Egyptian nationalists initially dismissed pan-Arabism as a British anti-Ottoman plot

Evidence

Many Egyptians, indeed, notably the nationalist leader, Musfitfiafa¯ Ka¯mil, had regarded the scheme for a pan-Arab Caliphate as a British plot directed against the Ottomans; he had criticized the Syrian emigrants in Egypt for their attacks on the Ottoman Empire, by which, as he saw it, they were playing the British game. The distinguished Egyptian writer Lutfifı¯ al-Sayyid, in 1938, went so far as to describe the pan-Arab idea as “pure fantasy.” — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 898

Categorization

• XREF: Reinforces the pattern that ideologies imported as imperial tools are often rejected before being adopted — comparable to reactions described in works on colonial-era nationalism.