Abstract
Proponents of the ‘Islamic alternative in Egypt’ claim that it is the only solution to the ills besetting the political and economic structures in the country. The network of Islamic charitable associations, the jamiyyaat khayriyya, have taken a lead in promoting economic and social development in local communities throughout Egypt. Islamic private voluntary organisations (PVOs) and other groups are attempting to fill the void left by a government that is increasingly unable to devote its limited resources to a plethora of problem areas — education and training, housing, health care, agricultural and industrial productivity, employment, transportation.
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Notes
The Islamic world is no more Islamic today than it was a decade or a quarter century ago. It only seems more so, because mobilization has succeeded in bringing into the political arena classes and individuals traditionally cowed by political authority and convinced that power is the realm of people other than themselves.’ Fouad Ajami, The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice Since 1967 (Cambridge University Press, 1981) p. 187.
Needless to say, Richard P. Mitchell’s The Society of the Muslim Brethren (Oxford University Press, 1969) is the most enlightening account of the founding, development, and programme of the ikhwan. For more recent accounts of the ikhwan, see Gilles Kepel’s Muslim Extremism in Egypt, in which the author compares the neo-Muslim Brotherhood not only with the original leadership of the Ikhwan but also with leaders of other contemporary Islamic organisations in Egypt; and see Emmanuel Sivan’s Radical Islam, for a general comparison between the Eyptian and Syrian organisations, both known as the Muslim Brethren.
Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and the Pharaoh, transl. by Jon Rotchild (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) p. 129. This book is an indispensable resource for any student of contemporary Egyptian and/or Islamic social and political movements.
Michael Hudson recognised that most Arab governments lacked legitimacy and were attempting to correct this situation through various techniques and ideologies. Since 1952 Egyptian governments have probably suffered least from such crises of legitimacy, but this may now be slowly changing — the principal question of this research. Hudson, Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977).
Morroe Berger, Islam in Egypt Today: Social and Political Aspects of Popular Religion (Cambridge University Press, 1970). See especially, chapter 4, ‘Voluntary Benevolent Societies’.
Most of the information on Ezbet Zein is taken from Louise G. White (1986), ‘Urban Community Organisations and Local Government: Exploring Relationships and Roles’, Public Administration and Political Development, vol. 6, no. 93, pp. 239–53.
Imam Roushdy Hammady, Religious Medical Centres in Egypt, thesis, American University in Cairo, 1990. p. 42.
Borrowed from Hernando de Soto, The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World, trans. by June Abbott (New York: Harper & Row, 1989). While Islamic and other legally registered PVOs are not comparable to the informal sector, the underground economy highlighted by de Soto, there are parallels between the two. PVOs in Egypt, while ostensibly part of the formal sector, nevertheless continue to skirt legality by bending many of the regulations in Law 32 of 1964. This and many other characteristics of these organisations place PVOs in a tenuous situation, both formal and informal.
Imam Roushdy Hammady, ‘Religious Medical Centres in Egypt’, Master’s Thesis, American University in Cairo, 1990. Quote is from Abstract; see also, p. 97.
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© 1994 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Sullivan, D. (1994). Islam and Development in Egypt: Civil Society and the State. In: Mutalib, H., Hashmi, T.uI. (eds) Islam, Muslims and the Modern State. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14208-8_10
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