Friday's Read: Islam and the Search for Social Order in Modern Egypt: A Biography of Muhammad Husayn Haykal

Smith, Charles D. Islam and the Search for Social Order in Modern Egypt: A Biography of Muhammad Husayn Haykal. (New York: State University of New York Press, 1984)
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Charles D. Smith’s Islam and the Search for Social Order in Modern Egypt: A Biography of Muhammad Husayn Haykal (1984) has as its subject a thinker from the next generation after Rida who was also concerned with the relationship of Islam to modern Egypt. Unlike the earlier Islamic reformers, however, Haykal (1888-1956) a lifelong writer and career politician, was less concerned about the idea of reforming Islam from the inside in order to accommodate social change. Instead, in the 1920s Haykal called for a secular, liberal government that made room for the moral and social benefits and spirituality of Islam. As his political career progressed, however, Haykal changed his public approach to Islam. By the 1930s he had reintegrated the idea of Islamic state back into his writing, in part in order to negotiate with the powerful Al-Azhar and ‘ulama. The need to campaign on Islam was a reflection of the competing identitarian strains percolating through Egypt in the interwar period (addressed in some detail in Gershoni and Jankowski’s work from the nationalist lit review).