Egypt: from Egyptian to pan-Arab nationalism

The language–national identity link is a recurrent theme in nationalism studies. However, both this link and its constituent members (language and nation) are a matter of construction, what I have elsewhere called a discursive project (Suleiman 2006), that is amenable to formulation and counter-formulation. It is, therefore, not surprising that for much of the twentieth century the link between language and national identity in Egypt has been the subject of debate which sought to argue either for an Egypt-bound form of identity, revolving around the territory of Egypt (Egyptian nationalism), or for forms of supra-Egyptian nationalism that sought to define this identity extraterritorially by reference to dominant religion (Islam), some vague notion of a Western versus Eastern culture, or language (Gershoni and Jankowski 1995). This chapter deals with the two most important formulations of national identity in Egypt: Egyptian nationalism and Pan-Arab nationalism.