What POD is needed to prevent or lessen Islamic terrorism

While there were many factors that would have had to be taken into account in preventing this phenomenon from occurring, perhaps the single most decisive historical event that led to the eventual proliferation of what many simply regard as "Islamist extremism" was the overthrow of the Hashemite Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali, and the conquest of Hejaz and unification of Arabia by the House of Saud. Prior to that, Wahhabism, correctly recognized as the ideological doctrine that is part of virtually every Salafi-Jihadi organization including IS, had no real presence or legitimacy in the two holiest sites of Islam, Mecca and Medina, and thus no real attention in the Muslim World outside of Nejd. With control of the two holiest cities, and perhaps more importantly, with the discovery of massive deposits of oil in succeeding decades in the regions of Nejd and Eastern Arabia, the Saudis were able to appease the Wahhabi clerical class by exporting Wahhabism across the Sunni Muslim World by the 1970s, just as the Arab World and many other newly independent Muslim-majority states were slowly reeling back from nationalism and secularization.

Therefor, there are technically two PODs you'd have to have to prevent the phenomenon of intensive sectarianism and "Islamist extremism" from emerging:

- Prevent Ibn Saud from conquering Hejaz and enforcing Wahhabism under the authority of being the "Custodian of the Two Holiest Mosques"

- Allow the Hashemites (or really any non-Wahhabi ruler) to conquer Nejd, thus securing access to the oil supply there and making sure that there is no way for the Wahhabi to finance their international expansion.
 
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While there were many factors that would have had to be taken into account in preventing this phenomenon from occurring, perhaps the single most decisive historical event that led to the eventual proliferation of what many simply regard as "Islamist extremism" was the overthrow of the Hashemite Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali, and the conquest of Hejaz and unification of Arabia by the House of Saud. Prior to that, Wahhabism, correctly recognized as the ideological doctrine that is part of virtually every Salafi-Jihadi organization including IS, had no real presence or legitimacy in the two holiest sites of Islam, Mecca and Medina, and thus no real attention in the Muslim World outside of Nejd. With control of the two holiest cities, and perhaps more importantly, with the discovery of massive deposits of oil in succeeding decades in the regions of Nejd and Eastern Arabia, the Saudis were able to appease the Wahhabi clerical class by exporting Wahhabism across the Sunni Muslim World by the 1970s, just as the Arab World and many other newly independent Muslim-majority states were slowly reeling back from nationalism and secularization.

Therefor, there are technically two PODs you'd have to have to prevent the phenomenon of intensive sectarianism and "Islamist extremism" from emerging:

- Prevent Ibn Saud from conquering Hejaz and enforcing Wahhabism under the authority of being the "Custodian of the Two Holiest Mosques"

- Allow the Hashemites (or really any non-Wahhabi ruler) to conquer Nejd, thus securing access to the oil supply there and making sure that there is no way for the Wahhabi to finance their international expansion.

This is where I have been starting from within my developing TL regarding an altered Great War. Although it appears that Islam was rallied and used by the Ottomans during the war, with some calls for a Jihad, your synopsis is in my opinion the true root of our modern Islamic wrapped terrorism. In my pondering it I have the Entente fail to carve off the Mandates and the Ottoman Empire surviving, the Arabs fall back under their rule with some liberalizing and autonomy granted under Hashemite rule, then later I foresee a war between the Ottomans and the Arabian tribes gathered by Saud, thus no modern Saudi Arabia, the holy cities remain Ottoman, the Caliph holds on as the unifying voice of Islam. I assume they leave the Nefud to the sun and sand, ruling the edges seems to put almost all the oil in Ottoman hands, save for Kuwait, the Trucial states, etc. At worst the British and Ottomans go to war over this, at best there is Persian Oil, American Oil and Ottoman oil to grease the world. This Ottoman Empire may rapidly develop and look like the socialist middle east of the 1960s. There is a window to transition to modernity and the likely secularization of the middle east. Here terrorism might be wholly domestic, and I do not see a Shia / Sunni split, but if so then the issues might be far more internal to Islam and the ethnic (nationalist) groups than directed outward. So in the end I think the British and french set us on a rather unfortunate path.
 
Simple have religious extremists be the ones who gain power instead of the secular strong men, then have them try to push their idology on people, cripple the economy, and act in obviously hipocritical manners, after a generation or so of having every thing fun be banned, and crippling opression and complete economic collapse people will embrace secularlism and will look at the religious right with extreme scepisim.

Bonus points if their stooges for outside powers.
 
