This is a course that examines the origins, ideas and socio-political impact of two consequential ideational forces in the Middle East, Arab nationalism and Islam and their relationship to the efforts to build democratic structures. We will first focus on the development of nationalist and religious identities by tracing the underlying factors that allowed for their growth, their hold on peoples’ emotions, sensibilities and loyalties, and their role in shaping the political proclivities of those who inhabit the region. In this, we shall try to explore the historical stations and signposts at which they converged and diverged, and at which they clashed.

Arab nationalism and Islam have constituted two different paths by which those who identify themselves as Arabs would lay their claim to authenticity, to cultural and political separation from the ‘other’-- in nationalist lexicon, the ‘imperialist West’, in Islamist, the ‘Crusaders’. No wonder, therefore, that the ‘West’ with its cultural dominance and political power and Israel, which is perceived by Arabs as a creation of the West, are the two main nemeses of the Arab world.