This article explores the history of “Islamic Society” (al-Mujtamaʿ al-Islāmī), a concept whose widespread usage is paralleled by shallow understandings of its origins. Scholars of premodern Islamic history often use this term to describe the ideas and practices of Muslim communities under Islamic political rule, while historians of the Muslim Brotherhood highlight this leading Islamist movement’s commitment to forming such a collective yet treat the concept as sui generis. This article, in turn, draws on a wide array of Islamic print media published by leading Islamic movements and state institutions in Egypt between 1898 and 1981 to tell a story of how this concept became intellectually viable and politically meaningful in the context of transition from colonial to postcolonial rule in the mid-twentieth century. Building on histories of religious nationalism which trace how religious nationalist visions produce novel understandings of religious identity rather than replicating prior models, the article explores the ways in which identity is linked to particular projects of religious practice. In doing so, it casts light on how religious nationalist projects seek to structure social life through calls to continuity with the past even as they adopt the core assumptions of the nation-state project. Specifically, it argues that, as Muslim thinkers, activists, and scholars navigated the transition from colonial to postcolonial rule, they turned to this concept to articulate dueling conceptions of religious change through state power and social mobilization alike.

本文探讨了“伊斯兰社会”（al-Mujtamaʿ al-Islāmī）的历史，这个概念的广泛使用与对其起源的浅薄理解并行。前现代伊斯兰历史的学者经常使用这个术语来描述穆斯林社区在伊斯兰政治统治下的思想和实践，而穆斯林兄弟会的历史学家则强调这一领先的伊斯兰运动致力于形成这样一个集体，但将这一概念视为自成一格. 反过来，本文借鉴了 1898 年至 1981 年间埃及主要的伊斯兰运动和国家机构出版的大量伊斯兰印刷媒体，讲述了这个概念如何在从殖民过渡的背景下变得在思想上可行和政治上有意义的故事到二十世纪中叶的后殖民统治。本文以宗教民族主义历史为基础，追溯宗教民族主义愿景如何产生对宗教身份的新理解，而不是复制先前的模型，探讨身份与特定宗教实践项目相关联的方式。在这样做的过程中，它揭示了宗教民族主义项目如何通过呼吁与过去的连续性来构建社会生活，即使它们采用了民族国家项目的核心假设。具体来说，