<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n In Midest, a wave of political Islam<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n By Michael Slackman <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n CAIRO She grew up in Cairo with the privileges that go to the daughter of a military officer, attended a university and landed a job in marketing. He grew up in a poor village of dusty unpaved roads, where young men work long hours in a brick factory while dreaming of getting a government job that would pay $90 a month.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But Jihan Mahmoud, 24, from the middle-class neighborhood of Heliopolis, and Madah Ali Muhammad, 23, from a village in the Nile Delta, have come to the same conclusion about what they and their country need: a strong Islamic political movement.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00ab\u00a0I have more faith in Islam than in my state; I have more faith in Allah than in Hosni Mubarak,\u00a0\u00bb Mahmoud said, referring to the president of Egypt. \u00ab\u00a0That is why I am proud to be a Muslim.\u00a0\u00bb<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The war in Lebanon, and the widespread conviction among Arabs that Hezbollah won that war by bloodying Israel, has fostered and validated those kinds of feelings throughout Egypt and the region. In interviews on streets and in newspaper commentaries circulated around the Middle East, the prevailing view is that where Arab nations failed to stand up to Israel and the United States, an Islamic movement succeeded.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The widespread view that Hezbollah won has both propelled and been propelled by a wave already washing over the region. Political Islam was widely seen as the antidote to the failures of Arab nationalism, communism, socialism and, most recently, what is seen as the false promise of American-style democracy. It was that wave that helped the banned but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood win 88 seats in the Egyptian Parliament last December despite the government’s efforts to stop voters from getting to the polls. It was that wave that swept Hamas into power in the Palestinian government in January, shocking Hamas itself.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00ab\u00a0We need an umbrella,\u00a0\u00bb said Mona Mahmoud, 40, Jihan’s older sister. \u00ab\u00a0In the ’60s, Arabism was the umbrella. We had a cause. Now we lack an umbrella. We feel lost in space. We need to be affiliated to something. Usually in our part of the world, because of what religion means to us, we immediately resort to it.\u00a0\u00bb<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The lesson learned by many Arabs from the war in Lebanon is that an Islamic movement, in this case Hezbollah, restored dignity and honor to a bruised and battered identity. People in Egypt still talk painfully about the loss to Israel in 1967, a loss that was the beginning of the end of pan-Arabism as an ideology to unite the region and define its people.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Hezbollah’s perceived victory has highlighted, and to many people here validated, the rise of another unifying ideology, a kind of Arab-Islamic nationalism. On the street it has even seemed to erase divisions between Islamic sects, like Sunni and Shiite.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n