Читать книгу Inside the Muslim Brotherhood - The Truth About The World's Most Powerful Political Movement - Youssef Nada - Страница 14

Like most trouble, it began in a small way with two youngsters arguing with each other and then their friends taking sides. The voices became raised and angry. Quickly, the fists and the fighting began as 17-year-old Youssef Nada emerged at the corner of the street near his family home.

Knives appeared and flashed in the sun and the fighting became deadly. How could he help? He wanted to, but was fearful as the rival factions inflamed the ferocious actions. The battle closed in on him but he couldn’t move; he was rooted to the spot by that sometimes dangerous desire, curiosity. Now, more than 40 people from neighbourhood families were involved.

The teenager thought the police would arrive at any moment. There was no sign, no sound of sirens. The battle went on until a group of young people ran into the middle of the antagonists. They pulled them apart, hugged some, deflected raised fists, and slowly, slowly, with pacifying words and actions, brought calm to the warring crowd. Nada was mesmerised. To him, it was some sort of miracle. One moment this crowd were trying to kill each other and now they were talking.

The mediators were from the Muslim Brotherhood. Looking back on that day, Nada recalls: ‘They started to talk, saying that they were neighbours, they were families, and about morals and mixing all these things through religion with some phrases from the Koran, from the words of the prophets, and things calmed down. The quarrelling people were asked what would happen to their children if they were killed: “Who will support your family without you?” They said that most times the “fire”, the trouble, started with a spark. This was repeated several times in front of me. The trick was to avoid the spark – or contend with the fire.

‘I knew of the Brotherhood through their centre being near our house, and on religious occasions they had activities. But we were of a different life. The general atmosphere of all the Egyptians was that religion should be respected. That day we heard the invitation for prayers that happens in every mosque, and you hear it five times. All the people started to make lines and the Imam came in front of us and started to pray. He chose the phrases of brotherhood and mercy, and good behaviour with others, and avoiding fighting between Muslims.

‘When Muslims fight each other you must intervene and support the one who has the rights. It is about fairness, always about justice. The angry crowd who’d been fighting picked up what he was saying, the lesson he was delivering. He asked everyone who loved his religion and Allah to apologise to him and embrace his opponent. They did this. They had tea together and everyone was happy.

‘For me, it was as a hymn. I’d witnessed a working philosophy and I wondered: “Who are those people?” That was the start. I went to the centre where two or three Brothers talked to me. They said everyone was welcome and on Tuesday one of their leaders, Farid Abdul Khalek from Cairo, would speak. I went along, and he was very intelligent and emotional.

‘One of their respected members asked me to help, as the father of one my classmates, Mahmoud, had been paralysed in an accident. The mother had been working to support the family but she had also become ill and there was no income. He asked me to take money to the family but not to say where it had come from. I got a practical lesson in how to assist silently without hurting a person’s pride. My life in the Muslim Brotherhood began as easily as that. I talked to my family about it, but they never encouraged me, and they never discouraged me.’

Nada’s parents, Mustafa Ali Nada and Nemat Abu Saud, were well regarded in their community and raised a large family. Youssef was born the fourth of eleven children in Alexandria on 17 May 1931. Mustafa Ali Nada owned a farm and a dairy products factory, and his son would help there. His father provided, but his mother, who was to die tragically young, led the family’s attitude and thinking: it was always about doing the right thing. She had to truly trust her judgment when Nasser’s security men used her husband and a younger student son, Sobhi, to trap Youssef, who was a thinker.

Youssef Nada’s schooldays began at the Al-Ramliah Elementary School and he stayed in that system through to high school. His hobby was to attend the city’s law courts. He was fascinated by the lawyers and their arguments – as one would say one thing and the other would counter it, and the judge would quiz them on points of law. ‘It taught me how to negotiate, how to bring new ideas to the table,’ he said. ‘Also, to understand what another person was getting at before they offered their conclusion. I was just twelve when I started going to court and I kept going while my friends would play football or go to the cinema after any demonstration against the British occupation. My interest was in the legal world.

‘There were two courts: one for the Egyptians and one for the foreigners. During the occupation the British didn’t accept that one of their nationals would go to an Egyptian court if he broke the law. I visited the Egyptian court – the other was the court of the enemies! There was a double standard.

‘When I try to analyse myself now, to turn the film back, I wonder how it started. Did it come from the school, or from the family? I believe it came from seeing injustice in the courts.’

Yet, Nada and his siblings did have some freedom in their lives: ‘We had freedom in the way we were brought up. We got advice to do one thing and not another. We were told someone was good because they acted in a certain way. My father was very busy and my mother taught us the way to lead our lives.

