Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and Pharaoh by Gilles Kepel

From the Publisher

Gilles Kepel takes us into the world of the students, professionals, workers, and unemployed who are caught up in the Islamic movements of our day. Events that have riveted world attention--the World Trade Center bombing, assassinations in Beirut, the attempt on the life of the Pope, the assassination of Sadat--are illuminated by this penetrating study which surveys the background of the Islamist movement beginning with the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928.

Library Journal

Within the past decade, a wave of religious fundamentalism has surged through the Islamic world. With the assassination of President Anwar Sadat as a focal point, Kepel examines the ideologies and activities of several Egyptian fundamentalist groups over 30 years. He describes the small but devoted religious groups determined to replace their barbaric regime with a government devoted to the true principles of Islam. The fervor of the Islamic revolutionaries, however, was equalled by their political naivete, and their success in killing Egypt's president led only to arrests and continued powerlessness. Although sympathetic to their religious concerns, Kepel asserts that most of the zealots were motivated more by the hopelessness and poverty of Egyptian life than by a desire to replace a modernist regime with pure Islam. A reliable, scholarly study of an important phenomenon. Elizabeth R. Hayford, President, Assoc. Colls. of the Midwest, Chicago

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Table of Contents