Nationalism and Islam: perspective ofEgyptian and Syrian Muslim intellectuals

Theproblem of therelationship between nationalism andIslam has historically revealed dynamic discourses, butseems to have gained little attention.
This problem is important not only inunderstanding the moderndiscourse
on Islam and nationalism but also in promoting a dialogue between Islam
and theWest. This paper attempts toshow howthe best known ofMuslim
intellectuals from Egypt and Syria during the 19th andfirst half of the 20th
century, managed to fuse Islamic concepts and nationalism together into a
single, unifieddiscourse. This paper approaches thequestion intwo different
ways. In order to provide a context, thefirst section reviews hownationalism
emerged and influenced theMuslims. The nextsection studies howMuslim
intellectuals have responded to foreign ideas in general and nationalism in
particular, and howsome ofthem have attempted towork out a compromise
between nationalism andIslam.