Abstract
Nationalism in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is a fundamental issue. As long as this fundamental issue is not well discussed, any reforms in the regional system, including integration and state building, would be insufficient in alleviating the challenges faced by Arab nations as they attempt unity in the region. Any understanding of how and why MENA states make political choices towards stability and unity, necessitates the understanding of how they view themselves in terms of representing identity. The objective of this study is to investigate the transformation and the changing nationalism in the modern MENA region. For instance, Arab society has courted several ideologies from Arabism or Arab nationalism and Arab Islamic nationalism, among others. Ideologies do not exist in a vacuum. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the context in which several ideologies interact with each other and affect nationalism in the MENA region. Although Arab nationalism continues to play an ideological role, what is its relation with Islam? Why Arab Islamic nationalism in the MENA region does not unite states or non-state groups like the cases of Iran and the Kurds? It is therefore useful for this article to illustrate firstly, the relation between Arab nationalism and Arab Islamic nationalism, secondly, the case of Iran nationalism and finally, the Kurds and their strive for a separate nationalism.
Highlights
The fundamental transformation in modern Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is very obvious
Based on this understanding of nationalism, this study will focus on how the nationalists in the MENA region have imposed different doctrines and theories which are based on one aspect only
Arab nationalism and Islamic Arab nationalism represent the issue of nationalism ideology or doctrine in MENA region
Summary
The fundamental transformation in modern MENA region is very obvious. Its most visible signs are the changing ideologies, national identity and loyalty. Nationalism is essential to human existence in the modern world; BENDEBKA, Current Research Journal of Social Sciences, Vol 03(1), 72-85 (2020). (1996: 146-147) opines that a major difficulty in the way of clear definition is that different scholars and historians mean different things by the term. There are various definitions of “nationalism” developed by scholars of political science and other fields of social sciences. The idea of loyalty to one state, or to the fatherland, hardly existed. Amin (1991) on the other hand, opines that nationalism is a sense of belonging to a number of entities that can be small and large, rather than just a loyalty to a country. (1996: 146) emphasised that we can distinguish between three different areas of interest when we define nationalism: nationalism as a doctrine, politics and sentiments
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