I think the world is progressively realising that islamists are taking over the muslim world. What is unhelpful is that many confuse islamists and jihadists, which are a tiny fraction of islamists. Erdogan is a muslim brother.
You can do the exercise (I did) of going through every muslim country on the map, from Morocco to Indonesia, and lookup the recent political history of that country on wikipedia. In every single of these countries, no exception, either:
- the Islamists are in power or one of the largest political parties (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Marocco, Turkey, Pakistan, etc)
- the Islamists were one of the largest political forces but have been banned (doesn't mean they are not present) (Jordan, Algeria, etc)
- the Islamists are one of main the parties to a civil war (Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc)
I don't know what can be done in the west. I see this as a kind of repeat of communism. It's an idea which time has come. You don't get people to change their mind by force. They need to experience why it sucks before turning against the idea (in that respect Iran is probably leading the way, where the islamists seem to increasingly lose support of the population). And it doesn't mean it's a homogenous block (neither was communism).
> You can do the exercise (I did) of going through every muslim country on the map, from Morocco to Indonesia, and lookup the recent political history of that country on wikipedia. In every single of these countries, no exception, either:
> - the Islamists are in power or one of the largest political parties
Do you consider Central Asian countries muslim ones? (At least until very recently) these countries (especially, Uzb.) brutally supressed any Islamic attempt at gaining any sort of power. I read elsewhere Uzb. now is trying to "liberalize" its politics with respect to "religious freedom" among others.
You can do the exercise (I did) of going through every muslim country on the map, from Morocco to Indonesia, and lookup the recent political history of that country on wikipedia. In every single of these countries, no exception, either:
- the Islamists are in power or one of the largest political parties (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Marocco, Turkey, Pakistan, etc)
- the Islamists were one of the largest political forces but have been banned (doesn't mean they are not present) (Jordan, Algeria, etc)
- the Islamists are one of main the parties to a civil war (Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc)
I don't know what can be done in the west. I see this as a kind of repeat of communism. It's an idea which time has come. You don't get people to change their mind by force. They need to experience why it sucks before turning against the idea (in that respect Iran is probably leading the way, where the islamists seem to increasingly lose support of the population). And it doesn't mean it's a homogenous block (neither was communism).