It's telling that a secular liberal can only see the Muslim world through the lens of the West and Western history. Any historian would laugh at such a comparison. The Muslim world doesn't fight for religion, they mostly fight for SECULAR nationalism and influence [See THREAD] https://twitter.com/AkyolinEnglish/status/1325469687849889794

How many "heretics" do Muslim governments put to death? The answer is none.

As for Sunni vs Shia, sure, Saudi and Iran fight proxy wars, but then again so does Sunni Turkey vs Sunni Saudi. Notice that Iran and Saudi never actually fight each other, unlike 16c European powers

If anything Islamic scholars are getting locked up in Saudi for not going in the liberal direction Saudi's regime is taking it. It is the non-secular non-liberal Muslims that are being called heretics (or secular word 'extremists') and are persecuted throughout the Muslim world

Currently Sunni turkey is helping Shia Azerbaijan to fight an Armenia occupation...again, contradicts Akyol's 16cent europe hypothesis.

The main power 'blocs' are all a secular three-way tug of war: (renewed) Arab nationalism vs Turkish nationalism vs Persian nationalism

All secular states have used religion in their excuses for secular interests, like how secular Sisi used Islamic scholars to declare any protests against him to be rebels according to Islam, & SECULAR USA used religion to moralise their population against the 'godless communists'

The problem and crisis in the Muslim world, is that Islam is held hostage by secularists, who brutally police Islamic thought, and wheel out scared/or compliant 'Islamic' scholars only when they need to use religion to galvanise support for their regime from the population

The real problem is that Muslims have stopped using the lens of Islam to see the world, and see the world through other lens that keep them backward and bickering over non-Islamic nationalism.

And to that, Akyol and his Western lens, is a perpetuator of the problem, not a solver

And what adds insult to injury, is the deliberate strategy by such secular liberals who use the example of old secularist Muslims under backward colonial-era Secular regimes (that got rid of Islamic rule) to say "Islam is in crisis" so that they can justify even MORE secularism