Symbolically, the 1970s represent an era when “Third Worldism”, nation-state building, and secularist ideologies came to be criticized for failing to achieve their stated goals. The Nasser regime seemed to have played an ambivalent role in religion. The state had always made compromises with religion: Islam was declared the religion of the state, but shari'a law was interpreted under the cover of secular law. In short, the regime wanted to formulate religion according to its own political aims (Rodinson 1966, p. 240). This ambivalence and “utilization of religion” to promote foreign politics and to mobilize the clergy to propagate the ideology of the regime so as to create missionaries of socialism among the people (ibid., p. 242) became problematic in the seventies and eighties, when the state, through its use or manipulation of religious symbols ended up creating its own opposition.

It was during the seventies and eighties, therefore, that many intellectuals, in the centre as well as in the periphery, became even more critical of “Third Worldist” ideology and secularism. This, however, was felt more strongly in the Middle East than in Southeast Asia. Perhaps the defeat of the Arabs in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war represented the climax for all Middle Eastern societies, when all previous values were criticized. Secularism and modernism, as well as Pan-Arabism were debated, and a strong return to religious values was expressed. According to Laroui, many intellectuals attributed the Arab defeat to the fact that any type of imported social organization, such as that under Nasser, could only lead to failure. This explains the birth of the concept of Asala (authenticity), which was held to be an indigenous reaction against the West. It should also be noted that this trend was not only expressed by the Islamists but also by many disappointed liberals and Marxists who seem to have suffered from successive crises of ideology beginning as early as ‘Abduh's time (see Laroui 1988, p. 83).