Making the Arab World

Nasser, Qutb, and the Clash That Shaped the Middle East

De: Fawaz A. Gerges

Narrado por: James Cameron Stewart

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 and Islamists during the rule of Egyptian president and Arab nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. In Making the Arab World, Fawaz Gerges, one of the world's leading authorities on the Middle East, tells how the clash between pan-Arab nationalism and pan-Islamism has shaped the history of the region from the 1920s to the present.

Gerges tells this story through an unprecedented dual biography of Nasser and another of the 20th-century Arab world's most influential figures - Sayyid Qutb, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood and the father of many branches of radical political Islam. Their deeply intertwined lives embody and dramatize the divide between Arabism and Islamism. Yet, as Gerges shows, beyond the ideological and existential rhetoric, this is a struggle over the state, its role, and its power.

©2018 Princeton University Press (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

The book speaks about facts.

Albeit the author speaks about facts from those who lived the Era of the said period.
The narrative is a bit biased.

Especially when Fawaz Gerges hammers down on the faullts of the ikhwan and let go those who denied the Arab masses from the right to vote.

Then he label that by the idea of his book "the making of the Arab mind".

Then he blames the opposition movement in the Arab world for appeasement with the military.

What may the opposition do if the government have the internal ministry, parliament and judiciary within its apparatus.

Look at the expansion of jail population on the bases of politics in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Emirates.

The book was published before the kashogi affair. But what happened with kashogi is what happen to like minds of him with in Arabia. With the exception of Oman Kuwait and Qatar.

Look at the Civil War raging in Libya, Syria and Yeman.

It occurred because of the mismanagement of the economy and the disrespect received by the population by the government at different places.

Whether at their commute or at government service points.

good book, narration annoying

Fawas Gerges is very knowledgeable and a good writer. I found the narration well paced but with pronunciations that were frequently annoying.

Why didn’t anyone tell the narrator he was mispronouncing the name of the guy the book was about?

I thought the contents of the book was really good. The narrator miss, pronounced Arabic words in a fairly unforgivable way. understandable if you’re not a native speaker, but where were the editors?

A phenomenal book

I finished reading Making the Arab World, and it was an absolutely compelling read. The book provided a deep, nuanced understanding of how the Muslim Brotherhood emerged, rose to power, and ultimately faced decline. It brilliantly captures why the Brotherhood became the most significant Islamist ideological movement in the world and how its influence shaped the broader Arab world.

What I found most fascinating was the way the book unpacks the ideological struggle between Sayyid Qutb and Gamal Abdel Nasser—not just their political battles, but also their personal journeys, experiences, and transformations that shaped modern Middle Eastern history. The book didn’t just narrate events; it took me on a journey through the minds of the people who defined the region’s political and religious landscape.

This is a must-read for anyone who wants to truly understand political Islam, the role of Arab nationalism, and the Brotherhood’s lasting impact on the modern Middle East.

like a surgeon explaining a body by its organs

As someone deeply interested in the culture and mindset of political bodies, this book dominates in defining the core influences, social history and the weight of the last 130 years on the Muslim Brotherhood.

If you have a basic understanding of the Muslim world throughout the Middle East as well as a working knowledge of the Arab world, this is your next-level insight resource.

Excellent book

Very insightful book on the history of modern Egypt
I recommend it for all those interested

mispronounces Qutb's name throughout...

This book is about the tension in the Arab world between the visions of Gamel Abdel Nasser and Said Qutb, and unfortunately, the narrator mispronounces Qutb's name throughout the book. Unless he's adhering a subtlety of the Arabic that I do not understand, or decided to put Qutb in the accusative for similarly obscure reasons, it is an inexplicable blunder of the reading. The name comes up several times per page, and the narrator says "Qutuba" every time, which is in Arabic "he collected" or "he scrunched his [eyebrows]" which is what I did every time I heard it, until I couldn't take it anymore. I'll come back to this in print, unless someone can explain the unconventional pronunciation and save me from my disappointment here.