The Special Apparatus (al-Niẓām al-Khāṣṣ): The Rise of Nationalist Militancy in the Ranks of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood

Abstract

Existing scholarship has largely focused on the role of Sayyid Qutb’s ideas when analyzing the Muslim Brotherhood’s violent history. Perceiving Qutb’s ideas as paving the way for radical interpretations of jihad, many studies linked the Brotherhood’s violent history with this key ideologue. Yet, in so doing, many studies overlooked the importance of the Special Apparatus in shaping this violent history of the Brotherhood, long before Qutb joined the organization. Through an in-depth study of memoires and accounts penned by Brotherhood members and leaders, and a systematic study of British and American intelligence sources, I attempt to shed light on this understudied formation of the Brotherhood, the Special Apparatus. This paper looks at the development of anti-colonial militancy in Egypt, particularly the part played by the Brotherhood until 1954. It contends that political violence, in the context of British colonization, antedated the Brotherhood’s foundation, and was in some instances considered as a legitimate and even distinguished duty among anti-colonial factions. The application of violence was on no account a part of the Brotherhood’s core strategy, but the organization, nevertheless, established an armed and secret wing tasked with the fulfillment of what a segment of its members perceived as the duty of anti-colonial jihad.

1. Introduction

On 26 October 1954, while Egyptian Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser was addressing a rally, to celebrate the signing of an evacuation agreement between revolutionary Egypt and the United Kingdom on al-Manshiyya square in Alexandria, a botched attempt was made on his life. Standing among the rejoicing crowd was a 41-year-old plumber and member of the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin)1 and its armed wing, the Special Apparatus (al-Niẓām al-Khāṣṣ). He had arrived in Alexandria on the 09:30 train from Cairo on the day of Nasser’s speech and joined the crowd on its way to the square from where Nasser was to address the Egyptian nation. As the large audience was listening to the man who, in the foreseeable future, would become a symbol of Arab Nationalism, the would-be assassin, Mahmoud Abdel Latif, drew a handgun and fired eight rounds at the Prime Minister, only to miss his target (NA 1954, vol. I, p. 8). Abdel Latif was subsequently apprehended, court martialed, and hanged.2 As a direct result of Abdel Latif firing these eight failed but fateful rounds, the Ikhwan organization was exposed to a sweeping crackdown intended to uproot the organization and interrupt its activities all over Egypt. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, thousands of the Brotherhood’s leaders and members were arrested, packed into overcrowded prison cells, and exposed to harsh torture and mistreatment. On 1 November 1954, the military junta set up ‘the People’s Tribunal’ (Maḥkamat al-Shaʿb), a military court headed by the revolution’s “wild man” Gamal Salem and seconded by the two revolutionary officers Anwar Al-Sadat and Hussein al-Shafiʿi (Frampton 2018, p. 248). The tribunal had the avowed aim of prosecuting the members of an organization which “disguised its real terroristic aims under the cloak of religion […] This gang, which is operated and organized in secrecy, was willing to destroy everything on its way to the one overarching goal of becoming rulers of Egypt” (NA 1954, vol. VI, p. 1365). The Brotherhood members who stood trial became easy prey to draconian measures due to the lack of due process. Contemporary observers noted that Salem appeared to be engaging in a personal vendetta against the defendants (see NA 1954, vol. I, p. 154, vol. II, p. 461; FO 371/108319, JE 1016/24, No. 226 (1012/126/54), British Embassy, Cairo, 11 December 1954; Mitchell 1993, p. 155). In what was ostensibly a coordinated campaign, the official religious institutions were also mobilized concurrently to discredit the Brotherhood. As an example, on November 17, the Grand Council of Ulema (religious scholars) issued a statement denouncing the Brotherhood’s “deviation from the holy Koran”. The ulema condemned the Ikhwan’s “use of violence, terrorism, aggression, [and] deceit”, asserting that such acts as the Brotherhood was accused of were transgressions “of the limits appointed by God” (FO 371/108319, JE 1016/20, No. 238, Mr. F.R.H Murray, From Cairo to FO, 18 November 1954).

Adding insult to injury, on 4 December 1954, the ‘People’s Tribunal’ pronounced its first verdicts, condemning seven to death, and seven others to life imprisonment with hard labor, while a large group received varying prison sentences. Among those sentenced to death was Hasan al-Hudaybi, the Brotherhood’s second leader (1951–1973), a current and former member of the Brotherhood’s Guidance Office (Maktab al-Irshād),3 the organization’s highest executive office, as well as commanders of the Special Apparatus.4 On 9 December, six of the death sentences were carried out, while al-Hudaybi’s verdict was commuted to life imprisonment with hard labor (FO 371/108319, JE 1016/24, No. 226 (1012/126/54) British Embassy, Cairo, 11 December 1954).

The Manshiyya incident was unquestionably a costly affair for the Muslim Brotherhood. Apart from leading to the organization’s dissolution and the hanging of leading members, the Brotherhood was labeled a notorious terrorist organization acting against the nation’s interests and straying from the right Islamic path. This censure, no matter the veracity of the claims, came to adversely affect the Brotherhood’s image in society for some time to come. In the following decades, the organization was presented in state-sponsored media as a gang of terrorists and killers (see NA 1965, p. 11). The Special Apparatus, which was held responsible for the botched attempt, was a mainstay of focus in the official smear campaign against the Brotherhood. Media outlets and official spokesmen pointed to the Apparatus and its history as clear evidence of the Brotherhood’s ferocious plotting. It was, as stated by the ‘People’s Tribunal’, “[a]n armed and secret army prepared to wage a vicious war against the government and against the peaceful sons of Egypt” (NA 1954, vol. VI, p. 1398). Such accusations continued to cling to the Brotherhood decades afterwards. According to the main accusations made against the Brotherhood again and again, through its military wing, the Brotherhood has proven itself to be a terrorist organization and is responsible for numerous violent acts (Trends Research and Advisory 2020, pp. 291, 295).5

In view of such ongoing allegations in which the Brotherhood’s violent past and “present” take centerstage, this paper intends to shed light on the history of the Special Apparatus as a manifestation of the organization’s anti-colonial past. It argues that while the Brotherhood became involved in a variety of violent political acts against British and Egyptian officials alike, this was not a distinctive feature of the Ikhwan, but represented the hallmark of an era characterized by sentiments of hostility to colonization. Considering violent actions as a legitimate means to achieve political ends, nationalist groups had engaged in such actions since the early 20th century, even before the foundation and politicization of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was during the 1940s, and within the framework of anti-colonial agitation, that the Brotherhood began to engage in similar actions, leading to the Brotherhood’s dissolution in 1948 and subsequently in 1954.

Thus, I contend that the Brotherhood’s adoption of political violence should be understood as a continuation of this pre-Ikhwani struggle for independence (Hourani 2013, p. 310). What distinguished the Brotherhood’s violence from other types of nationalist violence of this era was the Ikhwan’s unambiguous framing of it in an idiom drawn from Islamic concepts.

