The Easternist orientation of the 1930s overlapped with a more profound cultural reorientation developing in Egypt at the same time – the return of Islam to a primary position in Egyptian intellectual discourse and public life. Even in the heyday of Western influence and Egyptian territorial nationalism in the 1920s, Islam was still the central factor in the daily life of most Egyptians. It was only in terms of the customs and ideas of the heavily Westernized elite of Egypt, and in its public life which was then in the process of organization along Western-inspired lines, that Islam can be said to have been shunted to the periphery. The new conditions of the 1930s and 1940s created a suitable environment for the return of Islamic sentiments and concepts to the center of Egyptian thought.

The return of Islam occurred on many levels. One was organizational; the emergence and rapid growth of societies with an explicitly Islamic agenda. The growth of a more Islamically oriented body of opinion within Egyptian society was paralleled by the greater political salience of Islam as manifested in the growing power of the Egyptian Palace and forces allied with it in the 1930s. Underpinning both of the above was the intellectual resurgence of Islam, the emergence of a body of new intellectual production concerned with the history, civilization, and values of Islam.

Studies of nationalism in modern Egypt have usually focused on the political struggle against Great Britain and the British Occupation of Egypt. The topics which bulk largest in such works are the changing relationship between occupier and occupied, the history of the various political movements striving for Egyptian independence, and the successive phases of the struggle for national liberation.

This work considers Egyptian nationalism from a somewhat different perspective. Although taking account of the external political conflict with imperialism, it emphasizes the social, the intellectual, and the internal political dimensions of nationalism. Its central concern is the creation and dissemination of new Egyptian national images and frameworks of identity. In part the history of Egyptian nationalism involves the contest for political authority and the competition among rival political forces; but it also involves the larger historical process of Egyptian collective self-definition.

In what follows, we address the evolution of Egyptian national identity on both the conceptual/intellectual and the operative/political levels. In terms of the former, we attempt to isolate and reconstruct the answers Egyptians gave to such fundamental questions concerning their national identity as “Who are we?” “What do we want?” “What are we to become?” In terms of the latter, we endeavor to determine the practical answers given by Egyptians to more concrete questions like “Where does Egypt fit in the world?” “Which policies best serve the interests of the Egyptian nation?”

Orientations, ideologies, intellectuals

The following discussion of supra-Egyptian nationalism treats the phenomenon on two levels. The first is an analysis of the underlying nationalist orientations reinterpreting Egypt's place in the world which developed after 1930. The second is an analysis of the specific ideologies which built on those new orientations, instructing Egyptians as to how to behave in their reinterpreted environment.

By “orientation” we mean the overall accounting people make of the place of themselves and their society in the wider world. Orientations are the global outlooks found in a society. On the one hand, they involve drawing lines: between us and them, self and other. On the other, they attempt to identify, in very broad terms, the network of symbols and values appropriate as the basis of the collective existence of a society. In content, orientations consist of a large body of overlapping, interrelated, and not necessarily totally consistent moods, attitudes, beliefs, and interpretations of reality. Generalized and diffuse in nature, they provide the basic assumptions and presuppositions about a society's relationship to its environment which are implicit in the specific arguments, theories, and debates occurring in intellectual and political circles.

While orientations are clearly a response to the temporal situation of a society, in and of themselves they do not offer a program for altering that situation. Orientations lack an operative, programmatic dimension. Both logically and historically, they precede attempts to define blueprints for current and future change.

Benedict Anderson has characterized nationalism as the creation of “an imagined political community.” “Communities,” he observed, “are to be distinguished not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.” Anderson's approach is useful for understanding the complex evolution of Egyptian national identity over the first half of the twentieth century. On one level nationalism in Egypt in this period was a network of several imaginings, in part overlapping but also partially incommensurate, which vied for primacy as the dominant conception of what Egypt was and should be.

The collapse of Ottoman religio-political order after World War I, along with the more extended social processes of the weakening and/or dissolution of the traditional family, village, and tribal communities, religious brotherhoods, and urban solidarities of quarter and guild, eroded the basis of the older concepts of community held by previous generations of Egyptians. These processes created an urgent need to redefine the collective image of Egypt in terms congruent with current conditions. It was this need which gave birth to the different new imaginings of Egypt which developed in the early twentieth century.

Structurally, these alternative images of Egypt can be divided into two major systems. The first was a territorially bounded imagining with a Western coloration; the second was a set of cultural and ethnic imaginings based on Islamic, Arab, and Eastern materials. In the immediate post-1919 era, it was the territorial and Western-influenced image of Egypt which achieved dominance in Egyptian cultural and political life.

