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Rating: 
Summary: Plausible Alternatives for Roots of Islamic Resurgence
Review: By focusing on education, Starrett shows that political ands socio-economic issues alone are insufficient in explaining the rise of islamic revivalism. The combination of increased literacy and Islamic awareness made possible by the spread of public education, in which religion has played a principal role, and its functionalization to serve the purposes of social engineering has made Islam a matter of increasing socio-political concern. The proliferation of Islamic affordable literature and media from official and private sector sources. The scope of religious discourse among non-specialists has widened and the Islamic establishment no longer holds a monopoly on this debate which is presently characterized by a variety of viewpoints. Starrett speaks of a new Islam now taking shape in Egypt as a result of the mass proliferation of Islamic publications and spread of literacy and communications media. Education's particular role in this process has been to create the demand for more religious information and from more sources as the religious discourse widens.
Rating:
Summary: Reproduction & Transformation of Islamic Religiosity
Review: Starret concise work stands out amongst a sea of books written
about religion (esp. Islam) in the Middle. While the unsecular
character of Mid. East Societies, in this case Egypt, and their
affinity by so-called violent religiosity has been attributed to a
primitive mentality of the people, cynical demagoguery by politi-
cians, angst-ridden youth, disillussionment of the middle-aged,
poverty, anti-Western hysteria, and rage arising from political im-
potence and failure, Starret gives an alternative account that is
actually convincing. He does this by drawing the roadmap between
the sensationalist events such as revolutions and assassinations
by examining how the religious citizen is constructed through
national discourse, with a specific focus on the development of
Egypt's educational system from Muhammad Ali's transformation
of the kuttab to later permuations under the British, Nasser,
Sadat, and onward. The result is a highly believeable account of
the salience of religion and religious conflicts [of all sorts,
not just the less-interesting, violent ones] in the country inte-
grated with the national changes in thinking with regard to such
subject as mass media, religious authority and the market. Thus,
the works offers numerous keen insights into the reproduction of
Islamic religiosity and its transformations in Egypt today through
the various interplays between power and public culture. His
anthropological-historical approach is a fresh and welcome one.An editorial criticism of the book as whole: the Arabic throughout
is atrociously transliterated. I ended up making notes in the
margins of my copy to make phrases written in Latin script intelli-
gible. Particularly, iDaafa constructions are not written, hard-
letters are not distinguished from soft letters, long and short
vowels are not differentiated, and sometimes letters are just out-
right confused (e.g., dhaal and Zaa'). With relatively standard- ized options of Arabic transliteration out there,this book is just
sloppy and amateurish in its final edit. Perhaps this won't
bother those who are ignorant of Arabic; however, for those who
are familar with the language, it's a continually frustrating
blemish.
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