There are more Muslim countries in the world than Iraq and Syria. Saudi Arabia, one of the richest countries in the world could invest billions in research and education and yet their people are poor slaves, only the Sheiks are rich.
Same with the other oil rich Gulf States. They are corrupt at the top, don't care about the population and use religion to keep them enslaved. Still think Muslims States are superior ?
First, I don't think any state or people are superior to any other ones. We, they, all have our moments in the Sun.
Second, I think what makes a country, a people, civilised and moral and stuff worth bragging about is what we do, not what we say of ourselves.
Third, what wealth, height of civility and democracy and liberties a country have could, and did, get lost. e.g. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
To your point about Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States... No one but the clerics would want to live under any theocracy. So we're lucky, I know I am.
Having said that, certain Gulf states - Qatar from memory - has a much higher GDP per capita than most Western countries - so the average pleb are pretty well off there. No freedom while they're in their country, but I'd imagine they won't be so strict once they're in the lands of the free.
For Saudi and all those Gulf states being run by religious nuts and dictators... all of them are so because the U.S and its allies make it so. It's just what you do when you're the only superpower left standing after the world goes to heck: you set up bases all around the world; you take what is most valuable; give what is less valuable to your lieutenants; and what you prize but can't get you fenced in.
So as much as we like to believe that Arabs (and hence Islam) are backward and regressive religious nuts... the people living under those nuts do not like it and has been, are, fighting back.
It's not about world conquest - that comes later. Now it's mainly for national independence.
How do you organise and unite against imperial powers? Communism is dead and the Bear is in hibernation; there are no other power interested in helping you... so you use the oldest trick in the book and get religious, really really religious.
That's at the upper echelon of power. At the lower runk, at the common terrorist level, they're just people wanting a job to feed their family... and it doesn't take much looking around to see that yea, maybe the country is all screwed because of foreigners and I don't like it.
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So we can talk down to the Muslims and praise ourselves all we like... the reality, the history, of the situation is that a world imperial power is trying to crush rebellions in its far-flung colonies.
It is quite simple. Why is that so hard to believe?
So we, the people, can either use our brain and think a little; or we can just buy into the BS about clashes of civilisation - Good versus evil and watch as our gov't crush the barbarians, and some time the barbarians pushes back.
Back in the good old days of empire, we could literally annihilate an entire people and nobody could stop us or even blink. That and there are plenty of goodies like land and continents to get from it.
Nowadays... being more civilised; with our own plebs having a say in how it's not cool to commit genocide; that and there are more losses than material gains from imperial ventures - it might be more humane to call this thing off lest a rising power sit, watch, build its own outposts and we'd be so broke and over-extended we either retreat, give concessions or bring life on earth to an end.
Imagine the Greeks, or the Romans, or the Spanards, or the Chinese, or the Indians back in their heydays... I don't think any of its kings and peasants could ever imagine being dictated to by barbarians, so dirt poor and living in slumps.