Anyway, the main reasons "why Islamism got so big as a viable tool" is that states like Saudi Arabia supports extreme version of Islam. ISIS and the like is based on Wahhabism, the same version that the Saudi regime supports. Iran is strongly opposed to ISIS, as Iran is allied with Assad.

That's part of it sure - but to many Islamists, Saudi Arabia is an apostate regime - regardless of how it spends it's government funds supporting worldwide madrassahs.
No, the central issue starts with the historical corruption and oppression of secular regimes and the effect that outside powers have had on helping them remain in power.
In a sense - Islamism is viewed as a home-grown weapon to fight against western-backed corruption. Removing Saudi Arabia from the equation doesn't change this fact.
 
That's part of it sure - but to many Islamists, Saudi Arabia is an apostate regime - regardless of how it spends it's government funds supporting worldwide madrassahs.
No, the central issue starts with the historical corruption and oppression of secular regimes and the effect that outside powers have had on helping them remain in power.
In a sense - Islamism is viewed as a home-grown weapon to fight against western-backed corruption. Removing Saudi Arabia from the equation doesn't change this fact.

Removing Saudi Arabia removes a major financer of radical Islam. Even though many Islamists consider them apostates, the Saudis still indirectly supports them by supporting radical Sunnism. By the way, if you look at this map, you will see that the main oil rich areas are areas with a majority of Shias. It would have been logical that this area had not belonged to the Wahhabi regime in Saudi Arabia.

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Sufism is not significant. It has no political backing nor does it have the numbers. People often tend to latch on to the first thing that satisfies their criteria of 'good'.
In places like India where you would expect it to have some grip, but it does not, forget the ME.
Sufi orders have been politically important in many Muslims countries, especially in Africa.

In Sudan, the Ansar and Mirghani sufi orders were the two most powerul organisations that the British would work with and play off on one another to prevent one from getting to powerful that could challenge British rule. They later formed the basis of Sudan's two main political parties which would dominate politics until the NIF took over in the late 1980s.

In Senegal, the Moruide Brotherhood wielded a lot of social and politca power that the French would work with them, a situation that has continued in post colonial Senegal.

The Sannusi order was responsible for organising anti colonal resistance to the French and Italians in the Sahara/Sahel region, and whose leader later become the KIng of Independent Libya.

The Salihiyya were important in anti colonial resistance to the British, Italians and Ethiopians in Somali inhabited lands until the 1920s. In addition, other Sufi orders such as the Qadiris worked with the British which helped contain the Salihiyya. Recentlly, a Sufi militia formed in Somalia to combat the Salafi Jihadi al SHabaab which is attempting to wipe out Sufi influence on Somali society.

Outisde of Africa, you also have important Sufi influences in Chechnya and the North Caucasus Republcis, where they with many of the Pro Moscow governments their having political ties to the Sufis.

The Naqshbandi Army are a Sufi militant groups in Iraq
 
The only real way to stop it would be to have a different Quran without the bad stuff or having Islam never form.
Having no Imperialism simply wouldn't do anything because radical Islam has existed since Muhammed.

Merely lessening it could be done with early military defeats for the Caliphates or the failure of the Saudi's to gain power or the Iranian Revolution.
 
Just prevent individual terrorism from being seen as a legitimate and successful tactic by Islamists. Traditionally suicide was viewed very negatively in most interpretations of Islam and it was only re-evaluation of the tactic after its success against the Americans in Lebanon that suicide attacks became embraced as a mainstream form of political violence in the Muslim world.
 
Pretty much exactly what the title says. What would need to happen in order to either prevent, delay or decrease the creation of Islamic terrorist groups.

I'd imagine one POD would be for Britain and France to allow the former conquests of the Ottomans to become independent rather then Mandates.

What do you people think?

Note: I'm not trying to start an arguement. I'm genuinely curious how one could prevent, delay or lessen this.

1) Rashidis rather than Saudis control the oil patch in Arabia; this insures that Wahhabist Islam does not get enormous funding.

2) Avoid Indian partition. Pakistan has become an incubator for jihadist terror. This essay discusses how Pakistan was Islamized in 1975-1985. The author suggests that this had a further effect: Arabized Islam replaced much of the original cultures of Pakistan's people. Pakistani identity became defined in terms of Islam, and Pakistanis try to out-Moslem Arabs. This has not happened at all among Indian Moslems, AFAICT. Indian Moslems are a minority (large, but still a minority), and have remained on generally civil terms with their neighbors. (There has been some inter-communal violence, but it often involves other confessions, and is no worse than India's occasional political violence. India has Moslem Bollywood stars, Moslem cricket heroes, and a Moslem rocket scientist who was President.) If there had been no partition, the Moslems of Pakistan and Bangladesh (about 1/3 of the world's Moslems) would remain embedded in a larger polycredal society, and IMO would be pretty much like Indian Moslems, i.e. not a problem.

