I have many close friends who are Lebanese Christians; they politely decline to be designated as “Arabs,” and remind those who call them by that name that they are descendants of the Phoenicians who were in Lebanon long before the Muslim conquerors arrived from Arabia.
Now in Egypt there is a movement stemming from similar principles. “Scores of Egyptian intellectuals and vocational members formed a party called ‘Egypt the motherland’ ( Mesr al-Um) for dismantling Egypt from its Arab identity.
“Lawyer Mohsin Lutfi said that he will apply to the Parties affairs at the Shoura council after Eid al-Fiter for licensing the party. He explained ‘we are a party which says: we are Egyptians and not Arabs.. The Arabs are our friends and neighbors and we have common destiny.. but we are not Arabs.'” . . .
“Lutfi calls for reviving the Heoglyphic and Coptic languages and has been teaching scores of students the Heroglyphic language in his house since 10 years. He studied Heroglyphic language at the French Surrbornne university after he had graduated in 1948 from the law faculty, Fouad 1st university ( the current Cairo university). He also studied at London’s university for more than 3 years.”
This is a strong anti-dhimmi movement. Also, it is a strong rejection of the general Islamic contempt for the pre-Islamic history of Muslim nations. And many in Egypt are well aware of this: “The Egyptian writer Jamal Badawi strongly criticized the idea of the new party in the Egyptian daily al-Wafd issued on Tuesday, saying ‘those of the Pharos trend do not care what form of government there is, rather what is of concern to them is to cancel the Arab era from Egypt’s history.’ He added they ‘are not brave to show off their hostility to Islam, and therefore they concentrate their arrows on Arabization, and put the Arabs in one bunch along with the foreign forces which occupied Egypt.'”