Secular leftists attributed the Islamic revival to ignorance, Saudi money, and Western conspiracy.
Evidence
Progressive leftists like myself explained this turn of the “masses” to Islamic forms of sociability in a number of ways: sometimes we attributed it to the lack of education and enlightened thinking among the vast majority of the population, sometimes to the conservative form of Saudi Islam that immigrant laborers return from the Arabian Gulf states had brought back into Pakistan, and sometimes to the mimetic effects that Zia ul— repressive regime had inevitably engendered in the populace. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 21 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
How does one revive the true Islam? The answer was self-evident, and it didn’t involve Western-style democracy or political parties. It didn’t blame outsiders like the United States or Europe or anyone else for the problems of the Muslim world, nor did it subscribe to the violence of radicals. Rather, the solution they sought lay in teaching Muslims the true Islam, in bringing back the true Islamic morality to the umma. Their evidence was the Qur’an itself, which states that “God does not change the condition of a people until they change what’s in themselves.” — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 880 (
#complicates, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: The US-backed Saudi war in Yemen killed 100,000 and starved 250,000; American arms, Saudi funding, and Muslim demographics defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan; Progressive leftists explained Islamic revival as ignorance or foreign imposition — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival…, 21 (+7 more)
Broader Connections
- Progressive leftists explained Islamic revival as ignorance or foreign imposition
#corroborates(0.97) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 21 - Leftists explained religious revival through ignorance, Saudi influence, and regime mimesis
#corroborates(0.92) - Revivalist Islamic movements blame internal moral decline, not outsiders
#complicates(0.85) — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 880 - Islamism rose from secular nationalist failure, left weakness, and economic crises
#complicates(0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 323 - Failed secular ideologies push non-Western peoples back toward religious revival.
#complicates(0.76) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 273