FREYA STARK’S EAST IS WEST, AND THE COPTS (II): RECRUITING COPTS TO THE BROTHERHOOD OF FREEDOM
https://copticliterature.wordpress.com/2016/02/23/freya-starks-east-is-west-and-the-copts-ii-recruiting-copts-to-the-brotherhood-of-freedom/
On 5 March 2013, I wrote about Freya Stark’s East is West, and the Copts (i): the Innuendo about the Jews. Today, I would like to write about her recruitment of Copts to what was called The Brotherhood of Freedom ( ), which she set up in Egypt to combat the Nazi propaganda during WWII, particularly as the German army was posing a real threat of occupying the Middle-East, at the time occupied by Britain and France, as it marched across North Africa on its way to Egypt before El Alamein in 1942 put an end to its threat.
As a reminder, Freya Stark (1893 – 1993) was a British explorer and travel writer, and an Arabist, who was fluent in Arabic. During World War II (1939 – 1945) she worked for the British Ministry of Information; and was a member of the British Intelligence Service. Her work, as a war propagandist, was focused on contact with the peoples of the Middle-East and winning them over to the British side – in Yemen, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq. In Egypt, she founded the Brotherhood of Freedom in Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, and many other cities – “a network of Allied sympathisers aimed at convincing the Egyptian people that they were better off with the British devil they knew than with the Axis monster they did not;”[1] and the membership of the movement reached some 75,000 strong.[2]
The Brotherhood of Freedom was supposed to recruit people who were for democracy represented by the Allies and against tyranny represented by the Axis. In Egypt, Stark’s target population was the Muslims and Arabs of Egypt: she met with the emerging middle-class of the effendis, but she made contact with everyone she thought would be influential and could be won over, even the students and graduates of Al-Azhar, the bastion of traditional Islam. To cajole them into joining her committees, Stark told them that Britain was the best friend of the Arabs; that her rule was not based on imperialism but common interests and ‘safe transit’; that she would support the movement for Arab unity; and that she would resist the Zionists’ claim to Palestine.[3]
Her view of the Arab World – North Africa (including Egypt) and what the Arabs call ‘the island of the Arabs’, the land bordered by Persia, Turkey, and the sea – is interesting: “In speaking of it, it is important to remember that its unity is one of language, largely of religion, and of the civilization they have produced; it is not a unity of race.”[4] Her definition is basically that of the Arab nationalists; and even when she says Arab unity is one “largely of religion” she adds a footnote to modify any misunderstanding she may have created: “Not entirely, since the Christians and most of the other minorities would consider themselves ‘Arab’ in the area referred to.”[5] Downgrading the separate identities of the Christians of the Middle-East was part of the game – and the game was to be as Arab as could be. The Copts in her estimation, formed one-fifteenth or so of the country’s population.[6] Their race was evident: “The Copts are most like the original people of Egypt; even now you can recognise their slender profiles and long-lashed black eyes, opaque and lustrous, in any pharaoh’s tomb.”[7] However, she adds: “They have kept the Christian religion taken from earlier conquerors, but they have long since adopted the Arabic language for ordinary conversation.”[8] One feels that, this, for her, seals the identity of the Copts – Arabs, whether they agree or not, like it or not.