Missionary institutions were social spaces of closest encounters between Europeans and various segments of the Egyptian society, during the period of British colonialism. In European Evangelicals in Egypt (1900-1956) Samir Boulos develops a theory of cultural exchange that is based on the examination of interactions, experiences and discourses in the context of missionary institutions. Drawing upon oral history interviews as well as rich Egyptian, British and German archival sources, a multifaceted perspective is offered, revealing the complexity and dynamics of mission encounters. Focusing on the everyday life in missionary institutions, experiences of former Egyptian missionary students, local employees, as well as of European missionaries, Samir Boulos explores mutual transformation processes particularly on the individual but also on institutional and social level.

This collection focuses on representations of Egypt between 1750 and 1956. Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition of 1798-1801 failed in military terms, but succeeded in focusing Western attention on the country. The nation fascinated travellers because of its antiquity, its monuments, and its bazaars. In the nineteenth-century, the typical itinerary for travellers included Alexandria, Cairo, the Pyramids, and a journey by boat up the Nile to the temples of Luxor and others. Some of the essays included in this volume focus on fiction by writers like Samuel Johnson and Charles Dickens, or travel works by Florence Nightingale, Lucie Duff-Gordon, and Gérard de Nerval. Others analyse representations of Egypt by explorers, American ex-soldiers, French painters, British colonial administrators and sociologists, and a Russian doctor investigating the efficacy of Muhammad Ali’s reforms in relation to the plague. There is also a discussion of the changes in nineteenth-century Egyptian dress.

“This volume is interesting both because of its global focus, and its chronology up to the present, it covers a good century of changes. It will help define the field of gender studies of humanitarianism, and its relevance for understanding the history of nation-building, and a political history that goes beyond nations.” - Glenda Sluga, Professor of International History and ARC Kathleen Laureate Fellow at the University of Sydney, Australia This volume discusses the relationship between gender and humanitarian discourses and practices in the twentieth century. It analyses the ways in which constructions, norms and ideologies of gender both shaped and were shaped in global humanitarian contexts. The individual chapters present issues such as post-genocide relief and rehabilitation, humanitarian careers and subjectivities, medical assistance, community aid, child welfare and child soldiering. They give prominence to the beneficiaries of aid and their use of humanitarian resources, organizations and structures by investigating the effects of humanitarian activities on gender relations in the respective societies. Approaching humanitarianism as a global phenomenon, the volume considers actors and theoretical positions from the global North and South (from Europe to the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and South East Asia as well as North America). It combines state and non-state humanitarian initiatives and scrutinizes their gendered dimension on local, regional, national and global scales. Focusing on the time between the late nineteenth century and the post-Cold War era, the volume concentrates on a period that not only witnessed a major expansion of humanitarian action worldwide but also saw fundamental changes in gender relations and the gradual emergence of gender-sensitive policies in humanitarian organizations in many Western and non-Western settings.

On a sweltering June morning in 1933 a fifteen-year-old Muslim orphan girl refused to rise in a show of respect for her elders at her Christian missionary school in Port Said. Her intransigence led to a beating—and to the end of most foreign missions in Egypt—and contributed to the rise of Islamist organizations. Turkiyya Hasan left the Swedish Salaam Mission with scratches on her legs and a suitcase of evidence of missionary misdeeds. Her story hit a nerve among Egyptians, and news of the beating quickly spread through the country. Suspicion of missionary schools, hospitals, and homes increased, and a vehement anti-missionary movement swept the country. That missionaries had won few converts was immaterial to Egyptian observers: stories such as Turkiyya's showed that the threat to Muslims and Islam was real. This is a great story of unintended consequences: Christian missionaries came to Egypt to convert and provide social services for children. Their actions ultimately inspired the development of the Muslim Brotherhood and similar Islamist groups. In The Orphan Scandal, Beth Baron provides a new lens through which to view the rise of Islamic groups in Egypt. This fresh perspective offers a starting point to uncover hidden links between Islamic activists and a broad cadre of Protestant evangelicals. Exploring the historical aims of the Christian missions and the early efforts of the Muslim Brotherhood, Baron shows how the Muslim Brotherhood and like-minded Islamist associations developed alongside and in reaction to the influx of missionaries. Patterning their organization and social welfare projects on the early success of the Christian missions, the Brotherhood launched their own efforts to "save" children and provide for the orphaned, abandoned, and poor. In battling for Egypt's children, Islamic activists created a network of social welfare institutions and a template for social action across the country—the effects of which, we now know, would only gain power and influence across the country in the decades to come.

This book, first ethnographic attempt, examines negated spaces, practices, and relationships that have been intentionally or unintentionally dismissed from academic and non-academic studies, articles, reports, and policy papers that investigate and debate the experiences of Coptic Orthodox Christians in Egypt. By taking the Coptic identity and faith to bars, liquor stores, coffeehouses, weed gatherings, prisons, casinos, night clubs, brothels, dating applications, and porn sites, this book argues that airing out this “dirty laundry” points to the limits of victimhood and activist narratives that shape the representation of Coptic grievances and interests on both national and international levels. By introducing misfits who exist in the shadows of the well-studied Coptic rituals, traditions, miracles, saints’ apparitions, and street protests, the book highlights the contradiction between the centrality of sin to the (Coptic) Christian tradition and theology, on one hand, and on the other hand the dismissal of lives that are dominantly labelled as sinful while simultaneously studying Copts as agents or victims of history and in today’s Egyptian society. Drawing on many years of fieldwork accompanied and preceded by periods the author spent as a student and a lay servant in different forms of services in the Coptic Orthodox Church, the book acknowledges the recent anthropological work that is critical of how the secular West and its academia misrepresent God and His believers in the Middle East. However, the fact that this book extends its arguments from “ethnographic confessions” collected from who deal with God on a daily basis since their childhood, it investigates the implications and consequences of inviting God to be part of an anthropological study that complicates aspects of repentance and salvation among the largest Christian minority in the Middle East.

For several years now, Islamism has been associated with 'jihadism' and violent extremism both in academia and in contemporary political debates. However, this association can be misleading: Islamism has much deeper roots than 'jihadi terrorism' and it stands as a powerful and complex ideology inspiring thoughts, actions and groups all over the world. Emerging as a protest-for-justice ideology claiming freedom against Western colonisation of the Muslim world, Islamism has triggered both individuals and groups worldwide since the early 1900s. Almost as a sacred ideology – based on the need to revive Islam as the only saving grace for Muslims around the world – Islamism started to be widely associated with 'jihadism' after 9/11. Before then, Islamism was not automatically related to terrorism but to resistance. Given that terrorists are only a small and definite portion of Islamists, this volume aims to re-focus research on Islamism beyond 'jihadism' by collecting relevant contributions on Islamist but non-violent organisations. More precisely, this volume innovatively contributes to current academic debates by exploring the origins of Islamism and the differences between 'jihadism', the evolution of Islamism over time and places and the role played by the most influential non-'jihadist' Islamist organisations active today as powerful non-state actors.