CAIRO, April 30 (UPI) -- The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt says its new political group, the Freedom and Justice Party, is not "theocratic."
Leaders said the party will run candidates for as many as half the races in the parliamentary election scheduled for September, the BBC reported.
"It is not an Islamist party in the old understanding, it is not theocratic," Mohammed al-Mursi, who was chosen to head Freedom and Justice, told reporters after the founding meeting in Cairo.
The two-day meeting of Muslim Brotherhood's Shura Council began Friday with a speech by Mohamed Badie, its supreme guide, the newspaper al-Masry al-Youm reported. The newspaper said reporters were barred from the meeting but sources said Badie promised the party would work with other parties and with Egypt's Coptic Christian communities.
"The whole world now sees the Brotherhood as a group whose actions speak louder that its words, after Egypt saw long years of oppression and tyranny in which the role of the Brotherhood was curtailed," he said.
The Brotherhood has run candidates for Parliament in the past who stood as independents because of the laws banning it.
