"Arab civilization - that sounds like a good idea"

[Person Man]

Does BRTD honestly not understand the connection between religious identification and ethnic identification that exists in many countries outside America?

Either not do that or get called a "liberal racist" for suggesting that religious intolerance has a racial element.

[Person Man]

So what about the many Western converts to Islam? Clearly any branch of Islam doesn't coincide with their "ethnic identity". Hell look at my Congressman for a textbook example, I think he's Sunni, but he was raised Catholic, so he clearly isn't from a "Sunni family" or "Shia family".

I'm sure the Middle East is just teaming with African- and European-descended people who converted to Islam from other faiths.

These are both two good points. There are plenty of people that change faiths but it does seem that those who always identified are quite different from those who actively sought their faith. It also seems that the identities of those who always identified with their faith are more likely to be labeled beyond their religion. But maybe this really isn't a thing.

[Person Man]

There is so much whining in this article that it makes it annoying to read, even if it is true that the Arab world (and the Muslim world) has been in trouble since 1979 and the author is unlucky to be born in that place and time.

1979? Try 1919. As long as we don't have a constructive way of separating ethno-religious identities, illiberalism and the wars and crimes in the region and unless there is a way to have it "both ways", the abolition of the Mandate Treaty, there will be trouble.

At this point, its a question of containing the trouble or getting everyone together for an end to the trouble. The neocons might of had good ideas, but as long as they can't come to a strong convincing Middle East strategy that gets the broadest coalition on board for the largest plan possible, containment and hoping that over the decades (if not centuries) that there is some sort of cultural change in the Arab (and to less extent Persian and Turk world) world and the Islamic world that allows a path towards stability.