The four myths about Islam unpacked, and the political work each one performs A clean look at why the West fuses Islam with violence, why the Islamic world fell behind technologically, where political Islam actually came from, and why Hamas is not Islamic State. Islam is not uniquely violent: Religion and political project are different things. Islam is a faith. Islamism is a political programme using Islamic identity for legitimacy. The same distinction holds for Judaism and Zionism, Hinduism and Hindutva, Christianity and the Christian nationalism animating MAGA, Hungary, Poland, Italy, and Brazil. Islamist governments in Iran, Afghanistan, and NATO member Turkey pursue conflicting programmes. There is no single Islamist ideology. Some pursue violent change, others peaceful change, exactly like Zionists, exactly like every other political movement that draws on religious language. Islam gets fused with terrorism in Western discourse while Christian nationalism gets covered as politics, Hindutva gets covered as politics, and Zionism gets covered as Jewish identity itself. The framework is consistent. The application tracks the politics. The Enlightenment that never happened was technical, not theological: Europe's Enlightenment ran on the printing press. Roman scripts with discrete letters were easy to typeset. Arabic, with letters that change shape by position and connect cursively, was nearly impossible to reproduce on early presses. Microsoft Word took years to render legible digital Arabic long after handling Latin scripts. European scholars travelled to Islamic libraries, copied the texts, and mass-printed them at home. The Islamic world had led mathematics, medicine, metallurgy, and agriculture for nearly 500 years from the 8th century. The technical bottleneck broke that lead. Western dominance followed the typeset, then the gunship, then the oil concession. Where political Islam actually came from: Early 20th century Islamist movements focused on charity and community work while secular Arab nationalism dominated. The 1967 war changed that. Israel's defeat of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan exposed how thoroughly Western-backed strongmen had failed to modernise the Arab world. Photos of Damascus and Tehran in 1970 show miniskirts and open-necked blouses. Political Islam emerged from disillusioned youth who watched secular elites fail to defend the region, and crafted a programme of dignity and resistance using familiar religious language. Repeated failure to dislodge Western power produced the nihilism that ended in al-Qaeda and Islamic State. Hamas is not Islamic State: Islamic State wants to dissolve borders and build a transnational caliphate. Hamas wants to build a Palestinian state, the opposite project. Hamas governs Gaza without imposing Sharia law, has protected Christian communities now being bombed by Israel, won elections in 2006, and confines its military operations to Israeli targets. Islamic State views Hamas as apostates. Israel has been arming Islamic State-linked criminal gangs led by Yasser Abu Shabab to weaken Hamas inside Gaza. Hamas softened its territorial demands from historic Palestine to the 1967 borders, an implicit acceptance of two states. Israel responded by hardening toward a Greater Israel project now reaching into southern Lebanon and western Syria. The Jewish fascists of Ben Gvir and Smotrich sit in cabinet. The question of which extremist political project deserves Western attention is no longer difficult.
Isn't Islam inherently violent? What stopped the Islamic world having an Enlightenment? Why are some Muslims so into head-chopping? And isn't Hamas the same as Islamic State?
Islam isn't inherently violent, but you are, with your Hamas-propaganda "shoot this Jewish target" upside down red triangle profile pictire.
Hamas isn't ISIS, but both are extraordinary violent hyper-Islamist groups who use the same sort of cartel-level torture and murder techniques against their innocent victims.
