TY - JOUR

T1 - Locating Religion in Victory-Making

T2 - The 1973 War Discourse in Egypt

AU - El Menshawi, Mustafa

PY - 2018/2/1

Y1 - 2018/2/1

N2 - Most of the literature on the Arab–Israeli war in 1973 takes material gains and military advances as measurements that indicate victory or defeat. Accordingly, based on the magnitude of weaponry used and the associated tactics employed, scholarly works declare Egypt or Israel the winner. This article moves away from such ‘materialistic’ accounts of the war’s conclusion by exploring a similarly significant victory-maker: the use of the discourse of religion. By looking at previously untapped official and semi-official texts from the war’s onset through the eight years of President Anwar Sadat’s rule, the article finds this discourse to be composed of three thematic structures. These structures cohere into patterns that facilitated an account of the war as a massive and unquestionable Egyptian ‘victory’. The study also addresses how the interplay of language and religion was so closely attuned to the broader context that included the use of authoritarianism in politics and in the media as well as a so-called Islamic revival. Rather than supposing that the religious references in this discourse may have been in some way truthful, I show that it relied on a set of intentional falsehoods.

AB - Most of the literature on the Arab–Israeli war in 1973 takes material gains and military advances as measurements that indicate victory or defeat. Accordingly, based on the magnitude of weaponry used and the associated tactics employed, scholarly works declare Egypt or Israel the winner. This article moves away from such ‘materialistic’ accounts of the war’s conclusion by exploring a similarly significant victory-maker: the use of the discourse of religion. By looking at previously untapped official and semi-official texts from the war’s onset through the eight years of President Anwar Sadat’s rule, the article finds this discourse to be composed of three thematic structures. These structures cohere into patterns that facilitated an account of the war as a massive and unquestionable Egyptian ‘victory’. The study also addresses how the interplay of language and religion was so closely attuned to the broader context that included the use of authoritarianism in politics and in the media as well as a so-called Islamic revival. Rather than supposing that the religious references in this discourse may have been in some way truthful, I show that it relied on a set of intentional falsehoods.

KW - Political Discourse

KW - Religion

KW - 1973 War

KW - Egypt

U2 - 10.1080/13537903.2018.1408276

DO - 10.1080/13537903.2018.1408276

M3 - Journal article

VL - 33

SP - 39

EP - 52

JO - Journal of Contemporary Religion

JF - Journal of Contemporary Religion

SN - 1353-7903

IS - 1

ER -