A broad “Islamic Revival” followed the devastating Egyptian defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and the triumphant crossing of the Bar Lev line in the 1973 war. Egyptians moved towards Islam and religious elites, newly empowered by the permissive media policies of Anwar al-Sadat (r. 1970-1981), spoke to the nation through print, television, radio and audiocassette. In turn, Egyptians turned in unprecedented numbers towards greater ritual observance, public piety, and for many, a commitment to social and political transformation. Yet, this is a story told with nearly exclusive reference to Cairo and Alexandria; rarely do those outside the religious elite, let alone those outside of Cairo and Alexandria, speak. This paper seeks to fill this void by using letters to the editor and fatwa requests within three Islamic magazines between 1976 and 1981 to examine the processes of religious mobilization and subjectivity formation that underlay the broader emergence of the Islamic Revival in Egypt under Sadat. This approach serves not only serve to de-center Cairo and Alexandria but similarly to broaden the study of religious change during this period beyond the Muslim Brotherhood’s al-Da‘wa magazine to consider reader correspondence from the Salafi-Islamist al-I‘tisam and the State-affiliated Minbar al-Islam. It shows how, far from a simple “turning” to Islamism following the disappointment of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, middle class readers from the Nile Delta, Upper Egypt, Cairo and Alexandria sought to reform themselves as pious Muslims of varying political persuasions at the juncture of state educational policies, economic shifts and mass media. Collectively, these readers provide a window into the turn of Egypt’s middle class to Islam during the opening years of the Islamic Revival and the geographic, socioeconomic and gender dynamics of this crucial period. These projects of piety, though initially minority undertakings, would grow over the coming decades and public religiosity is now the norm, rather than the exception, in Egyptian society. Yet, as this paper argues, this shift was hardly inevitable; instead, it emerged out of the efforts of religious elites and middle class readers from across Egypt to make sense of political, economic and social disappointment upheaval by rededicating themselves to Islam.