Do middle east dictatorships promote or suppress radical islamism?

[joshcryer]

If you think it is a mixture of both does it err on neutrality (ie, "a neutral dictatorship&quot or would you say it tends to go in one direction, or what?

I think ultimately dictatorships create the very thing that they're, at every turn, trying to "suppress."

[grok]

1. They have to supress

For good or Ill, Almost all religions have an ethical/moral code of conduct that is damn near impossible to abide by.

Have a sizable portion of the the population(and leaders) that demand the dictator strictly abide by their code and you see the problem.

One has to go...

[MNBrewer]

3. The Saudi dictatorship FUNDS it, for goodness sake!

[joshcryer]

4. Yeah, but what would happen if you suppressed the tea baggers?

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that a small contingent started terrorizing people (there is historical precedent for it). Then another country decided that our extremists were bad so they invade and set up a dictatorship to silence our extremists.

Those extremists might be suppressed, but they're going to get even more extreme in light of the suppression. So once that suppression is released (dictatorships cannot last forever) there is going to be big time blowback from it.

[grok]

5. If the point you are trying to make that supression makes things worse for the future, I agree

In our situation we have alot of bleeding valves. Pretty much everybody can go where they when their desires and particular niches are not so suppressed. The ridiculous need to have to hold on to a particular piece of real estate is just not there

Social and financial conservatives feel oppressed in urban areas so they leave and establish their own political and financial provices just outside..

Progressives feel straightjacketed in the 'burbs and establish their own near total political power in urban nirvana.

start denying enclaves for those that disagree with you and yes, we are going to have serious problems.

[dogman]

2. yes

Depending on their needs, like any politician. Remember Saddam Became very Islamist when he was attacked. Also, radical Islam is not just anti-non-Islam, they have their own factions at war with each other.

[Puregonzo1188]

6. Both. They suppress it when it threatens their rule, they embrace when it legitimizes it.

Let's face how many people actually think the fairly decadent Saudi monarch actually cares that much about their brand of political Islam? They like it because it gives them an ideological reason to rule, but they're more than happy to suppress when it threatens them.

As Marx said, the ruling ideas of any epoch are the ideas of the ruling class.

[joshcryer]

9. How does that explain Syria, Yemen, Bahrain?

[former-republican]

7. First define what radical Islam is

What does the term radical islam mean to you?
Is there moderate Islam ?
Is there Islam of convenience for some ?
Is there Islam that is suppose to be followed to the letter of the Quran ?

[randome]

8. Sometimes they simply fear it and react accordingly.

[bhikkhu]

10. I don't think you can generalize

Seriously, the characters of dictators is different, the character of nations is different, and every nation is made up of diverse groups.

Some statements could be made about human nature in general but there isn't really any cookie-cutter "middle east dictator" model to work from.

[joshcryer]

11. That's quite fair. The reason I made the OP is that I keep seeing it repeated...

...that people like Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad, Mubarak, Ben Ali, etc, were/are all good for keeping down the radical islamist presence. I don't know that it's true and I am inclined to believe the opposite. I think if anything is simplistic it is the thought that these forces wouldn't exist if the dictators were kept in power.

Meanwhile the same arguments are used against other countries whose dictators are "friendly" to us, such as Bahrain or Yemen, that is, the United States is criticized for supporting those regimes while the same sorts of forces (which are likely composed of protesters and radical islamists in all occasions) are cheered as anti-US or something.

I dunno. The hypocrisy is really thick, imo.

[Iterate]

12. A topic worthy of several library shelves, so I'll oversimplify with "symbiotic".

If we assume that radical fundamentalist religions are a reaction against modernism and liberalism (by the broad definition), and is concentrated among those who skipped The Enlightenment,

and if we assume that the dictators we see wish to keep the limited benefits of modernism and the power derived from it for themselves,

then the tension is inescapable.

It's often been said that the Shaw set up his own demise by driving all dissent to the mosques. The French and Russian revolutions solved this by simply stripping power from the clerics. I don't consider Castro to be among this class of dictators, but it's interesting to think of him as having limited the benefits of modernism, shared them as has been possible, and limited the political power of the Catholic church as well.

The symbiosis comes into play when the two sides realize they have useful enemies in each other. Each side derives power and control through the conflict itself, and each side will subvert a resolution.

That dynamic is not stable though. The power concentrates into fewer and fewer hands. Inevitably, whether it's Bush, Bachmann, or Bin Laden, someone will define the conflict as a fight to the death and the rest of us are left with a mess to untangle.

Ug. I'm not comfortable with those kinds of sweeping statements, but it's the best I could do with my library shelf.

[joshcryer]

13. Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

As far as Castro is considered, he did do a purge of homosexuals, fortunately there was a place they could go (despite the lack of right in their destination; they at least were accepted). The Catholic Church in Cuba has been quite powerful for quite some time. It is only quite recently (2010+) that homosexuals, for instance, have been accepted in Cuba. Gay marriage is still banned but gender reassignment is legal and freely provided so a "straight male" can now marry a "gender reassigned female" there.

[Edweird]

14. Iraq (pre war) was the most liberal Middle East country.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, gave us most of the 9/11 attackers.
It totally depends on who is in charge.