This is not the place to discuss secularism...

This is not the place to discuss secularism, and it is only the first of a long chain of Western intellectual goods appropriated by the 'purist' Arab nationalists.

The most outstanding of these is the idea of nationalism itself, not as the recognition of the existence of tribes or races or peoples, but as a call for the establishment of a secular political entity around a vaguely defined nation, which in the event turns out more often than not to be those people governed by a central authority that sets out to legitimize and mask its authority by fostering the 'national' myth of a historic, glorious past and a unique identity with a future-oriented mission.

Thus, a phenomenon which was deeply embedded in local European religious, cultural, and political conditions and which often came to reinforce certain power interests, is imported by the Arab nationalists, or rather, is purposely exported by the West to the Islamic world, after being abstracted from its distinctive and unique historical matrix and transformed into an abstract, prescriptive programme according to which certain entities are to be created and certain existing power interests are to be encouraged to repeat European experiments and Europe's historical developments.

With regard to this last point one thinks of the attribution, after the fact, of nationalist tendencies to some rulers in the Muslim world in the nineteenth century who sought independence from the 'Uthmani State, for example. Mere power-seeking was responsible for such 'famous' nationalist examples as the Muhammad 'Ali rule in Egypt.

The Arab nationalists usually forget that European nationalism which they so readily imitate dealt with individual entities or 'peoples' within the larger European entity. Applied to Arab conditions, this justifies the division of the so-called 'Arab world' into such constituent nationalisms as the Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, Sudanese, etc.

This logical 'nationalist' move is, however, bitterly rejected by Arab nationalists, who choose, for no apparent reason, to halt their process of dividing the Muslim world at the 'Arab' frontier rather than carry the nationalist principle to the legitimate level of 'sub-nationalities'.