The Making of an Egyptian Arab Nationalist The Early Years of Azzam Pasha, 1893-1936 by Ralph M. Coury. (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 1998: 528 pages.)

Abstract

Thirty years in the making, this ambitious book covers the first forty-three
years of the life of Abd al-Rahman Azzam Pasha, the political activist and
writer who became the first secretary-general of the Arab League (1945-
1952). Few biographies of public figures in the Arab world have treated
their subjects in comparable depth and detail. The Making of an Egyptian
Arab Nationalist is essential reading for anyone seriously interested in the
complexities of evolving national and religious identities in 20th-century Egypt.
Coury sets out to refute interpretations elaborated by such scholars as
Elie Kedourie, P. J. Vatikiotis, Nadav Safran, and Richard Mitchell thirty
or forty years ago. He argues that their works, reflecting the influence of
Orientalism, perpetuated false assumptions that Islam and Arab culture
harbored essentialist and atomistic tendencies toward extremism,
irrationality, and violence. He maintains that in treating 20th-century
Egypt, they set up a false dichotomy between a rational, western-inspired
territorial patriotism and irrational, artificial pan- Arab and Islamic
movements. Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid's circle before World War I and the
Wafd Party in the interwar period represented the first school who opposed
British imperialism but were eager to borrow western rationalism, science,
secular liberalism, and democracy. In the 1930s this moderate patriotism
began to give way before pan-Arab and Islamic movements tainted with the
extremism, terrorism, and irrationality which the West has long attributed
to Islam.
Coury cites hopefully revisionist works by Rashid Khalidi, Philip
Khoury, Ernest Dawn, and Hassan Kayali but is dismayed that other recent
studies have perpetuated the old, hostile stereotypes. "Martin Kramer's
Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival (1996)," he says, "reveals that even
the old-fashioned Kedourie-style hysteria, compounded, as it sometimes is,
by Zionist rage (Kramer refers to Edward Said as Columbia's 'part-time
professor of Palestine') is still alive and well . . . "
Coury insists that Azzam's "Egyptian Arab nationalism" sprang from the
perspectives, needs, and interests of an upper and middle bourgeoisie
facing specific challenges. The rank and file following came from a lower ...