One Nation, Under God? Religion, Political Philosophy, and the Struggle for the Cold War Arab State

Historical narratives of the “rise of Islamism” in the modern Middle East traditionally emphasize three periods: the Islamic modernism of the late 19th century, the rejection of the “liberal experiment” and growth of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1930s, and the Islamic Awakening (al-Sahwa al-Islamiyya) of the 1970s. In this periodization, the early Cold War is reduced to an era of secularism, Arab socialism, and government repression of religious politics. However, in the first tumultuous decades after independence, Arab leaders faced a complex political playing field. Old and new elites, military men, the ‘ulama’, and religious associations competed for positions in the new Arab state, all while exploring diverse political philosophies like democratic confessionalism, Islamic socialism, and spiritual universalism. Such political debates demand a reconsideration of the role of religion in modern Middle Eastern politics. This study examines three Cold War battles for moral hegemony and political legitimacy: Nasserist experiments with Mahdism and Islamic socialism, Ba‘athist efforts to conceptualize a “spiritual Arabism” fit for the confessional diversity of Syrian society, and Palestinian nationalist philosophies of God, jihād, and revolution.