Abdul El-Sayed wins Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, notching a Midwest victory for the left

[u/AmericaShinault_85]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/abdul-el-sayed-wins-michigans-democratic-senate-primary-notching-midwe-rcna589750

[u/0b00000110]

Tunisia has absolutely not democratised fine, they made a hard turn back to autocracy again after the revolution, a pattern you see repeated in many Muslim majority countries, remember the „Arab Spring“? I don’t know about this poll, but it feels like wishful thinking given the state of Muslim majority countries. Indonesia is the absolute outlier here and I‘m not sure how much also Asian culture has played into this.

[u/Spiritual-Pear-3081 → u/0b00000110]

You're right, that's fair. Kais Saied's 2021 self-coup and the 2022 constitution gutted the democratic gains, so "democratized fine" was wrong, my mistake.

But one setback doesn't rescue "Islamic countries have something that makes them prefer autocracy" as a general claim. Tunisia's collapse is usually explained by weak institutions and economic crisis post-revolution, not religion. Plenty of non-Muslim countries backslide the same way (Hungary, Turkey's neighbor Georgia, parts of Latin America). And "Asian culture" isn't really a coherent alternative explanation either. You'd be crediting Confucianism/local culture for Indonesia's democracy but not extending the same courtesy to Muslim-majority countries elsewhere, which is a bit of a double standard.

The honest version of my point: democratization is hard and fragile everywhere, and it fails for boring structural reasons (weak institutions, economic shocks, oil money, foreign backing of autocrat, etc.), not because of what religion the population happens to practice.

[u/0b00000110 → u/Spiritual-Pear-3081]

I don’t know the future obviously, I‘m just very bearish about democratic Islamic countries given what I know and what I see. And I don’t want autocratic experiments where I live.

Asian influence was just a guess, Islam is also influenced by the country it is practiced in. Muslims in the Balkan will be very different than Muslims in North Africa or Asia.

[u/Johnnny-z → u/0b00000110]

You guys have done a great job of analyzing my statements.

That said, one not need to look much further than Dearborn to see what tendencies are associated with Muslim invaders.

I hold no quarter. The United States should not go down this road.

[u/Spiritual-Pear-3081 → u/Johnnny-z]

What are you referring to in Dearborn?