A Quiet Revolution (9 page)

As Egypt staggered through the depression era, the series of gov- ernments that came after Egypt’s partial independence in the early
1920
s proved for the most part incompetent and/or corrupt, as well as inca-

pable of either ending British control or addressing the economic needs of the people.

The Brotherhood, responding to these conditions, preached a mes- sage of hope and renewal through a return to Islamic values, and it in- creasingly took a strongly anti-imperialist stand against the British Occupation—the stand that the government was failing to take. It be- came active in providing social services. It set up schools and clinics and provided a network of support for the poor, among them the rural im- migrants who in these difficult economic times were moving to the cities in large numbers. It was not enough, however, al-Banna argued, for the Brotherhood to offer services and education to the poor, as other Islamic groups were doing. To reach the “desired goal[s]” of ending imperialism, establishing a nation based in Islam, and achieving social justice, another kind of educational undertaking was required. A “renascent nation,” al- Banna wrote, required the “education and moulding of the souls of the nation.” It required an education that would create a “strong moral im- munity, firm and superior principles, and a strong and steadfast ideol- ogy. This is the best and fastest way to achieve the nation’s goals and aspirations, and it is therefore our aim and the reason for our existence. It goes beyond the mere founding of schools, factories and institutions, it is the ‘founding’ of souls [insha’ al-nufus].”
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At the time he established his organization, al-Banna was a twenty- two-year-old college graduate in Cairo who had chosen to attend the secular Dar al-Ulum rather than al-Azhar, which his father favored. He was appointed to a position in the school system in Ismailia, a town in the Suez Canal Zone, an area where the British army presence was most

in evidence and where, “equally hateful to Banna,” the Suez Canal Com- pany was an obvious presence. Here the “conspicuously luxurious homes of the foreigners overlooking the ‘miserable’ homes of their workers” were starkly noticeable. Here even the street signs, as al-Banna noted, were “in the language of economic occupation.”
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Dedicated from early in his college career to the idea of work “in the service of humanity,” al-Banna supported the founding of the Young Men’s Muslim Association in Cairo in
1927
. In Suez, pursuing his goal of service, he began teaching adults in the evenings at mosques and coffee-

houses. According to the Muslim Brotherhood’s accounts, he would found the organization in response to a request from a group of Egyp- tian men who worked in the British camps and who heard his teachings. Telling him that they were “weary of this life of humiliation and restric- tions,” and saying that they saw that “the Arabs and the Muslims have no status . . . and no dignity . . . they are not more than mere hirelings be- longing to foreigners,” the men asked al-Banna to lead them on the path to “service of the fatherland . . . the religion, and the nation.”
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The Brotherhood rapidly gained followers through the thirties and forties. It built mosques and schools, as other Islamic groups were doing, but the Brotherhood outstripped them by building and developing an expanding network of clinics, health-care centers and hospitals, and am- bulance services that they made available not only to their members but also to the needy in the general population.

In the thirties, as Jewish immigration to Palestine began to pick up in the face of growing anti-Semitism in Europe, people in Arab coun- tries, including Egypt, who had hitherto paid little attention to the Pales- tine issue, began to sympathize with the Palestinians.
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When the

Palestinians launched a strike in
1936
against the British and the Zionists,

the Egyptian government took no position, having been given secret or- ders by the British to neither raise money nor show sympathy for the Palestinians. The government also had been ordered not to permit Pales- tinians to speak publicly in Egypt in support of their cause. In contrast, the Brotherhood now raised funds in support of the Palestinian strike, and in general it took a firm stand in support of the Palestinian cause, a cause now increasingly popular among the broader population. This po- sition further added to the society’s appeal.
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After gaining followers from the middle class as well as from rural immigrants and the urban working class, by the
1940
s the Brotherhood had amassed a large enough following to rival al-Wafd, the country’s dominant political party. By this time the Brotherhood had also devel- oped a military branch. Of all the organizations and parties founded in this era, the Muslim Brotherhood alone would grow to become a formi- dable force in history, first in Egypt and eventually globally.

On the political level, the Brotherhood’s goals included, first, free- ing Egypt and other Islamic countries from imperialism. Their objec- tives were also to reinstitute Islamic laws and to work for Islamic revival and unity, and ideally for the return eventually of the caliphate abolished in
1924
by Ataturk. Their ultimate goal in this domain was the “univer- sal Brotherhood of mankind and the global hegemony of the Islamic na- tion.”
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This meant that they rejected the notion of an Egyptian national- ism defined by geography—the notion embraced by the reigning gov- ernment of the day. Instead, they were committed to the idea of the larger Islamic umma, or community, “linked together by bonds of creed and Brotherhood which extended far beyond the borders of Egypt.” They conceived of Arab unity in support of the Palestinian cause as a necessary first step toward Islamic unity.

On a social level, their goals included working to purify society and restore it to Islamic values and laws. From early on they called for the prohibition of prostitution, alcohol, nightclubs, and gambling, as well as for government action to curb Christian missionary activities. For a while in the late thirties a radical element among the Brotherhood tried also to push forward its agenda with regard to the veil and what it viewed as proper dress for women by smearing mud on the clothes of unveiled women. The Brotherhood leaders, however, insisted that the organiza- tion’s message be spread through persuasion, not force, and they expelled the radicals behind these tactics.
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Of particular importance was the Brotherhood’s increasingly pro- nounced commitment to the ideal of social justice. Criticizing the upper classes for squandering the resources of the people, the Brotherhood em- phasized its own stance of activist social responsibility and its work in the service of promoting a just social and economic order grounded in

Islamic principles. From the thirties on, pursuing the goals of social jus- tice and of reducing the gap between rich and poor became key elements of their ideology. These commitments and actions, which the Brother- hood both articulated and visibly and energetically worked for, were deeply resonant with the popular understanding of Islam as a religion committed above all to social justice, and they naturally gained the Brotherhood the support of many.
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At the heart of the entire project of bringing about a “renascent na- tion” was al-Banna’s notion of the education and “founding” of souls. Educating souls and “imbuing them with love for the Islamic cause” was of importance because, among other reasons, once this love is sufficiently strong, “it generates the will to sacrifice . . . and makes the members con- tribute whenever necessary to make the projects of the Muslim Brothers successful.” Quoting the Quranic verse “Verily God will never change the condition of a people until they change it themselves,” the Muslim Brotherhood made it a goal to energize Muslims to throw off attitudes of fatalism and apathy and take charge of their own destiny.

