ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the rise of pan-Arabism through the lens of its principal proponents the Ba'ath Party and the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Pan-Arabism, also known as pan-Arab nationalism, was the dominant ideology of the Arab world in the 1950s and 1960s. The chapter also examines the impact of the Afghan conflict on political Islam and its later evolution into transnational Salafi-jihadism. In the 1970s, Islamism eclipsed pan-Arabism as the principal revolutionary ideology in the region. State secularization played a central role in the rise of political Islam. The Afghan conflict and the instrumentalization of Islam to mobilize and attract Muslim volunteers to resist the Soviet invasion led directly to the evolution of Islamism. The movement was extended from an ideology for political action into armed militancy, even terrorism. The political movement known as Islamism emerged in the mid-twentieth century in a context of growing frustration with the shortcomings of secular nationalism in the Muslim world.
