Thoughts: being an Arab or a Muslim?

So I haven't been here a lot, apparently residing in a new country requires so much work to be done especially when you are residing in a country where the bureaucracy is unbelievable. Apart from that living in Syria for a while made me notice a lot of things that are wrong with this country, whether big or small but I'll leave those for other posts (just to have something to talk about later on).
As I read the news through a proxy server (since many useful websites that I used to visit are no longer permissible for the average Jim in Syria) a title of an article written by Michel Kilo caught my eye on Alquds Alarabi. The article is titled "The Arab inability to find Shared Nationalistic Denominators". The following is not a comment on the article but merely a remark on the title of the article.

To be honest as I became more interested in politics through the years, as most Arabs, I have been deceived with the colonial idea of Arab Nationalism. When it becomes hard to define what an Arab is in the first place (according to the Arab league it is mainly language?) then you will have a problem with finding the smallest shared denominator between different "Arab" countries. Arab nationalism only came about when western powers that had colonial interests in the region came up with this idea to break up the last of the Caliphates, the Ottoman Caliphate. Arabs back then were over excited with the promises and lies that were given to them by those seeking to colonize the region. Indeed after the "Arab revolution" finally getting what it wanted, an independent rule over "Arab territory" separate from Islamic rule they were (the Arabs) put aside as those seeking to colonize the region (Britain and France mainly) forgot about their promises to the Arabs and sent their armies to colonize the region (see for example the Sykes-Picot agreement).

In addition to this, the failure of Arab nationalism to really deliver the hopes and dreams of Arab states can be easily seen. Maybe the only time Arab Nationalism was saw the light of success with out it succeeding was during the time Abdulnasser was in power in Egypt who failed with uniting Arab countries even though he had widespread public support from nearly all Arab countries.

I think the only reason why many of us consider ourselves as being Arabs is just a result of something more greater that most of Arabs believe in. Our Arab identity is just part of a greater identity, which is Islam. In reality our ultimate identity as people who live in the region known today as the "Arab World" is not the over-puffed and hyped identity as Arabs, It is Islam whether it was through the Islamic culture and traditions shared by most Arabs or in the belief in Islam as a religion (keeping in consideration ethnic and religious minorities that do exist in this region).