The Arab World before Islamism

[Anomalocaris]

Most of the Arab world was fairly progressive from the 50s to 80s. Many Arabs used to work and study in Europe & North America, coming back to their home country with liberal and humanistic views about the world.
But after Saudi Arabia started getting rich through oil,& Iran's Islamic Revolution. We started working and studying in these countries, coming back with regressive Salafist and Khomeinist views.
Before the Lebanese Civil War, Islamists did not exist.
The left was very powerful & influencial
The Islamists started gaining popularity slowly, after the 9/11 incident. But significantly gained more after the Arab spring, they hijacked the secularist uprisings.
After the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian Armed Forces declared martial law, forcing young women with or without the hijab to undergo virginity tests, and if they weren't virgins they were tortured by being stepped on. them. The rate of sexual harassment has significantly skyrocketed, including perpetuation by police officers and military personnel. Sometimes a woman is raped and encircled by men.
Arab women back then used to wear skimpy clothes, bikinis and no one used to care about them, sexual harassment was taken much more seriously. The hijab was only popular with elderly women.
After Gaddafi's death, Islamists ruined Libya mostly Al Qaeda & Daesh.
Before the Syrian War and during it's civil uprisings phase, many people who took to the streets were secularists,liberals,socialists,communists,atheists,feminists,anarchists,centrists and anarchists, same for the Free Syrian Army, but then Islamic Terrorists hijacked the civil uprisings and armed rebellions making it become a full scale civil war.
Before the Iraq War, suicide bombers and sectarian tensions did not exist.

Total bullshit.

1.  In the early 1950s, the Arab world was just coming off of European colonialism.  The top end of the Arab society was populated by a thin crust of European educated privileged class that looked progressive.   The west, when looking at the Arab world, wants to see and therefore mostly only saw those same class of arabs who looked western, dressed western, did the bidding of the western colonial ruling class while the western world were still the the colonial masters, so whom the westerners in the immediate post colonial periods felt comfortable with.  Almost invisible to western eyes, and indeed would have been loathsome to the western eyes to see, were the vast majority of poor hinterland arabs whose outlook would have looked backward and primitive to the ancient romans.   You won't find any miniskirts on any live Arab women in 98% of the Arab world during those same time when the upper 2% looked so western.

2. Islamists had existed since the 18th century.  Islamism first arose as a atavistic fundamentalist reaction to the relatively progressive ottomans (ottomans looked progressive, for smooth!).  Wahabism is an early form of islamism.   Islamist suicidal assassins have plagued Dutch colonial authorities in what is now Indonesia since about 1887.   These Islamist assassins were trained in religious schools in what is now Saudi Arabia even back then.

3. Islamism was very popular well before 9-11.  What do you think overthrew the shah of Iran?  Admittedly that was Shia islamism, not Sunni islamism.  Why do you think the Soviet invaded the insignificant middle of of nowhere called Afghanistan?  Who the hell did you think our mujahadin friends,said to be fighting so heroic for "Freedom" against the invading tanks and helicopters of the "evil empire", really were?

4.  Before the iraq war, suicide bombers blew up 100+ US marines in one fell swoop in 1982, and caused the gipper to pull the entire US marine force out of Lebanon with their heroic tails between their fatigued legs, remembers?  Suicide bombing was a regular insurgent tactic and played a huge role in French colonial wars on North Africa in the 1950s.  Sectarian violence was an core of Islam as long as there had been Islam.   But then again, sectarian violence has been the core of most religions whether they admit it or not for most of each religion's existence.