I'm not sure who wrote the Wikipedia article, but perhaps the meaning was that the appeal of Wahhabism today to a lot of people in the Arab world is 'Nationalism' in the sense of cultural identity. Nationalism as such is about as un-Islamic an idea as you can have. The community of believers transcends anything that we think of a 'nation' in a Western sense. More like the German 'volk' vs the Communist 'workers of the world' To a real salafi being an 'Egyptian' or an 'Iraqi' ( except as it might connote some tribal identity ) is just not part of the identity.

When people like Nassar and al-Husri talked 'nationalism' they were appealing to a tribal sense - version of nationalism akin to the German one - but not the Islamic
ummah. It was racial and cultural rather than religious. To the salafi - the Islamic 'puritans' - the issue is the 'believer' vs the apostate - those on whom they have declared a takfir. (Saddat, Mubarak, the House of Saud etc ) ( the infidels are outside of the dar-al-islam and are another matter all together. )


>>I'm not saying it wasn't a factor, but various movements to 'purify' Islam predate the crusades.
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>Well, the day after Muhammad's death there was disagreements about what was pure and what was not.
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>I saw this comment in the same wikipedia article I mentioned:
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>"The appeal of Wahhabism to Muslims has been described as stemming from Arab nationalism, ..."
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>One thing I keep in mind is that no religious idea has ever taken off because it was a good idea in any factual sense.
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>It always takes off because a clear pragmatic application succeeds in some social/political situation and carries it.