This chapter returns to Egypt to examine an instance in which the religious and the national fail to converge into a sacred synthesis. Gamal Nasser deliberately attempted “secularize” in a mode similar to Kemalist Turkey via strategies of usurpation. This chapter shows, however, that Egypt differed significantly from Turkey in that it inherited the legacy of a British colonial occupation—marked by decades of state expansion into education and law—that ostracized religious elites, institutions and attachments. This legacy made it virtually impossible to replicate the Turkish outcome, meaning that religion retained a larger amount of sovereign space in Egypt, the subsequent politicization of religion did not result in groups with statist tendencies, and this ultimately challenged the state and impeded is hegemonic.