This workshop was concerned with the changing role of religion in public life not only in Egypt but throughout the Middle East and North Africa region, and in sub-Sahara Africa as well. The pan-regional view provided religious contexts that were Christian, Jewish, and indigenous African as well as Islamic. The issues, however, were strikingly similar—such as the relation between religion and entrenched cultural positions on gender, health and equality; the traditional suspicion of outsiders, regardless of their good intentions; and the persistent confrontation between secular and religious bases for public order and moral obligations for social service.