ABSTRACT
One country, Egypt, and one sub-region, the Gulf, have been selected as empirical illustrations of the approach used in the present book. The reader has the right to ask for a justification of this selection. Egypt has been chosen as a case study on the predicament of Islam with modernity as it best demonstrates the relevance of culture to development. Egypt also provides the best explanation of why cultural change and religious reform have so far failed. Further, the choice of Egypt1 is supported by the fact that this country is historically central in the Islamic world’s exposure to European expansion.2 Egypt went through all the historical stages of the Muslim encounter with the more successful Western civilization: early Islamic reform, liberalism, secular nationalism and, more recently, the rise of political Islam, named Islamism. Egypt has always occupied a central place in the civilizational territoriality of “Dar al-Islam/the abode of Islam.” The process at issue began in Egypt when the West invaded that country and thereby brought into question Islam’s claim to superiority (al-Islam ya’lu wa la yu’la alayh/Islam is superior and no power could be superior to it). That was in 1798. Today, Egypt is the place where the world dominance of Western globalization is under fire. It is challenged by political Islam, which was not only born in Egypt, but also took shape there.
