From the time of the overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy by Colonel Nasser in 1952 to Osama bin Laden’s attack on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, the focus of Arab nationalism was opposition to the West, particularly the United States, and the destruction of Israel. For 50 years, these sentiments echoed around the Arab world, and deeply influenced the political and religious climate in much of the Islamic world. Anti-Western sentiment found fertile soil in which t…
