Throughout the 20th century, Egyptian nationalism has alternately revolved around three primary axes: a local Egyptian territorial nationalism, a sense of Arab ethnic-linguistic nationalism, and an identification with the wider Muslim community. This detailed study is devoted to the first major phase in the perennial debate over nationalism in modern Egypt--the territorial nationalism dominant in Egypt in the early 20th century. The first section of the book examines the effects of World War I and its aftermath, which temporarily gave rise to an exclusively Egyptianist national orientation in Egypt. Subsequent sections consider the intellectual and political dimensions of Egyptian interwar years. Egypt, Islam and the Arabs is the first volume in a new Oxford series, Studies in Middle Eastern History. The General Editors of the series are Bernard Lewis of Princeton University, Itamar Rabinovich of Tel Aviv University, and Roger M. Savory of the University of Toronto.

The authors examine the emergence of nationalism among the Egyptian middle class during the 1930s and 1940s, and its growing awareness of an Arab and Muslim identity. Previously Egypt did not define itself in these terms, but adopted a territorial and isolationist outlook. It is the revolutionary transformation in Egyptian self-understanding which took place during this period that provides the focus of this study. The authors demonstrate how the growth of an urban middle class, combined with economic and political failures in the 1930s, eroded the foundations of the earlier order. Alongside domestic events, the momentum of Arabism abroad and the impact of events in Palestine, necessitated Egyptian regional involvement. Egypt's present position as a major player in Arab, Muslim and Third World affairs has its roots in the fundamental transition of Egyptian national identity at this time.

Three main themes are explored in this book, first published in 1984: the first is the problem of religion and politics as a major and long-standing preoccupation of Middle-easterners or Arab Muslims themselves; the second is that of the conflict-ridden inter-Arab and regional politics, approached largely from a local rather than an international perspective; the third deals with Egypt. The book also enquires into the nature of rule and regimes in the Middle East, the basis of authority and the arrangements for the organisation, exercise and use of power. Drawing examples from Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, the emphasis is on the relation between tradition and politics, historical evolution and state policy, domestic factors and external constraints.

How Arabic influenced the evolution of vernacular literatures and anticolonial thought in Egypt, Indonesia, and Senegal Sacred Language, Vernacular Difference offers a new understanding of Arabic’s global position as the basis for comparing cultural and literary histories in countries separated by vast distances. By tracing controversies over the use of Arabic in three countries with distinct colonial legacies, Egypt, Indonesia, and Senegal, the book presents a new approach to the study of postcolonial literatures, anticolonial nationalisms, and the global circulation of pluralist ideas. Annette Damayanti Lienau presents the largely untold story of how Arabic, often understood in Africa and Asia as a language of Islamic ritual and precolonial commerce, assumed a transregional role as an anticolonial literary medium in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By examining how major writers and intellectuals across several generations grappled with the cultural asymmetries imposed by imperial Europe, Lienau shows that Arabic—as a cosmopolitan, interethnic, and interreligious language—complicated debates over questions of indigeneity, religious pluralism, counter-imperial nationalisms, and emerging nation-states. Unearthing parallels from West Africa to Southeast Asia, Sacred Language, Vernacular Difference argues that debates comparing the status of Arabic to other languages challenged not only Eurocentric but Arabocentric forms of ethnolinguistic and racial prejudice in both local and global terms.

This textbook helps students and readers navigate the various factors ranging from the legacy of the past, ethnic, sectarian differences, and cultural rivalry to the impact of colonial rule, modernization and state building, plus the evolving nature of the international political system and great power policies in shaping Arab-Iranian relations in the last seven decades. The first part of this book looks into factors such as history, ethnic, sectarian and cultural issues that have shaped Iran’s relations with Arab states. It explores the impact of the process of modernization and state-building in the Arab world on these relations, plus the legacy of colonialism and the shifting dynamics of international politics and the evolution key global players’ policies towards Iran and the Arab states. The second part examines case studies in the evolution of Iran’s relations with several key Arab states, including Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the smaller Persian Gulf Arab states. By highlighting the complex set of factors and their interactions that have shaped Arab-Iranian relations, the book hopes to be a corrective to the simplistic and reductionist interpretations of these relations. This approach shows how a variety of factors and their interactions have shaped these relations; sometimes they have exacerbated the conflictual aspects of these relations and at other times have fostered accommodation and even cooperation.

This book takes a hermeneutic approach toward reading the writings of Jamal al-Banna and Tariq al-Bishri across several decades in order to explore contemporary Islamic political thought under authoritarianism. Ebtisam Aly Hussein uses the framework of 'meta-languages', in relation to the writings of these two particular Islamic intellectuals, to examine how authority over the public sphere is established, in both religious and political terms. Chapters outline the major themes of Islamic political thought in the writings of al-Banna and al-Bishri - mainly the state in Islam, Shari'a application, political violence as jihad, and identity politics - and how in their writings they have interacted with a variety of autocratic practices under Nasir, Sadat and Mubarak. The book puts forward a unique study of the role of politics and religion in establishing authority over the public sphere, and how this authority is manifested in the intellectual output of these two Islamic intellectuals.

This volume unfolds the ebbs and flows of Muslim thought in different regions of the world, as well as the struggles between the different intellectual discourses that have surfaced against this backdrop. With a focus on Turkey, Egypt, Iran and the Indian subcontinent – regions that, in spite of their particular histories and forms of thought, are uniquely placed as a mosaic that illustrates the intertwined nature of the development of Muslim socio-political thought – it sheds light on the swing between right and left in different regions, the debates surrounding nationalism, the influence of socialism and liberalism, the rise of Islamism and the conflict between state bureaucracy and social movements. Exploring themes of civil society and democracy, it also considers current trends in Muslim thought and possible future directions. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the fields of sociology, anthropology, political science, history and political economy, as well as those with interests in the study of religion, the development of Muslim thought, and the transformation of Muslim societies in recent decades.