Arab nationalism in interwar period Iraq: A descriptive analysis of Sami Shawkat’s al-Futuwwah youth movement

Author

Saman NasserFollow

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Date of Graduation

Fall 2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Department of History

Advisor(s)

Shah Mahmoud Hanifi

Timothy J. Fitzgerald

Steven W. Guerrier

Abstract

Abstract

Historiography of Iraqi Arab nationalism has studied the Iraqi Futuwwah Youth Movement of the interwar period in relation to the European fascist youth model of the post-World War I era. Moreover, the futuwwah is limited by linking its objective to training high school students of Iraq in the area of paramilitary exercises. By re-reading the futuwwah lectures of Sami Shawkat, the Director General of Education and founder of the futuwwah in Iraq, this thesis demonstrates how the movement was rather at the core of Iraqi Arab nationalism. The lectures appear in Shawkat’s book Hadhihi Ahdafuna (These are Our Goals), which was published in 1939. Conceptions of Arab nationalism, as this thesis shows by translating and analyzing the futuwwah lectures in These are Our Goals, exist in many pages of the work. These conceptions had both local and global contexts. Therefore, this thesis is organized around the following structure: section one is a raw translation, from Arabic to English, of These are Our Goals futuwwah lectures. This section forms the primary source of the thesis. Section two is an analytical discussion of the lectures uncovering major nationalist themes as they relate to historical Arab past and to Iraqi Arab nationalism of the period. However, this section will also emphasize the global context of the said themes, as they relate to the rise of nationalist movements in Europe and the world. Section three is the conclusion. This section will highlight the thesis main findings, and point to other possibilities in rethinking the futuwwah as a nationalist conception. One possibility, for example, is to suggest that Shawkat’s futuwwah movement was perhaps based on the old young men’s social clubs, during the late Abbasid era, by the same name.

Recommended Citation

Nasser, Saman, "Arab nationalism in interwar period Iraq: A descriptive analysis of Sami Shawkat’s al-Futuwwah youth movement" (2018). Masters Theses, 2010-2019. 587.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/master201019/587