@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit i think this is right. but even those for whom states feel most artificial have to ask themselves whether wearing a costume for a while isn’t better than ripping it apart in the name of authentic expression. a pan-Islamism could peacefully emerge from the politics of artificial states. an Arabian EU might quickly thrive in ways the European one has not, as in Europe people’s identities are national. 1/

@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit but simply casting off states as colonial impositions, however accurate the characterization may be, means a lot of war, internally against incumbent elites, also externally against all the powers—not just “the West”—for whom militarily assertive emergence of a nonterritorially founded entity vying for allegiance of a globally dispersed umma would seem dangerously destabilizing. 2/

@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit i may be wrong, but in actual practice my sense is the claims associated with pan-Islamist identity are narrower than they might be in theory. people in the Arab world view Baghdad and Cairo and Mecca as capitals of a community to which they belong, but do not view Jakarta in the same way. (Tehran is perhaps an intermediate case?) 3/

@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit a pan-Islamist superstate that is formed from a voluntary association of territorially circumscribed, internationally recognized Westphalian states could emerge peacefully and compatibly with the existing, currently uncomfortable order, and become something much more consistent with lived identities. 4/

@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit i’m obviously a not disinterested outsider, so boulders of salt, but that’s the path i hope they’ll choose. 5/

@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit oddly, this version of pan-Islamism could eventually be compatible with Israel’s existence. as Thomas Friedman (more boulders of salt) likes to put it, Israel has been aspiring with its Abraham Accords and flirtations with the Saudis to join the contemporary Middle East. 6/

@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit if one thinks of the Abbasid caliphate as an Islamic dominion under which diverse other communities who accepted that dominion could also thrive, one might imagine Israel as kind of the superstate analog of a prosperous Jewish quarter of Baghdad.

of course anything like this will remain impossible while millions of Palestinians remain stateless and hopeless under Israeli military occupation. /fin