Gamal Abdel Nasser laughing at Muslim Brotherhood hijab requirement in 1958 (subtitled)

Saudi Arabia: political islam in power => MBS somehow Tudoring it away at an unexpected pace Turkey: Erdogan is effectively a muslim brother => On the decline, projected to be ousted next year The Gulf states don't really have political parties as far as I understand. They are absolute monarchies. > the steady rise of islamism across the muslim world is real It waxes and wanes. May have peaked several places. Syria, Egypt and Iraq used to be quesi-socialist dictatorships for example. Here is some black and white footage of Nasser from 1958 laughing at the ridiculousness of somebody from the Muslim Brotherhood complaining about hijabs not being enforced: ▶ this video Iran was a very different place before the revolution. Turkey was originally pivoting towards secularism with Ataturk. Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Jordan were/are primarily monarchies engaged in a game of thrones type battle royale etc. > common goal of imposing the Sharia as the rule of law Well, only kinda sorta. There's also the regional competition for supremacy between Shia and Sunni to consider. And all of this is overlaid untop of feudal tribal society dynamics. > But its influence seems to have been completely ignored by the cookie cutter response that any problem of the world should be attributed to the West, one way or another. Not only has it been ignored out of political correctness. In many cases the West for some reason likes to empower religious nutjobs whom they somehow find more palatab

I think the situation in France is probably hopeless. Even Muslim-majority countries are having a difficult time reconciling themselves with the rise of Islamic separatism. In countries like Bangladesh, where I’m from, or Turkey or Egypt, the separatism takes the form of reaction against the moderate secular regimes of the 20th century. Here is the President of Egypt in 1958 recounting his conversation with the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. He and the audience laugh at the leader’s request to mandate headscarves in Egypt, observing that the leader’s own daughter, a medical student, doesn’t wear a headscarf: ▶ this video . Back then, few women in Egypt wore a headscarf. Today, 90% of women do (and Muslim Brotherhood was recently in control of the country). In Bangladesh there are objections to our legal system, which is based on British common law, and our western-style constitution that embodies principles of secularism: link . People don’t give the United States enough credit for how well we have assimilated our Muslim immigrants. In France and Germany, Muslims suffer from generational poverty. In the US, they have higher incomes than average within a generation. I think our religiosity had a lot to do with it. We are a country founded by people who got kicked out of Europe for being religious fundamentalists. Our society functions smoothly with Mormons, Jehovah’s witnesses, Amish, etc. Our society is accommodating on multiple levels—religious immigrants aren’t exclusively

> Counting everyone born to Muslim parents as Muslim doesn't make any more sense That is, in fact, exactly how it’s defined within that religion. Also, using Egypt as an example is deeply ironic: ▶ this video

Yeah, look at them evil Muslims.[1] Fundamentalists, every single one, right? Islam has issues, of course, just like any other ideology. Too bad the Wahhabis are largely successful in exporting their flavor of Islam.. but I guess that's what happens when you prop up oppressive regimes in the name of stability (and preferential access to natural resources). [1] - ▶ this video