Yes, the Middle East has always been cursed to be a region infested with religious zealots. Don’t look into the British and American empires (plus Israel itself) doing everything they could to empower fundamentalists and discredit secular socialists, liberals and nationalists (as far back as the British-backed ousting of a reformist Afghan monarch). Don’t look at what the Palestinians had and have to say about coexistence.

Also, sure is coincidental that they’re using the same bad faith argument Jim Crow and Apartheid defenders used to claim: that dismantling oppressive systems would lead to a bloodbath by “savages” against former oppressor populations.