In Cairo, Tunis and elsewhere along the rim of the Mediterranean, the first headway made by Islamists in the student world occurred initially in technical institutes, then in engineering faculties and finally in scientific universities-in other words in the most modernist sectors and those most exposed to the outside world. Apparently, we got everything wrong. Our modernist vision of modernity has itself turned out to be only an archaism of the industrial age. It is not by mere chance that such a large number of contemporary cultural mysteries can only be penetrated through the x-rays of primitive societies. In fact, terms that are antithetical in the mind of modern sociology appear instead to be in correlation with each other.
Every imbalance caused by technological progress seems to lead to an ethical readjustment.
Hence, the confusion between the homogenization of the world and assertion of differences, between intellectual knowledge and emotional roots, between economic imperatives and spiritual aspirations. When the birthplace becomes blurred, the threat of death looms large. There is an intrinsic relationship between the disappearance of points of reference and the rise in myths of origins. It is true that industrialization is antireligious because it relocates peoples through the rural exodus, the shift in employment, the immigration and emigration of foreign labor, the increased social mobility and the loosening of moral codes dependent upon close community. But it is because of this very dislocation that, in industrialized countries, the pursuit of relocalization of the imagination is relentless through movements seeking regionalization or ethnic affinity.