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.