>>>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. )
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>>Thanks for all the information. When did you pick it up?
>
>About 40 years ago. Remember this computer thing is about my fifth career <s> My first overseas work was in the middle east and I travelled a lot in that area for a couple years, so I got interested in Islam. (personally more drawn to the Sufi and culturally preferred Turks to Arabs, perhaps because I had close friends who were Turks and spoke it a lot better than Arabic.) Got to spend some time in Lebanon - in Beirut when it was still the Paris of the middle east and in the Bekaa valley before it became Hezbollah's gang turf ( though you could see the signs already beginning) I was back in Turkey in the 70s as an advisor and spent time with the Kurds on the Syrian border and got a peek at Afghanistan and Pakistan as strange things were beginning.
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>I went on to Southeast Asia later and my obessions shifted, but still stay connected to a lot of my ties in the Middle East, especially Turkey.
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>I geek out on history ( and get pedantic about its esoterica <s>) the way other folks here do on math or physics or computer science. ( where I have a pretty shallow and lay-person understanding )
>
>Like Dennis Miller says: I have ADD-OCD - what I'm obsessed about changes a lot. <g>


Thanks for sharing, Charles.

You've got an interesting history and valuable insights.