A new weekly series about Egypt (Saturdays)

The author of this series "Egyptian Frescoes" André Dirlik was born in Egypt and spent the first twenty years of his life in Cairo, then moved to Beirut where he studied at the American University. He later completed his studies at Mc Gill University, in Montreal. 

André's long career as professor exclusively at the "Collège Militaire Royal de Saint-Jean" was only interrupted when that institution closed it's doors in 1995. 

Egyptian Frescoes part (10 of 19) issued with the permission of the author. 

Egyptian Frescoes (10): Hasan al-Banna and the Ikhwan Muslimin.

The transition from a traditional to a modern society, from one that is rural to an urban one, from illiteracy towards becoming exposed to an array of ideas, this transition is both slow and stressful anywhere. In Egypt, it brought change as the War of 1939 approached. In the world at large, it caused nations who thought the First World War to be the last war to now prepare for another. The Age of Liberalism was in confrontation with an Age of Totalitarianism.

In 1929, a Great Depression which caused massive unemployment spread fast across the planet. Egypt's economic development, which had become closely associated with that of Europe since its modern sector operated in the cash economy, was severely affected. This sector, although still infant, collapsed in the 1930's. Social ills afflicted mainly the towns and cities along the Valley of the Nile. Only the subsistence economy was spared that would now be expected to sustain the entire Egyptian population. Egyptian society was ripe for new ideologies which, instantly, sought to sooth, explain and promise remedies.

Communism and Zionism fascinated mainly the Jews in Egypt. Fascism spoke directly to the Italian Khawagat. Amongst Egyptians, Blue Shirts from the Wafd Party battled in the streets the Green Shirts of Ahmad Husayn, a demagogic orator who took his lead from Mussolini and Hitler, starting in 1930. His party, Misr al-Fatat, Young Egypt, was disbanded in 1938 by the authorities who charged him with inciting violence against the State. The al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin did not wear any particular colour of shirt; they grew a beard instead, the mustache having been shaven off in the manner of the Sahaba, the Compagnons of the Prophet.

The Ikhwan had been formed, in 1928, by one Hassan al-Banna 

Hassan al-Banna

Al-Banna was born near the provincial town of Damanhur. His name tells of a recent ancestor who must have been a bricklayer, a "builder". His father was a watchmaker who, most probably, learnt the trade from an Armenian whose apprentice he may have been in his youth. Hasan's father studied at al-Azhar. Father and son were pious Muslims. More significant, Hasan's father belonged to the Hanbali Madhhab, one of four schools of Islamic law which was the least prone to compromise with change. More on this later in this frescoe. Suffice it to say that Hasan al-Banna's world view was determined, in its formative years, by the trade he learnt while he assisted his father, the watchmaker: as one who had become familiar with watch repairs, he could fathom the interdependence of each single part with the whole. The trade demanded, essentially, patience and thoroughness, which he must have acquired. As for his Hanbali affiliation, in colloquial Egyptian, a Hanbali referred to someone whose views were set in his conservatism when it came to matters of faith, one who took his Islam more seriously than any other Muslim.

al-Banna had taught school in Damahur. He was sent to Teachers Training College, Dar al-'Ulum, in Cairo in 1923, and he earned a scholarship to travel to Europe. He turned it down.  And, in 1927, he was appointed to teach secondary school in the Suez Canal City of Isma'iliyyah. There, the presence of foreigners was tangible. Ten thousand British troops were also camped nearby who frequented the city on their leave. al-Banna made his xenophobia known in cafés and in mosques. When he founded Jami'yat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin in 1928, he had recruited 60 disciples to his views. He lectured against British presence in Egypt. He denounced the ways of Egypt's foreigners. He called for the observance of Islamic Law and the establishment of a true Islamic society in Egypt.

al-Banna, the teacher, was eventually posted in Cairo in 1932. His associates followed him to the capital. Barely the following year, the Ikhwan were founding schools, charitable associations, clinics and libraries. In 1936, the population of Egypt had reached 16 million. Since 1925, primary education rose from 193 thousand pupils to 661 thousand. In secondary education, the figure had reached 45 thousand from 17. The Ikhwan aimed to reach such a youth. Also, imitating the famous Egyptian feminist, Huda Sha'rawi (1879-1947) who had created, in 1923, a Union of Egyptian Women to promote women's rights, al-Banna, ten years later, founded the Muslim Sisterhood. 

Huda Sha'rawi

The sisters would wear the hijab, the head-scarf, in defiance to Sha'rawi's theatrical removal of her veil when she returned from Paris to Alexandria Harbour in 1909. The Sisterhood favoured education for women but it had to be Islamic education.  

