The History of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (1939–1954) discusses the History of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt from its actions during World War II to its official dissolution by the Egyptian government.
The Second World War In the late 1930s, in keeping with the Muslim Brotherhood's emphasis on actions rather than words, some members pushed for the organisation to form a military wing to take up armed struggle against British imperial rule, and some were already disobeying the Brotherhood's leadership and taking part in isolated clashes with the police. The Brotherhood's General Guide, Hassan al-Banna, felt that the Society was not ready to engage in military campaigns, and that those who wished to do so "might take the wrong course and miss the target". He advocated a more cautious, longer-term plan of forming groups of particularly dedicated members, called "Battalions", who would receive rigorous spiritual and physical training; once their numbers were sufficient, Banna felt, the Battalions would be prepared to engage in warfare. This would not involve terrorist or revolutionary action, which Banna rejected completely, but rather (and only as a last resort, if all peaceful strategies failed) openly declared war on imperial occupation. However, the Battalion system failed to develop on the scale Banna hoped for, and pressure from members for armed struggle against the British continued to increase. In 1939, this internal conflict developed into a major crisis, during which some of the most active cadres left the Society to form a rival organisation called Muhammad's Youth.
The following year, as a result of this conflict, the Brotherhood created a military wing called the secret apparatus, which nevertheless remained mostly inactive during the war years.Lia, 172-181.Carré, 30-31. The future Egypt president Anwar Sadat was an active member of the secret organization as a "Free officer" in the early 1940s.Sadat and the "Free Officers Organization", linked to "Secret apparatus"
The Society's official position was that Egypt should refrain from participating in the Second World War. In 1940, in order to ensure Egypt's support of the war effort, which initially seemed to be going very badly for the Allies, Britain replaced the Egyptian government with one whose cooperation it could be sure of. Martial law was imposed, and in 1941 some public figures that Britain considered subversive were arrested. Hassan al-Banna was imprisoned twice (only to be released within weeks), the Brotherhood's journals were suppressed, its meetings were banned and any reference to it in newspapers was forbidden.Mitchell, 19-23.
The Brotherhood's leadership was keen to avoid confrontations that could give the government a pretext to suppress the Society altogether. During the war, the Society alternated between avoiding sensitive issues in the interest of self-preservation, and taking risky political positions such as calling for the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company. During the periods when it kept a low profile, it concentrated on maintaining and expanding its membership base and extending its social welfare programmes, which included humanitarian assistance to the victims of Axis bombings of Egyptian cities. In 1943, the Society replaced its Battalion system with a form of internal organisation called "families", a hierarchy of close-knit groups of five members each; members of a family met regularly, usually in their own homes, and assumed responsibility for one another's welfare.Lia, 256-266, 176-177.
Shortages and bombings contributed to political unrest; after a mass demonstration of students in February 1942, the government resigned. British troops then surrounded the king's palace and forced him to accept a government headed by the Wafd party (thus durably damaging the Wafd's credibility in the eyes of Egyptians). The Wafd remained entirely loyal to the British throughout the war, as did the Sa'dist government that followed it in February 1945.Lia, 267-268.
The first act of the Wafd government installed by the British in 1942 was to dissolve parliament and call for elections. When Banna declared his candidacy, prime minister Nahhas Pasha pressured him to withdraw it. He agreed, but in return he obtained the prime minister's promise that the Brotherhood could resume its normal activities, and that the government would take action to curtail prostitution and the sale of alcoholic drinks. Shortly afterward, the government did indeed make prostitution illegal, and restricted the sale of alcohol, particularly on religious holidays. The Brotherhood was allowed to resume some of its work, but for the next several years the government alternated between repression and friendliness towards the organisation.Mitchell, 26-28.Lia, 268-269.
During the 1940s, the Brotherhood's membership continued to grow; by 1948, it had two thousand branches, and is thought to have had over a million members.Carré, 21.
Postwar nationalism The candidacies of Banna and several other Brothers were defeated in the rigged 1945 elections, even in their stronghold of Isma'iliyya. The Society's exclusion from parliamentary politics tended to strengthen the position of those members who advocated a more radical confrontation with the state, and to make them increasingly unwilling to submit to Banna's insistence on nonviolent action.Mitchell, 33.Lia, 270–271.
The presence of Allied troops had created many jobs and led to the establishment of trade unions; after the war, the departure of most of those troops left many unemployed. Inflation rose, the gap between rich and poor widened and wages decreased. During the war, propaganda had poured into Egypt from all sides of the conflict: British and American propaganda about democracy and national independence from Nazi and Soviet aggression, German propaganda about Egyptian and Arab liberation from Western imperialism, and Soviet propaganda about Soviet economic power and social justice. Britain's occupation of Egypt and the conflict in Palestine remained unresolved. Frustration with the political and economic order was endemic, communist ideas were widespread, and activist groups in general found it easy to attract new members.Mitchell, 35–36.
