On the genesis of the early Muslim Brotherhood and the scandal that launched the group to prominence.
Much is known about the contemporary Muslim Brotherhood—the political party that enjoyed great popularity (followed by a precipitous fall from power) in the wake of the 2011 ousting of the U.S.-backed autocrat, Hosni Mubarak. Considerably less understood are the origins of the organization. In The Orphan Scandal Beth Baron describes how the Muslim Brotherhood began as a byproduct of the unfurling influence of Christian missionaries in the early 1900s, revealing just how far back this party's penchant for throwing off imperial yokes extends.
The following is excerpted from The Orphan Scandal: Christian Missionaries and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood:
At a time when the Muslim Brotherhood has been turned once again into a pariah organization, with allegations that it is a terrorist group, it is fitting to reexamine its roots in Egypt. The story of the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood is a surprising one, given its intersection with the history of American and European missionaries in the Nile Valley. The origin and spread of the first Brotherhood branches, institutions, and activities in the Canal Zone and nearby Delta were intimately connected to the trajectories of missionaries in Egypt and their evangelical activities.
The presence of Christian missionaries in Hasan al-Banna’s hometown of al-Mahmudiyya and in nearby Damanhur was formative in shaping his worldview and that of his close friend and collaborator Ahmad al-Sukkari. The organization they started, the Hasafiyya Welfare Society, battled missionaries and metamorphosed into a Muslim Brotherhood branch after al-Banna launched that organization in Isma`iliyya in 1928. The Muslim Brotherhood founded its earliest institutions in Isma`iliyya—boys’ and girls’ schools, the Islamic Freedom Institute, the School for the Mothers of the Believers, a branch of the Muslim Sisters, and roving preacher-guides—in direct response to missionary inroads. The first Brotherhood branches in the Canal Zone carefully watched missionary activity, trying to remove children at risk of conversion, with Muslim Brothers in al-Manzala alerting members in the branch in Port Said to the danger of Swedish Salaam Mission schools. Port Said Muslim Brothers and supporters subsequently helped publicize the story of the Turkiyya Hasan affair, the orphan scandal that took place there in the summer of 1933, in the press. Foreign missionaries thus helped to give rise to the Muslim Brotherhood and to galvanize its membership, which stood on the front lines in the battle with missionaries for the bodies and souls of Egyptian youth.
Using the discontent fostered by aggressive Christian proselytizing, the Brotherhood rallied support, mobilized members, and started new branches, with al-Banna touring the Canal Zone and Delta countryside in the summer of 1933 for that purpose. Yet the missionaries served as more than a rallying point for Muslim Brothers and other Islamists: they also provided an excellent model for organizing and a template for action. Islamist organizations such as the Brotherhood developed, in part, in response to missionary enterprises as well as in their image, mimicking their ways and borrowing their tactics. Taking a page from the missionaries’ script, the Brothers rewrote it for their own purposes. The copying and adapting was local and specific: a school answered a school, a factory challenged an industrial workshop, a branch of Muslim Sisters responded to Bible women. In this way, striving to take back the terrain ceded to missionaries and protected by British colonial officials, the Muslim Brotherhood established the foundation of their own network of social welfare institutions. The Brothers learned from their first adversaries that providing social welfare was an excellent way of recruiting supporters and spreading their message.
Members of the Muslim Brotherhood recognized that they were using the missionaries as a model at the time. As one Brother wrote, their strategy regarding missionaries was first to inform people of the danger arising from exposure to them, and second to adopt “the active means of the missionaries.” In contesting the presence of evangelicals and co-opting their ways, the Brotherhood had a very effective mold for producing its own missionaries, who could spread its ideas and the call (da`wa) to Islam throughout Egypt and beyond its borders. Christian missionaries helped to give the Brotherhood its shape, as the Brotherhood’s activities and itineraries bore a striking resemblance to those of Protestant missionaries. When faced with inroads by evangelicals from the Egypt General Mission and others, the Brotherhood consciously learned from them and adapted their tools to fight them, in the process transforming these tools and techniques.
Hasan al-Banna noted in his memoirs that the anti-missionary campaign that started in al-Manzala and took off in Port Said “spread after that to many regions in Egypt,” resulting in “the founding of a number of institutions, refuges, and foundations.” The Muslim Brotherhood inspired Muslims throughout the country to launch new social welfare projects. If al-Manzala provided the sparks, and Port Said the ignition, then the orphan scandal in the summer of 1933 was the engine that drove the anti-missionary movement. The Muslim Brotherhood capitalized on the event, elevating it from a local incident to a national scandal with international repercussions.
For a more contemporary take on the Muslim Brotherhood, tune in later today for a Q&A with Arab Politics Professor, Samer Shehata.
Beth Baron is Professor of History at City College and Director of the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is the author of Egypt as a Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics (University of California, 2005) and The Women's Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press (Yale, 1994) as well as the forthcoming The Orphan Scandal (Stanford, 2014).
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