3) The USSR collapses during WW II; after the Allies smash the Axis, the US (and its allies) is "the last man standing", i.e. the only world power. There is no Cold War, no need for the US to compete for influence in sleazy parts of the world, no deals with devils required to oppose Soviet advances, no devils propped up by Soviet aid to make trouble for the West. I don't know that the Soviets actively covertly promoted jihadism as a way to plague the West, but it would be consistent with their methods. They worked closely with Qaddafi for decades, and he promoted Islamist terror; they were thick as thieves with Arafat and other anti-Israel thugs. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they assisted Khomeini in exile. They certainly helped flood the world with "anti-imperialist" memes through the so-called "Non-Aligned Movement"; one effect of this is that "progressive" Westerners routinely embrace murderous, reactionary Islamists in the name of "anti-racism" and "anti-colonialism". Take all that away and Islamist terror would be greatly reduced. Also, without Soviet troublemaking, there would be far fewer wars and disorders in the Middle East, which have spawned much terrorist activity.
 
Just prevent individual terrorism from being seen as a legitimate and successful tactic by Islamists. Traditionally suicide was viewed very negatively in most interpretations of Islam and it was only re-evaluation of the tactic after its success against the Americans in Lebanon that suicide attacks became embraced as a mainstream form of political violence in the Muslim world.

But not all terrorism uses suicide. For instance the latest attack in London did not. They were killed by the police.
 
This POD would mean Iranian revolution failing in 1979. Iranian Revolution was a first spark on radical (albeit shia) islamism.
 
Iran is a minor problem compared to Saudi-Arabia. The main problem is Wahhabis, who sponsor a radical version of Sunni Islam. The Iranian regime are @ssholes, for sure, but they are opposed to ISIS.
 
This POD would mean Iranian revolution failing in 1979. Iranian Revolution was a first spark on radical (albeit shia) islamism.

Iran is a minor problem compared to Saudi-Arabia. The main problem is Wahhabis, who sponsor a radical version of Sunni Islam. The Iranian regime are @ssholes, for sure, but they are opposed to ISIS.

And both forget the palestinian problem, that had been brewing since 1948...
 
A war where Saudi Arabia is heavily damaged would help here. With the sheikhs having little money and influence- the West has no business with them, and the toxic brand of Islam known as Wahhabism never spreads.
 
A war where Saudi Arabia is heavily damaged would help here. With the sheikhs having little money and influence- the West has no business with them, and the toxic brand of Islam known as Wahhabism never spreads.

The best would be that the Saudi-clan never manages to get control of the oil rich areas along the coast. As I point out in post 47, and as can be seen on the map attached to that post, these areas have a Shia-majority.
 
This POD would mean Iranian revolution failing in 1979. Iranian Revolution was a first spark on radical (albeit shia) islamism.

Iran is a minor problem compared to Saudi-Arabia. The main problem is Wahhabis, who sponsor a radical version of Sunni Islam. The Iranian regime are @ssholes, for sure, but they are opposed to ISIS.

The key point in the Islamic revolution was that it really combined religion and politics in a coherent republican system, literally an "Islamic state". While Saudi-Arabia is basically like a 'classic' medieval kingdom with a harsh, ultra-religious penal code, the Islamic Republic was trully the first manifestation of "political Islam": a complete political system where parliament and President can be elected, yet are effectively selected and controlled by a religious institution (the guardians' council and the supreme leader). In a way, it's a more 'modern' system than the one in Saudi Arabia, because it has elements of a parliamentary system in it (although this mostly being a facade). That's what it made a role model also for Sunni Islamists. Iran may now "only" support its chief Shia/Alawite allies in Syria, Iraq and Libanon (although they also supported the Sunni Hamas!), but back in the 1980s the Sunni-Shia divide wasn't as extreme as it is now, therefore making the Iranian system a model for Islamists of any kind.


And both forget the palestinian problem, that had been brewing since 1948...

This actually had not much to do with the rise of Islamism. Hamas emerged in the early 1980s, but they started out as a Muslim Brotherhood offshot. No Muslim Brotherhood would also mean no Hamas. It's rather a conflict that is used by Arab leaders to divert attention away from the problems in their home states.
 
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