The red circle includes ISIS.

who told me that religion is a personal thing in his culture.

He also said that in Saddam's time there weren't many religious people but even the ones they had were peaceful.

They see ISIS as foreign invaders who are alien to their culture.

The Kurdish people are quite different from the rest of the Iraqi Sunni population. (And exhibit a spectrum of other religions as well)
It's like a country with no currently recognized borders, occupying parts of Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran, with its own unique culture.

Thinking back on the last 20 years of US intervention in the ME, the Kurds are often caught between the Sunni and Shi'a populations of other cultures.

Sadly, we backed down from Turkey's threats, and didn't partition Iraq. Well, Turkey's threats about the Kurds, and also being fundamentally incapable of doing anything that might expand Iran, as one of the three possible partitions of Iraq would have been ethnically, culturally, and religiously aligned with Iran, and we just can't have that sort of thing, apparently.

(It would have done some level of justice to the Kurds, and also been an incredible peace/reconciliation offering to Iran if we'd done it.)

are not liberal democracies.

You said it but you don't see it. IMO

that the neocons were never serious about spreading liberal democracy. That's the last thing they want to see in the ME, despite their protestations to the contrary. They don't even believe in liberal democracy at home.

Maher and Harris were way off the mark in their position on Islam, but virtually everything you've said here is just plain... wrong.

Just think about it for a second: if liberal democracy "cures" religion of fundamentalist elements, why are there so many fundamentalists in our particular liberal democracy?

While it is true Muslims are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their governments, the root of modern Sunni fundamentalism isn't a lack of liberal democracy. Jihaddi groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS, and the hardline Islamist clerics who are their ideological foundation, don't want liberal democracy. They see the concept of the modern nation/state as "Western" and inherently un-Islamic. Rather, they want a return to the Golden Age, to bring back the Caliphate.

To accomplish this end, they are actively working against the established governments in the Middle East, which they also view as being "Western" and corrupt. There is no divide-and-conquer going on here at all; if anything, ideologically-opposed opposition groups are working together against governments, like we saw in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia during the Arab Spring, not against each other as you seem to think they are.

And, let's not forget that while the Arab Spring was hailed as a great step forward toward liberal democracy in the Middle East, Tunisia was the only country that made even modest gains in that regard. In Libya, Islamists took power and implemented Sharia Law; now there is civil war. In Egypt, Islamists took power and tried to implement Sharia Law; now the military is in charge once again. In Yemen, Arab nationalists took power; 20% of the legislature is controlled by Islamists, and the Shia in the northwestern corner of the country are in open insurgency against the government. Civil war in Syria is still burning hot; while the overall war against Assad is failing, Islamists are leading the other opposition groups by a wide margin.

I think the "clash of cultures", combined with the hegemonic attitude America took towards foreign policy in the Cold War years, is a more likely explanation for the emergence of modern Islamist movements. Apart from Shia fundamentalism, which is a completely different beast than the Wahhabism we see in the Arab world, most of these movements can be traced back to Postwar Saudi Arabia, when Kings Abdulaziz and Saud opened the country up to Western oil companies. The influx of non-Muslims to the holiest of Islamic lands perturbed the Saudi clerics, who feared the corrupting influence of the foreigners. This was exacerbated by the longstanding relationship between the House of Saud and the Arabian clerics.

See, as a condition for their support in conquering the Peninsula in the 18th century, House Saud conceded control of all moral issues to the clerics. This means, in effect, there are not one, but two governments in Saudi Arabia, that for the past sixty or seventy years, have been moving in opposite directions. The royal family wants to modernize, the clerics want to regress. But, with the backing of the United States and other western allies, the royal family has been able to push modernization through regardless of the clerics' feelings on the matter. Feeling disabused of their former powers, the clerics have taken to hardline Islamism. Sunni terrorism, as a result, has taken up two very basic goals: scaring the west into breaking their alliances with House Saud, and the ultimate overthrow of the royal family in favor of... you guessed it, a Caliphate.

And, for the record, I think the same is true of our own religious fundamentalists here in the United States. I don't think they're fighting for greater representation in government, because they already have about as much as they can get. What they are fighting, however, is a culture they see to be moving away from the "pure" faith, and towards the "corrupting influence" of secularism.

that the moderate and secular citizens of the middle east could keep their extremists at bay. This will take time.

Of course this is just a theory but it makes sense to me.

If ME history had moved in the way of secularism things would have been different but unfortunately they did not.

Even if liberal democracy were to appear in Saudi Arabia tomorrow, it wouldn't help. Because then you'd have a significant portion of the population throwing their lot behind Islamist candidates, who have no intention of upholding the foundational tenets of liberal democracy. This is exactly why the Arab Spring failed in Egypt. The Egyptians came together, ousted the Mubarak government, and then promptly empowered Islamists whose agenda included legitimizing Islamic law, across the board.

There's no easy solution to this problem. The road ahead is so bumpy and ill-defined, I can't even begin to speculate as to what the correct course would be. Each country is different, each country's problems are different, and each country's religious climate is different. While secularism is -- I would argue obviously -- the only truly fair relationship between government and religion, there's no certain path to getting there with things as they stand today. The Islamists are certain they are correct; it is absolutely foolish to think they can be rationalized out of their positions. Any attempt to liberalize the countries in which they hold significant sway -- even if they are a minority -- will be met with hostility.

In an event, I don't think the situation is hopeless. The Middle East will have no choice but to secularize at some point. But don't expect an easy fix, much less a peaceful one. Things are probably going to get a lot worse before they get better.

We made Libya worse. Every time we dink around over Iran, we bolster the hard-line extremists in Iran. They're all 'SEE SEE, AMERICA IS COMING TO BOTHER US AGAIN', and frankly, there is truth to the claim.

