As a concept, “Arab nationalism” has tended to be used in the literature of Middle Eastern politics and history interchangeably with other terms such as Arabism, Pan-Arabism, and even sometimes Arab radicalism, thus blending the sentiment of cultural proximity with the desire for political action. To say one is an Arab should denote a different connotation from saying one is an Arab nationalist. The former concedes one’s cultural heritage, expressed best in the term “Arabism, ” whereas the latter, as we have seen, imbues this cultural oneness with the added ingredient of political recognition. […]

There are authentic Arabic equivalents for a number of terms that are of significance for our subject: al-qawmiya al-‘Arabiya (Arab nationalism), al-‘Uruba (Arabism), al-Wuhda al-‘Arabiya (Arab unity), al-Ittihad al-‘Arabi (Arab union), al-Iqlimiya (regionalism), and al-Wataniya (state patriotism). These terms appear constantly in Arabic texts as speeches of leaders, radio and newspaper editorials, and political books and pamphlets. But one is hard put to find the literal Arabic translation of pan-Arabism (presumably, al-‘Uruba al-Shamila) in any of these texts.

The reason is self-evident: the desire for, as well as the pursuit of, political unity for the Arabs, which is how Western literature has defined and portrayed pan-Arabism, is incorporated, in the minds and discourse of the Arab nationalists themselves, in the very definition of Arab nationalism itself. To those who thought of themselves as Arab nationalists—the men and women who were consumed by the idea, who were prepared to endure hardships on its behalf, who drew courage from its promise, who celebrated its triumphs and mourned its setbacks—to all those people, Arab nationalism was meaningless without its ultimate goal of Arab unity. After all, what would be so distinctive about an Arab world that was nothing more than a region with a multiplicity of states, the vast majority of whose population were Muslim and happened to speak Arabic and share in Arabic culture? How would that be any different from, for example, Catholic and (Brazil-less) Spanish speaking Latin America? At some point, the cultural bond that presumably
tied citizens of the various Arab countries together under the banner of Arabism would have to acquire geographic and political rationalization. We have already seen that in contrast to an ethnic group, a nation desires and seeks a sovereign political identity, and those who identified themselves as Arab nationalists fervently
believed that the Arab nation could not continue to allow its children to be scattered among different Arab states.

In his introduction to an edited volume on the origins of Arab nationalism, the noted historian Rashid Khalidi, in setting out the arguments of the various chapters, contends that “there was a clear difference before 1914 between the majority of Arabists, whose emphasis on Arab identity was linked to continued loyalty to the Ottoman Empire, and the tiny minority of extreme Arab nationalists who called for secession from the empire.” In this account, those who Khalidi calls “Arabists” are aware of their cultural separateness from the Ottoman Turks, but have no aspirations for political sovereignty, yet Khalidi’s “Arab nationalists” go beyond the cultural domain to demand political separation. And this trait need not be reserved only to the extreme elements, but, as has been argued here, it should constitute the characteristic of all true nationalists.