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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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You and @hydroacetylene are both falling into the trap of assuming any one subgroup or what you see in particular forums is indicative of a billion people. Muslims are much like Christians - you have your "Cultural Muslims who don't really believe," you have your "Aid Al-Fitr and Aid Al-Adha Muslims" who only remember they're Muslims on important holidays, you have your "Imperfectly practicing Muslims" who maybe feel a little guilty about smoking and drinking and premarital sex but still do it, you have your devout Muslims who actually take it seriously, go to the Mosque regularly, but think the extremists are kind of crazy and embarrassing, you have your super-serious Muslims who wear hijabs if not niqabs and thawbs, do the five-prayers-a-day thing without fail, and generally follow the religion to the letter, and then you have the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, the Taliban, ISIS, etc., for whom Islam may be a serious part of their identity but is also instrumental to their political goals.

I was speaking of "will people get religion by turning to Islam". No, they will not, because few people find religion while intending not to follow the rules, and any American who wants to follow the rules of Islam can get a much better deal in mormonism.

People don't usually go religion-shopping, though. They don't evaluate which one gives them a "better deal." The young Westerners converting to Islam right now are doing so because of Palestine and because Islam is anti-establishment and "decolonialist" in a way that Mormonism is not. Will it become a real trend? Probably not, but I wouldn't completely rule out some sort of surge in Muslim converts.

I think the pro-palestinian youths becoming muslim will be gone in a year(or possibly less). Just my impression, but, look, I'm an actual IRL tradcath and fairly prominent in my local IRL tradcath community. We get young men showing up because the internet says we're based all the time and they usually leave not long after finding out we're an actual religion, not a meme.

I expect the left-wing version of that, but precommitted to incompatible beliefs, will have even less staying power. And honestly any difference I can identify is one that seems anticorrelated with likelihood to stick around.