The carnage in the courtyard of Hatshepsut Temple on Luxor's West Bank has shown once again that Egyptian militancy is alive and well, in spite of government claims to the contrary.
Only a few weeks ago the authorities heaved a sigh of relief when swift military justice sentenced two brothers to death for bombing a tourist bus in September and closed the door on the embarrassing situation of having two non-militants kill their victims in the name of Islam.
It seems they sighed too soon.
Like Saber Abu el-Ela, one of the brothers who turned the bus into a deadly inferno on September 18th, the Gama'a militants who killed so many in Luxor believed they were working for the good of Islam.
The government's pronouncements about security, and the welldocumented human rights abuses perpetrated on so many of their fellow radicals, did not deter them.
And although Saber was portrayed by the government as mentally unbalanced, many of his apparent ravings about killing Jews and fighting to defend Islam from Western infidels were very similar to Gama'a and Jihad statements.
More disturbingly, they had all appeared before on Egypt's state-run television, on the pages of its semiofficial press or from the state-endorsed religious leadership.
These views, say critics, highlight the contradictions of a state policy that on the one hand cracks down mercilessly on Islamic militants, but on the other tolerates and even sponsors a religious conservatism that fosters extremism.
Saber himself told journalists he was inspired by the widely respected scientist turned tele-evangelist, Dr Mustafa Mahmoud, who said on his television programme that there was going be a war against the Jews.
He, like the young Gama'a zealots, may have also heard the views of the supposedly moderate mufti (or state religious guide), Nasr Farid Wassel, and the liberal head of AlAzhar University, Sheikh Muhammed Sayed Tantawi, both of whom have called suicide bombings in Israel acts of martyrdom.
Wassel has also said sharia law should be established in Egypt, a key demand of militant groups.
The Egyptian government has always used religion both for legitimacy and as a policy tool. Former President Anwar Sadat obtained fatwas, or legal opinions, from prominent theologians to sanction the Camp David accords with Israel. More recently, the Prime Minister used a fatwa from the Sheikh of AlAzhar to justify a land reform programme.
But many claim that the state has been neither consistent nor rational in the way it has played its religious card.
The government is using the same religious ideas as the opposition, both militant and non-militant, and this creates a paradox, said Mr Rafiq Habib, a Coptic Christian and cofounder of the moderate Islamist alWasat party.
A consistently progressive, moderate interpretation of Islam by the state would, he said, be a very powerful weapon against the extremists. Instead, he charged, the government is reactive. Its leadership is from a military background and acts only to continue its authority.
Others point out that part of the government's dilemma lies in the Egyptian constitution. A compromise between the secularism of Turkey and the religious literalism of Saudi Arabia, it affirms that Islam is the religion of the state but is otherwise couched in the language of secularism.
The modern history of Egypt is dependent on this ambiguity, explained Dr Muhammed El-Sayed Said, head of a Cairo think tank. The state moves with the pendulum of the popular mood and makes a mix that suits its political aims.
In contemporary Egypt, however, striking a balance between popular religious sentiment and a moderate interpretation of Islam is not easy. The government is forced to react to the popular revival of Islam.
AS A RESULT, conservatives feel more in tune with the street and therefore feel freer to voice what they believe than they would have 10 years ago, said one western analyst currently researching a book on religiosity in Egypt. As a result, clerics and preachers are given considerable latitude.
Al-Azhar university is a case in point. More than 1,000 years old, Al-Azhar is Sunni Islam's foremost theological training centre, with students from throughout the Muslim world.
Its current head, Sheikh Tantawi, was appointed more than a year ago in an attempt by the government to moderate some of the venerable institution's more extreme elements.
Since Tantawi assumed his post, however, Al-Azhar's self-appointed moral guardians have, among other things, blacklisted books by moderate religious scholars and branded a philosophy professor an apostate, the same charge that led to the death of secularist writer Farag Foda in 1994 and which forced scholar Nasr Abu Zeid to flee Egypt in fear of his life in 1995.
The government has reacted timidly to such incidents and in many cases the police have raided bookshops to carry out the scholars' bidding.
The result of all this is an atmosphere in which extremism thrives, even though most ordinary Egyptians deplore the violence of militant groups.
Defence lawyers for the Abu el-Ela brothers' co-defendants put the blame for the September bus attack squarely on the religious atmosphere in Egypt. "Saber and those like him believe that they have a responsibility to defend their faith," said one.
Others will no doubt relate yesterday's killings to the same phenomenon. For, as Rafiq Habib pointed out, despite all the well-publicised police operations and all the death sentences, both the Gama'a and the Jihad keep finding new members.