There exists today a voluminous body of literature addressing questions of radicalization and political violence as related to the Islamist movement in Egypt. A number of these studies have linked the militarization of the Brotherhood with the prison writings of Sayyid Qutb between 1954 and 1966 (executed in 1966). By way of illustration, Gilles Kepel maintained that Qutb filled the ideological vacuum left by Hasan Al-Banna’s death in 1949 by disseminating a radical worldview. According to Kepel, the Nasserite prison camps led to a militarization of the Islamist movement in Egypt. “In the seclusion of the Nasser regime’s concentration camps, new strategies were developed to fight against a state whose totalitarian character the imprisoned Brethren quickly perceived” (Kepel 1985, pp. 27, 37). Taking Kepel’s argument a step further, Fawaz Gerges claimed in a recent book that Qutb “eschewed gradualist political engagement and social mobilization in favor of nourishing a subversive vanguard that would spearhead the institution of a new Islamist utopia” (Gerges 2018, p. 243). According to Gerges, there was a striking disparity between Al-Banna’s gradualist approach and Qutb’s prioritization of “armed struggle and subversion against Nasser” (Gerges 2018, p. 243). Such claims link the radicalization of Islamist activists in Egypt with the Qutbian discourse, as provided in his well-known and often-cited prison book “Milestones” (Kepel 1985; Toth 2013; Calvert 2010; Moussalli 1992; Khatab 2001). The main argument of this rich and important line of research is that Sayyid Qutb, more than anyone else, came to shape the idea of a modern jihad, which became pivotal in anti-establishment violence in Egypt. Peter C. Weber claimed that Qutb was instrumental in charting “the road of confrontation” in the Egyptian context (Weber 2013, p. 517). It was during the Nasserite years, argues Weber, that Qutb “reduced [society] to the pre-Islamic jahiliyya and declared the ruler outside Islam, hence excommunicating him” and thereby legitimizing violence against the rulers. This instance of “takfīr” (excommunication of self-proclaimed Muslims) was the first in the history of the Ikhwan, according to Weber (Weber 2013, pp. 517–18).

Mark Sedgwick has, however, in a recent article, pointed to the role played by the Special Apparatus in shaping the violent history of the Muslim Brotherhood, and more generally in the Egyptian context. Studying the Apparatus as a vehicle of anti-colonial terrorism, Sedgwick argued convincingly that, while the Brotherhood engaged in “several varieties of violence,” it was “never primarily a terrorist organization” (Sedgwick 2021, p. 2). By so doing, Sedgwick puts the Brotherhood’s application of violence in a historical framework that goes beyond the focus on Sayyid Qutb as the main ideologue of Islamist violence. I concur with Sedgwick in perceiving the Special Apparatus, which dates back to the early 1940s, as a vehicle of a specifically Islamic version of that generation’s pervasive anti-British and anti-establishment sentiments which, in many instances, were translated into political violence. As this article will demonstrate, during the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the Brotherhood developed a specific understanding of the nationalist struggle which was based on an interpretation of jihad as violent, anti-colonial and, at times, anti-establishment conduct. This interpretation and its translation into tangible acts predated Qutb’s transformation to Islamism, which took place at the earliest in 1949 and before he formally joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 1953 (Al-Khalidi 1994, p. 323). Thus, while I agree with the above-described claims in perceiving Qutb’s writings as instrumental in developing a pathbreaking understanding of modern jihad, the aim of this article is to shed light on the Brotherhood’s violent history in a colonial setting. In so doing, I attempt to show that violence within the ranks of the Brotherhood predated Qutb and was a result of anti-colonial sentiment in Egyptian society. The ideas of Qutb, on the other hand, came about in post-colonial Egypt, and they dealt with a particular reality in which the British occupier was on his way out. The significance of Qutb’s writings lies in the fact that he, from his prison cell, tried to devise a reading of the Nasserite regime. It was on this account, and as a response to the harsh repression the Brotherhood was witnessing, that Qutb, in his final analysis, offered a bleak reading of society (Qutb 2007). As I argue, herein lies one of the key differences between the two understandings of violence.

It is the aim of this article to offer a concise journey into the Apparatus’s history, ideas, and most importantly its actions as a militant wing in the context of anti-colonial and anti-establishment political opposition in the pre-revolutionary years. I intend therefore to study the raison d’être of the Apparatus, the context in which it was established, and the extent and nature of its participation in political violence in pre-revolutionary Egypt. In so doing, I seek to offer an alternative version of this violent history of the Brotherhood, a narrative in which Sayyid Qutb’s ideas are not at the forefront. Thus, my contribution attempts to historicize the violence of the Brotherhood, tracing its early beginnings to the colonial era.

2. Early Anti-Colonialism in the History of Egypt

Born in 1906 in al-Mahmudiyya, a small provincial town in the governate of Buhayra in northern Egypt, the young Hasan Al-Banna grew up in an Egyptian context of growing anti-British sentiment. The year of Al-Banna’s birth witnessed a violent clash between officers of the British army and local Egyptian villagers in a small village in northern Egypt. This incident has thenceforth been referred to as the “Ḥādith Dinshwāy” (the Denshawai Incident), named after the village in which it took place.

What started as a small and presumably coincidental scuffle between local villagers and individual British officers soon turned into a political issue with longstanding political and social implications. It all started when a group of five British army officers, an Egyptian policeman, and a dragoman went out for pigeon shooting near the village of Denshawai. The pigeon shooting, which took place not far from the villagers’ houses, angered the indigenous villagers, who attacked the British officers when fire broke out in a threshing floor. The indigenous villagers assumed that the British officers had been responsible for the fire and therefore channeled their indignation against them. In the course of this clash, a British officer and an Egyptian fellah were killed, while three Egyptian men and one woman were shot and wounded by British fire (Vatikiotis 1985, p. 205; Mansfield 1971, pp. 167–68).6

Nothing about this incident was, so far, extraordinary. It embodied an accidental dispute between officers and villagers. However, the British authorities conceived this confrontation as potentially dangerous if not pursued remorselessly (Blunt 1907, pp. 40, 59). As a direct repercussion and in order to make an example out of it, fifty-two Egyptians were arrested and appeared before a special court convened to punish the “assailants”. The prosecution accused the local villagers of premeditated murder. Presided over by the Boutrus Ghali, the Coptic Minister of Justice, and including three British officials, the court passed severe sentences on the accused. While four were condemned to death, many others were either sentenced to imprisonment with hard labor or public whipping. The flogging was carried out the following day, publicly, and in a brutal way, so as to make an example of it. This incident, which took place in late July 1906, was described by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt as an example of “injustice [… and] an act of terror of which either our officials there or Lord Cromer have certainly been guilty” (Blunt 1907, p. 8).