In September 1945 the Society adopted a new constitution which formally recognised the structures put in place during the 1938 reorganisation. It also submitted its records to the ministry of social affairs as required by law, and was classified as a "political, social and religious institution"; this meant that the government assistance given to charities would only be available for some of its activities. The organisation's social welfare activities were therefore split off into a separate section with its own director and hierarchy, in order to better protect them from political interference.Mitchell, 36–37.
During the post-war years the Brotherhood grew rapidly. It continued to expand its social welfare activities, setting up hospitals, clinics and pharmacies; schools offering technical and academic courses for boys, girls and adults; and small factories to help remedy post-war unemployment.Mitchell, 37.
Egypt's ruling elites were vehemently opposed to communism, and in this, the Brotherhood agreed wholeheartedly with them; the government therefore made attempts to use the Brotherhood as an instrument against its communist opponents. However, conflict between the elites and the Brotherhood was inevitable, because like the communists, the Brothers were activists who appealed to widespread dissatisfaction with the existing social order, and aspired to bring about profound changes to remedy the injustices of Egyptian society.Mitchell, 37–42.
The Brotherhood's publications expressed unrelenting hostility towards the government and its policies, and the Brothers were a major force in strikes and nationalist demonstrations.Mura, 61–85. In October 1945, the Society organised a "people's congress" on national liberation in Cairo and seven other cities. The Brotherhood and the Wafd were now the two main opposition parties; now that the Wafd was no longer in power, it was just as eager to champion the nationalist cause, and was supported on this issue by the communists. The Brothers therefore found themselves in direct competition with the Wafd for leadership of the nationalist movement. Despite their deep mutual distrust, the two groups joined in the same mass demonstrations on occasion. However, the Brotherhood's refusal to cooperate with communists led to the breakdown of a united front, and to accusations that the Brothers were tools of the government and of the ruling class. The Society strongly rebutted these charges, and indeed organised strikes of its own; this deeply strained its already poor relations with the government, and the Brotherhood became the target of police harassment and arrests. The youth of the two groups repeatedly came to blows in 1946, and Banna was nearly killed by a bomb attack. After these clashes, representatives of the Brotherhood and the Wafd held secret meetings in order to reach an understanding; this considerably reduced the tensions between the two groups.Mitchell, 42–49
In the same year, prime minister Sidqi Pasha returned from negotiations in London with a draft treaty that the nationalist groups found absolutely unacceptable. Violent student riots broke out. Members of the Brotherhood's secret apparatus started to carry out attacks on Britons as well as on Egyptian police stations, and continued to do so over the next few years. The government responded to this escalating violence with harsh repressive measures, including a wave of arrests among the Brothers and other nationalist groups. Rioting continued throughout 1946, and in December the government resigned.Mitchell, 60, 49–50.
In July 1947, having accompanied the new prime minister, Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi Pasha, to the United Nations, a representative of the Brothers, Mustafa Mu'min, interrupted the UN Security Council discussions on Egypt to make a speech from the spectator's gallery, rejecting all negotiations with Britain and calling for a complete and immediate British withdrawal from Egypt. However, the Security Council took no action.Mitchell, 50–51.
In Egypt and among Arabs and Muslims generally, the cause of Palestine continued to inspire strong sympathies; the 1947 UN resolution on the partition of Palestine gave the issue a greater urgency. The Brotherhood sent volunteers to fight in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. During the war, there were numerous bomb attacks on Jews in Cairo; in the "jeep case" discussed below, it emerged that members of the Society's secret apparatus had been responsible for at least some of these.Mitchell, 55–58, 75.
In March 1948, members of the secret apparatus assassinated judge, Ahmed El-Khazindar Bey, President of the Court of Appeal, who had given a prison sentence to a Muslim Brother for attacking British soldiers. Banna expressed his revulsion at the assassination.Mitchell, 62.
In December 1948, the Egyptian government released a decree ordering the dissolution of the Society. The police had discovered caches of bombs and other weapons accumulated by the secret apparatus, and though the Brothers insisted that these were for use in the Arab–Israeli war, the government suspected that the Brothers were planning revolution; it was also keen to remove what it saw as one of the main causes of the general political unrest that had become increasingly violent, and increasingly threatening to its authority, since the end of the Second World War. Moreover, because the Brotherhood had its own hospitals, factories and schools, as well as an army in the form of the secret apparatus, the government saw it as a potential parallel state, which Egyptians might come to see as more legitimate than the official one.Mitchell, 58–59, 61, 64, 66.