Background:
Father Christiaan van Nispen tot Sevenaer (15.3.1938 – 12.5.2016) was a Jesuit priest and had been in Egypt since 1962. Van Nispen had a PhD in Islam which he received in Serbonne, Paris. Besides his PhD, he also studied Philosphy and Islam and had been active in the formation within the Coptic Catholic Church in Maʿādī, Cairo. In January 1994, he became part of the Religious Brotherhood Group which advocated unity between Muslims and Christians. The group’s objective was to bring people together as believers of a monotheistic religion. Every member believes in one God and this should bring them together. The group initially started in 1938 until it declined in 1952. It was never officially registered after the 1952 Egyptian Revolution because the ministry had allegedly been afraid of the group being a secret organization. In 1975, the former members of the group in addition to several innovative people came together and decided to re-establish the group.
Side A:
The first president of the group was the former Minister of Health of Egypt, a certain ʿAbd al-Salām. Van Nispen describes him as a very spiritual person who liked transparency. He was a Muslim and once mentioned to van Nispen that he had a Christian friend, who is Egyptian, served his time in the army, and pays taxes like every other Egyptian. Why is it that he is asking for his place as an Egyptian Copt in society, but instead has to read about “tolerating the Christians?” Van Nispen argues that ʿAbd al-Salām’s comment showed van Nispen the kind of person he was; the directness and transparency in his character.
Van Nispen says the group does not distinguish between conservative and liberal religious people but accepts anyone who is interested in unity between the two monotheistic religions. He mentions Aḥmad Ḥassan al-Bāqūrī who was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood for approximately 20 years and had been the Deputy Guide respectively. Al-Bāqūrī was a member of the Religious Brotherhood Group and created a prayer for Christians and Muslims to cite together at the beginning of the meetings.
Moreover, Van Nispen dives deeper into Egypt’s place in the Islamic world. He believes that Egypt holds a central position as he noticed that most Islamic thinkers were Egyptians. A few were also from Pakistan, Bangladesh or India, but in the Arab World, Egypt holds a central place. According to van Nispen, Egypt had been greatly influenced by an Iranian activist and populist Shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī during the 1870s. Van Nispen found al-Afghānī a very interesting person as he allegedly pretended to be Afghani because he wanted to hide that he was Iranian. Being Iranian would have revealed to a predominantly Sunni-Islamic world, that he was a Shiite. Van Nispen believes that al-Afghānī was a populist because in a way he wanted to re-mobilise the Muslim community against foreign intervention and organise a Muslim response to Western pressure and the regimes of that time.
Muḥammad ʿAbduh was a student of al-Afghānī’s and is considered to be the teacher of modern Islamic movements. The 1882 Orabi Revolution was a nationalist uprising in Egypt from 1879-1882. It was a conflict between the Khedive Tewfik Pasha and the Egyptian army who sought to dispose him. The uprising ended by the British bombardment of Alexandria and Egypt continued to be under foreign control until after World War II concludes van Nispen. ʿAbduh did not believe in the opportunity of the revolution but was solidary with it. He became Mufti of Egypt and believed that Egypt had to accept the British colonization for the time being because there needed to be cultural reform before there could be even thought of political reform.
Side B:
Succeeding Muḥammad ʿAbduh’s death, people thought two things: either go back to their roots by opening doors for modern Western culture and thus internalising also the political and social aspects of that culture (democracy) or going back to their roots by going back to Islam. Van Nispen argues the latter still remains an ambiguity today because what does going back to one’s roots really mean? Does it mean being close to Islam in the liberal sense or go back to the Islam from thousands of years ago?
It was often expected that of the European models that these would create miracles for society, but they did not fulfil their expecations. The people, who believed that Western culture would indeed be a great asset to Egyptian society, became disappointed with the Europeans’ input and thus felt like they were losing their identity, which is why many of these people chose to go back to their Islamic roots.
Shaykh Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā was a student of Muḥammad ʿAbduh’s and of Lebanese origins. He, according to van Nispen, was the key between the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood Ḥassan al-Bannā and Muḥammad ʿAbduh. Riḍā grew more and more conservative and was influenced by the Saudi Arabian Wahabism. Van Nispen believes the Muslim Brothers are more activists than they are Islamic thinkers. They want an Islamic inspirated society. Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī, Muḥammad ʿAbduh, and so on, had brought the ideas and framework to the table, and now it is time to carry out their ideas. This is how the Muslim Brothers think according to van Nispen. It is a movement which looks a lot like communism politically, but simultaneously it is very efficient socially. Al-Bannā was a very charismatic leader which worked to the Brotherhood’s advantage says van Nispen.
The movement’s problem was that violence brewed within the group, in particular within the secret wing of the Brotherhood. They were allegedly guilty of killing a Minister of Egypt and it is because of this violence that al-Bannā himself was later killed. The violence within the group continued to grow nonetheless as they were accused of the assassination attempt on Jamāl ‘Abd al-Nāsir. Sayyid Qutb, who would later become the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, allegedly had close relations with Nāsir prior to his presidency. However, when Qutb realized that the two had contradicting ideas on how Egypt should be ruled, Qutb allegedly plotted an attack on Nāsir. Van Nispen mentions that some believe the attack had been carried out by the regime itself in order to frame the Muslim Brotherhood and to justify the latter crackdown on the movement in the late 1950s.
