The French Modernization Project in Egypt

The local religious leaders were helped along in their brewing hatred of the french by contact with the british and the ottoman turks. They launched an armed uprising, using the great mosque as a base. It was a semiorganized blood bath, and any frenchman caught out in the open was simply killed. And i doubt they would have taken much solace in the knowledge that the french weren't doing anything different moslems in egypt than they were doing to catholics in belgium.