Hey everyone, welcome back to My Weird Prompts. I am Corn, and I am sitting here in our living room in Jerusalem with my brother, Herman. It is a gray, drizzly afternoon outside our window, the kind of day that makes the limestone walls of the Old City look almost silver. It is a quiet day on our street, but as always in this part of the world, the quiet is often just a thin veil over some very heavy geopolitical currents.
Herman Poppleberry, at your service. And yeah, heavy is the right word, Corn. Our housemate Daniel sent over a prompt this morning that really gets to the heart of how we—and by we, I mean the collective West and global media—consistently misunderstand one of the most significant regions and ideological blocs on the planet. Daniel was asking us to deconstruct the concept of the Muslim world, specifically moving past the religious monolith idea and looking at it through a cold, hard geopolitical lens. It is March eighteenth, two thousand twenty-six, and if the last few years have taught us anything, it is that the old maps are lying to us.
It is a great prompt because, especially here in Jerusalem, you see the nuances every single day. You walk through the Muslim Quarter and you realize that the person selling you coffee might be a secular nationalist, a devout traditionalist, or someone whose primary identity is tied to a specific village in the Hebron hills. But if you are sitting in an office in New York or London, you might just see a giant green blob on a map stretching from Morocco to Indonesia and think everyone inside that blob thinks the same way, votes the same way, and wants the same things. Today, we are going to tear that map up and look at what is actually happening on the ground in two thousand twenty-six.
The foundational mistake people make is conflating the Arab world with the Muslim world. They are not the same thing, and the overlap is actually smaller than most people realize. In fact, if you look at the raw numbers, the demographic center of gravity for Islam is not even in the Middle East. It is in South and Southeast Asia. We are talking about Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India. Indonesia alone has over two hundred forty million Muslims. That is more than the populations of Egypt, Iran, and Turkey combined. When we talk about the Muslim world as a geopolitical bloc, we are talking about nearly two billion people across dozens of countries with vastly different histories, languages, and economic interests.
And yet, when people talk about Muslim geopolitics, they almost exclusively focus on the Levant, the Gulf, and maybe Iran. Why is that, Herman? Is it just historical inertia because that is where the religion started, or is there a more cynical reason for this narrow focus?
It is a mix of both. Part of it is historical and theological, sure. The holy sites of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem are here. The Arabic language remains the liturgical language of the faith, which gives the Arab core a certain cultural prestige, or soft power. But from a strategic perspective, the focus stays on the Middle East because of energy and geography. The Suez Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab el-Mandeb—these are the carotid arteries of the global economy. But if you ignore the non-Arab giants like Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan, you are missing the actual power players who are driving the bus right now. These are the states with the industrial bases, the large standing armies, and the institutional memory of being empires in their own right.
I want to touch on something Daniel mentioned in the prompt about non-Muslim populations within these states. There is this persistent idea in some circles that these are religiously pure states, or at least that the minorities have all but vanished. What is the reality there as we look at the data today in two thousand twenty-six?
It is a grim picture, Corn, and it is one of the most significant demographic shifts of the last century. If you go back to the early twentieth century, roughly twenty percent of the Middle East was Christian. Today, in many of those same core Arab states, that number has plummeted to less than five percent. In places like Iraq and Syria, the numbers are even lower due to the brutal conflicts of the last two decades. Lebanon is the only one that still maintains a significant, though shrinking, Christian population that actually holds constitutional power. We talked about that delicate and often dysfunctional balance in episode nine hundred fifty-four when we looked at the state-militia symbiosis there.
Right, the polite fiction that Lebanon is a functioning multi-confessional state when, in reality, Hezbollah holds the keys to the armory and the foreign policy. But it is not just Christians. You have the Druze, whom we covered in episode twelve fifty-nine, who have survived by being incredibly pragmatic and often secretive. But the broader trend is definitely toward religious homogenization at the state level, even as the societies themselves fragment along tribal or sectarian lines. It is like the outer shell is getting harder and more uniform, but the inside is crumbling into a thousand pieces.
