Mustafa Kamil Pasha (Arabic: مصطفى كامل, IPA: [mosˈtˤɑfɑ ˈkæːmel]) (August 14, 1874 ⁠– February 10, 1908) was an Egyptian lawyer, journalist, and nationalist activist.

Kamil was born in Cairo in 1874. His father was an engineer who first worked for the Egyptian army and then for the civil institutions. He was a graduate of the Khidiwiyya high school in Cairo. He was trained as a lawyer at the French law school in Cairo and at the Toulouse School of Law in France. In January 1893, as a university student Kamil first became famous when he led a group of students who destroyed the offices of the newspaper Al Muqattam which supported the British occupation of Egypt. As a passionate nationalist, he supported Egypt's khedive, Abbas Hilmi II, who strongly opposed the British occupation. A protegee of Abbas Hilmi, whom he first met in 1892, it was the khedive who paid for Kamil to be educated in Toulouse. The American historian Michael Laffan described Kamil as "...a spellbinding orator, tireless traveller, prolific writer and charismatic personality". Kamil befriended the French Orientalist François Deloncle who promised to introduce him to French politicians, but instead gave him the job as his secretary, causing him to quit in disgust.  

Kamil first came to widespread attention outside Egypt when he presented a petition to the French Chamber of Deputies in Paris in June 1895 asking the French government to pressure Britain to leave Egypt. Kamil at the same time paid for a poster to be printed which shows him presenting a petition to Marianne in the "Temple of Reason" asking her to free Egypt, with the miserable-looking Egyptian masses standing behind him while the British lion together with a British soldier hold a half-naked woman symbolizing Egypt in chains. To the right of Marianne stand Uncle Sam and other symbolic characters for the other nations of the world, who were all standing upright and look happy, showing what Kamil hopes that Marianne will make Egypt like. Kamil's poster with its symbolic representation of Egypt's status was very popular, and was reprinted in many European and American newspapers in 1895. In a speech delivered in French in Toulouse on 4 July 1895, Kamil accused Lord Cromer of "purposively appointing incapable, indifferent or traitorous men at the head of Egyptian government ministries and other administrative positions. In this manner he not only manipulates these men like an instrument under his control but he uses the incompetence of these men to attempt and prove to Europe that our country lacks a governing managerial class." In the same speech, Kamil called for French help, saying: "Yes gentlemen, it is France's duty..to interfere and save us...France which has generously awakened Egypt from its profound sleep and has always treated us like its dearest offspring, earning in the process our eternal respect, emanating from the depths of our hearts and souls."

Upon returning to Egypt, Kamil wrote and published a pamphlet in French (the language of Egypt's elite) whose title Le peril anglais: Conséquence de l'occupation de l'Egypte par l'Angleterre gave away its thesis. From 1895 to 1907, Kamil visited France every year, always giving speeches and writing newspaper articles criticizing British rule in Egypt. Kamil's friendship with the French writer Pierre Loti and the feminist Juliette Adam led to him being introduced to much of the French intelligentsia, who were impressed by the charismatic and intelligent young Egyptian who spoke and wrote fluent French. However, Kamil's Francophile rhetoric was calculated as he told Abbas Hilmis's secretary in a letter in September 1895: "Like any realistic person knows, nations only cater to their best interests. The French, just like the English; regardless of how they pretend to be loyal to us, will do whatever is in their best political interests. Therefore through our rapprochement and our amicability toward them we are merely employing a purposeful political maneuver to gain their trust and perhaps, even if it is temporary, we can benefit from them politically." Kamil sometimes exaggerated the Francophilia of Egypt to win French support, as in a speech in Paris on 18 June 1899 when he said: "The war which your neighbors from across the English-Channel have been waging against your cultural influence and prestige on the banks of the Nile is without a name. English hate has especially targeted the French Language, for they have been zealously and tirelessly attempting to replace their language for yours." Despite Kamil's claims, French remained one of the official languages of Egypt until the 1952 revolution.

