Umma and Dawla: The Nation State and the Arab Middle East »

Tamim Barghouti is a fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study, and a lecturer at the Free University of Berlin. He is the author of Benign Nationalism: Egyptian Nation State Building under Occupation (2007). He studied at Boston University, USA, and the American University in Cairo. He is also a published poet.

This book argues that the Arab states in the Middle East have failed to provide security for their citizens or define themselves along the lines of traditional nation states. Due to continuous war, they have been unable to foster development and prosperity.

The author argues that these failures have led to the development of an Islamic political theory that is based around the non-territorial concepts of the Umma and Dawla. Each concept is explored in detail and the author explains how crucial they are in explaining the difference between Western policy and the priorities and the identity of the Arab world.

This unique book should be required reading for students of Middle East international relations and Islamic political theory.

Preface     vii
Introduction     1
The Formation of the Canon     6
Introduction: On Essentialism     6
The Power of Poetry     8
A Brief Account of the Emergence of Islamic Sects     11
The Shiites     17
The Kharijites     18
The Early Sunnis (the Murji'ites and the Mu'tazilites)     19
The Hashemite Abbasid Rule     22
The Ash'arties     24
Ashab Al-Hadith (the Late Sunnis)     25
The Canon     26
Wahhabism     27
Definitions     32
Introduction: Domination in Translation     32
The Nation and the State     33
The Umma and the Dawla     37
The Precious Nothing     77
Introduction     77
Post Colonialism and Nation-States, a Review     78
The Twin Paradoxes of Representation and Replacement     91
The Precious Nothing     97
The Least Likely Cases for Failure: Egyptian and Arab
Nationalisms     104
The Colonial Origins of Egyptian Nationalism     108
Introduction     108
French Egypt     109
British Egypt: The SkilfullyConstructed Automaton     115
Ahmad Lutfi Al-Sayyid: The Theorist of Egyptian
Nationalism     125
A Brief Account of the Rise and Fall of Egyptian
Nationalism     132
Egyptian Nationalism and the Umma     148
Arab Nationalism     150
Introduction     150
Prelude: Ottoman Modernization and Disintegration     153
The Arab Literary Societies of the Late Nineteenth Century     157
The First Arab Nationalist Congress 1913     161
The Arab Revolt and its Offspring     168
The Arab Nationalism of the Cold War     178
The Fall of Arab Nationalism     195
Conclusion: A Working Compromise?     200
First, the Compromise that Does not Work     200
A Compromise that Works?     209
Prediction and Prescription: Questions for Further
Research     212
References     218
Index     231