| Through an examination of the life and writings of the Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), this dissertation seeks to determine the conceptual bases of the Islamic movement in twentieth-century Egypt. It is argued that the central factor in the rise of islamically-oriented opposition to the elite order has been the gradual emergence in Egypt of the distinctively modern form of the nation-state. Specifically, the processes of Egyptian State formation are seen as responsible not only for the creation of conditions conducive to oppositional Islamism, but for engendering notions of national community and historical transformation which, through the processes of discursive transmutation, have provided the core of political sentiment undergirding this particular form of dissent. |