He also sought co-operation with France and the Ottoman Empire, but later he gradually grew more independent of outside backers, and appealed mainly to the Egyptian people to demand the end of the British occupation. Kamil often worked as an unofficial diplomat, touring the capitals of Europe on behalf of the Khedive, seeking support to end the British occupation of Egypt.

Kamil had what was described as a "complicated loyalties" owing to Egypt's status as an Ottoman vilayet (province) that was self-governing under the descendants of Mohammad Ali of Egypt that had been occupied by Britain in 1882. Like most Egyptians of his generation, Kamil saw the Khedives as the legitimate rulers of Egypt, who in turn owned their loyalty to the Ottoman Sultan-Caliph in Constantinople. He also called on Khedive Abbas II to grant constitutional government to his subjects. Realizing that Egypt could not expel the British by force, Kamil confided his efforts to public relations, writing: "The wise among the British have realized the danger of their occupation of Egypt. What they need to know is the true feelings of the Egyptian nation, its fears, hopes, and the truth. This would force their government to evacuate the Nile Valley. The best thing that we Egyptians can do now is to advertise the truth to Europe with as many languages as possible, especially in English and French."

In 1900, Kamil founded the newspaper Al Liwa' ("The Standard") as a platform for his views and utilized his skill as both a journalist and lawyer. He also founded a boys' school open to Egyptian Muslims, Christians, and Jews. A Francophile, Kamil was much influenced by French republican values of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, seeing France as the embodiment of the values of progress, prosperity, and freedom. Kamil's writing help to redefine loyalty to al-watan ("the homeland") in terms stressing the importance of education, nizam (order), and love of al-watan, implicitly criticizing the state created by Mohammad Ali the Great, which was run on militarist lines. Like many other Egyptian nationalists of the early 20th century, Kamil took pride in the achievements of the ancient Egyptian civilization, which for him showed that Egypt had a history of statehood going back thousands of years, which set the Egyptians apart from other peoples.

Greatly influenced by the French philosopher Ernest Renan who argued that what defined a nation was "Le désir d'être ensemble" ("a will to live together"), Kamil maintained that the Egyptians had for millennia had wanted to live together in a single state. Kamil's argument that the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt around about 3100 BC was the birth of Egypt as a state based his sense of Egyptian nationalism on loyalty to Egypt as a state and geographic entity, and contradicted the standard Islamic teaching that all of Egypt's history prior to the Muslim conquest of 639-642 AD was a period of jahiliyyah ("barbarous ignorance"). Like many other Egyptian nationalists of the 19th century, Kamil took great pride in the discoveries of archaeologists who uncovered the ruins of ancient Egypt, and he presented Egyptian history from the time of the Pharaohs to the present as one that all Egyptians should be proud of. Somewhat misunderstanding Mohammad Ali the Great's intentions, Kamil claimed that Mohammad Ali had only restored Egypt back to its status as a great power, which originated with the days of the Pharaohs. Proud of his fallah (peasant) origins, Kamil saw himself as an Egyptian first and a subject of the Ottoman empire a distant second. Kamil's position on the role of Islam in Egyptian life was quite elastic as at various times depending on his audience he asserted that Islam was the cornerstone of Egyptian national identity and at other times asserted that it was love of al-watan which defined being Egyptian, a position that implicitly accepted the Copts and Egyptian Jews as equals of the Muslims. Kamil tended to see Egyptian wataniya (patriotism) as being boosted by Islam instead of being based on Islam. Through Kamil was not willing to reject publicly the pan-Islamic message of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II aka "Abdul Hamid the Damned", his writings tended to imply that the Muslims of the Egyptian al-watan had more in common with each other than they did with Muslims from other lands, and Islam was presented by him more as a means for unifying the Egyptian people than the end. Kamil supported Abdul Hamid's pan-Islamic campaign as the best way of bringing the Ottoman empire onto Egypt's side, hoping that the Sultan might persuade the British to leave Egypt, but he did not want Egypt to be occupied by the Ottomans again.