The Palestine Arab Revolt of 1936–9 was the crucial catalyst in reorienting Egyptian foreign policy toward active involvement in Arab politics. Yet the Palestine issue should not be regarded as the “cause” of the adoption of a more forward Egyptian regional policy. The basic reasons for the evolution of Egyptian nationalism in a supra-Egyptian direction lie in domestic Egyptian developments, particularly in the emergence of a larger educated public with a more Arab and Muslim outlook and values. The contribution of the Palestine issue was its role in transforming what had hitherto been a primarily cultural orientation on the part of this cohort into a political one. The growing identification of many Egyptians with the struggle of the Palestinian Arabs from the later 1930s onwards and their extension of moral support and material assistance to the Palestinians contributed decisively to the politicization of supra-Egyptianism. The Palestine issue became the mobilizing force impelling both Egyptian public opinion and Egyptian governments into involvement in regional politics.

What allowed the Palestine question to play such a central role in Egyptian politics? Several aspects of the conflict in Palestine made it of particular significance to Egyptians. First, it was primarily an anti-imperialist revolt, and indeed was directed against the same imperial power (Great Britain) which had for so long dominated Egypt. Thus it possessed a powerful emotional resonance for many Egyptians.

The 1930s were a crucial decade in the evolution of modern Egypt. Many things changed in Egypt between the onset of the world depression in late 1929 and the outbreak of World War II ten years later. Not the least of these changes was a major shift in the character of Egyptian nationalism. In place of the exclusivist territorial nationalism which had marked the 1920s, the period after 1930 witnessed the development of new supra-Egyptian concepts of national identity.

Three processes laid the basis for the emergence of supra-Egyptian nationalism. One was the manifest economic and political difficulties of Egypt in the 1930s, difficulties which produced a widespread mood of disillusionment with the existing Egyptian order and which led many Egyptians to question the territorial nationalist premises upon which that order was based. A second development was the changing social composition of the articulate Egyptian public after 1930 – the physical growth and growing political importance of a larger urban and literate population which was less thoroughly Westernized than the smaller Egyptian elite of the previous generation, and correspondingly whose nationalist inclinations were toward greater identification with Egypt's Arab and Muslim neighbors. The third was the gradual growth of a variety of new institutional as well as personal contacts between Egyptians and other Arabs, contacts which over time reinforced an Egyptian identification with Arab nationalism in particular.

The relationship between the new supra-Egyptian orientations and ideologies of the post-1930 period and the positions taken by the various political forces operating in Egyptian public life was a complex one. Through the period under consideration in this study, there was a sizable gap between ideological development and political evolution. On most issues, the demands of supra-Egyptian ideologues and movements exceeded what Egypt's political parties and leadership were willing or able to do in the way of the tangible expansion of Egyptian involvement in Arab and Muslim affairs. Nonetheless, over time a definite trend in the direction of Egypt playing a more assertive role in Arab and Muslim international politics is visible.

The political adjustment to a more supra-Egyptianist position passed through three phases in the period from 1930 to 1945. In the first half of the 1930s, Egyptian political involvement in Arab and Muslim politics remained much as it had been in the 1920s: intermittent and largely reactive. In the later 1930s, prompted especially by the intensifying crisis in Palestine, Egypt's regional policy for the first time became a major issue in Egyptian public life. After a hiatus in the formulation of new initiatives in Egyptian foreign policy during the early years of World War II, the expansion of Egypt's regional role entered its third phase in 1943–5 when the Egyptian government took the lead in the diplomatic negotiations which eventually resulted in the formation of the League of Arab States.

Due primarily to the circumstances of war, little in the way of extending Egypt's links with its Arab and Muslim neighbors was achieved during the early years of the war. Significant movement in the direction of greater Egyptian regional involvement only occurred from 1942 onwards, as war receded from the Middle East. Early in 1943, the Wafdist ministry of Mustafa al-Nahhas initiated prolonged diplomatic consultations with other Arab governments concerning the establishment of a new association of independent Arab states. As a result of further negotiations conducted by the non-Wafdist ministries of Ahmad Mahir and Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi in 1944–5, the League of Arab States was established in March 1945. Egypt was the unquestioned leader in the involved inter-Arab diplomatic negotiations resulting in the formation of the Arab League. Negotiations commenced with an Egyptian initiative in the spring of 1943; Egypt to a large degree controlled the course of negotiations over the next two years; the character of the new international organization was in good measure determined by Egypt, corresponding with Egyptian conceptions of what Arab “unity” should mean in the postwar world; and Egyptian primacy within the body was symbolized by the selection both of Cairo as its headquarters and an Egyptian, ‘Abd al-Rahman ‘Azzam, as its first Secretary-General.

