Ethnoreligious movements seriously challenge state hegemony throughout the Middle East.

Evidence

Even where they are taking root they are still tender, immature, and precarious. They do not yet correspond to the feelings and loyalties of the great mass of the population; they cannot adequately express the instinctive and spontaneous responses even of the educated elite to the challenges of internal and international affairs. They cannot therefore provide us with a key to the understanding of those movements and policies in the Middle East that are due not to the calculations of groups or individuals, but to a real upsurge of popular sentiment and emotion. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1171 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Modernization seriously deteriorated religious tolerance in the Middle East; Ethnic minorities like Kurds and Berbers have challenged secular nation-state hegemony; State-sanctioned definitions of Muslim identity trigger escalating sectarian narrowing — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 866 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• National state forms cannot explain Middle East popular movements. #complicates (0.75) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1171