‘Ali Ahmad Bakathir’s novel, ‘Wa Islamah (Oh Islam)’ was published in 1945 at a time of conflicting views over Egypt’s political future as the country nears decolonization and approaches self-rule. The novel dwells on a specific event in Arab-Islamic history, namely, the war of Mamluks against the invading Mongols at ‘Ayn Jalut’ (1260), which saved Egypt and Islam and halted the westward expansion of the Mongol Empire. Through the novel Bakathir revisited the significant historical event and stages it as a narrative tool for transmitting Islamic ideology to the Egyptians in order to call upon them to unify under the banner of Islam against the challenging West rather than other nationalist ideology such as, Egyptian Arab nationalism and integralist Egyptian nationalism. This paper investigates both the textual and contextual significance of Bakathir’s work, with particular reference to the use of the novel genre as a vehicle for expressing political critique as well as propaganda for an altogether different ideology. Situating the novel in the sub-genre tradition of the Bildungsroman, which focuses on the growth of the main figure through a series of mistakes and disappointments, this paper explores the ideological development of Bakathir’s protagonist, Qutuz and his final discovery. Quṭuz initially appeared to have hesitated and did not automatically recognize and accept the fate that would force him to sacrifice himself for the sake of the Islamic world and Egypt. However, over time he realized that it was inevitable. At the end of the novel, Qutuz, even came to realize that he had to die for Baybars being the next Sultan. The paper will address the following questions: In what ways does Bakathir successfully reinvent the ‘Ayn Jalut war as a glorious Islamic victory and symbolize Qutuz as Islamic hero? To what extent does the novel succeed in promoting Islam as a triumphant imaginary and a more valid ideology for formulating a new Egyptian collective identity? Does the novel constitute a socially symbolic act in a larger meta-narrative of competing ideologies in Egypt in the age of decolonization or no

This presentation contributes to research on the origins of Arab nationalism. Based on articles, poems, and plays I present a number of instances when loyalty was expressed in Arabic for the nineteenth-century rulers in Egypt. What is the significance of these discursive examples in the development of non-religious Arab patriotism? Was the Egyptian khedivate considered the first would-be Arab national kingdom? Were the rulers included in hubb al-watan ("the love of the homeland")? I attempt to describe this relation between homeland and rulers, expressed in cultural products, with a concept what I call ‘monarchical patriotism’ in Arabic. I argue that this political emotion was a significant trend in the often conflicting imaginations about the nation in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Arab lands. As a result, it contributed to the naturalization of the Turkish-speaking Egyptian ruling dynasty and prefigured the loyal discourses in twentieth-century Arab monarchies.

Najib Mahfuz’s al-Qahirah al-Jadidah (Cairo Modern), tells the story of a group of students at Cairo’s King Fuad University who serve as archetypes for various trends in 1930s Egypt. I approach this novel as a source for modernist critique through my investigation of Mahfuz’s presentation of the characters and their interrelationship as a critical reflection on the role of an entrenched (at least among intellectual historians) dichotomy of tradition vs. modernity in Egyptian society. The characters are stand-ins for Islamic reformers, socialist positivism, and the emergent system of worldwide capital. My theoretical approach offers an exploration of the effects of modernity on these characters that puts this novel into an ongoing conversation about ‘critical’ as opposed to ‘celebratory’ modernity as laid out by Jaafar Aksikas in Arab Modernities: Islamism, Nationalism, and Liberalism in the Post-Colonial Arab World. I believe that Mahfuz’s parodying of popular trends in 1930s Egyptian politics—trends that continue to define the Egyptian public sphere today—challenges assumptions taken as given in earlier scholarship on the role of modernity in Egyptian society. Previous scholarship, among Arabs and foreign orientalists alike, has generally come to the conclusion that the ultimate failure of the Arab nahdah (loosely translated as ‘renaissance’) can be blamed on the inability of Arab intellectuals, politicians, and others with cultural capital in the Arab world to overcome the dialectic of traditionalism and modernism and take on (Western) modernity. I begin my theoretical approach with Michel Foucault’s comments on the condition of modernity in his “What is Enlightenment?” I then turn to the concept of ‘quasi-objects’ (things that exist between the poles of subject and object, sometimes acting on us while we sometimes act on them) outlined in Bruno Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern and Michel Serres’ The Parasite. I find their theory particularly informative in regard to the role of money in modern society in general, and to money’s role in Cairo Modern in particular, where it is money, not man, which decides the actions of the characters. In addressing the relationship between modernity and literary modernism as found in Mahfuz’s text, I also refer to the work of Marxist critics such as Georg Lukács and Marshall Berman as well as that of Marx himself. By looking at the modern crises experienced by Mahfuz’s characters, I seek to trouble the absolute distinction between tradition and modernity found in earlier intellectual approaches to Egyptian society.

In the post-colonial Egyptian state, the army decided to intervene and take down existing regimes three times: once in 1952, and twice more recently in 2011 and 2013. In old and new cases of intervention, the Egyptian military institution deployed the same nationalist rhetoric about its duty as the “guardian” of the nation and the protector of national unity and security. However, the new army of the last three years is not the same institution that existed sixty years ago. Investigating the recent history of the Egyptian army from 1980s till 2014, this paper argues that a new military institution was born in the country from 1981 onwards—after Egypt fought its last war with its traditional enemy and signed a peace treaty. It is an army of “neo-liberal officers,” who run vast business enterprises, enjoy financial autonomy beyond public scrutiny, heavily penetrate into social realms, and intervene in politics for reasons different than those of the old army—albeit by using the same populist rhetoric. It is an army that has militarized the nation through perpetuated nationalistic myths and ever expanding economic hegemony. Applying political economy and post-colonial theoretical approaches and drawing from comparative literature on other global and Middle Eastern militaries, the paper argues that a fundamental rupture took place in the history of the Egyptian army in the 1980s. Whereas the old army was composed of low- to middle-class soldiers who militarized society through wars and socialism, the new army is controlled by a class of military business managers and militarizes society through economic dominance. This group of “neo-liberal officers” does not believe in the dicta of the market economy, but took advantage of Mubarak’s neo-liberal transitions to create links with regional and global capital, and expanded social control over low- and middle class consumers and the collaborating local business elite. Between 2011 and 2014, this army has forged new alliances with old leftist forces internally, and consolidated its ties with regional and global capital externally towards prolonged dominance—with or without winning the presidential seat. The paper relies on a variety of Arabic and English primary sources, including military companies’ profiles, laws and decrees, government budget files, court cases, parliamentary minutes, interviews with officers and conscripts, newspapers, U.S. congressional and NSC archives, movies, songs, museums, social media, etc. (This paper is derived from a book manuscript the author is working on-- contracted by Columbia University Press.)