‘My father had a big dairy farm and a team of about fifty workers to process our milk and collect the milk from other farms. As children we went with the workers to faraway farms and saw how they milked the cows and the buffalos. We were with these men all day and knew how they were thinking and behaving. It gave me an understanding of how other people lived and ate and thought. I was not brought up in a vacuum.’ It gave the young Youssef Nada a bond with his fellow men.

The Muslim Brotherhood began in Egypt in 1928 as a social and cultural movement; it was founded by schoolteacher Hassan Al-Banna along with half-a-dozen employees of the Suez Canal Company. The intention was based on altruistic Islamic principles, but instantly the organisation was branded as sinister.

The Brothers were targets for imprisonment, torture and death. This intimidation made them, by necessity, secretive while they quietly grew in number and influence. When Youssef Nada joined the Muslim Brotherhood they existed in a complex environment in which the Cold War was getting icier by the day.

During their residency, the occupying British were blinkered by events, focused on the communist threat to the Middle East and to the control of the Suez Canal. King Farouk was getting fatter, and in his oversized shadow the Wafd Party was the recognised political power in the country. American and Russian interests were served by the CIA and the KGB, employing their black arts to much effect, whispering cryptic contagion that the king was totally in control of the imperial, exploitative British. It was all very uneasy and myopic.

The incorrigibly political Gamal Abdel Nasser served as an infantry commander when King Farouk sent his troops into Palestine, ending in what Nasser judged a humiliating treaty. In October 1948 he made contact with the Muslim Brotherhood with a view to forming an allegiance with them. Compatibility was never assured, as, indeed, it wasn’t with the British. The Brotherhood were at odds with the ruling government Wafd party, who didn’t want the Brotherhood’s popularity to increase. Neither, of course, did the British, the colonial power which held the reins of the Wafd.

Youssef Nada had the attitude and strong views of a young and confident man, speaking out without inviting favour. It stood him well at university where he went to study agriculture, about a 30-minute bus ride along the long-gone landscaped streets from his home. He was a member of the Students’ Union and once, during a meeting with the Dean, Shafiq Alkeshen, he made a point, strongly opposing the Dean’s view.

The Dean gave a rude reply and his student responded: ‘Don’t be angry doctor. I have great respect for you. You are my teacher. Why are you angry with me? I’ll resign.’ Nada said that he’s never forgotten the Dean’s answer: ‘You would leave me with only those who say “Yes sir”. You are needed here.’ The other students didn’t question the Dean and obeyed him without saying what they believed and thought. ‘I felt I was respected,’ said Nada, ‘because I offered my opinion – even though he didn’t agree with it.’

When he was 20, Nada was conscripted into action. ‘It was 1951 and Egypt was asking for the withdrawal of the British military. There were demonstrations and violent clashes between the police and the British army. The trouble was ugly and flared up in all the universities. On the campuses they started Egyptian army training camps for the students. I did full military training in the use of weapons at Alexandria University and most of us being taught were Muslim Brothers.

‘When the militia heard that the Jews were arriving from everywhere in the world to settle in Palestine, which was the country of Muslims and Arabs, all those in the area mobilised on the side of the Palestinians. The Muslim Brotherhood joined the insurgents against the invasion. All the people’s hearts were with the Palestinians, even members of the Egyptian government. They were against the settlement but weren’t prepared to take the road of trouble; they wanted peace. They wanted to live calmly. They didn’t want problems with the British but their hearts and minds were with the Palestinians.’

Strong post-war world diplomacy was needed, but instead arrangements under the guise of political necessity brought the rule of arrogant self-interest. With long spoons, Washington and Moscow stirred the Egyptian melting pot into 1951 and through into 1952. Nasser was plotting and had joined the Free Officers Movement aimed at restoring the dignity of Egypt. This organisation was headed by a more senior officer, Mahmoud Labib, who was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. When Labib died, Nasser swiftly took his place.

There was a fearsome reprisal incident in January 1952 when British forces guarding the Suez Canal attacked a police headquarters in Ismailia, injuring more than 100 and killing 49 Egyptian officers, provoking riots. Demonstrations, encouraged by the Free Officers and several thousand strong, marched through Cairo, putting in danger any building or business or person linked to the British. It resulted in 80 deaths, including nine British nationals. Fires burned, King Farouk fumed, and politicians failed to stop that winter of deadly discontent.

The ‘Cairo Fires’ of world headlines raged on metaphorically until the July 1952 military coup led by General Muhammad Naguib – soon to be overtaken in power and position by Nasser. It was at this time that the now military-trained Youssef Nada was called up. ‘Nasser promised the Brotherhood that he would personally not allow anything to be done against the religion, against Islam. Because of that he had all our support.

