Putting Islam to work: education, politics, and religious transformation in Egypt

In: Comparative studies on Muslim societies 25

Abstract

In the chapter on character in his classic Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, first published in 1836, Edward Lane included a note on religious pride as one of the leading features of [Egyptian] character. I am credibly informed, he wrote, that children in Egypt are often taught, at school, a regular set of curses to denounce upon the persons and property of Christians, Jews, and all other unbelievers in the religion of Mohammad. Noting that these curses were recited daily in some of Cairo's government schools (but not those held in mosques), he quoted from an Arabic transcription given to him by his friend Richard Burton: O God, destroy the infidels and polytheists, thine enemies, the enemies of the religion.