Most Muslim governments were repressive ‘bunker regimes’ with shaky legitimacy and high collapse odds

Evidence

Without denying the real difficulties of democracy taking root in the Muslim world, we should assume neither that Muslim nations are unique in wrestling with the full implications of democracy nor that there is something inherently antidemocratic about Islam. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 292 (#complicates, via linked claim)

In the 1980s and 1990s Islamist movements dominated and often monopolized the opposition to governments in Muslim countries. Their strength was in part a function of the weakness of alternative sources of opposition. Leftist and communist movements had been discredited and then seriously undermined by the collapse of the Soviet Union and international communism. Liberal, democratic opposition groups had existed in most Muslim societies but were usually confined to limited numbers of intellectuals and others with Western roots or connections. With only occasional exceptions, liberal democrats were unable to achieve sustained popular support in Muslim societies, and even Islamic liberalism failed to establish roots. “In one Muslim society after another,” Fouad Ajami observes, “to write of liberalism and of a national bourgeois tradition is to write obituaries of men who took on impossible odds and then failed.” The general failure of liberal democracy to take hold in Muslim societies is a continuing and repeated phenomenon for an entire century beginning in the late 1800s. This failure has its source at least in part in the inhospitable nature of Islamic culture and society to Western liberal concepts. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 312 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Elective caliphate failed catastrophically, leading to dynastic rule; Islam’s lack of core states fuels instability without central mediation — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 735; Missing Islamic core states force outsiders into failed ordering roles. (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Muslim nations are not unique in struggling with democracy #complicates (0.80) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 292
• Liberal democracy repeatedly failed to take root in Muslim societies for a century #complicates (0.74) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 312