Acknowledgments

This book is based on doctoral research conducted at Stanford University. It has taken far too long to produce, and too many people have been too patient with me, for which they all deserve my deepest thanks. I want to thank Clifford Barnett, Joel Beinin, Joseph Greenberg, and Bernard Siegel, who agreed, probably against their better judgment, to be responsible for me, giving me their unfailing and generous support despite chronic confusion about what in the world I thought I was doing; the late Lawrence Berman for providing me with the intellectual tools to think comparatively about Islam; Dale Eickelman for providing invaluable advice, encouragement, and much-needed collegial support for a decade now. In Egypt, I benefited from the extraordinarily generous help of Drs. Wadi‘ and Yvonne Haddad, each of whom taught me more than I thought there was to know. Many others have carefully read, considered, and thoughtfully criticized the work in its various incarnations, including Michael Chamberlain, Denis Sullivan, Barbara Metcalf, Patricia Horvatich, Roslyn Mickelson, Adeeb Khalid, Dan Bradburd, Patrick Gaffney, John Bowen, and Steven Caton. I am grateful to all of them for helping improve the manuscript immeasurably, but apologize for not being able to meet all of the challenges they posed. The good stuff is largely theirs; the mediocre is entirely mine. Thanks also to Lynne Withey, Mark Chambers, and Juliane Brand at University of California Press, for shepherding the work through the editing and publication processes.

The institutions that aided me, financially and otherwise, are Stanford University and its Center for Research in International Studies, the Social Science Research Council's Committee for the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies, the Binational Fulbright Commission in Egypt, the Center for Arabic Study Abroad, the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College Teachers program. The marvelous staff at the Hoover Institution library at Stanford University, and at the Dartmouth College Library, made a number of difficult tasks much easier. I want to thank the Egyptian government for sponsoring my Fulbright research, and all of the people who spoke with me, particularly the teachers and staff at the Nasr Language School, and Samia ‘Abd al-Rahman and Layla al-Shamsi, who provided extraordinary models of devotion to Islam.

Finally, I will always be indebted to the many friends who supported me before, during, and after the research for this book. In Egypt, Paul and Arzetta Losensky, Regina Soos, and Jennifer Thayer; in the United States, Laura Leach-Palm, Maidie Golan, Eric Ramirez, and especially Barbara Bocek and Anna Laura Jones, who deserve all praise. Finally, for my parents, my lovely daughter Katherine Grace, and for my wife, Martha Louise Catt, who has supported, fed, and put up with me and without me for these many, many years, I am everlastingly grateful.