To many Egyptians, this incident and its consequences came to symbolize the cruelty and wrongdoing of the British administration against the autochthonous population. A lasting consequence of this incident was the growing acceptance of violent agitation against the colonial administration promoted by, among others, the Egyptian journalist and lawyer Mustafa Kamil Pasha, founder of the National Party (al-Ḥizb al-Waṭanī).7 The main demand of this newly formed party was the “immediate evacuation of the British from Egypt.” To Kamil and his National Party, any means that could secure Egypt’s independence was legitimate, including, if need be, “mass political violence”(Vatikiotis 1985, pp. 205–6, 226–67; Gifford 2013, p. 93).

In a correlated development indicating the surge of anti-colonial sentiment, a number of underground groups were emerging in Egypt aiming at undermining British occupation (Gifford 2013, p. 92). The groups included some of Egypt’s most prominent political figures and future prime ministers, such as Saad Zaghloul (1859–1927), Ahmad Maher (1888–1945), and Mahmoud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi (1888–1948). Deeming assassinations and clandestine violence as the proper way of eroding British authority, these groups began cropping up in Egypt and carrying out violent, if limited attacks against British personnel and Egyptians they deemed collaborationists (Gifford 2013, p. 91).

In other words, political violence, understood as a legitimate device to end occupation, was implemented by representatives of nearly every political affiliation in Egypt before the foundation of the Brotherhood. As we shall see shortly, this intent to free Egypt from colonization would become a substantial justification for the establishment of an armed wing within the Brotherhood. However, before discussing the history of this armed wing of the Ikhwan, I will review the Brotherhood’s understanding of nationalism in summary.

3. The Nationalism of the Muslim Brotherhood: An Ideological Reaction to Colonization

Founded in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood was the manifestation of Hasan Al-Banna’s desire to change what he perceived as the displeasing conditions in his beloved Egypt and, more generally, in the Arab and Muslim World.8 To Al-Banna, the occupation of Egypt and the subservience of the Egyptian people represented a deplorable situation which had to be changed by any means possible. What started as a society for charitable work and the education of the masses in al-Ismailiyya soon turned into a mass organization comprising hundreds of thousands of members. Concurrent with the expansion of membership numbers came about a politicization of the Brotherhood’s discourse and an explication of its anti-British jihad. This growth in numbers and development of ideas occurred mainly after the move of the organization’s headquarters to Cairo in 1932. It was in the capital city, with its animated and energetic mass population, that the Brotherhood seriously came in contact with the political sentiments of the Egyptian population, and began to develop a clear understanding of the means to rid Egypt of British occupation.

The Brotherhood propagated, in this regard, an understanding of nationalism based on three interconnected spheres: the Egyptian, Arab, and Islamic. Adding to this, Al-Banna charted a course in which the struggle (jihad) for the liberation of Egypt and the greater Arab and Islamic world would pave the way for the propagation of the Islamic idea among all peoples (Al-Banna 2004, p. 22).

By blending strong nationalist sentiment and anti-colonial agitation with Islam and aspects of cultural authenticity, the Brotherhood attained a substantial ability to recruit strongly among the youth during the late 1930s and early 1940s, thus becoming one of Egypt’s largest organizations, with 500,000 members (Lia 2010, p. 285).9 I argue that this brand of anti-British nationalism amalgamated with Islamic tenets were paramount in the Brotherhood’s ability to recruit new members. Deeming the Brotherhood as promoting a concrete vehicle to combat the British and an Islamic idea resonating among a segment of Egypt’s youth, the Ikhwan came to take a lead in anti-colonial contention in Egypt.

4. The Special Apparatus: A Vehicle for Anti-Colonial Jihad

On 20 February 1910, as the Egyptian Prime Minister Boutrus Ghali Pasha left his office in the ministry of foreign affairs to ride home in his car, he was approached by a young man pretending he wished to lodge a complaint with the Prime Minister. The man, Ibrahim Nasif al-Wardani, was in fact a pharmacist and a member of the Nationalist Party and the secret society The Black Hand. When he came close to Ghali Pasha, the young pharmacist drew a gun and fired six fatal rounds at him. Ghali Pasha passed away shortly afterwards (Azb and Khalifa 2011, p. 14). In assassinating the Prime Minister, al-Wardani was translating into reality his dictum “It is impossible to free a nation with speeches” (Salim 1975, p. 11). For this act, perceived in nationalist circles as patriotic, al-Wardani was dubbed “deer of the land” (Salim 1975, p. 10; Goldschmidt 1993, p. 186; Azb and Khalifa 2011 pp. 41–42).

Accused of being in league with the British and denounced for presiding over the special tribunal of the Denshawai incident, inter alia, Butrus Ghali Pasha fell victim to the nationalists’ vengeance. Al-Wardani, who had studied pharmacy in Switzerland and graduated from the University of Lausanne, became a member of the National Party on his return to Egypt. During his stay in Europe, the young Egyptian had been attracted by European ideas of clandestine violence as a means of reaching political goals. After shooting the Prime Minister six times, he did not make any effort to escape, and when apprehended, he confessed to the murder, describing his act as a patriotic one against a “traitor” (Salim 1975, pp. 12–13; Azb and Khalifa 2011, pp. 16–17; Gifford 2013, p. 93).

The assassination of Butrus Ghali was an omen of what would come in the following decades as regards political assassinations and anti-British agitation. What awaited Egypt was a long list of notorious assassinations and assassination attempts of Egyptian public figures and British personnel10 (Reid 1982, pp. 628–29, 647–49).11

I argue in this regard that the Brotherhood’s own violent history should be interpreted and understood as a continuation of this violent history, which occurred as a direct result of the occupation of Egypt. The establishment of the Special Apparatus as a secret structure within the organization of the Brotherhood took place sometime between 1938 and 1940. It came in the wake of increasing demands from the expanding membership of the Brotherhood to confront the British. It is thus my contention that the violence of this Apparatus should be understood and studied as part and parcel of anti-British sentiment and activities that date back to the early twentieth century. It was at that time that prominent Egyptian politicians and activists, such as the celebrated nationalist leader Sa’d Zaghloul, began to engage in subversive activities to end British occupation. The Brotherhood, however, interpreted and explained their conduct in religious terms, considering anti-colonial agitation as an individual obligation of jihad (farḍ ʿayn) (Al-Sabbagh 1989, pp. 63, 104).12

Secrecy in the ranks of the Brotherhood dates back to the early 1930s, when the organization began to incorporate ideas of clandestinity into its organizational frame. This clandestinity was deemed the best means to protect the organization against infiltration and persecution. By way of illustration, in 1932 the Brotherhood’s bylaw obliged members to maintain their weekly meetings in “secret places”. These weekly meetings were mandatory for all cadres, and the bylaw underscored the importance of not allowing anyone outside the organization’s ranks into the meetings, unless permission was explicitly given by the meeting’s chair (Dessouqi 2012, p. 17).13 In addition and complementing the secrecy of the Brotherhood, a pledge of “preforming jihad in the defense of my religion” was inserted into the Brotherhood’s bylaw (Dessouqi 2012, p. 19). This oath was at this point in time restricted to the highest echelons of the Brotherhood and was a substantial alteration of the Brotherhood’s former bylaw which stipulated that the Brotherhood was obliged to defend Islam but “within the limits of law” (Dessouqi 2012, p. 5).

