Beginnings: Practice and belief
Islam was a new religion born of the wreckage of the Greco-Roman world around the south of the Mediterranean. Its founder, a merchant named Mohammed from the wealthy city of Mecca (now in Saudi Arabia), was chosen as God's Prophet; in about 609 AD, he began to hear divine messages, which were later transcribed into the Koran , Islam's holy book. This was the same God worshipped by Jews and Christians - Jesus is one of the minor prophets in Islam - but Muslims claim He had been misunderstood by both earlier religions.

The distinctive feature of this new faith was directness - a reaction to the increasing complexity of established religions and an obvious attraction. In Islam there is no intermediary between man and God ( Allah ) in the form of an institutionalized priesthood or complicated liturgy; and worship, in the form of prayer, is a direct and personal communication with God. Believers face five essential requirements, the so-called "Pillars of Faith" : prayer five times daily, the pilgrimage ( Hadj) to Mecca, the Ramadan fast, a religious levy, and - most fundamental of all - the acceptance that "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His Prophet".

 

Development in Egypt
Islam's arrival in Egypt , in 640, coincided with widespread native resentment of Byzantine rule and its particular version of Christianity. By promising to respect Egyptian Christians and Jews as "people of the Book", the Muslim leader Amr got acquiescence, if not immediate support, from the population, in the wake of the Arab conquest. For many Egyptians who had found Christianity a more valid religion than the old pagan, polytheistic theology, Islam must have seemed a logical simplification, capturing the essence of human relationships with an all-powerful god.

Early on, the spread of Islam was accompanied by a somewhat bizarre conflict of interest. The Arabs wished to spread the faith, yet their administration depended on finance raised by a poll tax levied on non-Muslims. A balance was maintained for a while, but towards the end of the ninth century, rulers began to use the tax as a punitive measure, alongside a series of repressive acts directed against the Christian and Jewish faiths. Khalif al-Hakim, in particular, embarked on a programme of destroying churches and synagogues. However, it was not until the eleventh century that Cairo attained a Muslim majority , and not until the thirteenth century for Egypt as a whole.

The original Arab dynasties of Egypt subscribed to Sunni Islam - the more "orthodox" branch of the religion, dominant then, as now, in most parts of the Arab world. However, the Fatimid dynasty, which took control of Egypt in 969, signalled a shift to Shi'ite Islam, which was to continue (among the rulers, at least) until late in the twelfth century. Under the Ayyubid dynasty that followed, Egypt reverted, permanently as it turned out, to Sunni adherence, with orthodoxy propagated through the new institution of the madrassa - a theological college attached to a mosque.

Orthodoxy, by its very nature, has to be an urban-based tradition. Learned men - lawyers, Koranic scholars and others - could only congregate in the cities where, gathered together and known collectively as the ulema , they regulated the faith. In Sunni Islam, the ulema divide into four schools ( madhahib) : Hanbali, Maliki, Hanafi and Shafi'i - the last two of which predominate in Egypt. The ulema of Cairo's great Mosque of Al-Azhar is regarded as the ultimate theological authority by most Sunnis outside of the Gulf Arab states.

Towards crisis
With all its different forms, Islam permeates almost every aspect of Egyptian society. Unlike Christianity (or at least Protestant Christianity), which has accepted the separation of church and state, Islam sees no such distinction. Civil law was provided by the sharia, the religious law contained in the Koran, and intellectual life by the madrassas and Al-Azhar university.

The religious basis of Arab study and intellectual life did not prevent its scholars and scientists from producing work that was hundreds of years ahead of contemporary "Dark Age" Europe. The medical treatises of Ibn Sina (known in Europe as Avicenna) and the piped water and sewage systems of Fustat are just two Egyptian examples. Arab work in developing and transmitting Greco-Roman culture was also vital to the whole development of the European Renaissance.

By this time, however, the Islamic world was beginning to move away from the West. The Crusades were one enduring influence towards division. Another was the Islamic authorities themselves, who were increasingly suspicious (like the Western church) of any challenge and actively discouraging of innovation. At first it did not matter in political terms that Islamic culture became static. But by the end of the eighteenth century, Europe was ready to take advantage. Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in 1798 marked the beginning of a century in which virtually every Islamic country came under the control of a European power .

Islam cannot, of course, be held solely responsible for the Muslim world's material decline. But because it influences every part of its believers' lives, and because East-West rivalry had always been viewed in primarily religious terms, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw something of a crisis in religious confidence . Why had Islam's former power now passed to infidel foreigners?