Al-Banna conceived of the Muslim masses as a “dormant force” that needed to be awakened and activated by the Muslim Brothers. He described the difference between the Muslim masses and the Brothers in the following way: among the masses, Islam was an “anaesthetized faith, dormant within their souls . . . according to whose dictates they do not wish to act; whereas it is burning, blazing intense faith fully awakened in the souls of the Brothers.”

The goal and mission of these awakened souls ablaze with faith was that of awakening other Muslims and persuading them to accept the Brotherhood’s understanding of Islam. Thus the Brothers saw them- selves as a “distinct group separated from the Muslim masses” and as an “avant-garde” that was ahead of and even above the ordinary masses. Some scholars believe that these attitudes nurtured a sense of self-right- eousness and “intolerant arrogance” among the Brotherhood that would result in acts of violence made possible by their sense of superiority and

difference. Others, however, note that the Brotherhood would not be in- volved in violence until the
1940
s, and that when acts of violence were committed by the organization’s military wing, their actions were strongly condemned by the leadership.
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Within this overall framework, the idea of “jihad”—to strive or struggle in the service of Islam—came to hold enormous importance for the Brotherhood, who now elaborated a distinctive and complex under- standing of the meaning of “jihad.” Besides referring to the duty to wage war against the occupying imperial power, “jihad” also meant, in Broth- erhood terminology, the obligation to work to “eradicate the deeply in- grained resignation of the souls and minds of their co-religionists and remove their inferiority complexes.” It meant, further, commitment to productive work; activism dedicated to improving the condition of the Muslim community; and the obligation to speak out against unjust rulers and to demand justice. The definition, elaborated by the classical Mus- lim jurist Abu Sa‘id al-Khidri, of speaking “truth in the presence of a tyrannical ruler” became a guiding principle for the Brotherhood—as indeed, according to Brynjar Lia, “it still is.”
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During the war years Egypt again became a base for the British army. This created conditions of hardship, particularly for the poor, who did not have enough to eat and who rioted against the British, whose army they saw as the cause of their troubles. The common sight of British sol- diers in the streets and the suddenly growing numbers of bars and broth- els shocked many. The Muslim Brothers in particular were “outraged that their poorer women were opting for a life of sin through the lure of British gold,” and they redoubled their efforts to convey to the people that the British were trampling on Islamic mores and ethics even simply by their presence.
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In
1942
the British surrounded the king’s palace with tanks and or-

dered him to appoint the prime minister they favored. This flagrant dis- play of brute British power would rankle deeply among Egyptians— including the group of officers who, in
1952
, would seize power in a coup that drove King Farouk into exile.

The United Nations in
1947
voted to partition Palestine into an

Arab and a Jewish state, a decision that distressed and affronted Arabs and Muslims everywhere. Following Britain’s departure from Palestine and Israel’s declaration of independence in May
1948
, the Arab states, including Egypt, declared war on Israel. The Egyptian government had

been opposed to such a war. The prime minister met with the king to inform him of the government’s position and notify him that Egypt had neither adequate arms nor enough trained men to go to war with Israel. But the king, fearing that other Arab leaders would go to war and steal a march on him and gain victory, determined otherwise. The following morning the country’s prime minister read in the papers that Egypt had declared war on Israel.
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The Muslim Brothers, who had started recruiting volunteers even before the British withdrawal from Palestine, sent a contingent of vol- unteers from their wing of armed and trained men. In the ensuing bat- tles, which proved disastrous for the Arabs, only the Brotherhood’s volunteer forces acquitted themselves well. Their effectiveness alarmed the prime minister, Mahmud Nuqrashi, alerting him of the potential threat that such a force posed to the Egyptian state. The Brotherhood’s military wing had already carried out acts of political assassination and violence in the country, beginning early in the forties, including the as- sassination of a judge who had sentenced a Muslim Brother to prison for his attack on British soldiers. Such attacks by members of the orga- nization’s military wing reportedly occurred without the knowledge or support of al-Banna, who was said to have reacted with revulsion to such activities. With attacks now occurring on the properties of Egyptian Jews and Jewish businesses, as well as on British interests, this was a time of deep tension in the country.

On December
8
,
1948
, Nuqrashi issued an order dissolving the

Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Commenting on this order, a pro-gov- ernment newspaper observed that the Brotherhood was the govern- ment’s strongest opponent. The Brotherhood, it noted, was not just a party; rather, it “resembled a state with its armies, hospitals, schools, factories, and companies.” On December
28
, Nuqrashi was assassinated by a third-year veterinary student who was a member of the Brother- hood.
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In February
1949
, Hasan al-Banna was himself assassinated, pre- sumably by government agents. During the following years the Brother- hood, which by now had branches all across the country and a following of more than half a million men, would continue to be banned, and some

of its members would be pursued and imprisoned. In
1949
there were over four thousand Brotherhood members in prison.
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