In the last decade, with several international crises involving Islam and Muslims, like the bombing of Gaza, the invasion of Iraq and 9/11, academia has shown particular interest in the early 20th century codification movement in Egypt. Egyptian and Western academics alike have written works assessing the civil code of 1949 drafted by Abdel Razzaq Al-Sanhuri. These voices mostly hail Sanhuri for successfully blending Western codification, patterned on the French code, with Islamic law, infamously known in the West as Sharia, resulting in a government in line with the Western view of a “moderate” Middle East. Their attempts occlude, first, that the codification was and indeed is a legal tool to assert “Egyptian” identity, supported by the Egyptian government, against the conflicting “Muslim” identity, supported by the majority of Egyptian society. I am understanding “Muslim” identity to mean a reminder of the obligation to uphold Sharia without any consideration for nationalism. “Egyptian” identity refers to giving preference to Egypt’s national interests even if this necessitates siding with non-Muslims against Muslims. Second, the codification was viewed among contemporary popular intellectuals as emptily mimicking aspects of Sharia to effect this subsuming of the popular “Muslim” identity. To prove these two assumptions, the paper first compares Sanhuri's position on the right to khayar (unreasoned contractual termination) with its equivalent in Sharia to show that the codification movement aimed to take Sharia’s place in the Egyptian legal system. Second, the paper reviews the resurgence of Sanhuri's popularity among Western-affiliated acedemia and its role in supporting the Egyptian identity, albeit indirectly, by undermining the legal doctirnes of Sharia versus the "legal achievements" of Snahuri.