ABSTRACT
For over two decades, slogans such as al-Usuliyya al-Islamiyya [the roots of Islam, Islamic fundamentalism], al-Salafiyya [the ancestral heritage], al-Sahwa al-Islamiyya [the Islamic awakening], al-Ihyaa al-Islami [the Islamic resurgence], or al-Badeel al-Islami [the Islamic alternative] 1 have attracted millions of young people in the Muslim world in general and in Egypt in particular. Slogans like these are regarded as a return to the pure sources of Islam and to the divine message of the Prophet Muhammad (570–632), which reached a zenith in the days of Muhammad and the first caliphs — Abu-Bakr al-Siddiq (573–634), ‘Umar Ibn al-Khattab (d. 644), and ‘Ali Ibn Abi-Talib, cousin of the Prophet and his son-in-law (d. 661). In his book Ma'alim fi al-Tariq [milestones], Sayyid Qutb (1906–65) notes, ‘al-Da'wa [the message] — This [Islamic] preaching created a generation of people — a generation of followers of Muhammad — which is special in the history of Islam and of the human race in general’. 2 Their devotion to the divine calling in the full sense of the word is what gave them the power to bring two giant empires to their knees with the growth and dissemination of Islam as the new religion, the religion of the supreme God which was heir to the other monotheistic religions — Judaism and Christianity. 3
