The past four decades have witnessed profound transformations in the Egyptian legal system and in the Egyptian legal profession. Article 2 of the Egyptian Constitution now enshrines Islamic jurisprudence as the principle source of law, thus establishing an important symbolic marker at the heart of the state and opening avenues for Islamist activists to press litigation campaigns in the courts. Additionally, the Islamist trend gained prominence within the legal profession, a development that is particularly striking given the long and illustrious history of the Lawyer's Syndicate as a bastion of liberalism. Despite these significant shifts, however, Islamist litigation has achieved only limited legal victories. This article traces the political and socio-economic variables that underlie the Islamist trend in Egyptian law, and examines the impact of Islamist litigation in the Egyptian courts.

The aim of this article is to test two hypotheses on the relationship between religiosity and war-related distress in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The article is based on a representative survey (n = 3,313) in Bosnia and Herzegovina during 2003–2004. The questionnaire included 15 items on war-related distress and 13 items on war experiences. From these items we developed a war-related distress scale, a war experiences scale, and several measures of religiosity. Regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between the war-related distress symptoms on the one hand, and religiosity and war experience on the other hand, controlling for a range of other variables. Religious beliefs and religious stability seem to protect against war-related distress, but religious activity works in the opposite direction to increase war-related distress. In conclusion, we found weak support for the first hypothesis, although the effects of religiosity on war-related distress seem more complex than expected. Our second hypotheses, that religiosity may work as a buffer to dampen the effects of war experiences on war-related distress, found no support.