Making the Arab World: Nasser, Qutb, and the Clash That Shaped the Middle East PDF
Preview Making the Arab World: Nasser, Qutb, and the Clash That Shaped the Middle East
Making the Arab World Ma k i n g t h e A ra b Wo r l d Nasser, Qutb, and the Clash That Shaped the Middle East Fawaz A. Gerges PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Princeton & Oxford Copyright © 2018 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR press.princeton.edu Jacket photograph: Burning of the Muslim Brotherhood’s headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, in retaliation for an attempted assassination of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, October 27, 1954 / AP Photo Jacket design by Faceout Studio, Charles Brock All Rights Reserved ISBN 978-0-691-16788-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018930051 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Miller Text Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 As AlwAys, for NorA Contents Preface ix Introduction 3 1 Egypt’s “Liberal Age” 35 2 The Anti-colonial Struggle and the Dawn of Underground Politics 60 3 The Free Officers and the Ikhwan 77 4 The Birth of the Deep State and Modern Radical Islamism 126 5 Young Gamal Abdel Nasser 152 6 Young Sayyid Qutb 175 7 The Lion of the Arabs 187 vii viii contents 8 The Accidental Islamist? 214 9 Qutb’s al-Tanzim al-Sirri 236 10 The Decline of the Nasserist Project 284 11 Sadat’s Coup and the Islamist Revival 314 12 The Mubarak Era: Keeping the Ikhwan in the Freezer 343 Conclusion 390 Notes 407 Index 467 Preface this book sets out to explain how the opposing forces of Arab nationalism, spearheaded by the military, and the Islamists, led mainly by the Ikhwan (the Muslim Brothers), have shaped the development of postcolonial Arab politics. It does so by focusing on two seminal, and interconnected, figures: Gamal Abdel Nasser and Sayyid Qutb. Far from being diametrically opposed, the movements that Nasser and Qutb represent have had critical commonalities with each other. The book aims to break down the established and misleading dichotomy of two monolithic ideas that has dominated conventional thinking on Middle Eastern politics. Through a detailed historical, sociological, and personality-based approach the book shows that Arab nationalism and Islamism are constructed in large part through interaction with each other, and also that each group has “ideational fluidity,” shifting from one mode of thinking to another. In so doing, the book avoids reductionist and ahistorical viewpoints that fre- quently stereotype both Arab nationalists and Islamists. The history pinpoints the rise of nationalist forces—both religious nationalists and more secularly oriented nationalists—starting in the ix
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