The organized International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a humanitarian movement with approximately 16 million volunteers, members, and staff worldwide. The Red Crescent is one of two symbols of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and the name of Red Crescent societies in countries with a majority Muslim population.
In much research on humanitarianism the International Committee of the Red Cross, founded in 1863, is generally considered the prototype of a Christian-inspired, Western humanitarian organisation. While this view is legitimate in many respects two points should be added: first, for a long time non-Western and in particular Muslim Red Cross and Red Crescent societies did not receive sufficient attention in research on the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement. Second, this movement has played an important role in respective Muslim societies and considerably influenced the Swiss members of the movement.
Inspired by Henry Dunant (1828-1910) experiences at the Battle of Solferino, the committee sought both to improve the treatment of wounded soldiers independent of their nationality and to put the relationship between belligerent states on a more codified basis, through the development of international humanitarian law, in particular the Geneva conventions. From the beginning, these ideas and norms claimed a universal scope, although they were deeply rooted in Christian values and resonated with the European colonial powers.
The emblems of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
Moreover, the conditions set up for acceptance as a Red Cross society clearly favoured Western societies and structures: the respective state had to be sovereign, had to have signed the Geneva conventions, and there should be only one Red Cross society per state.
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In the Muslim world, the first Red Cross Society was founded in the Ottoman Empire in 1869. At a medical congress in Paris, they had been able to convince the Ottoman surgeon Dr. Abdullah Bey (1801-1974), of Austrian origin, to set up a Red Cross Society in Istanbul. Interestingly, the first Ottoman committee contained many Christians.
After the Ottoman Red Crescent, founded in 1869, the Egyptian Red Crescent was the second Muslim and first Arab Red Crescent society within the movement. While the Ottoman Red Crescent’s foundation happened mainly due to an International Red Cross initiative, the Egyptian Red Crescent was founded solely based on an Egyptian initiative.
Its establishment in 1912 is even more surprising as the founder, Shaykh Aly Yussif, was a Pan-Islamic, anticolonial newspaper publisher with close connections to the Egyptian viceroy, Abbas Hilmi II. The initial reason for the Egyptian Red Crescent’s foundation was the Italo-Turkish War in Libya in 1911/1912. The Egyptian Red Crescent was meant to support the ‘Ottoman brothers’ and Muslim soldiers in their fight against the colonial invader. Thus, in this first phase of the Egyptian Red Crescent, humanitarian aid was often provided with reference to Islam as uniting donors and beneficiaries.
For both Red Crescent societies, the “Greater War” (1911-1923) was an important moment which accelerated their development and engagement. The Egyptian Red Crescent sent various medical missions to the Balkans to support the Ottomans. First, the Ottoman Red Crescent was very active in providing help for wounded soldiers. The Balkan Wars in 1911 and 1912 also triggered the engagement of these Red Crescent societies.
The Ottoman Red Crescent’s members also engaged for humanitarian and patriotic reasons. There had already been contact between the Ottoman Red Crescent and Egyptian volunteers, because the former had to cross Egypt in order to find the medical materials, which they lacked and needed for the wounded soldiers in Libya. One can imagine that the idea of founding a Red Crescent society in Egypt also grew out of this contact, because, in contrast to the Ottoman Red Crescent, the one in Cairo was solely based on an Egyptian initiative.
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The Muslim population was also supported by the British Red Crescent, which provided medical and financial support, and, in a similar manner, Muslims in India sent money and even medical missions.
From 1914 to 1918, the Ottoman Red Crescent continued its activities and deepened its experience through the conflict. While the organization stressed its emancipatory potential, women also remained bound to activities that corresponded to an idea of femininity, based on service and care. Upper and middle-class women became very active and formed women’s Red Crescent committees.
They provided social services, collected donations, nursed wounded soldiers, sent packages to prisoners of war and provided relief to refugees. The latter were mainly Muslims, as the Ottoman Red Crescent’s assistance to Armenians remained marginal.