Egyptian regional policy from 1939 to 1941

The outbreak of war in September 1939 had immediate repercussions for Egyptian political life.

The supra-Egyptian nationalist doctrines which developed in Egypt after 1930 did not all have an external referent, such as the Islamic or Arab communities, as their point of departure. There was also a nationalist ideology which, while possessing a supra-Egyptian dimension, nonetheless kept Egypt as its central focus. Unlike the other supra-Egyptian ideologies, its external dimensions were tactical rather than strategic, instrumental rather than fundamental. Egypt remained its primary concern, with an Egyptian external identification and role seen as the necessary mechanisms for the achievement of specifically Egyptian national purposes. Although sharing many of the supra-Egyptian elements found in the Egyptian Islamic and Egyptian Arab nationalist approaches, it retained an Egypt-centered core.

We have termed this approach integral Egyptian nationalism. The term “integral nationalism” was coined by Charles Maurras to refer to the variant of late nineteenth to early twentieth-century European nationalist doctrine which was distinguished by “the exclusive pursuit of national policies, the absolute maintenance of national integrity, and the steady increase of national power.” The generic feature of integral nationalism is the absoluteness of the nation: “integral nationalism defines the one nation as the Absolute. It is not justified by its followers in terms of service to a higher cause; the cult of the nation becomes an end in itself.” Internally integral nationalism was usually illiberal, subordinating considerations of individual liberty to the demands of national strength; externally it was expansionist and militarist, assuming the inevitability of the need for force in international relations.

The new Eastern and Islamic orientations of the post-1930 era set the general mood underlying the more focused supra-Egyptian ideologies of the period. The first of these to emerge with clarity was Egyptian Islamic nationalism. Egyptian Islamic nationalism was an attempt to build a religiously based alternative to supplant the territorial nationalism which had gained ascendancy in Egypt in the 1920s. It is important to emphasize that its formulators were both Muslims and nationalists. By this we mean that they were the first Egyptian Muslims to undertake the task of developing a systematic nationalist doctrine whose reference point was firmly anchored in Islam.

The Islamic orthodox establishment of Egypt was not the primary force responsible for the formulation of Egyptian Islamic nationalism. This was in part because of the diversity of that establishment; Egypt's ‘ulama’ spanned a wide range of opinion and spoke in tones ranging from relatively liberal to quite conservative. Even in the 1930s, when Nur al-Islam provided the ‘ulama’ with their own outlet for cultural expression, their role in developing a specifically Islamic variant of nationalism was less important than that played by spokesmen for the new Islamic societies of the period. Azharite-trained shaykhs such as ‘Abd Allah ‘Afifi, Muhammad Sulayman, and Mustafa al-Rifa'i al-Lubban occasionally contributed to Islamic nationalist publications; ‘alim and effendi both participated in the task of reformulating nationalism in more Islamic terms.

But on the whole Egypt's ‘ulama’ followed rather than led in the discourse which articulated Egyptian Islamic nationalism.

The third supra-Egyptian nationalist ideology to develop in Egypt in the 1930s and 1940s was Egyptian Arab nationalism. Like Islamic nationalism and integral nationalism, it too rejected the exclusivist territorial nationalism of the past and in its place postulated an Egyptian identification with a larger entity – in this case, the Arab nation. Its specifics in part overlapped with Islamic nationalism which accepted the Arabness of Egypt as a part of Egypt's Muslim identity, and with integral nationalism which viewed the Arab world as the most immediate arena of Egyptian leadership and greatness.

But Egyptian Arab nationalism had its own character which made it quite distinct from its rivals. The most significant difference was in breadth. The Arabist outlook was less parochial than Islamic nationalism, which because of its religious focus, had little appeal to non-Muslims or those of a secular inclination. It was also less solipsistic than integral nationalism, whose aggressive nature alienated many Egyptians. Belief in Egypt as part of the Arab nation possessed a greater scope of attraction than either the Islamic or the integralist approach. In terms of production, a larger pool of intellectuals participated in its articulation; in terms of reception, it ultimately appealed to a wider range of public opinion. Its content incorporated elements of both Islamicism and integralism as well as of earlier territorial nationalism, but reshaped to fit its particularly Arab perspective. As a result of its synthetic character, it became the most widespread supra-Egyptian ideology of the era.