I honestly believe our meddling, and the blowback from it, is a major contributor to the durability of some of the more regressive political regimes in the area.

Attempting to control or influence their political destiny is fraught with peril. We have to wean ourselves off believing we can control it, or even believing we SHOULD control it.

9/11 gave rise to some debate over precisely where Islamic antagonism against the West began. The Bush Administration babbled out some stupid shit about freedom, while "BECAUSE ISLAM" became the refrain of the administration's supporters. Democratic politicians took an ideological vacation for eight years, refusing to speculate one way or the other, while those of us in the trenches in the anti-war movement were pretty convinced American foreign policy was to blame.

Being the fairly intelligent person I am, I automatically discounted both the Republicans and their useful idiots, but in retrospect the people I was protesting alongside weren't exactly correct, either.

Foreign policy is Johnny-come-lately to the Islamists' list of grievances. It certainly exacerbated the problem, but the problem was there long before the United States started dropping bombs on the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia.

Rather, it seems to have gotten its start in the 1950s and 1960s, when American workers started showing up in Saudi Arabia to pull oil out of the ground there. The clerics weren't too pleased with what the infidels brought with them: alcohol, movies, music, a comparatively libertine approach to human sexuality. They didn't like this stuff, fundamentally at odds with traditional Islamic morality, mere miles away from Mecca and Medina. They were even less pleased the jahili Americans enjoyed the full support of the Saud monarchy. That the Saud monarchy, which the clerics hate with an unrivaled passion, is even more infuriating.

Part of the reason we've been targeted by Sunni extremists is because we are seen as empowering and protecting an unpopular regime. They think if they can scare us into breaking our alliance with the Sauds, they'll be able to overthrow the family and reinstate the Caliphate there.

In any event, our presence in the Middle East is toxic. Any moderate or liberal faction lucky enough to receive our support would immediately become suspect as pawns of the Great Satan. We'd be undermining their cause, and presenting ourselves as targets. It simply isn't worth it. If system change is going to come to these countries, it has to come from within. Without our help.

Odd historical tidbit, 1854, almost precisely 100 years before that intervention in Iran, Commodore Perry sailed to Japan and made them open their ports and cities to trade, to the US at gunpoint. Putting Japan on the reformation (Meiji Reformation) path to arming itself, and becoming an industrialized imperialist power itself. What we did to them, they turned around about 20 years later and did to Korea. We put them on the path that eventually led to their role in WWII. They learned, by watching *US*.

I am thankful, that so far, the Middle East hasn't yet gone down the same path, exactly, as the Pacific unfolded in WWII.

The two movements are distinct, with differing geneses, differing tactics, differing goals, and markedly differing positions on the West.

Where Shia Islamism is concerned, clandestine "meddling" is the centerpiece of their relationship with the United States and other western powers. They don't seem as concerned with Western cultural norms. While it is true the Iranian government prohibits alcohol and has codified in law standards of dress for women, their government is at least ostensibly a republic (a Greek tradition) and the Iranian people are voracious consumers of Western cultural exports. Above all, however Shia Islamists have shown themselves far more capable than Sunni Islamists of drawing distinctions between Western government and westerners more generally. You could travel to Iran without much worry of being kidnapped and/or butchered (but you could be mistaken for a CIA agent and thrown into Evan prison).

So yes, American interventionism is a much bigger issue for Shia Islamists than for Sunni Islamists, while the clash of cultures plays a rather diminished role.

But I don't think Shia Islamism is as big a problem as Sunni Islamism. Yes, civil rights conditions in Iran are deplorable by any objective measure, but civil rights in, say, Saudi Arabia are much worse. It may be in part due to Persia's illustrious past, and strong historical connection to Europe, but the Iranian brand of Islamism is much more subdued in its fanaticism. Women are certainly constrained, but they are educated, and many hold high-ranking positions in the secular government. Also, while they will never admit to it openly, the Iranian government is known to work with western governments when it is in their interest to do so (Iranian support was crucial in our initial expulsion of the Taliban from Afghanistan). Lastly, while it may be mostly lip service, Iranian politicians speak a good deal about peace and international cooperation, regardless of religion... which is something you'll never catch ISIS or Al Qaeda doing.

At the very least, the Shia Islamists seem content to mind their own business. The only outlier, it would seem, is Hezbollah, which even then is more Israel's problem than ours.

It is good the Middle East didn't go the way of Japan, but given the cultural traditions of each respective region, that's not surprising. For centuries, the Japanese have valued order, conformity, loyalty, and martial prowess. The idea of nation/states is something a novelty to the Middle East; theirs was, and in some ways is, a tribal society. "Arabism" didn't become much of a thing until the end of World War I.

How the hell is anyone supposed to disabuse the folks who work with/for/in ISIS, who think that it DOES represent islam? Because that's the real head-scratcher.

Everything else is either academic, or mud-slinging. It's the folks who live and breath it, and think it does represent or is somehow intrinsic to islam, that are the actual problem.

It's an ideological problem.

It's not pleasant though. It mostly involves showing people, clearly, and in a very succinct form, uncomfortable things like

1. How this nation treats returning vets.
2. Conditions on the ground abroad.
3. The flow of money through the pentagon, and the waste churn on the other side.
4. Failed states in the wake of our nation building efforts.

That first item almost never fails to resonate powerfully with that target audience. But you have to be quick about it. Basically it needs to be accompanied with an element of surprise, so their jingoistic barriers come down for a moment, and they actually *look* at the evidence.

It's tricky, but in many ways, it's a much easier order than the religion thing, whichever religious subject might be at hand. (Or whatever subject that might be hiding behind religion)

The waste thing... Easy peasy.

Pennies on the dollar is a misnomer, in this case. That's actually FAR less than one cent per dollar.