US Politics on Sidechat | How did Muslim societies go from being relatively tolerant of other religions and gay people (for the time) to extremely conservative

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US Politics 2w

How did Muslim societies go from being relatively tolerant of other religions and gay people (for the time) to extremely conservative

Anonymous 2w

certain destabilizing interventions

Anonymous 2w

Residual attitudes from colonial era buggery laws + a resurgence in religious fundamentalism associated with Arab nationalism post-WW1

Anonymous 2w

Power shifted from Persian elites to Turkic elites around the 1500s

Anonymous 2w

A lot of things. They didn’t really have an enlightenment period as recent as Europe. Ottoman Empire fearing the rise of nationalism heavily favored religious unity and feared others who could destroy that(see Arminian genocide). Suadi Arabia who Wahhabi and supported more extreme forms of Islam blocking others from the Haji. And of course western interventions which means LGBTQ and women rights were seen as Western

Anonymous 2w

I’d imagine being bombed and destabilized by outside powers (read: US and Israel) would be a pretty compelling reason to become extremely conservative. Plus, it’s not like they’ve had time to become more progressive as of late. The US, at its most peaceful time ever with no domestic wars, was (and still is) very critical of gay people. I think it would be hard to become progressive as a society if your country is being torn apart and innocent people are dying

Anonymous 2w

As people have said, a lot of it was a backlash to western influence. For many Muslim societies, the impact of colonization and imperialism (and the ideology of nationalism which arose in the 1900s) promoted a return to their religious roots and an adherence to ethnic uniformity.

Anonymous

justinian 2w

Does it though? Cause a lot of that toleration persisted up until the 1800s and early 1900s. The Ottoman Empire in the 1800s was pretty tolerant of gay people and religious minorities (until the 1920s happened). This shift was one that happened across the Muslim world, including in Persian-dominated states like Iran and Arab-dominated states.

Anonymous

#5 2w

Like honestly I think the atrocities committed by the governments of the late Ottoman Empire, independent Egypt, and Ba’athist Iraq were more about ethnonationalism than religious fundamentalism.

Anonymous

#5 2w

But yeah basically there has been a huge rise in religious fundamentalist groups in that region for several reasons. A great example is the Iranian revolution, which came to view the western influence under the shah as a corruption that had made Iran weak, so they sought to purge western influence from the country. You also have Saudi Arabia spreading their fundamentalist interpretations. And the USA promoted fundamentalist groups like the mujahideen and created the instability for Isis to arise

Anonymous

#5 2w

I mean the bit here about ethnonationalism is just true, Saddam’s regime wasn’t even explicitly religious.

Anonymous

#5 2w

AND it’s important to recognize the shift in acceptance of religious minorities coinciding with backlash against Israel, which resulted in a rise of regional antisemitism and the expulsion of the Jewish communities of many of these countries. And I think we also have to recognize that part of this is also that the west shifted to become way more tolerant very rapidly. Shifts occurred in both directions.