‘We had been pre-warned the coup d’état was happening. We were told to protect the foreign embassies, the banks, and the Government buildings, as they were sabotage targets. I got a tough one: they appointed me to help guard the British Consulate in Alexandria – a prime target. It was only months since Cairo was burned up, so there was great concern. The Brotherhood were afraid it could happen anywhere in Egypt, with property ruined and people killed.

‘The Brothers in the jails were released following the coup. They were in the streets, involved in the preparation for a new beginning. Our voice was very loud at this time and the support of the people was enthusiastic. Gamal Abdul Nasser and his crew had to keep them happy – he was a Brother and had lived among a group of the Muslim Brotherhood, and they considered him very faithful. But he turned on them.

‘He wanted to be the only power in the country. The Brotherhood leaders were rigid when they negotiated with him. They were sincere and they believed sincerity is the only factor. In politics, sincerity is not the only factor. The message was one of strong nationalism which was grabbing the emotions of the people: the British had to go! We must evict them, we must be free! We must not be occupied by the British forever. Egypt was everything. The British must go! That was the mood and it was ferocious.

‘After the coup d’état the negotiations between Nasser and the British began. A man called Evans, who was doing the talking with Nasser, asked to meet the Brotherhood, but they didn’t want to make any secret moves, to deal behind the new government’s back. So they told Nasser that Evans wanted to meet them.’ Nasser advised the Brotherhood to go ahead on the grounds that ‘the British will know the total position with us, and that will support our position in the negotiations.

‘The Muslim Brotherhood met Evans, but later when Nasser betrayed them, he said the Brothers were spying and in contact with British secret agents. He said the Muslim Brotherhood were nothing but traitors. It was staggering to be accused of working with the British – Egyptians had suffered so much under the occupation.’

Youssef Nada had personal experience of the suffering when his elder sister was getting married:’ The bridegroom supplies the house, and the bride’s family is responsible for furnishing it. My mother was everywhere, buzzing about, and bought everything for the marital home and supervised it being loaded onto delivery lorries.

‘Two British military trucks hit the lorries, and the furniture broke free spilling on to the street. The drivers were drunk but nobody could touch them. The authorities protected them, not only from our family but from the people in the street who saw what happened and were very angry. The British Military Police came and took the drivers away in cars. There was no justice in that.

‘The British occupation was hard for our people – we all believed we should be free; we had to fight for our freedom, fight the occupation by weapons. I cannot deny it. Anyone who battles against the occupier of his country is a hero. When de Gaulle fought the Nazis he was a hero. But they didn’t want to consider me a hero when I fought the occupation of my country. Every loyal citizen in the world must defend his country when it is occupied, or you don’t deserve to be a citizen of it. I would be a traitor if I didn’t protect my country.’

Yet, with his membership of the Muslim Brotherhood, Youssef Nada had a more immediate enemy in the revolutionary Colonel Gamal Nasser, who very much wanted to be his own man. At that time America was keen to keep Nasser on its side against the Soviets in what became known as the ‘Game of Nations’. Then there was one of those intriguing happenstances of history when in 1910 Teddy Roosevelt, shortly after declining to run for another term as President of the United States, spoke at what would become Cairo University. Roosevelt angered Egyptian nationalists by backing the British occupation and arguing that Egyptians weren’t prepared for independence or, for that matter, democracy.

More than 40 years later America – and another Roosevelt – was still meddling in Egyptian politics. Then, when President Eisenhower and America were trying to persuade Nasser to be ‘their man’, Kermit ‘Kim’ Roosevelt Jr, a senior CIA official and President Roosevelt’s grandson, arranged for US$3million in cash stacked in two suitcases for a clandestine delivery to Nasser. (Some reports put the cash at four times that, but in 2011CIA officials with access to files from the time insisted it was ‘only three million dollars’.) Nasser didn’t stash the money but put it to work creating the free-standing concrete Cairo Tower on Gezira Island on the Nile. The structure, taller than the pyramids, near to the downtown district and across from the US Embassy, remains a city landmark. Nasser intended the Cairo Tower as an elaborate display of disdain to the American diplomatic mission, Kim Roosevelt and the other CIA spooks. His aides knew it – politely – as ‘Roosevelt’s folly’.