Hasan al-Banna was addressing a rising strata of society, a lower middle class, when he warned Egyptians of the dangers of abandoning  their beliefs and religious practices. Morality, in society, is related to social cohesion, not to creed. Transition, for the new lower middle class, from a pre-modern to a modern civilization, invited new interpretations of Islam. Hasan al-Banna had stepped in to fill the vacuum which changes were causing and was drawing his social contract for the present and the future by using the ingredients of the past. He demanded complete submission to the strictest doctrine of Islam he knew. Totalitarianism was certainly in the air when he presented his ideological platform.

al-Banna had sought and found his inspiration from Rashid Rida (1865-1935), the Editor of al-Manar. Rida, the collaborator of Muhammad 'Abduh, had grown in time to be an admirer of

Rashid Rida

Muhammad ibn 'abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792), the preacher from Najd, in Arabia. The latter, was heir to the ideals of ibn Taymiyah (b. in 1263) the theologian and judge who died in prison, in 1328, in Damascus for his extreme views on Religion and State. All four, al-Banna, Rida, ibn 'abd al-Wahhab and ibn Taymiyyh, were in the intellectual trail of Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780-855) from Baghdad, the most rigid jurist when it came to formulating the Shari'ah, the Religious Law, the Path towards an all encompassing Islamic way of life.

Shortly before the death of the Prophet in Madina, in Hijaz, in 632, the Coranic Revelation came to an end: "wa al-yawm akmaltu lakum dinakum". Muslims were left with a compendium of Surat from which they derived a set of rules by which they may conduct themselves. Wherever there existed no rules, pious and learned Muslims would consider the Sayings, the aHadith of the Prophet, to help understand the path Allah had traced for them. The Science of Hadith divided these Sayings into true, weak or correct sayings. In time, Sayings were fabricated to suite interest groups. Whenever such Sayings, however weak, were conform with the spirit of Islam, they were retained. ibn Hanbal rejected, outright, most sayings in seeking to interpret the Scriptures.

Hanbali Law

Also, in the development of Islamic Jurisprudence, the technique of analogy was devised, Qiyas. The early jurists, moreover, utilized the consensus of Jurists and the opinion of the most learned, pious and eminent amongst them. Consensus, Ijma', and opinion, Ra'y, were acceptable to the most flexible of the four schools of law, attributed to abu Hanifa (702-767). While rulers favoured Hanafi Law which allowed them much latitude, Hanbali Law was adamant to use either of spurious aHadith, and certainly not consensus and opinion: only the text of the Qur'an bore the ultimate weight in Islamic Jurisprudence.

Hasan al-Banna taught formally to his disciples and informally in public that pristine Islam should not be tampered with. Innovations which the Europeans had brought into Egyptian society should be banned. His was a literalist reading of the Coran. And yet, like all fundamentalists before him, al-Banna was a man of his age, a reformist of what he and his disciples were experiencing. It is important that this point be retained. Conservatives are aware of the threats to their values and their creed. They react to change because they notice change. It is certainly the case amongst conservatives of the Lower Middle Class.

Hasan al-Banna ought to have known Rashid Rida personally. Or else, he must have regularly read Majallat al-Manar which the Syrian-born radical edited, after Muhammad 'Abduh's death. Rida was in favour of restoring the Caliphate yet opposed King Fu'ad's ambition to occupy this spiritual high office: the king may have claimed he was a descendant of the Prophet; he was, in fact, an Albanian through and through who, after the First World War, had even considered claiming the Albanian throne for himself; the King, also, was an Italophile who had studied in Turin and spoke Italian better than he did Arabic. al-Banna shared the view that the Caliphate ought to be re-instated and revert to a true descendant of the Prophet, a member of the Tribe of Quraysh. Rida, who had Wahhabi leanings, had turned out to become an advocate of Wahhabism: 

King 'abd al-'Aziz ibn Su'ud

he met with King 'abd al-'Aziz ibn Su'ud of Saudi Arabia, the descendant of the houses of 'abd al-Wahhab and Al Su'ud in Najd and the unifier, in 1915, of the entire Arabian Peninsula under his rule. ibn Su'ud fought along with his military phalanx called the Ikhwan. al-Banna chose Ikhwan to name the association he created to rid Egypt of its ills. Rashid Rida urged Muslims to turn away from European influence. al-Banna's refusal to further his studies in Europe may well have resulted from Rida's such admonitions made to his readers. Rida had been converted, in his youth, to the brand of Islamic Nationalism which Jamal ed-Din al-Afghani preached all his life. Nearing the year of his death, Rida stood committed to the Question of Palestine as a Muslim Nationalist should. 
So would Hasan al-Banna.