[rvense]

Islam is extremely important to Tajik identity. But Tajikistan is making the same mistake many other Muslim dictatorships and authocracies did. By not having a real open political system, the only place for dissent to take root is in Islamist circles, and then that's the opposition you get.

[slt2021]

Tajikistan had civil war in 1990s where Islamist radicals were the opposition and wanted to turn TJ into sharia run state.

open political system actually makes islam opposition stronger (and easy to influence with $$$ from Gulf monarchies).

Keeping islam in check, also means keeping in check Gulf oil $$$$ that install their own version of islam.

the pipeline of volunteers from *stans to join ISIS/Al-Qaeda was funded and enabled by Gulf monarchies.

If there is another big war in the Middle East - guess from where all the islamist volunteer fighters will be coming from - from these poor 3rd world islamist countries, the *stan countries

[aprilthird2021]

> open political system actually makes islam opposition stronger (and easy to influence with $$$ from Gulf monarchies).

No it doesn't. Provide one example where this has happened?

[slt2021]

i lived there, gulf monarchies are financing construction of mosques all over the *stans, and are sending people to "study islam" in ... Pakistan and Bangladesh, where they are radicalized and brainwashed.

various conflicts in Causasus in russia - where caucasians were bankrolled and brainwashed via gulf money (dagestan and chechnya)

[aprilthird2021]

Are you replying to the wrong comment? I asked for one example where an open political system led to radical Islamists cementing power

[slt2021]

Afghanistan was relatively open during US and USSR occupations, still radical islamists prevailed.

Iran during Shah times was relatively open politically, although it was monarchy.

Egypt before the brotherhood took over.

Turkey was relatively sectarian, but with Erdogan it became more and more islamist.

Iraq after occupation was relatively open, yet ISIS ideology took off

[Wytwwww]

> Afghanistan was relatively open during US and USSR occupations

Coincidentally in both cases the administrations propped up by US/USSR were thoroughly corrupted, incompetent and abusive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacha_bazi) so that even the Taliban became relatively appealing to most people.

> Iraq after occupation was relatively open, yet ISIS ideology took off

That was to a large degree just the extension of the whole Shia vs Sunni conflict/civil war which began immediately after the invasion.

Also I'm not sure what do you mean by "open" in all of the cases (besides post 2001 Afghanistan) the countries we ran by semi-secular authoritarian dictatorships which kept the Islamists in check. Most of the population would have (and eventually did) supported them if they were given a choice (like in Egypt).

[aprilthird2021]

The USSR was brutal autocracy. Us military occupation was also brutal and not free.

Iran was a brutal autocracy.

Egypt was a brutal military dictatorship.

Turkey is a great example, tbh. The level of radicals and terrorism there is far less than anything else we've described because it has open democracy. If anything, the big terrorists in Turkey are separatists which every nation, even European ones, has to fight.

Iraq after brutal military occupation? All of what you're talking about about are scenarios where brutal authoritarianism led to extremists gaining popularity because they are an excellent alternative to brutal one-man repression of an entire people.

[protomolecule]

Russia. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Khattab

[admissionsguy]

Egypt before the latest coup?

[aprilthird2021]

Egypt had been a brutal autocracy for years which led to the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and just when democracy finally peaked its head out, bam, back to brutal military dictatorship.

You may not believe in democracy, but I do. Democracies lead to progress in nations and balance in political systems around the world. Closed political systems lead to the rise of revolutionaries and in the Muslim world those are Islamic and often extreme