Egyptian nationalists publicly declared slavery an abomination to win British approval

Evidence

From its very inception, the nationalist movement was forced to respond to this question, and the leaders of the Nationalist Party delegated Sir Wilfred Blunt, one of their staunchest British supporters, to address the Anti-Slavery Society directly on their behalf. In a letter to the Society, Blunt explained the party’s views:“The liberal views in politics and religion which now for the first time are finding their free expression in the movement known as National, have it for a first principle that slavery is a qabïha, an abomination, one to be utterly abolished in all its forms and branches in the modern world.” Explaining that the shaykhs of al-Azhär supported this view, Blunt continued that slavery was permitted by the Qur´an “only when Islam was in a state of war with idolaters.” The first act of the party’s Minister of the Interior was “to appoint a new Governor General of the Soudan and the Red Sea coast, with the most positive orders to suppress the trade; and in Lower Egypt a secret system is being organised … for the discovery and liberation of all persons still held in bondage there.” — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 670

Categorization

• SEED: The strategic appropriation of abolitionist rhetoric by a colonized nationalist movement seeking legitimacy from a specific British constituency is a rich angle for an essay on colonial politics of morality.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 670