Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-l82ql Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-02T12:03:32.269Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Religion or Opposition? Urban Protest Movements in Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid-Marsot
Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid-Marsot
Affiliation:
University Of California, Los Angeles
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Recent years have witnessed a resurgence throughout the Muslim world of movements calling for radical social reforms and for changes in the form of government. These movements are characterised by a strong religious component. Their calls for reform are couched in the Muslim idiom — that is, in demands for social justice (adala) and the satisfaction of man's basic necessities, and are accompanied by demands for a return to an Islamic form of government, one that is ruled by the sharia. The supporters of such movements frequently are dressed differentlyfrom the rest of their compatriots, an outward manifestation of their allegiance to a Muslim-guided and a Muslim-oriented goal. It has become customary in the West to refer to such movements as Muslim fundamentalists, but the Arab world refers to them more correctly as Muslim organizations, or jamaat islamivya. This nomenclature covers a multitude of organizations with different principles and slogans, but all have one common denominator — their reformist appeals derive from religious belief and are asserted to be founded in Muslim principles.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , November 1984 , pp. 541 - 552
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For further information regarding revolts and revolutions see Tilly, Charles, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978).Google ScholarDougherty, J. and Pfaltzgraff, R. L., Contending Theories of International Relations (New York: Harper and Row, 1981),Google ScholarTrimberger, Ellen Kay, Revolution from Above: Military Bureaucrats and Development in Japan, Turkey. Egypt and Peru (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1978),Google Scholar also Yassin, S. and Kerr, M., Rich and Poor States in the Middle East (Boulder, Col.: Westview, 1982).Google Scholar

2 See introductory chapter for a summary of theories of social revolutions in Skocpol, Theda, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge University Press, 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 As when pre-emptive military coups prevent the outbreak of a greater conflagration.Google Scholar

4 Skocpol, States and Social Revolution, p. 17, quoting Jeremy Brecher.Google Scholar

5 See my “Political and Economic Functions of the Ulama in the 18th Century” in Journal of she Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. XVI, Parts II–III, 01. 1974, pp. 131–154.Google Scholar Also see Keddie, N., ed., Scholars, Sufis and Saints (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).Google Scholar

6 al-Jabarti, Abd al-Rahman, Ajaib al-athar fi-l tarajim wa-l akhbar (Cairo, 1882).Google Scholar

7 See my book, Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali (Cambridge University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

8 See Mitchell, Richard, The Society of Muslim Brothers (Oxford: University Press, 1969), pp. 35 ff.Google Scholar

9 Delanoue, Gilbert, Moralistes et Politiques Musulmans dons l'Égypte du XIX e Siècle, 2 vols. (Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, 1982), p. 309.Google Scholar

10 See Heikal, Mohamed, Autumn of Fury, The Assassination of Sodas (Andre Deutsch, 1983) for an account of Sadat's attitude towards the West and towards his own people.Google Scholar

11 See articles in special issue of International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 12, no. 4, 1980, especially articles by Saad Ibrahim and Nazih Ayyubi.Google Scholar