@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/