not a single medieval altarpiece survives in England and the Netherlands' cathedrals are all whitewashed (and until the 1930s liberals were all clapping and cheering at the memory); existing late-medieval crises erupted into a wave of unprecedented persecution of homosexuals (well, "bottoms"
, women, and non-Germans
again, calls for "a Muslim Reformation" were always just dogwhistles to the US and UK, which still largely define themselves as anti-Catholic--they assumed that the problem was that terror was caused by listening to clergy and theologians, and that if Muslims would stop listening to their ulema and read their books for themselves without any training they'd settle down, get a job and maybe even start growing Shiraz for export again, instead of being a yelly mass that's out for our blood for no reason whatever, no siree bob
note how the Salon commenters are all "like, Europe used to be fundamentalist until Newton, lolz" but that just shows that they understand literally none of the words they're using, including to and Newton: the poor dears even think that Christianity was literalistic before the 18th century
Basayev et al were proud, militant Sufis, but because we like Sufi poetry and think they're "syncretic" we think these warrior monks are nice mini-Americans that the rest of Islam has to use as a model (then the wars will end and subdevelopments of tree-shaded ranchettes and Cape Codders will go up in Benghazi and Banjarmasin and Jenin)
now this is entirely missing the history of the region since the Urabi Revolt, and the fact that Washington's been playing favorites and then dumping them like pet rocks on and off since the 50s (before we were praised as not being like those imperialist asses France, Israel, and Britain)--if we understand that political Islam became a driving force only in the 70s because Nasserism and Kemal-style developmentalism had failed tremendously, if we suddenly remember what the CIA did in Islamabad and Khartoum and Jakarta and Kabul and Beirut and Riyadh and Mossad with Hamas in the 80s, then the illusion of an "Islamism" whose sole problem is being too Muslim is revealed as impossible
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