234 No god but God
and God, while the fatherland is the concern of us all.” Nevertheless,
the Pan-Arabists considered their movement to be both political and
religious because, in their view, Islam could not be divorced from its
Arab roots. To quote the nationalist ideologue Abd al-Rahman al-
Bazzaz, “The most glorious pages of Muslim history [are also] the
pages of Muslim Arab history.” Thus, while Pan-Arabists agreed with
the Pan-Islamists that Muslims must return to the values of the origi-
nal community in Medina, they defined that community as uniquely
Arab. Muslim unity, it was claimed, could not be realized except
through Arab unity, and Pan-Arabism was seen as “the practical step
which must precede... Pan-Islamism.”
Of course, the Pan-Arabists had a difficult time defining what
exactly they meant by Arab unity. Despite their claims of racial soli-
darity, there is simply no such thing as a single Arab ethnicity. Egyp-
tian Arabs had practically nothing in common with, say, Iraqi Arabs.
The two countries did not even speak the same Arabic dialect. In any
case, regardless of the Ummah’s Arab roots, the fact is that at the
beginning of the twentieth century, Arabs accounted for the tiniest
fraction of the world’s Muslim population—perhaps as little as 20 per-
cent. In response to such obstacles some nationalists sought to con-
nect themselves with the ancient cultures of their home countries. For
example, Egyptian nationalists appealed to an imagined Pharaonic
legacy, while Iraqi nationalists strove to return to their Mesopotamian
heritage.
The Arab nationalists were given an unexpected boost at the end
of the First World War, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the
hands of Kemal Ataturk. The Caliphate that had, despite its declining
powers, symbolized the spiritual unity of the Ummah for nearly fif-
teen centuries was suddenly replaced by a radically secular, ultrana-
tionalist Turkish republic. The Empire was broken up by the victors
of the war, particularly Britain, into individual, semi-autonomous
states. In Egypt, Britain seized the opportunity to sever all ties with
the Turks, simply declaring itself the country’s sole protector. The
khedive was declared king of Egypt, though he was still a puppet of
the colonialists.
With the Caliphate dismantled and Egypt firmly under British
occupation, Pan-Islamism was discarded as a viable ideology for Mus-