Making the Arab World: Nasser, Qutb, and the Clash That Shaped the Middle East

How the conflict between political Islamists and secular-leaning nationalists has shaped the history of the modern Middle East

In 2013, just two years after the popular overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian military ousted the country’s first democratically elected president—Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood—and subsequently led a brutal repression of the Islamist group. These bloody events echoed an older political rift in Egypt and the Middle East: the splitting of nationalists an...