If the west did not meddle in the middle east after the fall of the ottoman empire...

This
Fuck Sa*di Ar*bia

Nope. That's just a myth liberals tell themselves so they can keep blaming the victims of Islamic extremism.
Even though Ottoman Islam was more tolerant of different ideas, it was still very extreme even compared to Christianity back then. In reality, the Wahhabist Saudis are already firmly established throughout the Middle East, to un-fuck Islam, you'd probably have to go all the way back to the Mongol era.

Not really. Muslims despise the cucked nature of Liberalism/progresssvisim and see the West current meddling as nothing more than an attempt to turn them into Sweden 2.0. Muslims don't want faggots, atheists, feminists, non-Muslims, or anyone who doesn't subscribe to their culture anywhere near Mecca and near them, and they want it to stay that way. They are the most conservative group in the world and are proud of it too.

/pol/ ruins every damn board, I only wish for your genocide you damn motherfuckers.

This is the only real answer in this thread.

Short answer: Yes, definitely.

Long answer: Assuming the west kept their hands away from the middle east, many events that caused the rise of Islamism and dictatorships would've gone away. Examples:

1- Most prominently there would be no zionist state in the levant and thus no refugee influx in the neighboring countries causing several civil wars in the following decades. And by default it would render Baa'th parties in Syria and Iraq non existent since liberating Palestine is the shared platform that led to their rise to power.
2- Egypt would've remained a royal country with foreign investments not escaping with no socialist Nasser to threaten them. It also means no socialist policies that led to destroying the liberal and cultural class of Egypt, it would also mean that liberal ideals would live on in the future generations.
3- More diversity in the levantine region due to millions of Christians not immigrating to South and North America.
4- No British backed Hashimites and Saudis leading the Pan Arabism movement. With other movements like the Secular Greater Syria and Westernized Royal Egypt leading the region.
5- Stable secular Iran.

In short, the French and the Brits are to blame for the current state of events in the middle east.

The Saudi rise to influence in the middle east benefited greatly from weak Levant and Egypt. See

Probably more secular. Arab (secular) socialism was on the rise before the US did everything it could to squash it.

There was a point where wearing a headscarf was a sign of being uneducated low class in the middle east and looked down upon.

This assumes that liberal democracy is the default form of government a population wants/has.

Don't be ridiculous.

In what way does my post even imply such a thing?

Not your safe space. Libtard.

>Every non liberal-democratic government is a "dictatorship" (pejorative slur)
>Arabs "copied" westerners in having non-democratic forms of government (lolwut?)

Just.... Stop being a libtard.

Please?

>Every non liberal-democratic government is a "dictatorship" (pejorative slur)

I didn't say anything of the sort fagtron.

During the early 19th century the middle east witnessed a strong move towards a parliamentary democratic system. In Egypt, the king had to consolidate more powers to PM after several protests against absolute monarchy in favor of an electoral system. In Iraq and Iran too and both of them had running parliaments. It was also the case in the Levant with parliaments in both Syria and Lebanon, with Palestine being the exception due to the mandate. However, that doesn't mean it didn't have a very active political parties with majority of them running on the secular side of politics spectrum.

>I'm going to venture a guess and say that Arabs copied European fascism as a substitute for theocracy and empire.

Sorry, every non-democratic form of government (from Egyptian Kingdoms to Baathist Republics to Theocracies) is "fascism".

Please go and get yourself de-programmed.

>with majority of them running on the secular side of politics spectrum.

What proof is there of this? How widely was the franchise extended? I can well believe a larger portion of the population in certain states (particularly Egypt) were more secular minded back then, but I don't think it's as easily explained as "western meddling", in places like Egypt and Syria differential fertility rates over the past 60-70 years have played a role too. The same liberal-minded people in Cairo 60 years ago simply weren't having as many children as people from the rural areas or urban poor.

Lebanon was majority-Christian back then though.

Also the Levant != All of the Arab World.

>"Liberal democracy is a DISEASE!"
t. Westerner who lives in a liberal democracy who can say whatever he wants.

>t. Westerner who lives in a liberal democracy

Irrelevant.

>who can say whatever he wants.

Completely untrue.

I think you could also call liberal democracy a 'disease' in most totalitarian states as well.

>splitting hairs and shitting yourself over your own particularly autistic interpretation of his sentence

seems obvious he meant nothing of the sort, and you are busy wringing the proverbial semen out of the argument to self-validate

Just because I don't validate every possible argument and clarify every technicality doesn't mean I believe them

>Completely untrue.
You're doing it right now.

It isn't "splitting hairs", use of terms like "dictatorship" to refer to everything from the Venetian Republic to the KSA is simply imprecise, politically loaded language with no purpose other than to slander.

It's the same as terms like "reactionary". These terms have no place in serious debate. Be precise with your language, use literal meanings or fuck off.

Doing what? In my country loads of things are sanctioned by law, a nationalist leader was put on trial for referring to Islam as a "vicious and wicked faith" in a public speech for example. The interpretation of "racially aggravated public order offenses" is wide-ranging.

And that's not to mention the economic and professional sanctions that are employed.

>Huhuhu I can't be an asshole in public!
Your problem.

