Islamist movements excused Soviet brutality because Western tolerance invited open criticism

Evidence

Another reason for this relative lack of concern for the 50 million or more Muslims under Soviet rule may be a calculation of risk and advantage. The Soviet Union is near, along the northern frontiers of Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan; America and even Western Europe are far away. More to the point, it has not hitherto been the practice of the Soviets to quell disturbances with water cannon and rubber bullets, with TV cameras in attendance, or to release arrested persons on bail and allow them access to domestic and foreign media. The Soviets do not interview their harshest critics on prime time, or tempt them with teaching, lecturing, and writing engagements. On the contrary, their ways of indicating displeasure with criticism can often be quite disagreeable. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1574

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Said-adjacent and critical-nonfiction themes of how public criticism and its toleration shape the perceived character of regimes — and to scholarship on why Islamist movements demonized the West more than the communist East.
• QUESTION: Why did so much fundamentalist demonology fixate on a distant West rather than the adjacent Soviet oppressor of co-religionists? Lewis offers several candidate mechanisms here.