abstract:Pan-Islamism ( ) is a political movement advocating the unity of Muslims under one Islamic state – often a Caliphate – or an international organization similar to a European Union with Islamic principles. As a form of religious nationalism, Pan-Islamism differentiates itself from other pan-nationalistic ideologies, for example Pan-Arabism, by excluding culture and ethnicity as primary factors towards unification.
Many Arab governments, including Egypt's, had come to regard Salafism, with its focus on Sunni orthodoxy and punctilious personal piety, as a useful foil to the more politically engaged pan-Islamism of groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.