ABSTRACT
This book is an attempt at making sense of Islamism in Egypt from a linguistic point of view. It started with the idea of analysing critically the discourses of liberal Muslim thinkers and their Islamist counterparts to study the way language is put to use by different ideologies. My interest in this subject stemmed from the fact that the current intellectual climate in both Europe and the Arab world is characterized by what might be termed a war of ideas (between Islamism and secularism, liberalism and neo-conservatism) where printed texts play an important role. In Egypt, these conflicts have attracted much popular attention and have involved universities, the press, the Ministry of Culture and the courts.