In Egypt, where World War I took place and the British also gathered their troops for the whole region, the Egyptian Red Crescent fulfilled its humanitarian duties as well, nursing wounded soldiers in its hospitals, collecting donations in money and kind not only for Muslim, but also for Christian people in need.
In a second phase, the Egyptian Red Crescent turned towards Western and secular ideas. This was mainly due to its members who came from wealthy Egyptian land owners with close connections to the royal family. Many of the Red Crescent’s presidents were surgeons at the famous hospital Qasr al-Ayni and professors of the Faculty of Medicine in Cairo.
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Such a Western and secular orientation can also be observed with regard to the women of the Egyptian Red Crescent, the association’s most active members. Many of them were educated at foreign, mainly French schools in Egypt and wore Western clothes. However, this did not mean that they were in favour of the British occupation of Egypt. On the contrary they defended the country’s independence.
The majority of the members of the Egyptian Red Crescent were Muslims although some Christians and even Jews took part in the association. Yet, in the historical archive on the Egyptian Red Crescent religion rarely appears as a point of legitimacy. In newspaper articles on the association we sometimes find references to Islam, for example when during the Second World War donations were requested for the support of Muslims in Yugoslavia.
Otherwise, the central term used to legitimise the work of the Egyptian Red Cross was ‘humanitarianism’, insāniyya in Arabic. Nonetheless, Islam remained an important parameter of the Egyptian Red Crescent’s engagement. During Ramadan, the association organised special collections of donations and their distribution to people in need.
Simultaneously, although still not officially recognized, the organisation became more institutionalized. It started to publish annual reports documenting activities, income and expenses, and it set up an administrative board. While members of the royal family served as presidents but only had representative functions, the work itself was done by a number of Egyptian and foreign members of the social and economic elite. Among the foreigners was Henri Naus (1875-1938), a Belgian Jew who owned the biggest sugar factory in Egypt. Thus, the Egyptian Red Crescent was an institution marked both by colonial and anticolonial elements.
In the following decades, however, the organization turned more secular and pro-Western, without giving up its Muslim roots and pro-independence aspirations. It was deeply influenced by local traditions of charity and philanthropy, and yet sought to connect to international humanitarian structures and standards, struggling for autonomy from the successive Egyptian governments.
After 1918, the Red Crescent societies became more institutionalized and even more incorporated by their respective governments. The Red Crescent, as one of the symbols of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, was only officially recognized in 1929, after long deliberations during which the European colonial powers expressed their reservations.
In the Middle East, most Red Crescent societies were only founded after their countries’ independence in the 1930s (Iraq) or 1940s (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan).
Map of the Middle East.
Strategies focusing on political power were an important part of the activities of the Egyptian Red Crescent. These strategies occurred on the national, regional and international level. On the national level the Egyptian Red Crescent was, as many other Red Cross or Crescent societies, closely connected to the Egyptian government. Nonetheless, I suggest that the Egyptian Red Crescent also influenced the Egyptian government and its social and health policies.
For instance, after the first Israel-Palestine-War in 1948, the Egyptian ministry of social affairs established a Higher Committee for Palestinian refugees which included two female delegates of the Egyptian Red Crescent. Based on their support for humanitarian concerns, these women became part of state structures that were otherwise completely male-dominated.
In this context, the example of the Regional Federation of Arab Red Cross and Red Crescent societies is revealing. Launched in the early 1960s, the Egyptian Red Crescent was both central to and absent from this endeavour: while it expressed interest in heading the federation and in convening meetings in Cairo this engagement never materialized, and finally, in 1975, the permanent Secretariat of the Federation was established in Jeddah financed by the Saudi government.
Finally, the Egyptian Red Crescent fostered close links between regional and international humanitarian engagement. In periods of crucial political change the Egyptian Red Crescent played an important role for the nascent Egyptian nation-state.
While Islam was referred to mainly in the organisation’s beginnings, it remained a central parameter that shaped the Egyptian Red Crescent’s discourses and practices on the national level. On the regional level, the question of Arab solidarity was more important, especially under the regime of Nasser who perceived himself (and was at times perceived) the leader of the Arab world.
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