Although the practices we have examined in previous chapters – learning, worshipping, judging – form the center of Islamic religious preoccupations, in their daily lives, Muslims, along with other humans, have other worries as well, such as jobs, peace, and respect. It is here that religious appeals often are directed at mobilizing Muslims to improve their social lot, by organizing, preaching, or fighting. It is also here that most of us have the most difficulty sorting out motivations and actions. How do religious beliefs, social loyalties, and political passions interrelate? The role of the anthropologist has been to try and articulate the individual's passions and actions, on the one hand, and his or her role in broader (sometimes transnational) social movements, on the other.

Predication and politics in Egypt

Our starting point will be the da`wa, the “call” or “summons,” that Muslims are urged to make to their fellow Muslims, asking them to pursue their faith in a pious and proper way. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the organizers of Islamic social movements have used da`wa as the way to spread their message and to recruit followers. In the years following the dismantlement of the Ottoman Empire (the last pretender to the status of Caliphate), Muslim leaders throughout the Muslim-majority world sought to reinvigorate the umma and restore an Islamic society. In Egypt in 1928, Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood for this purpose. The Brotherhood began with the goal of encouraging Muslims to become better Muslims by performing their ritual duties and helping one another. The movement expanded to become a major social and political force, one that took on the goal of creating a new Islamic society (Mitchell 1969).