For sure...

For sure, a true believer in nationalism would wish to see that principle carried to its logical conclusion, and the local peoples of the Middle East region have more unity and common identity factors than can be adduced for the nebulous 'Arab' variety of nationalism -- if we exclude Islam, of course.

The secret behind the arbitrary halting at the Arab level is that the real concern behind this call is not the application of the nationalist principle as such but rather its employment as a tool to hit at the unity of the larger Islamic entity. It is a good tactic to hide the disintegrative aims of that tool by pretending that it is still a unity-seeking idea -- among the 'Arab peoples', that is.

Besides, an idea directed originally against the 'Uthmani State will have a better chance of success if it brought the combined weight, real or imaginary, of the 'Arabs' to bear, rather than an attempt to invoke heterogeneous local nationalisms.

It is clear that the Arab nationalists, both old and new, have not even been faithful to the principle of nationalism which they borrowed from Europe to plant in an Islamic environment, which owes allegiance to a more inclusive political expression than that of race or 'nation' defined in vague tribal terms. Secularism and nationalism represent the outer frame which includes and determines the various other borrowings from the West by the Arab nationalists.

Having rejected Islam and having posed themselves as the carriers of a certain cause, they found themselves obliged to fill the vacuum and boost their claims by a programme of action or a project,' as it is now fashionably called in their circles.Upon inspection this 'project' turns out in its various presentations and developments to be no more than a weaker version of the dominant Western ideologies also removed from their social matrix and imposed as abstract rules of action on the totally different Arab environment.

The strangely protean content of Arab nationalism has passed the entire gamut of Western ideologies from liberal to fascist to socialist to Quasi-Marxist to social-democrat. It has a tendency to be coloured by the ideology of the particular Western power that happens to be dominant in the Middle East at a certain time or that patronizes the Arab nationalist factions.