These two interrelated traits were central in the foundation of the Special Apparatus a few years later,14 i.e., the jihad obligation and the protection of the Ikhwan organization were its main objectives if we are to believe the words of its founders (Abdel Halim 2013, p. 288). It was, as explained by one of its top members, a translation of the Brotherhood’s serious intent to “combat the British with the strength of arms until they withdraw their troops from Egypt” (Al-Sabbagh 1989, p. 62; see also Abdel Halim 2013, p. 290). The establishment of the Apparatus should also be understood in light of a broader historical context in which events in neighboring Palestine constituted an additional motive for its foundation. Al-Niẓām al-Khāṣṣ was established at a time when the “Great Arab Revolt”15 was shaping events in Palestine, and its establishment can therefore rightly be interpreted as a rection to these events too. Mahmoud Abdel Halim relates that the Apparatus had the two-pronged aims of fighting the British and their “stooges” in Egypt and preparing a well-structured militant formation to “save the Aqsa Mosque” (Abdel Halim 2013, p. 288).16 As will be seen briefly below, the Special Apparatus took active part in the first Arab Israeli war of 1948–1949, which points to the importance of this issue in the formation of the Apparatus.17

On this account, the Apparatus’ architects developed a syllabus that combined religious education with political refinement and physical and military instruction. The members would accordingly, upon joining the Apparatus, undertake a “deep and thorough study of the concept of jihad in Islam” coupled with heavy physical training and instruction in the use of firearms. The activists would also undergo training in how to secretly distribute pamphlets, communicate clandestinely, and operate underground (Abdel Halim 2013, p. 289). Secrecy and militancy were in other words the two main hallmarks of al-Niẓām al-Khāṣṣ.

I will now concisely depict the raison d’être and organizational framework of the Apparatus, as presented by its own members. Doing so, I will proceed to discuss how the abovementioned militancy was translated into violent actions against British occupiers and Egyptian officials.

“The Muslim Army [The Special Apparatus] was being constructed to fulfill the obligation of jihad” was the reasoning offered by Mahmoud Al-Sabbagh about the establishment of the Apparatus (Al-Sabbagh 1989, p. 127). Erected as a hierarchical formation of tight-knit cells, the Apparatus was headed by a leading committee of the five Brothers Abdel Rahman al-Sindi, Mustafa Mashhur, Mahmoud Al-Sabbagh, Ahmad Zaki Hassan, and Ahmad Hasanein (Al-Sabbagh 1989, pp. 87–95).18

Born to lower-class rural families, these young men had moved to urban centers to gain access to education and acquire employment. It was within this process of education and urbanization that these men became conscious of the national cause and shouldered responsibility for its redemption. However, unlike their predecessors of nationalists and anti-British agitators who had interpreted the battle in secular terms, the members and leaders of the Apparatus understood and propagated the task through an Islamic idiom combining nationalism with an Islamic framework.

Muhammad Mahdi Akef, who became the seventh Murshid (guide) of the Brotherhood, describes the Nizam of which he became a member as an elite force tasked with accomplishing special missions. Besides combating the British, the Apparatus was charged with “erasing the military ignorance” of the Egyptian population. The objectives of the Apparatus were, in the words of Akef, a realization of the Islamic obligation of jihad (Akef 2017). Hasan al-Hudaybi, the second leader of the Brotherhood, described the Apparatus as a formation entrusted with the task of “Shaping the Muslim Subject in the right way [and] to endow him with the ability to defend the Islamic Nation.” The Apparatus would, in the words of al-Hudaybi, be prepared to fight the British in the Canal Zone or to send its members to any other occupied area of the Muslim World (NA 1954, vol. IV, pp. 789, 826).

Despite the Brotherhood’s firm attempts to keep these aims and the very Apparatus hidden, it seems that the British had gotten wind of them during the war years. In 1942, a British report noted that Hasan Al-Banna was promoting among his followers the belief that “[i]t is every Moslem’s duty to fight Great Britain with all his might” (WO 208/1561 Security Summary Middle East No. 13, Published by S.I.M.E. Cairo, 17 January 1942). Such views were undoubtedly disquieting reading for British officials who conceived the Brotherhood as a potential root of unrest. Voicing explicit concerns about the Brotherhood, another British intelligence report remarked that “[t]he militant and xenophobic character of the Ikhwan, and the fact that throughout Egypt there are a large number of arms (largely obtained from abandoned dumps in the Western Desert) that could be brought into use should feeling be sufficiently aroused, make the Ikhwan a potential danger that cannot be discounted” (FO 371/41334, J 3812/16/44, “PIC Paper No. 49 (Revised): Ikhwan el Muslimeen”, 25 July 1944; WO 208/1560, “Fifth Column Activities in Egypt”, 20 November 1941).

Corroborating the abovementioned anxieties and presumably pointing to the Special Apparatus, a Foreign Office telegram from May 1942 stated that “there was more and more evidence to show that the Ikhwan el Muslimin [sic] had been very carefully organized for Fifth Column purposes.” The telegram additionally disclosed that the Ikhwan “had laid down the nuclei of sabotage organizations,” and it listed a number of Brothers whom it “regarded as dangerous” (FO 141/838, telegram D.S. (E)/200/42 reporting “First fortnightly meeting with Amin Osman Pacha held at the Embassy on 18 May 1942”).

I will now concisely turn to the organizational structure of the Apparatus before I proceed to shed light on some of the violent incidents in which the Apparatus was engaged. In so doing, I intend to show that the Brotherhood took the lead in anti-British activities and became a potent force in this regard during the second half of the 1940s and during the 1950s. However, by turning to anti-colonial violence following the end of World War II and by consenting to political violence as a legitimate means to achieve Egypt’s independence, the Brotherhood was encircled in a bitter struggle with the governments of the day. This led to several notorious acts of violence in the post-war years, culminating in the assassination of Prime Minister Al-Nuqrashi Pasha at the hands of Apparatus militants in December 1948, and the subsequent slaying of Al-Banna in February 1949 as an act of revenge for the Prime Minister’s death. Senior members of the Brotherhood and founding members of the Apparatus insist that its purpose was to “fight the colonizers and their stooges” (Abdel Rahman al-Sindi, quoted in Muhammad 1987, p. 371). It was this latter perception of some Egyptian officials as stooges of the British that consequently justified their killing at the hands of Apparatus militants.

