A plague of nationalism? —Read "The Arabs in Conquest and Revolution: 1516 to the Present"

People's self-perception can change reality.

Under the Ottoman Empire, Arabs and Turks could live in peace. But when the plague of nationalism spread to the Middle East, the Turks became the Turkish nation, and the Arabs became the Arab nation, and the moment when they could live in peace turned into a deadly feud.

The modernization pioneered by the West has drawn other regions into the West-centered world history, and modernization has become the only correct way out. People always compare Europe and the United States with their own countries. The West is the future and the direction, and Arab countries are forced to transform to Western Europe.

In the 1950s and 1970s, secularization prevailed in the Middle East, and it was Arab nationalism rather than Islamism that stirred the tide. Today’s religious revival in the Middle East may be due to the wave of secularization. Arabs are still in turmoil, corrupt dictatorships are still prevalent, and Israel is still occupying Palestine. Since secularized authoritarianism has not brought a way out for the Islamic world, then fall back towards religion.

Compared with the modernization of East Asia, the Islamic world in the Middle East is more bumpy. If no way out for modernization can be found, the Middle East will probably continue to be in chaos.