In 1967 the Egyptian historian Namat A. Fouad (1973) already recognized
the identity crisis her people were undergoing after Arab nationalism had
received a severe blow through defeat in the war against Israel. She called
for the country’s history to be rewritten from an Egyptian perspective,
eliminating the Arab one, since the latter gave a purely external point of
view. Her book Egypt’s Character conveys a significant message which was
still considered of vital importance twenty-seven years after it was first
published, when the Egyptian government celebrated it with a review in its
publication Egypt Magazine (no. 21, autumn 2000), citing Fouad’s claim that
the country’s civilization was a purely Egyptian one and that the majority
of Muslims are the descendants of indigenous Copts and not of Arab invad-
ers of the country. Arab nationalism was also denounced in the 1999 Arab
Strategic Report, issued by the Al-Ahram Centre of Political and Strategic
Studies in Cairo, on which Ezzat (2000) commented as follows: ‘The plea of
the report against Arab nationalism is based on an argument that accuses the
founders and followers of this movement of a disinterest in democracy and
a preoccupation, if not an obsession, with Israel’s increasing power.’ Such an
attitude frees Egyptians to seek peace with their neighbour Israel, which is
of vital importance to them.