And that is the paradox. As the states try to look more monolithic from the outside to project strength, they are actually fracturing from the inside. We have to stop looking at the Muslim world as a religious bloc and start looking at it as a collection of competing power centers that often hate each other more than they dislike the West. There is no such thing as a unified Muslim foreign policy. There is no Ummah in a political sense, even if the rhetoric is used constantly at the United Nations or in regional forums to score points. The Ummah is a powerful emotional and spiritual concept, but as a geopolitical actor, it is a ghost.
So if it is not a unified bloc, how should we categorize these power centers? If I am a listener trying to make sense of the news today, what are the actual poles of influence that matter?
I would break it down into four main poles for two thousand twenty-six. First, you have the revolutionary Shia pole led by Iran. They are the most disciplined and have the most successful model for projecting power through non-state actors. Then you have the neo-Ottoman pole, which is Turkey. They are a North Atlantic Treaty Organization member, but they are increasingly acting as a freelance regional hegemon with their own military footprint in Africa and the Caucasus. Third, you have the status-quo Sunni powers, primarily Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They are focused on economic modernization, post-oil futures, and stability, which is why we saw the expansion of the Abraham Accords and the continued shift toward cold-blooded pragmatism. And fourth, you have the wild cards like Pakistan and Indonesia, who have their own massive internal pressures and regional rivalries that often have nothing to do with the Middle East but can destabilize the entire system.
Let us dig into that Iranian pole for a second. You mentioned they use non-state actors. This seems to be the defining feature of Middle Eastern conflict in the twenty-first century. It is not army versus army; it is state versus proxy. How does that change the way we think about borders?
It effectively erases them. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has mastered the art of exportable revolution. They do not just send troops; they build local franchises that are woven into the social fabric of the host country. You see it with the Houthis in Yemen, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. This creates what I call the polite fiction of statehood. On the map, Iraq is a sovereign country. But in reality, large swaths of its security apparatus and its political classes answer to Tehran, not Baghdad. This is the structural collapse we discussed in episode thirteen twelve regarding the Tribe-State.
That connects back to the idea that the Westphalian model—the idea of fixed borders and a central government with a absolute monopoly on violence—is basically a dead letter in a lot of these places. The identity that matters is the tribe, the sect, or the militia. If your government cannot provide water or security, but your local militia can, who are you going to be loyal to?
And the religious identity is often just the brand or the recruitment tool. If you look at the Houthi movement, yes, they are Zaydi Shias, but their primary drivers are tribal grievances, a history of marginalization by the central government in Sanaa, and a desire for local autonomy. Iran then weaponized those grievances to put pressure on Saudi Arabia’s southern border. It is a strategic tool. The theology is the glue that holds the fighters together, but the goal is territory, resource control, and regional leverage.
You mentioned Turkey as a neo-Ottoman pole. That is an interesting one because Turkey is ethnically not Arab, and they have a very different historical relationship with the West. Yet, under Erdogan, they have tried to position themselves as the leaders of the broader Muslim world. How does that sit with the Arab states who used to be under Ottoman rule?
Not well, Corn. Not well at all. If you talk to the leadership in Cairo or Riyadh, they view Turkish interference in places like Libya or Syria with a massive amount of suspicion. There is a very long memory of Ottoman rule, and it is not remembered as a golden age by the Arabs. Erdogan has been very clever in using religious rhetoric to appeal to the Arab street, often bypassing the Arab dictators. He wants to be the champion of the Palestinian cause and the champion of the oppressed Muslim because it gives him leverage in his negotiations with Europe and the United States. But at the end of the day, Turkey’s interests are Turkish. They want to secure their borders against Kurdish separatism, they want to be the energy hub for Europe, and they want to be a global arms exporter. Those Turkish drones we see in every conflict from Ukraine to Ethiopia? That is the real face of neo-Ottomanism.
