Egyptian intellectuals publicly composed defenses of Islamic slavery against European clerical attack

Evidence

Egyptians heard these ideas and accusations in a variety of ways: through the press, in speeches, and in meetings with British officials. Many chose the same venues to argue publicly with European interlocutors about the legality of slavery itself. In 1888, Ahmad Shafïk, while still a law student in Paris, listened uncomfortably in the Cathedrale de Saint Sulpice to a sermon by the renowned Cardinal Lavigerie against the Islamic slave trade in Africa. This was the same cardinal who, with the help of the Association for the Propagation of the Faith, launched the mission of the White Fathers in equatorial Africa in 1878. Before then, he began his missionary work in Algeria, fighting French authorities for the right to proselytize among Muslims; eventually, he would continue to work in what became known as the Belgian Congo. His authority substantiated by his fame as a missionary strategist, the cardinal used example after example to single out Islam as being inhumane for its supposed support of slavery. In response, Shafïk (who had been educated in France under sponsorship by Khedive Tawfïq and who, after such careful grooming, would eventually become an eminent political official in his own right) prepared an eloquent history of slavery through the ages, in defense of the practice in Egypt. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 676

Categorization

• XREF: The Egyptian intellectual defense of Islamic slavery exemplifies the reverse-discourse pattern theorized by postcolonial scholars (Fanon, Bhabha’s mimicry), useful for the reader’s Egypt-Sudan coloniality framework.