In this sense...

In this sense, the Muslims of the world can be said to have been 'Arabized' by the mere fact of embracing Islam. The Arab nationalists play the trick of separating a section of the 'Arabized' (the Muslims) which happens to possess one added feature of 'Arabism', the language, and place it as an independent entity and identity against the rest of Muslims (the 'Arabized' in our sense).

It is to be noted that they do not include in their nationalism some Arabic-speaking minorities while they ignore the vital role that Arabic -- with its script -- plays in the languages and culture of the other Muslims. The nationalists are indicted of contradiction according to their own secular view of Islam as a social growth.

For, if it is the 'religion of the Arabs', their prize acquisition as well as the main motive for issuing out of their limited homeland in Arabia, this religion should be the defining feature of Arab nationalism. It is Islam, and not those cultural factors transformed by it beyond recognition, such as language or history, that should be set up as the emblem and sine qua non of Arab nationalism.

Yet, the nationalists are out and out secularists who exclude Islam altogether or assign it a servile existence within their creed as a vaguely defined 'spiritual factor', a thing which negates Islam's own claims. This same criticism applies to the nationalists' call about joint interests -- presumably economic -- as a unifying factor of the 'Arabs' so ambiguously defined. It is to be asked, why shouldn't common interests, of whatever sort, exist among the Muslims, as they have always done?

Once again we meet with the same trick. An arbitrary carving out of a certain section within the general Islamic context and its setting up as an independent entity. The keyword here is 'arbitrary', which strips nationalism from any rational claims and exposes its bare ideological bias, which it tries to mask under pretexts of modernity or by appeal to similar specious terms.

The major contradiction in Arab nationalist thinking is seen in its most flagrant form in the adoption of certain cultural elements as language, common history and heritage, and tradition as defining features of that nationalism, while ignoring Islam out of a deep-seated secularist bias. Before Islam, the Arabs were living in what may be called their pre-history.