>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.
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>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. )


Thanks for all the information. When did you pick it up?