ABSTRACT
The relationship between migration fluxes and religious exchanges from one bank to the other of the Red Sea in Egypt is an object of controversy.1 Since the 1970s the development of a political Islam has provoked strong repressive reactions on the part of the Egyptian state as well as among leftist secular intellectuals (novelists, journalists, filmmakers). For these intellectuals, undermining the credibility of political Islam amounts to opposing an adversary that is often dangerous as well as gaining a common ground of understanding with the state. The discrediting of political Islam in the media utilises nationalist terms, using the rhetoric of a foreign plot in which secularism is likened to a ‘national essence’ pitted against the troublemakers of political Islam coming from abroad.
