In the Arab world, nationalism and Islamism can hardly live together. Concepts such as `Arab awareness`, the rise of `Arabicity`, `Arabism` (urūbah) and `Pan-Arabism`, along with ideas based on the Islamic religion such as `pan-Islamism`, or `back to the fundamentals of Islam` have flooded the Arab world since the 19th century.[1] Ideas of Arab Nationalism gained momentum in the 19th century, the period of rising nationalism in Europe, as Arab people were under the control of the Ottoman Empire, a political entity of Islamic religion but Turkish origin.[2] Therefore, ideas related to `Arabism` (urūbah) and less so ideas of `pan-Islamism` or Islamic solidarity and a common Islamic community (Ummah) gain momentum as a counterresponse to the concept of `Ottomanism`.[3] After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, `Arabism` continued as an ideal and peaked at the end of World War II.[4] The rise of Islamist ideas and Arab Islamism would have to wait up until the early 1970s, the period when the nationalist ethos started to lose momentum.[5] The historical and political evolution of both nationalist and Islamist ideas, as well as their direct ideological confrontation, could not find a more favourable place to develop than Egypt, which was not only the source of the Arab nationalism as `Arab Renaissance`, but also of political Islam (the Muslim Brotherhood).

Historically, Arab nationalism was born as an Arab rejuvenation, a cultural renaissance of Arab literature and ideas from what was believed to be a centuries-long decadence of Arab culture. This concept became enshrined in the `Nahḍah`, a reformist movement that developed in Egypt in the 19th century and spread further on to Syria and Lebanon.[6] [7] This cultural marvel in the Arab world was defined on European lines, with intellectuals of the `Nahdah` borrowing ideas on cultural unity and forms of expression from the West in an autochthonic infusion of modern and progressive concepts and artistic expressions unknown in the Arab world.[8] [9] In Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, concepts of autonomy from the Ottoman empire and even further, the idea of ​​the formation of an Arab state based on ethnic unity (Arabicity), and not religious credentials (Islamic solidarity) began to take hold.[10] The association of such ideas with places such as Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria (where these ideas and concepts were embraced the most) was motivated by their cultural advances and the presence, in addition to a Muslim population, of a significant community of Christians.[11] It was these Christians in Egypt (Copts) and Syria and Lebanon (Maronites) who contributed significantly to the concept-building of an Arab state, based on ethnicity (Arabs), and not religion (Islam).[12] Politically, Arab nationalism took off at the end of World War I, when the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire could have transposed the historical ideas and concepts into a -never realized- political project; it endured in the period between the wars and developed to high peaks immediately after the end of World War II.[13] In Egypt, Arab nationalism took on the most advanced political contour in 1952 with the rise of a charismatic Arab nationalist leader in the person of Gamal Nasser, who embarked on a mission of pan-Arabism and the suppression of all forces that ran contrary to this ideal, such as Islamist ideas.[14] Historically, Islamist ideas have been based on both a political and social ideal. The Arab world has been in a continuous decline, and after the European Enlightenment, the `Arab civilization based on Islam` remained way behind a `European Christian civilization based on science`.[15] [16] For Islamists, this backwardness was attributed to the continuous degradation of Islam and promoted the reform of society through the reform of Islam in order to step up in the face of Europeans, as contrary to nationalist ideas which put forward the idea of Arab unity to achieve Arab emancipation from European intrusions. At the basis of Islamist ideas was the return to fundamentals, meaning to restore the glory of Islam by eliminating everything that contributed to its decline and to take the first community established by Muhammad at Medina as a model.[17] Several thinkers contributed to the spread of such ideas such as Egypt-educated Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi in North Africa and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahab in the Arabian Peninsula.[18] [19] Politically, Islamist ideas had to adapt over time to modern world in order to survive and get support as a reasonable political alternative.[20] In Egypt, where the roots of political Islam were felt the strongest, the intellectual Muhammad Abduh promoted modernization and a reinterpretation of the Koran while adjudicating the need for a return to the fundamentals of Islam[21]. Another striking example is the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist political party that changed its political course in the 1970s-1980s, from the more radical convictions of its founder, Hasan Al-Banna, and thinker, Sayyid Qutb on an Islamic governance based on `sharia`, to a more political moderate discourse that helped its members to win seats in the 1987 Egyptian parliamentary elections.[22] [23] The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood (as well as other Islamist groups in the region) at the end of the 1970s was due to a cultural shift within Islam.[24] [25] Arab nationalism that peaked between 1950-1970 under Nasser was replaced by Arab Islamism after Nasser's death in 1970.[26] This was motivated by the political impact that the 1967 war between the Arab nationalist regimes and Israel (lost to the latter) had on the popular consciousness and the rise of the Gulf monarchies and the formation of a new social contract based on a trade-off between wealth and social demands.[27] [28] Once social demands (an important basis for nationalist support) have been answered with wealth, the political powerhouse of nationalism could hardly survive.[29]

