The Islamic content of Arab nationalist thought, 1908-1944

Islam and Arabism are closely interwoven. The challenge facing theoreticians of Arab nationalism was to distinguish their perimeters. This dissertation examines how Arab nationalists responded to this challenge and on what basis they justified Arab separatness from the Ottoman Empire--the only existing Muslim power at the beginning of the century. If Islam is the major determinant of Arab consciousness, how did Arab nationalists cope with the political dimension which is inherent in Islam? Did they develop a concept of the state and a theory of government independent of Islam?; In an attempt to answer these questions, this dissertation reviews the genesis of Arab nationalist thought until 1944. It shows that the Arab nationalist movement is a product of the reformist movement in Islam. It asserts that nationalism, inasmuch as it incorporates a secular theory which considers the citizen centre-place irrespective of religious or communal affiliations, would not have hit a responsive chord with the deeply-religious Arab masses were it not for the novel reformist interpretations of Islam introduced by highly-respected Muslim theologians. It was reformist Muslim thinkers who bestowed legitimacy on Arab consciousness and at the same time gave Western concepts of government Islamic acceptability.; Empowered with this legacy, Arab nationalists did not fully realize the serious challenge that Islam constituted. Western-educated and estranged from the Muslim discourse, they assumed that Islam could be spiritualized and divested of its political content without a confrontation. They did not address the political problems pertaining to the role of Islamic law in the formation of a secular state where all citizens are treated equally and obey the same laws independent of their religious beliefs.; This dissertation deduces that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism can be partly attributed to this theoretical vulnerability which was revealed during the nineteen seventies as a consequence of the political setbacks encountered by nationalist elites.