The main body of the Apparatus was organized into cells of five members19, with a chief commanding each cell (NA 1954, vol. I, p. 33). The structures of the Apparatus had a strong presence in Cairo and some of the larger cities in addition to cities where the British had a strong presence, such as in the Suez Canal Zone (NA 1954, vol. I, p. 33). With its tightly knit structure and clandestine nature, the Apparatus was kept under wraps even from “mainstream”20 members and leaders of the Brotherhood. The structures of the Apparatus were organized locally under the direction of the geographic Brotherhood branch. Thus, by way of illustration, in 1954 the Cairo branch was divided into seven districts, each of which contained a unit of the Apparatus numbering 30 members. Every unit was directed by a senior commander. All seven districts with their units were centrally commanded by Ibrahim al-Tayyib, a lawyer and senior member of the Brotherhood. Al-Tayyib was considered chief of the Apparatus in Cairo, and he was directly accountable to the Apparatus’s head, Yusuf Talʿat.21 Commands from the central leadership descended through this hierarchical order down to the Apparatus’s rank and file (NA 1954, vol. I, pp. 38–39).

Upon enlisting as a new member of the Nizām, the newcomer was asked to acquire a handgun with his own money as proof of his engagement, alacrity, and willingness to make a sacrifice for its sake. Thereupon began a process of vetting in which the seriousness, loyalty, and skills of the recruit were assessed. When the member passed this inauguration phase, he was brought to a dwelling in the ancient quarter of al-Salība in the vicinity of the well-known al-Sayyida Zaynab neighborhood in the southern part of Cairo. There, in a chamber with dimmed lights, the recruit was introduced to a veiled man who handed out a disc on which was placed a Quran and a handgun. Putting his hands on the Quran and the gun, the initiated Brother swore an oath of allegiance, pledging to “obey the General Guide both in times of ease and hardship,”22 to “execute jihad in the name of Islam,” and to “adhere to secrecy and dedication”(Al-Sabbagh 1989, p. 132; see also Muhyiddin 1992, p. 45; Al-Sadat 1957, p. 80).

The wording of the oath was meant to symbolize the intrinsic correlation between the nationalistic patriotic duties represented by the gun and the obvious religious symbolism of the Quran. This linking of the gun with the Quran was thus meant to signify the way in which the Apparatus interpreted anti-British violence, i.e., as a religious obligation of jihad.

5. The Special Apparatus: A Past of Anti-Colonial and Anti-Establishment Violence (1942–1952)

In the evening of Saturday 12 February 1949, as he was leaving the headquarters of the Young Men’s Muslim Association alongside his brother-in-law Abdel Karim Mansour, Hasan Al-Banna was shot seven times. The assassins who approached the Murshid, just as he was entering a taxi, fled the site in a black car, leaving their victim wounded in front of the YMMA headquarters (Muhammad 1987, pp. 511–12). Mansour and Al-Banna were brought to the Qasr al-Eine hospital located at the Nile’s bank, where the latter drew his last breath within a few hours (Muhammad 1987, p. 517).

Hasan Al-Banna’s death marked the culmination of a bitter struggle between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saʿdist regime23—a struggle that had taken a heavy toll on Egypt throughout 1948 and 1949 in terms of political violence and state-sanctioned repression, as we will see shortly.

Yet, the violent history of the Brotherhood precedes this conflict with the Saʿdist regime and dated to the early 1940s, when the establishment of the Apparatus brought forth the first incidents of Brotherhood-related violence. These incidents, albeit scanty and limited at the time, represented a turning point in the history of the organization. I will therefore address this violent trail of the Ikhwan to illustrate how the Brotherhood in this period transformed its modus operandi, sanctioning violence in the nationalist struggle. This trail of the Brotherhood’s beginning in about 1942 slightly anteceded the period that Donald Malcom Reid has coined as the “Second Wave of Assassinations, 1945–1949” (Reid 1982, p. 632). It was, however, during this “second wave,” and in accordance with the spirit of the age, that the Brotherhood’s most notorious acts of violence took place, thus adding fuel to the already kindled flames of Egyptian politics.

That the Brotherhood held anti-British ideas and worked to translate them into tangible activities on the ground was not a novel thing. In fact, since at least 1938 and 1939, British intelligence sources had been pointing to the Brotherhood as an organization carrying out “undesirable activities.” Accordingly, The British War Office found it indispensable to “curtail their activities” to prevent the situation from escalating (FO 371/21881, E 5898, No. 1077 (8/259/38), British Embassy Alexandria, 26 September 1938). One year on, and in line with previous estimates, the British described the Brotherhood as “a fanatical and subversive anti-British association of Moslems” inciting the masses to fight the British (WO 208/502, No. SD.P. 866, “Note on Wilhelm Stellbogen” 23 October 1939). Such perceptions of the Brotherhood as “anti-British” and “subversive” were predicated on intel reaching the British officials in Egypt.

It was not before 1942, however, that the Brotherhood was associated with a violent action against the British for the first time. At this juncture, two Ikhwan members were arrested and accused of a launching a grenade attack against a British club in December of that year (Muhammad 1987, p. 373). Mahmoud Abdel Halim, a chronicler of the Brotherhood’s history, reports that this attack on the British club at a time when it was known to be packed with British soldiers and officers was executed by the Apparatus. Its aim was to terrorize the soldiers, thus deterring them from insulting ordinary Egyptians (Abdel Halim 2013, p. 294).24 Concurrently, and pointing to an increase in the number of incidents, two other Brotherhood members were arrested and brought to trial, arraigned on conspiracy charges. According to these charges, the Brothers had been plotting against the British and had acquired firearms to this end (Shammakh 2012, p. 16; for a contemporary British account on the Ikhwan see FO 141/838 “The Ikhwan al Muslimin Reconsidered” 10 December 1942).25 This violent turn was not, however, restricted to the Ikhwan. In this same period, and pointing to a more general trend in Egypt, a group of young nationalists affiliated with Hussein Tawfiq26 and Anwar Al-Sadat (Egypt’s president 1970–1981) had been attacking British soldiers (El-Sadat 1978, p. 58).

As the war neared its end in February 1945, and as an omen of things to come, the Egyptian Prime Minister and leader of the Saadist party, Ahmad Maher, was assassinated in the parliament building. Maher’s assassin was Mahmoud al-Issawi, a young lawyer, ardent nationalist, and member of al-Hizb al-Watani. Shooting Maher four times in the chest, al-Issawi perceived his act a patriotic deed against a treacherous Prime Minister (Ali 1978, p. 191). In al-Issawi’s eyes, Maher’s fatal transgression was that he had secured parliamentary endorsement to declare war on the Axis, thus making Egypt entitled to membership in the United Nations (Reid 1982, p. 634). This was conceived by al-Issawi as a manifestation of treasonous obsequiousness towards the British. Al-Issawi was hanged in September 1945, at which time he had confessed to being a member of al-Hizb al-Watani, but some accounts point to the Special Apparatus as the actual mastermind behind this incident.

