Filming Modernity and Islam in Colonial Egypt

Explores over 30 feature films from the formative years of Egyptian cinema (191952) to contest the contradiction between Islam and innovation. This book studies the rise of cinema in colonial Egypt as a supplemental secular public sphere that is not anti-religion. To this end, it investigates the reception of film by three centres of power: the colonial authorities, the Muslim clergy, and the Cairene bourgeoisie. It inquires about the representations of modernity in films produced during the time and the place filmmakers assigned to Islam in these representations. The result is a story of survival and coexistence told through the lens of cinema as modern art and popular culture negotiating its overt and covert censorship in the public sphere, despite colonization and war.