The Islamic world’s genuine problems complicate any simple narrative of victimhood

Evidence

There has been a resurgence of emotion throughout the Islamic world, and there have been a great many incidents of terrorism, organized or not, against Western and Israeli targets. The general state of the Islamic world with its decline in productivity and well-being, including such phenomena as censorship, the relative absence of democracy, the dismaying prevalence of dictatorships, and fiercely repressive and authoritarian states some of whom practice and encourage terrorism, torture, genital mutilation seems backward and cruel; this includes such basically Islamic countries as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Sudan, and Algeria, among others. In addition, the (to me) simplistic reductiveness of some numbers of people who have recourse to a hazy fantasy of seventh century Mecca as a panacea for numerous ills in today’s Muslim world makes for an unattractive mix that it would be rank hypocrisy to deny. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 12

Related

• Western discourse reduces all Muslim societies to a single malevolent essence (similarity 0.83)
• Resisting essentialized stereotypes risks a mirror-trap apology for Muslim rulers’ atrocities (similarity 0.81)
• The reified notion of Islam has hindered rather than helped understanding of Muslim societies (similarity 0.81)
• Western ideological camps all reduce Islam to a scapegoat (similarity 0.81)
• Islamic history resists any single coherent characterization (similarity 0.80)
• Terrorism is not uniquely Islamic but often stems from state negligence and empire. (similarity 0.80)
• Every portrayal of Islam is an act of willed interpretation, not a description. (similarity 0.80)
• The Islamic threat narrative ignores that major Muslim states are US client states (similarity 0.79)
• Islam posed the most far-reaching problem medieval Christendom faced (similarity 0.79)
• Muslim-world upheavals are driven by social and economic factors, not by Islam (similarity 0.79)
• Islamic doctrine has justified opposite political programs alike (similarity 0.79)
• Islamization flowed from the cultural realm into social and political spheres. (similarity 0.79)
• Said judged Western media coverage of Muslim executions as worse than the executions (similarity 0.79)
• No single label can explain a billion people’s diverse experiences (similarity 0.79)
• The West is framed as having surpassed religion while Islam remains mired in it (similarity 0.79)