Introduction: Hybridity, Islamic Knowledge, and ‘Being Modern’ in Egypt

Summary

This chapter introduces the main tenet of the book: that tensions over public expressions of Islam in Egypt have a 130-year history, as they stem from decisions made in the half-century surrounding the turn of the twentieth century (1871–1922), and they first erupted into conflict during a ‘culture war’ that shaped the intellectual discourse of Egypt’s constitutional period (1923–52). Dar al-ʿUlum and its graduates, the darʿamiyya, are crucial to understanding this culture war. After providing historical background, this chapter explains a new approach to modernisation, nation-building, and sociocultural change. It presents modernity as a constellation of projects advanced by Egypt’s ruling Khedives, Europeans, and a range of Egyptian-based social groups. It uses the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu, Frederik Barth, and Mikhail Bakhtin to connect educational experiences with sociocultural outcomes using capital and habitus, to explore how sociocultural boundaries are crossed in productive ways, and to widen definitions of hybridity beyond combinations that are shockingly jarring. It uses these ideas to explore the sociocultural position of the darʿamiyya, a group that was suspended in between the modernising alumni of civil schools (efendiyya) and the traditionally trained alumni of religious schools (shaykhs) until a 1926 student strike.