To want a way to label the reasonable fear of the variety of Islam that wishes to impose Sharia law?

[Oodiks]

I understand that there are different sects within Islam and that while some pose no concerns, others do. I am horrified at the type of Sharia law imposed in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan, which denies women human rights, but it's hard to talk about those reasonable fears without being labelled Islamophobic. It's not unreasonable to fear a religion that imposes such harsh lives on women.

Hmmm, I'm not pro the current Israeli government, and I've never said that I support Netanyahu. I'm just very anti Hamas and their predecessors and would like to see Palestinians free of their pernicious influence.

While we're discussing colonizers, how about the Muslim conquest of the region? Jews and Christians were there before Islam even existed, so how come the whole region is now Islamic?

My single post that wasn’t a response to you had strong opinions on religions?
Have you been at the 🍷? 😂

Fundamentalist regimes have been put in place by Western powers ?

please continue......

The US did help foment revolution in Iran to depose the Shah. Not sure they understood what they were ushering in.

Western interference in the ME has a long history. From the 50s as Russia and the US struggled for dominance, the US protected repressive ME regimes in return for compliance and cheap oil and gas. US concern over Communist Russia and its attempt to establish a Pax Americana led it to make some terrible policy decisions.

The 1953 coup in Iran was instigated by the UK and US who toppled the democratically elected Prime Minister Muhammad. They centralised power under the autocratic Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. The US also helped create the secret police force SAVAK which amongst other things, used torture and perpetuated summary executions against dissidents.

US foreign policy in the ME from the 1950s to the end of the cold war, was characterised by allying with Islamists against 'communists'. America’s partnership with the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets was a continuation of this strategy.

The States pumped billions into pan Islamism changing the balance of power in the region and creating groups like Al-Qaeda. Their interference sowed the seeds for 9/11 and other terrorist attacks because they helped create militarised and despotic nations full of disaffected and angry men ripe for extremist indoctrination.

It's obviously more complex than this and I haven't covered the Suez crisis and other important events but it's all available online.

I think your internet man means mi6 not M16 but getting the details right isn't important I suppose.
I do wonder what the middle east would look like if USSR had no pushback in Afghanistan, I remember the news when their tanks first rolled in, I believe they justified it as protecting their border back then too. We all hoped Gorbachev & Glasnost was the end of that expansionism.
Your insistence that fundamentalist regimes were put there by 'the west' is poetic licence at best to try and justify terrorism. There certainly were reports that CIA helped the mujadeddin resist USSR expansionism but using that to justify Saudi nationals flying airliners into buildings is a bit of a stretch.

Your arrogance is astounding. It's almost admirable, I salute you. You're now a ME expert and are correcting Professor Gerges, holder of the Emirates Professorship in Contemporary Middle East Studies.

You've gone from knowing nothing about Western intervention in the Middle East to knowing more than someone who taught at Oxford, Harvard and Columbia - the 'internet man'.

I've already explained that the US ME strategy was to protect repressive regimes and explained how they brought about a coup. This information is freely available but I doubt you'll check.

I haven't attempted to justify terrorism at all - that's quite a twisted interpretation. You asked about Iran so I explained what happened and gave it some context. I see I wasted my time.

Your words

Their interference sowed the seeds for 9/11 and other terrorist attacks because they helped create militarised and despotic nations full of disaffected and angry men ripe for extremist indoctrination.

If you think analysis of US foreign policy is a justification for atrocities, then there's not much more to say. I think 7/7 happened partly because of our invasion of Iraq but you probably think that's me justifying it.

7/7 was carried out by 3 UK born terrorists whose parents were from Pakistan, the 4th was a Jamaican convert, why would they have a connection to Iraq?

Because of statements made by the bombers regarding their motivation:

Your government has openly supported the genocide of over 150,000 innocent Muslims in Falluja... You have offered financial and military support to the U.S. and Israel, in the massacre of our children in Palestine. You are directly responsible for the problems in Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq to this day. You have openly declared war on Islam, and are the forerunners in the crusade against the Muslims. ... What you have witnessed now is only the beginning of a string of attacks that will continue and become stronger until you pull your forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq. And until you stop your financial and military support to America and Israel.

That the US, the UK, France, Russia and now (most likely) China have been and are interfering in the ME does not detract from the fact that there are problematic aspects of the dominant religion in the area.

That there are bad things within the other religions in the world does not detract from that either.

