Revolutionary Decolonization and the Formation of the Sacred: The Case of Egypt*.

Egypt's successful struggle over ownership of the Suez Canal under President Gamal ʿAbd al-Nasser in 1956 is usually seen as pivotal in the history of decolonization. Scholars have written about how the Suez War brought many of the classical themes of decolonization into focus, such as sovereignty over natural resources, the hegemony of the new Cold War order, the rise of popular anti-colonial nationalism and the international politics of development. But what about freedom? Freedom is both a political and a theological concept. Scholars of decolonization have dealt with its political aspects, but they have yet to make sense of the theological, wherein the struggle for freedom results in the sacralization of the political sphere. Conceived as a deep study of freedom during decolonization, this article engages the field of political theology to examine how an organization of the politics of liberation that was founded on the imagination of the sacred became an article of faith that shaped everyday life for millions of people around the Arab world and the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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