“
But of course, both these—liberal multiculturalism and the Islamic resurgence—are not to be seen as separate but two sides of the same coin. While they may portray each other as the adversary/enemy, both equally feed off a vicious cycle of othering. This is perhaps most visible in the common forms of demonization deployed by both Islamofascists and Western anti immigrant racists (us-them, civilized-barbaric, pure-corrupt, more permissive, etc.). But ultimately, this is a false and mystifying conflict, each binary pole generating and presupposing the other. Instead, both sides are to be seen as symptomatic of the antagonisms of today’s (still mostly) Western Dominated global capitalist order. For one thing, several of the “fundamentalist”/“terrorist” groups that the West rails against are in fact Western creations, often initially supported to suit short-term geopolitical interests (e.g., British promotion of the Saudi Wahhabis [after World War I] and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood [during World War II] as part of a divide-and-rule strategy; US backing of the Taliban to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s; Israeli support of Hamas in the 1980s to undermine the PLO). Moreover, the United States and Europe have a long history of championing totalitarian regimes, especially in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Egypt, Iran under the shah, etc.): it is not implausible, in fact, to suggest that the West is (and has been) invested in these countries remaining undemocratic so that they can be counted on for their geopolitical support, and perhaps especially their oil reserves. Western economic interests thus trump Middle Eastern political well-being, with Islamic religious resurgence as a resulting symptom.
”
”