Filming Modernity and Islam in Colonial Egypt

Dr. Heba Arafa Abdelfattah graduated from Georgetown University in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies in 2017. Her research interests fall within the interdisciplinary area of humanities focusing on the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of art as articulated in Arabic and Islamic thought in all its expressions(from the 7th to the 21st centuries). She works with sacred scripture, literary texts, archival documents, films, and other forms of artistic and cultural production to understand creative experiences at the intersection of discourses of modernity and religious mores. Her articles appeared in such peer-reviewed journals as Religions, Review of Middle East Studies, International Journal of Communication, and the Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies (JIMS). Dr. Abdelfattah served as visiting assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Sacred Music and a lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University. She has been an assistant professor in the Division of Humanities at Grinnell College since 2022.

• List of Figures AcknowledgementsNote on TransliterationPrefaceIntroduction: Basic ConceptsRegulating the Amour-propre of the ColonizedProtecting the Amour-propre of IslamCaricaturing Dominant Modernity (Tafarnug)Lampooning Residual Modernity (Ta’ssul)Celebrating Emergent Modernity (Asala)Bibliography Index

Heba Abdelfattah’s fascinating book shows how different interest groups, ranging from British colonizers to conservative religious scholars and progressive urban elites, tried to make the emerging Egyptian film industry work for them. This is a masterful analysis of how their interactions shaped the new media of cinema and its discourse on modernity and on Islam.