ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the extent to which the intellectual trend so salient in the life of Egypt in the first half of the twentieth century, known in the literature on that period as "liberalism," has succeeded in surviving the Nasserite revolution and confronting the great challenge of the postrevolution period—Islamic fundamentalism. Nasserism swept away the elite of the big landowners and the royal dynasty that constituted its backbone, which had held the key political, economic, and social positions in Egypt. It ousted the foreign-Levantine-local bourgeoisie that had dominated commercial and financial activities and maintained a French-European cultural orientation; and it similarly abolished many elements and institutions of the monarchy period. An entirely new situation emerged in the postrevolutionary years. Sadat's de-Nasserization campaign in the early 1970s paved the way for a possible renascence of liberalism. The purge of Nasserist power elite in May 1971 was legitimized in terms of return to the rule of law and restoration of civil liberties.