>What proof is there of this?
In this particular case several of the parties in Palestina later formed PLO after 1948 which is consisted exclusively of Socialists, Communists, and some Progressives. As for Egypt, the only reason that led to the dissolution of liberal ideals is Nasser war on those elites, and then his disastrous economic policies which led to farmers abandoning their farms in the south and moving up north with no education or opportunities, and that led to the spread of Islamic groups financed by wahabbists like Islamic brotherhood. If farmers remained in the south and the social norms continued with the educated class extending its liberal ideals to them through influence and gradual social mobility, none of this nonsense would've happened in Egypt today.

>Your problem.

Well now you're changing your tune, earlier you said I can "say whatever I want". Now it's "well you can say whatever you want provided you don't meet my arbitrary standards of asshole behavior".

Are you just dense or purposefully dishonest?

>Socialists

How many socialists were internationalists though? I mean Baathists are ethnic nationalists, as were other Arab socialist movements.

>and that led to the spread of Islamic groups financed by wahabbists like Islamic brotherhood.

I don't think it is this economically deterministic, I think the rural population of Egypt has always been deeply Islamic.

Christians also formed a big minority in Palestine and Syria then too. And we are discussing the middle east which if you remove the levant you are left with Egypt and Iraq and a few desert dwellers in the gulf. Egypt was known for being the most secular place in the region in 19th century. And Iraq was and still a diverse country.

it worked perfectly well for what they wanted out of it

>well you can say whatever you want provided you don't meet my arbitrary standards of asshole behavior
>I_am_a_social_retard.jpg

You can say whatever you want. If whatever you wanted to say happens to be offensive, then you should be prepared for the shitty consequences that falls upon you.

So much for /pol/acks deriding people for "safe spaces."

>How many socialists were internationalists though?

Many of those who led these parties were educated in Paris, London and other western institutions, they weren't thinking of isolationist policies when they created their parties.

>I think the rural population of Egypt has always been deeply Islamic.

That's not true. Egypt rural population might've been more conservative than that of urban one, but their cultural development was greatly influenced by that of the population in the city, they looked at the city people and saw an example to emulate. The urban liberal class losing its power and influence over political and cultural life led to that rural class to find its influence elsewhere since the government only provided suppression and punishment at the time. There's a well known video on the internet where Nasser tells a story of how the Islamic brotherhood leader wanted him to make women wear headscarf while his daughter didn't. It shows the point I am trying to make, which is back then even the leader of the most religious group in the country was still influenced by class culture of the late 19th century and early 20th which dictated that only farmers and lower class wear headscarf, and so he couldn't imagine his family being grouped with such class. I worked with a somewhat older woman than me from the middle east, and she told me about how her mother would beat her if she caught her trying to wear a headscarf saying only poor villagers do that.

>If whatever you wanted to say happens to be offensive, then you should be prepared for the shitty consequences that falls upon you.

By this standard freedom of speech exists everywhere on earth, not just western countries.

>Many of those who led these parties were educated in Paris, London and other western institutions

Ok, but so was Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot, and the former was pretty much a de facot ethnic nationalist. I don't think being western educated made you an internationalist.

>they looked at the city people and saw an example to emulate.

Any primary sources?

>There's a well known video on the internet where Nasser tells a story of how the Islamic brotherhood leader wanted him to make women wear headscarf while his daughter didn't.

Seen it, and I'm not denying Egypt was comparatively more liberal-minded, I'm disputing the claim that there wasn't always a solid bedrock of Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt that grew since then.

>I worked with a somewhat older woman than me from the middle east, and she told me about how her mother would beat her if she caught her trying to wear a headscarf saying only poor villagers do that.

Doesn't surprise me.

Also you're downplaying the Gulf if you think only a few people live there. KSA has a large population and its growing fast. The GCC wields real power in the Arab World, not the Arab League.

No only whites are susceptible to liberalism since they are a race if deranged nutcases who are too altruistic and empathetic to think straight. The middle east would remain the way it was.

>I don't think being western educated made you an internationalist.
True. But iirc the political parties were divided into two sections back then: Pan Arabism and local ethnic nationalism, and both of them shared socialist and secular ideals with the difference being that Pan Arabism camp wanted to form a strong united power to stand as equal to the west, and the latter favoring closer relations with the west, and examples can be taken from several parties in the levant, just I can't remember the parties name so you either take it as it is or discard it.

>Any primary sources?
I am having hard time finding social studies from that era, I might link it up later if the thread is still alive.

>I'm disputing the claim that there wasn't always a solid bedrock of Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt that grew since then.

You are forgetting one thing, that majority of those rural people were illiterate and didn't even know how to pray with some villages even lacking a mosque. There was a bedrock for Islamic fundamentalism but not through a religious population but rather a poor uneducated one.

Also Saudi had a small population then and that area which included this population wasn't all part of Saudi, it was also Hijaz and parts in Yemen. Hijaz was more relaxed than Saudi heartland and so was Yemen

but what if he didn't want to bother using precise language to explain how while the baathist state was a one party state controlled by a military dictatorship it wasn't neccessarily operating under fascist guidelines?

And - by your suggestion, we aren't clarifying our definitions enough. Should we then break down what is and is not 'fascism?' what happens if someone else believes it's not fascism? What happens if someone calls monarchists facists because they share central tenants and therefore that makes them facists?

Do you see what I'm trying to say here? Why bother opening these cans of worms when you could just sense and accept (and you do accept this; you're just arguing against it for the sake of arguing) his general intention and carry on with a real discussion of the argument

and not

fucking

meta-notions

of 'what you really, truly mean by your largely-accurate catch all phrase'?

You are a sensible, rational adult with full use of your senses. Start by using your fucking brain, cunt.