ABSTRACT
Despite my boundless admiration for Muhammad Ali, who is generally recognized by scholars and historians to be the founder of modern Egypt, I have no doubt that his preoccupation with matters that distracted him from his main project, which was to build a strong Egypt, led to a series of disastrous setbacks that were to have long-term ramifications. Had Muhammad Ali focused his main efforts on building a strong and stable society, Egypt would have been in a position to play the pivotal role for which it is uniquely qualified by the factors of history and geography. Unfortunately, the pattern of squandering our efforts
in other than what should be our main priority, which is to deploy all our resources to build the strong foundations of a modern society, has been repeated in Egypt’s recent history with equally disastrous consequences.
