Race, Religion, and Reactionary Politics in Salama Musa's Communal Turn

This article explores the Egyptian Coptic intellectual Salama Musa's (1887–1958) writings on race and religion before and after World War II. Prior to the war, Musa's writings were hostile toward religious identity and public religion, emphasizing instead racial identity as an ideal basis for Egyptian society. After the war, however, Musa began to embrace Coptic communal identity and engage in church politics, all the while continuing to deploy race to highlight Copts’ place in the Egyptian nation. The author argues that Musa's turn to the communal was a response to developing sectarian tensions and authoritarianism in postwar Egypt that brought Copts’ precarity as a minority to the public stage. Pushing back against a rising tide of domestic reactionism, Musa offered a unique blend of communal mobilization and racial identity that stressed Coptic Indigeneity while also emphasizing the precarity Copts faced at the hands of Islamists and authoritarian governance.