Among those who point to a Brotherhood involvement was Ahmad Hasan Al-Baqouri, a close confidant of Al-Banna. Besides being member of al-Hizb al-Watani, Mahmoud al-Issawi, according to Al-Balouris’s autobiographical account, was also a member of the Brotherhood and its Special Apparatus. It was in his capacity as an ardent militant of the Apparatus, and upon orders from its commanders, that al-Issawi fired the lethal rounds at the Prime Minister (Al-Baqouri 1988, p. 49).27

Notwithstanding the Nizam’s involvement in this assassination,28 the incident itself heralded an escalation of violent incidents in Egypt. What followed was a series of attacks committed by young militants and directed at British soldiers and Egyptian officials alike.

In December 1945, by way of illustration, Hussein Tawfiq made a botched attempt on al-Nahhas Pasha’s life (El-Sadat 1978, p. 71; Mitchell 1993, p. 59).29 A month later, Tawfiq tried his luck again. This time he targeted Amin Othman, the wartime minister of finance and Nahas’ main link with the British Embassy. Othman was denounced by his assailants as a traitor who had had too-friendly relations with the British. Othman had gone so far as to proclaim, “Egypt and Great Britain are bound by a catholic [indissoluble] marriage.” On 6 January 1946, Hussain Tawfiq shot and killed Amin Othman, thus punishing him for his “treason of the nationalist cause” (Shadi 1987, p. 73; Mitchell 1993, p. 59).

The context for this development was the increasingly loud nationalist demand for independence following World War II—a demand that the British were not prepared to accommodate. This disheartening reality became obvious following the war, when the British expressed their intentions “of looking into the possibility of preliminary talks” rather than offering any actual promises of withdrawal (Vatikiotis 1985, p. 358). This certainly fell short of most Egyptians’ expectations, i.e., independence and the withdrawal of British forces. What resulted from this failure to recognize the Egyptian resolve was a period of “unprecedented ferocity and bloodshed” (Vatikiotis 1985, p. 358).30

I will now offer a few illustrations of the Apparatus’s involvement in these events. In so doing, I intend to shed light on the role played by the Apparatus in this development, thus putting the violence of al-Niẓām al-Khāṣṣ into the bigger picture of Egyptian politics of the day. Whereas the Apparatus’s first actions, if limited, took place during the war years, the volume and quality of its activities increased during the tumultuous post-war years. Translating into reality the dictum “jihad [is] an obligation on every Muslim and cannot be ignored or evaded,” the Apparatus set about attacking British targets more frequently than ever before in its history (Risālat al-Jihad (Al-Banna) quoted in Al-Sabbagh 1989, p. 35).

Kamil al-Sharif31 relates that from about 1945 the Brotherhood had been immersed in “assassinations of British soldiers in Cairo and Alexandria and bombing a number of their installments” (Al-Sharif 1987, pp. 28, 56). In order to acquire intelligence about the British bases, their personnel, and their weak spots, Apparatus militants worked on infiltrating British bases and other facilities and on gaining access to Egyptians working within these facilities (Al-Sharif 1987, pp. 40–41; Al-Bahi 2011, p. 31). A British document emphasized that this had been an undertaking of Brotherhood cadres, who were “collecting information on British troop movements, and making contacts with employees on the railways and in British military workshops and despots; it was suspected that they were making plans for eventual sabotage of our vital communications and installations” (FO 141/838 “The Ikhwan al Muslimin Reconsidered” 10 December 1942). In planning to “carry out a major campaign in the Canalarea [sic.],” the Brotherhood, according to evidence obtained by the British, had collected detailed plans “of camps, houses, etc. including that of the Commander in Chief’s [sic] and other Senior Naval and R.A.F. personnel” (FO 141/1342, “Arab Societies, Ikhwan el Muslimeen” 108/2/49G, Jenkins, Cairo to Head of SIME, GHQ MELF, DS (E) DS/P/62, 6 January 1949; see also Al-Sharif 1987, pp. 40–41; Al-Bahi 2011, p. 31).

The Apparatus’s activities were not, however, restricted to planning and collecting information, but involved violent attacks as well. In February 1946, amidst a general escalation of violence in Egypt, a British train transporting troops from Egypt to Palestine was attacked, leading to casualties among the British troops. The train that was on its way to Palestine was attacked with firearms, leading to at least two British casualties (FO 371/53330, XC15172, Mr. Bowker to Mr. Bevin telegram No. 499, 16 March 1946). Salah Shadi, a senior member of the Apparatus,32 recalls that three Brothers under his command attacked a British train going through Cairo “transporting troops from Egypt to Palestine” (Shadi 1987, p. 71; Al-Sabbagh 1989, p. 289). This episode was hastily followed by a grenade attack on a Cairo cinema frequently attended by British soldiers. The attack left two dead and thirty-seven wounded, including nine British soldiers (FO 371/53330, XC15172, Mr. Bowker to Mr. Bevin telegram No. 499, 16 March 1946). Regardless of whether the Apparatus had a hand in this incident,33 the British Ambassador, Lord Killearn, described the Brotherhood at this time as “the most dangerous elements” alongside the Young Egypt society (FO 371/53286, XC15100, J 946, telegram No. 377, Lord Killearn to FO, 3 March 1946).

In late 1946, the Special Apparatus coordinated several synchronized attacks on police stations in Cairo (Al-Sabbagh 1989, p. 278). These attacks were intended to display the discontent with the stalled Anglo–Egyptian negotiations, according to one of the militants who took part in them (Adel Kamal 1989, pp. 184–87).34 One more attack in 1946 struck the King George Hotel in al-Ismailiyya, a site known as frequently hosting British officers and their agents. Rifʿat al-Najjar from the Egyptian Air force and a cadre in the Brotherhood placed a briefcase containing explosives in the Hotel (Shadi 1987, pp. 87–91; Al-Sisi 2003, p. 133). Further attacks were directed at British soldiers and facilities in the Suez Canal Zone, such as an ambush on a British patrol of armed vehicles in al-Qantara and grenade attacks on British vehicles in al-Ismailiyya, inter alia.35

Richard P. Mitchell underlines that such attacks were carried out by apparently all political groups in Egypt and were directed against British and Egyptian officials alike (Mitchell 1993, p. 60). Along these lines, and pointing to the violent nature of the agitation at the time, a report compiled by the US Subcommittee for the Near and Middle East noted that “the flush of nationalist exuberance, occasioned by the final departure of British troops from Cairo to the Delta, have led to an increase in xenophobic incidents directed primarily against the British” (CIA-RDP78-01617A003000050001-2, Country report on Egypt, Report to the Special Ad Hoc Committee by the SWNC Subcommittee for the Near and Middle East, 31 July 1947).

However, what had taken place in 1946 and 1947 in the way of political violence somehow seemed to pale in comparison to what would happen during 1948. On 19 January 1948, 15 members of the Special Apparatus were apprehended while training on firearms. The arrest occurred after a brief exchange of fire between the police and the young militants. The young men were caught in possession of 165 bombs and boxes of arms in a remote spot of the Muqattam Hills on the outskirts of Cairo. Together with their leader, a senior member of the Apparatus, Sayyid Fayez, the young militants pleaded that the weapons in their possession were being stockpiled for the imminent war in Palestine (Adel Kamal 1989, p. 194).

