the crisis of modernisation and islamicisation 327a prophecy that seems to be materializing in the early years of the
new millennium. His admiration of the Western culture and his zeal
for the modernisation of Egypt, took him even further when he
stressed that Egypt shared common grounds with the West, the
Mediterranean countries and the monotheist religion, and apart from
Islam and the Arabic language, Egypt had no common grounds with
the Arabs. This would make Egypt more of a Western than an
Eastern country, or as he puts it, “there are no intellectual or cul-
tural differences to be found among the peoples who grew up around
the Mediterranean and were influenced by it” (Œusayn, 1982). In
stressing that secularism had always been part of Egypt, we find him
asserting, “From earliest times Muslims have been well aware of the
now universally acknowledged principle that a political system and
a religion are different things, which a constitution and a state rest,
above everything else, on practical foundations”. Therefore, in his
conclusion, it was only natural that the Egyptians should adopt
European customs and institutions from table manners to railroads
and political, legal, and educational systems. When these thoughts
are those of the Egyptian Minister of Education, as ̨aha Œusayn
was from 1950 to 1952, his views are not to be taken lightly. ̨aha
Œusayn, a renowned Egyptian writer and highly respected person-
ality, represented the mixed feeling, and probably frustration, that
spread among Muslim modernist intellectuals who in their endeav-
our, and zeal, to modernize the Muslim society found the Ulama"
unwilling, or perhaps, unable, to look at innovation favourably.
Surprisingly enough, ̨aha Œusayn as he is telling us in his novel-
autobiography “al-Ayyam”, the days, he, as a blind child, was brought
up in a religious environment where he was taught, and was able,
to recite the whole Qur"àn in an early age of his life.
Islam Triumphant: The Revival
The effect of the above Islamic reform movements seemed to have
been fundamental to the resurgence of Islam in the twentieth cen-
tury. Muslims became more convinced than ever that their religion
could still provide practical solutions to their problems: spiritually,
politically and economically. In the wave of Islamic revivalism that
characterized the mid to the late twentieth century two main devel-
opments occurred as far as economics was concerned: the emergence