Egypt proved to be the epicentre of both nationalist and Islamist ideas. Historically, Egypt was the place where the Arab rejuvenation of the `Nahda` spread its ideas of Arab unity and cultural emancipation further on.[30] [31] Politically, Egypt was the place where Gamal Nasser became the flag bearer of Arab nationalism and an example to follow in the Arab world, transforming Arab nationalist ideals into a political project, and the place where the political Islam was the most active as the Islamist ideas have been transferred to a moderate political agenda by the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s.[32] [33] But Egypt was also the epicentre of the thorniest conflicts between nationalist and Islamist ideas, as Hassan Al-Banna has been assassinated in 1949 after the Muslim Brotherhood's secret apparatus assassinated the prime minister in 1948, Sayyid Qutb, the Brotherhood`s most prominent thinker was sentenced to death by nationalist Nasser after he was found behind a series of assassination plots, and the Muslim Brotherhood has been repressed in the 1990s following their political victory in the 1987 elections.[34] [35] Behind the difficult relationship between nationalist and Islamist ideas is an ideological incompatibility. After all, nationalist ideas based on secularism, progressivism, and modernization (even though under an authoritarian regime) can hardly live with Islamist fundamentalist ideals based on the sovereignty of God and Islamic governance based on `sharia`.[36]

[1] Patrizia Manduchi, "Arab Nationalism(s): Rise and Decline of an Ideology", Oriente Moderno (Brill), 2017-03, Vol.97 (1), pp. 9-10.

[2] Lisa Anderson (1987), The State in the Middle East and North Africa, Comparative Politics, 20:1, pp. 3-4.

[3] Patrizia Manduchi, "Arab Nationalism(s): Rise and Decline of an Ideology", Oriente Moderno (Brill), 2017-03, Vol.97 (1), p. 9.

[4] Ibidem, pp. 15-19.

[5] Ibidem, p. 20.

[6] James L. Gelvin, The Modern Middle East, Oxford University Press, Fifth edition, 2020, pp. 140-141.

[7] Patrizia Manduchi, "Arab Nationalism(s): Rise and Decline of an Ideology", Oriente Moderno (Brill), 2017-03, Vol.97 (1), p. 11.

[8] Ibidem, pp. 11-12.

[9] Saeed Rahnema, (2008), "Radical Islamism and Failed Developmentalism", Third World Quarterly, 29:3, pp. 486-487.

[10] Patrizia Manduchi, "Arab Nationalism(s): Rise and Decline of an Ideology", Oriente Moderno (Brill), 2017-03, Vol.97 (1), pp. 12-14.

[11] Ibidem, pp 10-11.

[12] Ibidem, pp. 12-14.

[13] Patrizia Manduchi, "Arab Nationalism(s): Rise and Decline of an Ideology", Oriente Moderno, (Brill), 2017-03, Vol.97 (1), pp. 15-19.

[14] James L. Gelvin, The Modern Middle East, Oxford University Press, Fifth Edition, 2020, pp. 280-281.

[15] Saeed Rahnema, (2008), "Radical Islamism and Failed Developmentalism", Third World Quarterly, 29:3, p. 485.

[16] James L. Gelvin, The Modern Middle East, Oxford University Press, Fifth Edition, 2020, pp. 153-154.

[17] Ibidem, pp. 143-144.

[18] Ibidem, pp. 145-146.

[19] Saeed Rahnema, (2008), "Radical Islamism and Failed Developmentalism", Third World Quarterly, 29:3, p. 484.

[20] James L. Gelvin, The Modern Middle East, Oxford University Press, Fifth Edition, 2020, pp. 142-143.

[21] Saeed Rahnema, (2008), "Radical Islamism and Failed Developmentalism", Third Quarterly, 29:3, p. 486.

[22] Ibidem, pp. 488-489.

[23] James L. Gelvin, The Modern Middle East, Oxford University Press, Fifth Edition, 2020, p. 334.

[24] Ibidem, pp. 329-332.

[25] Patrizia Manduchi, "Arab Nationalism(s): Rise and Decline of an Ideology", Oriente Moderno, (Brill), 2017-03, Vol.97 (1), pp. 20-22.

[26] Ibidem, pp. 20-21.

[27] Ibidem, pp. 20-22.

[28] James L. Gelvin, The Modern Middle East, Oxford University Press, Fifth Edition, 2020, pp. 330-331.

[29] Patrizia Manduchi, "Arab Nationalism(s): Rise and Decline of an Ideology", Oriente Moderno, (Brill), 2017-03, Vol.97 (1), p. 21.

[30] James L. Gelvin, The Modern Middle East, Oxford University Press, Fifth Edition, 2020, pp. 140-141.

[31] Patrizia Manduchi, "Arab Nationalism(s): Rise and Decline of an Ideology", Oriente Moderno, (Brill), 2017-03, Vol.97 (1), p. 11.

[32] James L. Gelvin, The Modern Middle East, Oxford University Press, Fifth Edition, 2020, pp. 280-283.

[33] Ibidem, pp. 329-334.

[34] Ibidem, p. 334.

[35] Saeed Rahnema, (2008), "Radical Islamism and Failed Developmentalism", Third World Quarterly, 29:3, p. 489.

[36] Patrizia Manduchi, "Arab Nationalism(s): Rise and Decline of an Ideology", Oriente Moderno, (Brill), 2017-03, Vol.97 (1), p. 21.

Bibliography:

Anderson, Lisa, (1987), The State in the Middle East and North Africa, Comparative Politics, 20:1.

Gelvin, L. James, The Modern Middle East, Oxford University Press, Fifth Edition, 2020.

Manduchi, Patrizia, "Arab Nationalism(s): Rise and Decline of an Ideology”, Oriente Moderno (Brill), 2017-03, Vol.97 (1).

Rahnema, Saeed, (2008) “Radical Islamism and Failed Developmentalism”, Third World Quarterly, 29:3.