An anticommunist Islam strategy failed because elites preferred communism and socialism

Evidence

The strategy, however, was doomed to fail because it drew on homogenizing racist caricatures of people in the region. Historian Walter Laqueur, perhaps the only establishment political commentator who saw a problem with this approach, noted in 1956 that what “is decisive is that Islam has gradually ceased to be a serious competitor of Communism in the struggle for the souls of the present and potential elites in the countries of the Middle East” [emphasis in original]. Indeed, as political scientist Tareq Ismael shows, there were significant communist parties in several Arab countries. Indonesia, the most populous Muslimmajority country, had the largest communist party in the world. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 403

Categorization

• XREF: Directly answers the comparative question — the circuit of elite instrumentalization ran up against material leftist appeal, a mechanism visible in US empire contexts. — connects to: CIA Islamic-geopolitics strategy failed because elites preferred communism or nationalism — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 391; US cold-war strategy deliberately weaponized religion against nationalism and communism in Muslim regions — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 388; CFR realists rejected the Orientalist claim that Islam blocks communism — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 408 (+3 more)
• SEED: Essay angle: the afterlife of Laqueur’s 1956 observation that US strategy projected religious identity onto secular-material political struggles.

Broader Connections

• US cold-war strategy deliberately weaponized religion against nationalism and communism in Muslim regions #expands (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 388
• American Cold War strategy cultivated Islamists against secular nationalism #expands (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 219
• CFR realists rejected the Orientalist claim that Islam blocks communism #corroborates (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 408
• A doctrine popularized for the masses becomes inadequate against elite ideologies #expands (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1396
• Islamists dominated Muslim opposition because liberal and leftist alternatives had collapsed #expands (0.75)