Economy, modernity, Islam, and English in Egypt

ABSTRACT After the January 2011 Egyptian revolution led to the fall of the pro‐western dictator Hosni Mubarak and popular elections that brought Islamist parties to the political forefront, the international community speculated about the country's future. Discussion about Egypt's future involved diverse issues, among them globalization, the English language, and how Islam and modernity interact. In this paper, the authors examine the story of English and its widespread use in Egypt to illustrate how modernization and Islamization have contributed to the spread of the once colonial, now global language—English—in the Arab Republic of Egypt.