Nowyn
Hijab is not compulsory in majority of the Muslim countries legally to wear hijab. Socially it is in many, many more. But enclaves of choice among this is to purely Western perpgative. Choice is part of decision commonly in places like North Africaq, Jordan and Turkey.
That is not how the majority of Muslim women who wear hijab of their free will see it. Often it is framed in you hide what is most important to you. For Muslim women who have to wear hijab and do not want to it is seen as a tool of oppression. The difference is choice.
We are past second-wave feminism for the most part. If you can choose what you want to do, it is OK to choose traditionally feminine things. I am not Muslim. But I love kids, cooking and cleaning. It is OK. I can be more than one thing.
Only one brand of fundamentalist Islam is exported from KSA. There are a lot of brands including ones brought from Iran and Afghanistan not to mention whatever ISIS was doing.
While influencing each other and using the same playbook the far right between the US and Europe is as separate as the left is. It didn't really increase that much after Trump as it had increased exponentially and became more and more tolerated by centrists with the refugee "crisis". That happened in the summer of 2015 with election wins and gains in multiple European countries for far-right during the second half of 2015. It was a more parallel instead of a directly causative process.
Islam as religious text basis doesn't really differ in a bad way from the other two Abrahamic religions. It even gives some extra rights to women that Christianity and Judaism don't. Forcing hijab on women is also expressively banned in Islamic theological texts. Doesn't change how it works in practice as forced hijab is pretty common in fundamentalistic Islamic theocracies. But might explain why converting is a little bit less insane than at the surface level. If I had to choose one of the Abrahamic religions on a purely theological basis I might end up choosing Islam. Please note, I am not trying to give a pass to Islam, Islamic countries or especially fundamentalist Muslims. The issues are myriad. People outside Islamic countries just have a somewhat skewed image of the religion. Both in theory and practice.
Because people both under and overestimate organized crime. It is a weird beast. The majority of people don't run into them in a way they know it. And when you for some reason do, you learn to shut your mouth entirely or apart from the need-to-know basis depending on your cause to have run-ins with them. Not always because you think they are going to retaliate but from pretty complex reasons.
I realized later that's what it sounds like. I am not defending the act itself. I have spent a lot of time criticising it myself. What I am trying to do is to frame it into context. Bible is not without its pretty heinous acts. What I have an issue with is that people frame Islam, Christianity and Judaism in completely separate contexts. It is no less insane to convert to Christianity than Islam. Both are problematic and all three are built on each other literally. IMO based on religious texts Islam is better but that doesn't mean it is without significant faults. There are buts like with Aisha. Otherwise, I would have converted already.
People forget that countries, cultures, religions and people are not as simply understood as Islam bad. That would make my work easier. But religions are a complex mixture of all with a side of history. For example, both Christianity and Judaism also require veiling yourself as a woman but few do. I haven't really met a Christian who doesn't wear polycotton. And as few that don't eat crustaceans. Not even Catholicism nor Orthodoxy require either. But Bible does.
Fundamentalist thought processes have been pretty widespread in Islam for the past half a century. But they are not also explainable with just Islam bad. A lot of it is overcorrection because of imperialism. Some are about the far-right which while Islamophobic carries a lot of commonalities with fundamentalists of all types. And some are about religion. It is a potent mix and is used by a lot of populists globally. While there is a lot to criticize, it is often mischaracterized. Which makes me sound like I am defending the faults. I am not and should have framed better.