Islamic Clinics in Egypt: The Cultural Elaboration of Biomedical Hegemony

This article examines the provision of health care by Islamic voluntary organizations in Egypt. It links the development of Islamic clinics to national, regional, and international political‐economic transformations of the past decade. The Islamization of medicine is revealed as a particular manifestation of the worldwide spread of biomedicine and not as a revival of earlier Islamic medical traditions. Far from representing an alternative health care strategy that challenges state authority, Islamist medicine is considered as a vehicle for power sharing.