Whereas these young men were released shortly afterwards, the very incident pointed to the degree of militarization taking place in Egypt and especially among the members of al-Niẓām. It was against this background that the Apparatus’s most notorious actions took place, leading to the Brotherhood’s dissolvement and the subsequent assassination of its leader in early 1949. Abdel Aziz Kamel, a senior Ikhwan member at the time, pointed to this period in the history of Egypt as one characterized by “firearms, grenades and dynamite” (Kamil 2006, p. 59). This becomes evident from the historical occurrences that took place during these eventful years.

On 22 March 1948, as he was heading to the court of appeal, Ahmad al-Khazindar was shot dead by two young members of the Apparatus. The deputy of court of appeal in Cairo, al-Khazindar had, in the eyes of his assailants, committed treachery by convicting a member of the Brotherhood for attacks on British soldiers and sentencing him to prison (Azb and Khalifa 2011, p. 330).

While the Palestine War of 1948 was the order of the day, violent incidents also increased in Egypt, probably indicating a spillover effect from events in the region. The assassination of al-Khazindar at the hand of Apparatus militants was followed by several eruptions of violence, such as the clash between Apparatus members and police forces in Zagazig in lower-Egypt. The two Brothers involved in this incident threw grenades at the police, injuring some of the officers (Adel Kamal 1989, p. 227).

The violence of the Apparatus was not only induced by events in Egypt, but was also affected by developments in neighboring Palestine. This eventful war, which would come to affect the region for decades to come, was closely monitored by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Special Apparatus had, in fact, taken an active part in the war, with its militants participating alongside other members from the Ikhwan. According to Brotherhood accounts, the organization lost about 100 members, who were killed in battle against IDF forces, while approximately the same number were taken prisoner, and some injured (Shadi 1987, p. 102). Many of those Brothers who volunteered for battle were, in fact, members of the Special Apparatus. Moreover, in the simmering heat of the summer months of 1948, militants of the Brotherhood coordinated several attacks on the Jewish quarter in Cairo in response to the ongoing events across Egypt’s borders (Adel Kamal 1989, p. 229). As a case in point, a bomb wrecked the building of Société Orientale de Publicité, widely suspected as supporting the Zionist cause (Mitchell 1993, p. 64; Al-Sabbagh 1989, p. 285–87). The Brotherhood not only fought in Palestine but brought the effects of the war back to Egypt, as this and similar incidents indicate.

This spiraling of violence and militarization seemed unstoppable as the following incidents illustrate. On 11 November 1948, in what can best be described as a stroke of bad luck, a Jeep was stopped and searched by police officers. To their surprise, the officers found the Jeep full to bursting point with arms, explosives, and documents. The Jeep, its contents and those found driving it belonged to the Special Apparatus. The documents seized disclosed many hitherto unknown details about the Apparatus, its members, hierarchy, and plans (Adel Kamal 1989, pp. 238–41).

In light of this upsurge in violence and militancy came the government’s decree to dissolve the Brotherhood. Announced on 8 December 1948, the dissolution decree was appended by a long explanatory note summarizing the grounds for disbanding the Ikhwan organization and arresting its members. The note listed thirteen allegations against the Brotherhood, among them the claim that the Brotherhood had been planning, since 1942, “to overthrow the existing order,”, in addition to a number of violent incidents for which the organization was called to account (Muhammad 1987, p. 411). What ensued from the dissolution was a repression of hitherto unseen dimensions, leading to the arrest of hundreds of the Ikhwan’s members, the closure of its branches and headquarters, and the confiscation of its funds and estates (Adel Kamal 1989, p. 263).

The repercussions of the outlawing of the Ikhwan were not long in coming. On 28 December 1948, Prime Minister Mahmoud Fahmy al-Nuqrashi was approached by a young man in a police officer’s uniform who discharged three fatal shots at the Prime Minister as he was entering the Ministry of Interior with his entourage of guards. The shooting left the Prime Minister severely wounded. The young man, Abdel Majid Ahmad Hasan, was, in fact, a 21-year-old student at the veterinary school, and a member of the Special Apparatus. He had been handpicked by the Apparatus to carry out the task of assassinating al-Nuqrashi in “his own den”. The Apparatus held the Prime Minister guilty of selling out on the national cause, betraying the Palestinian cause, and lastly, his “attack on Islam by dissolving the Muslim Brotherhood” (Adel Kamal 1989, pp. 277–79). Adel Kamal, a senior commander of the Apparatus, relates that the original plans of the day were to subsequently assassinate Ibrahim Abdel Hadi and Abdel Rahman Ammar when they showed up at the crime scene. The latter part of the plan was aborted (Adel Kamal 1989, p. 279).

The death of al-Nuqrashi did not put an end to the violence. On 13 January 1949, another event took place, pointing to the continuing clandestine activities of the Special Apparatus. Dressed as a prosecutor, Shafiq Ibrahim Anas went into the courthouse, where he placed a briefcase containing a bomb in the prosecutor’s office, intending to destroy evidence seized by the police in the abovementioned Jeep. The briefcase raised the suspicion of the court’s guards, who threw it outside the building, where it exploded. This time, the perpetrator was a 22-year-old clerk in the archives of the ministry of agriculture. Shafiq was apprehended shortly after the explosion (Adel Kamal 1989, pp. 291–93; Mitchell 1993, p. 68).

It was as a link in this bloodstained chain that Hasan Al-Banna was gunned down in front of the YMMA headquarters, leading to a further escalation of violence within Egypt. CIA reports during the early months of 1949 underlined that the danger of political violence being committed by the Brotherhood was on the rise. In a report from January 1949, it was noted that “assassination threats have been made against King Faruq, the Minister of National Defense, and the new Commandant of the Cairo police” (CIA-RDP82-00457R002200760006-2, Information Report, Central Intelligence Agency “Activity of the Ikhwan al- Muslimin”, Egypt, 14 January 1949). The Brotherhood’s principal target was Prime Minister Ibrahim Abdel Hadi, held responsible for the death of Hasan Al-Banna and the ongoing repression of the Brotherhood (Al-Sisi 2003, p. 229). The translation of threats into tangible acts was not long in coming. In the leafy suburb of al-Maadi, south of Cairo, a well-organized cell of the Apparatus ambushed a person whom they perceived to be Ibrahim Abdel Hadi. The cell, which had been searching for the right time and place for the assassination for a long period, made the attempt on 5 May 1949. Armed with firearms and grenades and positioned in a well-chosen spot from where they could observe Abdel Hadi’s car, the cell opened fire on a car, only to realize that the car they had attacked belonged to Hamid Juda, head of the Lower House of Parliament. To their misfortune, Juda’s car was the exact same model as the Prime Minister’s. Ten of the militants were immediately apprehended and prosecuted in what became known as the Hamid Juda case (Al-Sisi 2003, p. 229; Shadi 1987, pp. 114–15; Abdel Halim 2013, vol. II, p. 222).

