TWELVEThe Rise of Nationalism
Among the ideas that the Middle East has imported from the West, none
has been more popular and durable than nationalism. Often called the reli¬
gion of the modern world, this ideology or belief system is hard to pin
down. Drawing on the Western historical experience, we define national¬
ism as the desire of a large group of people to create or maintain a common
statehood, to have their own rulers, laws, and other governmental insti¬
tutions. This desired political community, or nation, is the object of that
group's supreme loyalty. Shared characteristics among the peoples of Egypt
and also among those of Persia stimulated the growth of nationalism in
those two countries in the late nineteenth century. Other nationalist move¬
ments have grown up in the Middle East around shared resistance to gov¬
ernments, institutions, and even individuals regarded as foreign.
Nationalism was itself foreign to the world of Islam. In traditional Is¬
lamic thought, the umma, or community of believers, was for Muslims the
sole object of political loyalty. Loyalty meant defending the land of Islam
against rulers or peoples of other faiths. All true Muslims were meant to be
brothers and sisters, regardless of race, language, and culture. Although dis¬
tinctions existed between Arabs and Persians, and between them and the
Turks, common adherence to Islam was supposed to transcend all differ¬
ences. Nationalism should not exist in Islam.
Yet it does, though religion has deeply influenced nationalism in the Mid¬
dle East. Arab nationalism, at its start, included Christians and even Jews,
but its clearest expressions since World War II have been opposition to
Christian control in Lebanon and to Jewish colonization in Palestine (Israel
since 1948). The rhetoric of nationalism often confuses the Arab nation
with the Islamic umma, as when an Arab nationalist cause is termed a jihad.
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