326 DESTINY DISRUPTED
global trade and wreck the world economy. These two European countries
colluded with Israel in a complicated scheme to bomb Cairo, kill Nasser,
and recover the canal.
Just in time, however, U.S. president Ike Eisenhower heard about the
scheme and flew into a rage. Didn't the Europeans know there was a Cold
War on? Didn't they know their little plot could deliver the whole Middle
East to the Soviets? Eisenhower ordered the Europeans to give the canal
back to Egypt and go home, and U.S. dominance was such that both
countries (and Israel) had to obey.
Arabs saw this as a great victory for Nasser. For the next eleven heady
years, Nasser was the decolonizing hero, the prophet of Arab unity, and the
avatar of "Islamic Socialism," by which he meant a classless society
achieved not through class warfare, as in Marxism, but through class co-
operation regulated by the principles of Islam-a vigorous "socialist" re-
statement of the basic secular modernist Muslim creed.
Nasser built his dam and electrified his nation. He also joined with
India's Nehru, Indonesia's Sukarno, Sri Lanka's Bandaranaike, and several
others to forge the Non-Aligned Movement, a bloc of neutral countries in-
tended to counterbalance the two Cold War superpowers.
Nasser's big deeds and global stature won him countless new admirers
at home, and not just in Egypt. Arabs of all classes and countries found
him intoxicatingly charismatic. As a speaker, no one could touch him.
When he spoke, Arabs (who heard him mostly on the radio) said they felt
like he was in the room with them, addressing each person eye to eye,
drawing each one into a conversation about what was to be done, as if all
of them were in this thing together and every one of them mattered.
Nasser's popularity got him to dreaming of something bigger than a
sovereign Egypt-a pan-Arab nation! This was exactly what the Ba'ath
Party had been preaching in Syria. In fact, in 1958, Egypt and Syria tried
to form one big country, the United Arab Republic, but Syria seceded
three years later-a blow to Nasser's prestige.
Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood was still alive. In 1952, they had
helped overthrow the Egyptian king but as soon as Nasser's secular gov-
ernment commenced operations, they turned against him, even attempt-
ing to assassinate him. Nasser retaliated by putting the movements' leaders
in prison, where he had them tortured.