What ensued from this episode was a continuation of clashes between Apparatus members and the police, resulting in more bloodshed. Regular shootouts persisted, and reports of the discovery of arms and “terrorist plots” had become an almost daily litany.36 Brotherhood militants who had escaped arrest went underground to fight a state they considered their adversary (Al-Sisi 2003, p. 229; see also CIA-RDP78-01617A004700010037-9, Intelligence Summary, Vol. IV, No. 3, Office of Reports and Estimates, CIA, 26 January 1949; CIA-RDP82-00457R002400240004-9, Information Report, CIA, “Alleged Financial Support of Ikhwan al-Muslimin by Soviets” Egypt/USSR, 24 February 1949).

These events, beginning with the dissolvement of the Brotherhood, the subsequent assassination of al-Nuqrashi Pasha and Hasan Al-Banna, and the violent repercussions they had resulted in, left the Brotherhood in a state of confusion. Upon losing its founder and lifelong leader and finding itself subject to widespread repression, the organization was compelled to navigate troubled waters. The Apparatus had undoubtedly played a key role in the events that had led to this crisis of the Brotherhood. Voices were therefore raised inside the Brotherhood, calling for the dismantling of the Apparatus. Hasan al-Hudaybi, the Brotherhood’s second leader, formally announced, upon his appointment in 1951, that one of his main tasks was to rid the Ikhwan of secrecy and militancy—the two hallmarks of the Apparatus (Ashour 2009, p. 64). Al-Hudaybi did not proceed with this task due to internal pressures from cadres of the Apparatus. Al-Niẓām al-Khāṣṣ was perceived as a vehicle for execution of the Jihad obligation, and no one was allowed to dismantle it, not even the Murshid, to the contention of its partisans (NA 1954, vol. III, p. 559). The Apparatus would consequently endure this crisis and continue to shape events within the Brotherhood up until late 1954, when the botched attempt on Gamal Abdel Nasser’s life and the subsequent repression of the Brotherhood seemed to convince most Brotherhood members that this branch of the organization did more harm than good.

6. Conclusions

Sir Ralph Stevenson, the British Ambassador to Egypt (1950–1955), maintained, in 1951, that the violent incidents that had engulfed Egypt from the end of World War II were “symptomatic of a malaise deeprooted [sic] in Egyptian life and politics. Every Egyptian political party has either used or connived at the use of violence for political ends” (FO 371/90115, JE 10110/15, 1019/27/51, No. 167, British Embassy, Cairo, 2 May 1951 (italics in original)). Yet, what Sir Stevenson considered a “malaise” inherent in Egyptian life was perceived by many Egyptians as a direct result of, and response to, the British colonization of Egypt. Since the early years of occupation, native Egyptians had attempted to wrest Egypt from the grip of British control. Violent eruptions had consequently taken place, leading to the deaths of, among others, Butrus Ghali, Ahmad Maher, and Mahmoud Fahmy al-Nuqrashi, three prime ministers deemed by their assassins as having been on too good a footing with the British occupiers. Peter Mansfield has described the last three decades of British occupation as being characterized by “constant friction which occasionally burst into flame.” Mansfield added that Egyptian sentiment towards the occupiers developed into “strident and emotional hostility” (Mansfield 1971, pp. xi–xii). In view of this, I set about discussing the raison d’être, hierarchy, and history of the Special Apparatus.

As shown in this paper, the Special Apparatus was established sometime between 1938 and 1940 as a militant vehicle to combat the British. This militant wing of the Muslim Brotherhood came to represent the actualization of a widespread desire among segments of the Brotherhood’s members to engage militarily with the British occupation. Accordingly, al-Niẓām al-Khāṣṣ endowed its members with a combination of religious education and military training in addition to instruction in clandestine activities. In this way, it shaped subjects who perceived militant activities against the British occupiers and “treacherous Egyptians” as a religiously ordained jihad. These young men took it upon their shoulders to free Egypt from British occupation, and they found in the Special Apparatus a vehicle that could enable them to pursue this task. It was particularly among this social group of urbanized and educated young men that the Apparatus found a pool of promising young men willing to sacrifice their lives for what they perceived as a sacred cause.

I contend that this particular Islamic version of the anti-colonial struggle, as formulated by the Ikhwan, should be studied as part and parcel of a more general struggle that encompassed almost every political group in Egypt at the time. The main thrust of my argument is that the Apparatus symbolized an Islamic version of that generation’s pervasive anti-colonialism and anti-establishment sentiment.

While in historical terms, the Nizam began its violent conduct on a limited basis during the early 1940s, it instigated some of the most violent events during the late 1940s, best illustrated by the assassinations of al-Khazindar and al-Nuqrashi in 1948. The Apparatus continued its activities relentlessly throughout 1948, 1949, and well into 1951, when this militant arm of the Brotherhood took a lead in the War of the Canal Zone against the British (Mitchell 1993, p. 89; CIA-RDP79T00975A000400320001-1, Central Intelligence Bulletin, Copy No. 47. Office of Current Intelligence, CIA, 28 October 1951).

The Apparatus made headlines once again during late 1954, when one of its cadres allegedly made an aborted attempt on Gamal Abdel Nasser’s life. Whether the attempt was the work of the Apparatus, as the Nasserite state claimed, or staged by the regime to offer it a pretext to repress the Ikhwan is difficult to determine. Be that as it may, the very incident resulted in a harsh repression of the Brotherhood. The accumulative result of these developments was the final rejection of violence on the part of the Brotherhood and the dismantling of the Apparatus.

Opponents of the Brotherhood often point to the Brotherhood’s violent history and “present” to justify their hardhanded treatment of the organization and its members. It is often claimed that the organization continues to propound violent ideas and have militant cadres within its ranks. As a case in point, a report from 2020 argued that “The increasing extremism exhibited by the Muslim Brotherhood may have been a reflection of the presence of Special Apparatus personnel inside the executive authority and the Guidance Office, which enabled them to manage the Group’s affairs in the civil and military spheres alike” (Trends Research and Advisory 2020, p. 295). Yet, such portrayals have little basis in the truth and seem to serve as justification for further repression of the organization.

The violent turn of the Brotherhood during the 1940s and 1950s should accordingly be studied within the greater history of Egyptian politics. It came in reaction to the widely detested occupation of Egypt and represented just one current among a variety of other manifestations of anti-colonialism. It was sometime during the late 1950s that the Apparatus was disbanded because of changing circumstances in Egypt. Two reasons stand out as key in this development. On the one hand, large numbers of the Apparatus’s members were apprehended and detained following the October 1954 repression, thus making its dismantling less arduous (NA 1954, vol. I–VII). On the other hand, the anti-colonial objective of the Apparatus had somehow lost its relevance when British occupation was headed for its termination. Thus, the ascendancy of the revolutionary Nasserite regime represented a post-colonial break with the British colonization of Egypt. Put differently, as the occupation disappeared, so did the justification for the Apparatus.