A man big in personality and stature, Nasser wanted to be the boss and have ‘no partners’ in his administration. The Muslim Brotherhood were influential – and irritating. He couldn’t get on with his own policies and plans without considering those of the Brotherhood. He used Egypt’s recent history, and the tormented and turbulent times, as his weapon of choice to silence the Brothers. In November 1948 the Egyptian Prime Minister, Mahmoud Fahmy Nokrashy Pasha, began a clampdown on the Muslim Brotherhood whom he accused of political violence, of bombing and attempted assassinations. After police investigations, it was announced that sufficient explosives to blow up half of Cairo had been discovered, along with plans for bombing foreign and Egyptian institutions in the city and Alexandria on the coast. The authorities said that in one Jeep alone they found ‘large amounts of explosive materials, fuses, dozens of various kinds of mines, time-bomb detonators, a machine gun, a large number of revolvers and tommy guns, daggers, ammunition, a mask, leaflets, and secret instructions and documents referring to previous explosions as well as others in preparation’.

The Prime Minister’s office said the houses raided and the Jeep belonged to Muslim Brotherhood members. The Brotherhood were also accused of being responsible for an explosion outside the house of Mustapha el-Nahhas (the popular president of the Wafd); the attempted bombing of the Sudan Agency; the bombings of department stores of Ades, Ben Zion, Gettegno, the Delta Land Company and the Société Orientale de Publicité; and for machine gun attacks on politicians.

The Brotherhood issued denials, arguing that there had been ‘a frame-up’. In turn, two weeks later, Premier Nokrashy Pasha, in his role as Military Governor of Egypt (and with the strong encouragement of British advisers) ordered the dissolution of the Muslim Brotherhood. They were to be no more.

The Government – officially for the first time – accused the Brothers of ‘aiming at seizing power and overthrowing established order in the country’. The Prime Minister announced a ‘state of emergency throughout Egypt’, and with that the Brotherhood headquarters in Cairo was taken over by police. The government said the Brothers were targeting everyone from students to city officials with their propaganda. Members were forbidden to continue any form of activity, to hold elections, or establish other similar organisations.

Abdel Rahman Ammar Bey, Under Secretary of State for Security in the Ministry of Interior, said the Brotherhood had been founded as a religious and social organisation without political purpose. But when they won huge popularity the leaders ‘went beyond legitimate political purposes to other aims prohibited by the Constitution and the country’s laws, and aimed at changing the basic system of society by force and terrorism’. As if to prove that correct, Nokrashy Pasha was assassinated 20 days after the pronouncement and after he had banned the Brotherhood from existing.

The assassination took place on the morning of 28 December 1948 when a young man in the uniform of a police first lieutenant sat in the lobby of Cairo’s Ministry of Interior as the prime minister walked toward the elevators. The uniformed man got up and saluted. His arm dropped and he pulled a high-powered revolver from his trouser pocket and fired six bullets. Five rounds hit Mahmoud Fahmy El Nokrashy Pasha, killing him. The assassin then pointed the revolver at his own head but was overpowered by guards. He was identified as 21-year-old veterinary student Abdel Meguid Ahmed Hassan, a member of the Brotherhood. Government minister Ibrahim Dessouki Abaza Pasha said Hassan had claimed he murdered the Prime Minister ‘because he caused Egypt to lose the Sudan, surrendered Palestine to the Jews, and dissolved the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been the only organisation reviving Islam in the last twenty years’.

Immediately Hassan Albana, the head and founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, condemned the assassination, declaring that terror was not an acceptable way in Islam. Even so, several thousand arrests were made following the killing and several internment camps were opened to imprison Brotherhood members. Many were sent to Abu Za’abal, Fayoum, the Citadel, and Kharga and Hykstep which were concentration camps in all but name. The government said that an inner circle of the Brotherhood had recognised Hassan el Banna as Caliph, which was as good as naming him political chief of the Islamic world. This group were accused as conspirators who carried out acts of terror by lottery. Youssef Nada joined the Brotherhood leaders in condemning the charges as inventions.

The tit-for-tat actions and the vendetta bloodshed continued. On 12 February 1949, the Brotherhood leader Hassan Al-Banna was murdered – shot five times as he left the Jamiyyah al-Shubban al-Muslimeen headquarters in Cairo. He was there to talk with the government’s Zaki Ali Basha but Ali Basha did not turn up for their meeting.

Hassan Al-Banna was waiting for a taxi outside the offices when gunfire from a group of youths in a car blasted him and his brother-in-law Abdul Kerim Mohammed, who was wounded in the arms and legs. The Muslim Brotherhood did not end because of the death of their founder – the one-time school teacher in Ismailia on the Suez Canal, and a man who cited the Koran as support for all his arguments. Rather, although shaken by events, the Brotherhood all but began again. They entered the 1950s with a readjustment of the organisation in a new world: the world of military rule.