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This was written by a student two years ago and available in English and Arabic.

 There is a good point about both Arab nationalism and Islamism being a reaction to the "West". This "West" is not defined though. In addition, this highlighting of "reaction" ignores or marginalises the action.

 "Islamism" is neither defined nor specified. The assumption is that ot is homogenous. Islamist currents have not attacked "the West". Even the violent currents have not carried out violent attacks/reacted violently against Israel. Others have always been satified with verbal attacks. Some of them have worked with  Western regimes to undermine the left and the nationalists. Some others have not. Recently, after the Arab uprisings, both the main Islamist parties in Tunisia and Egypt openly demonstrated their friendly relationship with imperialism and have not challenged or tried to question capitalism. 

The socio-economic context is excluded from the discussion. Capitalism and class are not mentioned. After all the rise of the two movements with their variations took place during and after the penetration of capitalism and the encroachment of the imperialist powers (colonialism and neocoloniasm). In this dissertaion both capitalism and imperialism are replaced by a vaguely too broad a term: "the West."

 Furthermore, the (new) middle class nutured the two movements with leaderships. Yes, the two movements are a reaction to "the West", but they are also representative of social forces in society in a particular moving context. Ideology is not separate from the interests of those social forces. See Asef Bayat, for example.

 When Benedict Anderson traces and analyses the rise of Nationalism in his Imagined Communities, he contextualises its birth and metamorphosis in Latin America and Europe within the emergence  of "print-capitalism".

 Are Arab Nationalism and Islamism Two Sides of the Same Coin?
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