This chapter looks at Mehmed Akif’s fundamental acceptance of the nation-state and reconciliation of Turkish and Islamic identity and sets that against Sabri and Kevseri’s theoretical objections, which centre on the argument that the shariʿa system with its notion of a legal and moral core above the manipulations of politics and society was superior to man-made law. Noting that their work came (1) as Egypt finalised the process of codification and de-Islamisation of its courts and (2) as the era of military authoritarianism began its long reign in the Arab region, it goes on to examine Sabri’s development of a radical view of Islamic faith and identity in the context of the modern state and how this may have impacted Sayyid Quṭb’s thinking.

Islamic Jihadism has deep ties to National Socialism, both in its history and in its vision of a world that is “purified of the Jews.” Chapter 8 demonstrates the influences of Nazi exterminationist Jew hatred on modern Islamic Jihadism. It should be noted that I use the term Islamic Jihadism to distinguish Jihadists from other Muslims who are not part of this movement. Tracing the path from Hitler to Hamas, the chapter brings out the connections between the antisemitism of the Muslim Brotherhood and National Socialist Jew hatred, with particular attention to the Nazi war criminal Haj Amin al-Husseini. I incorporate primary texts of Jihadist ideologues such as Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Abdullah Azzam, Ruhullah Khomeini, and others. Like the Nazis, but with theological differences, the Jihadists maintain not that all Jews are evil but that all evil is Jewish, to which and that to resolve it there can be only a Final Solution.

This chapter traces the ascendency of the Brotherhood’s traditional leaders within the Brotherhood after its formal reconstitution in 1982, and the ways in which this development conflicted with the aspirations of an upwardly mobile class of former student activists. Starting with Hosni Mubarak’s early presidency, the chapter shows how the recently graduated student activists came to assume important positions within key institutions of the Egyptian state, and how the senior leaders sought to counter their influence by asserting control over the Brotherhood’s organizational joints – both at home through the ‘Egypt Office’ and internationally through the ‘International Organization’. The chapter ends with the Iraqi attack on Kuwait in August 1990 and the subsequent US-led intervention. This event showed the extent to which the Brotherhood’s stance on international politics meant the temporary demise of the International Organization, which led to a weakening of the organization in Egypt. Based on memories of key Brotherhood leaders, Oral History interviews with organizational members and eyewitnesses, a reading of original texts published by the Brotherhood, prison-writings, pamphlets and magazines, and a survey of the scholarly literature, the chapter traces how, despite emerging internal organizational disagreements, the Brotherhood was able to expand its activities and membership numbers.

This chapter offers an intellectual genealogy of Muslim critiques of Christianity’s accounts of law and politics. It traces developments in Muslim critiques of Christian views of law from their initial focus on the corruption of scripture to contemporary arguments that connect the lack of a Christian sharī‘a with the rise of secularism. Ibn Taymiyya proves to be pivotal, combining early critiques of taḥrīf and the negative influences of Paul with a legal-political critique of Christian power. In response to colonialism, this legal-political reading of Christianity is expanded by a range of Muslim intellectuals into a critique of Christian response to secularism, Marxism, and societal injustice. The geneology argues that Muslim critiques of the secular are part of a longer discursive practice of distinguishing Islam from Christianity by way of taḥrīf and sharī‘a. Finally, the chapter considers what concrete challenges the Muslim thinkers present to a contemporary Christian political theology.

This chapter rewrites the history of Egypt’s constitutional period (1923–1952) by examining a ‘culture war’ that broke out between graduates of Dar al-ʿUlum and Europhile modernist intellectuals such as Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Taha Husayn, and ʿAli ʿAbd al-Raziq. From 1930, Europhile modernist calls for westernisation fell on deaf ears due in large part to the darʿamiyya. Darʿamiyya continued to exercise significant influence over the teaching and reform of Arabic, including as members of the Royal Arabic Language Academy (Majmaʿ al-Lugha al-ʿArabiyya) from 1932. Furthermore, darʿamiyya Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood and Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani of Hizb al-Tahrir advanced explicitly Islamic alternatives to state-led projects of modernity. Their example established a new mode of religious leadership, the new religious intellectual, available to individuals without significant religious education. Europhile modernists responded differently to this loss of sociocultural authority. Haykal’s switch to writing about Islamic topics can be seen as an attempt to co-opt darʿami influence over popular views of religion. Husayn’s call for Dar al-ʿUlum to be subsumed into the Egyptian University’s College of Literature was a direct attack on the darʿamiyya’s sociocultural and professional authority.