Our western society is built on a mix of cold blooded economic interests, ideological and religious motives and some philosophical thought that benefits me as a woman. I don’t think The West is a monolith of goodness, but comparing our societies and the freedoms we have in it (with limitations) with theocracies in the ME, in the present day my preference is to have it the way we have it.
Those interests that push and pull for conflict in the ME are not any I can do much about. They are often intertwined with my experience of our welfare state, because of arms sales for instance.
I’m glad we are able to discuss those aspects as well to shine a light on the violence and unrest it causes people to live under.

Islam cannot be discussed in many of the theocracies because it is considered blasphemy. Blasphemy can be punished by death. In Europe most countries don’t have a blasphemy law anymore. The ones up in arms (quite literally) over criticism of their religion or burning of their sacred book are muslims. But criticising religion is very important within freedom of speech! Even if burning of books is rather extreme it should not be met with violence. Neither should criticising central figures in any religion be met with violence, such as slicing of throats, or beheadings.

When it comes to women’s rights it must be discussed. What are the aspects in the religion that some muslims think justify such an appalling treatment of women?
It is not unique to Islam, but it certainly is there too.

Which brings us back to the problem of weaponising islam and why the concern about that is not a phobia.
As has been said multiple times, tens of thousands of Muslim women and children are being killed by islamic regimes in the middle east, but 'the west.'

This is becoming repetitive. The West is currently funding an alleged genocide in the ME and tens of thousands of people, including many children have been killed.

Israel, supported by the West, has been a brutal occupying force found guilty of Apartheid. Their greatest ally and protector is the US. Aongside Palestine, they're supporting bombing other ME countries creating more instability in the region.

The War on Terror alone killed approximately 5 million people and both Afghanistan and Iraq are basically failed states. We're all aware of Trump's negotiations with the Taliban, releasing thousands of extremist prisoners, before beginning to withdraw troops. They left Afghanistan women to their fate.

The US as I explained, overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran and supported the despotic Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. They then supported Ali Khamenei who was responsible for numerous human rights violations including extensive use of child soldiers. It's estimated that he killed around 100k.

Because the US helped overthrow the Iranian Prime Minister, there's a lot of resentment towards the US and the West. The coup proved disastrous for multifaceted reasons and its effects are still felt today.

It's well known that Saudi Arabia, alongside the US and other states has invested billions in the global export of Wahhabism which is a particularly intolerant form of Islam based on a literal reading of the Qur'an which seeks to eradicate other traditions.

It was encouraged during the Cold War by the US in order to combat pro Soviet and anti Western ideologies. As such the US supported the creation of ideologically motivated regional groupings and the importation of political activists into Saudi.

Under their direction, Wahhabism changed into a highly politicised Islamic fundamentalism - Wahhabi Salafi Islam. This served Western interests and their allies such as Iran and Pakistan in their opposition to other regimes in Egypt, Syria, Iraq etc

Where this is all leading is the response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. While the US provided arms and training, Saudi brought in thousands of indoctrinated men and their base camp in Pakistan was run by Usama bin Ladin.

By the time the Soviet Union disintegrated, Wahhabi Salafis had become a global movement. They were driven by hatred of the West which they believed was intent on destroying Islam.

Bin Laden transferred the movement to Afghanistan in the 90s with the intent of overthrowing the Wahhabi based regime in Saudi. In '98 he declared war on the US and its allies and we know what happened next.

Again, this is a simplified version demonstrating that the Islam bad, West good narrative is far too simple.

In response to Islamic regimes killing thousands, the West has killed millions and helped prop up despotic regimes which have created untold misery.

the US, the UK, France, Russia and now (most likely) China have been and are interfering in the ME

An interesting line if enquiry might be to ask (a) if these countries are any more susceptible to interference than any other countries and (b) if that is the case, why ?. If indeed it does transpire that the ME is more susceptible to foreign meddling than other countries (obviously the UK, US and China are immune*) then it might be fruitful to look at a strategy to address that.

Presumably there are entire boxsets around these questions as I cannot possibly be the first to ask them.

*24 carat sarcasm for the slow.

@username8348 I appreciate your condensing 70+ years of geopolitics into a few hundred words. The diversions on these threads are often interesting to us mumsnetters.
It does get repetitive when every thread about fundamentalist islam turns into a bash at Israel, and it's allies failure to abandon it.

Have we been on the same thread? Several posters have objected strenuously to the pointing out that Christian extremism is no better than Islamic extremism.

I suppose being Jewish I see things slightly differently. Within living memory we were the ones feared and hated by Christian Europeans for our “backwards” religion and viewed as a threat to “western civilisation.” It is very discomforting to see such similar comments redirected another religious minority group.