It sounds like everyone is using the concept of the Muslim world as a cloak for national interest. But what about the internal divisions? The Sunni-Shia split is the one everyone knows, the one that gets all the headlines. Is it still the primary driver in two thousand twenty-six, or has it been eclipsed by other things like the struggle for food security or climate change?
It is still the primary fault line, but we have to understand it as a proxy for state-level competition rather than a medieval religious war. Think of it like the Cold War. The United States and the Soviet Union had different ideologies—capitalism versus communism—but the conflict was ultimately about who ran the world. Saudi Arabia and Iran use the Sunni-Shia divide to mobilize people and create "us versus them" narratives, but the underlying conflict is about who is the dominant power in the Persian Gulf. It is about who sets the price of oil and who controls the shipping lanes.
And what about the more extreme elements? We have seen groups like the Islamic State or Al-Qaeda try to claim they represent the true version of this geopolitical bloc. They want to bring back the Caliphate and erase all the borders. Where do they fit in two thousand twenty-six?
They are the ultimate disruptors. They are the only ones who actually take the idea of a borderless Ummah seriously, and that makes them an existential threat to every single state I just mentioned. That is why you saw this strange, temporary alignment where the United States, Iran, and the Arab states were all technically on the same side against the Islamic State. These groups represent a total rejection of the state system. They are the ultimate expression of the Tribe-State, but on a global, digital level. Even though they have been defeated territorially, the ideology acts like a computer virus, waiting for a weak operating system—a failing state—to download into.
It is fascinating because while these groups are largely suppressed for now, the conditions that created them have not changed. The states are still weak, the economies are still struggling to provide for a massive youth population, and the demographic bulge of young people with no prospects and high internet connectivity is still there.
And that brings us to the non-Arab giants like Pakistan. We often ignore Pakistan in these discussions, but it is a nuclear-armed state with over two hundred forty million people and a deep identity crisis. It was founded as a homeland for Muslims, but it is constantly pulled between its secular military heritage and its increasingly radicalized religious base. When we look at the Muslim world as a geopolitical bloc, a crisis in Islamabad is arguably more dangerous for global stability than a crisis in Damascus or Baghdad.
Because of the nukes.
Because of the nukes, and because of the proximity to China and India. Pakistan is where the Muslim world meets the rising powers of the East. We often forget that. We are so focused on the Mediterranean and the Levant that we miss the Indian Ocean. If Pakistan tilts too far in one direction, it changes the entire security architecture of Asia.
I want to shift gears to the practical application of all this. How do these dynamics manifest in real-world alliances? We have seen some very strange bedfellows recently, things that would have been unthinkable twenty years ago.
The most obvious one is the alignment between Israel and the status-quo Sunni Arab states. If you told someone in the year two thousand that Saudi Arabia and Israel would have a de facto security partnership against Iran, they would have called you crazy. But that is the power of geopolitical reality over religious rhetoric. The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and its regional proxies was more important to the Gulf states than the religious solidarity with the Palestinians. It is the classic "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" play.
It is pragmatism over poetry.
Precisely. And you see it on the other side, too. Look at the relationship between Qatar and Turkey. They both supported the Muslim Brotherhood, which put them at odds with the rest of the Gulf. So they formed their own mini-bloc. Or look at how the United Arab Emirates has branched out to support secular-leaning strongmen in North Africa, like Haftar in Libya, to counter Islamist movements. These are not religious decisions. These are strategic moves to ensure the survival of their specific model of governance.
You mentioned the Muslim Brotherhood. That is an important piece of the puzzle because they represent a political version of Islam that is different from the monarchies of the Gulf or the theocracy of Iran.
The Brotherhood is the great bugbear of the Arab monarchs. They represent a populist, participatory Islamism that says the king is not necessary. That is why the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia designated them as a terrorist organization. It is a battle for the soul of Sunni Islam. Is it going to be top-down, state-controlled, and quietist, or is it going to be a bottom-up social and political movement? This internal Sunni civil war is just as important as the Sunni-Shia divide.
And that battle is playing out in every mosque and every social media feed across the region. It is not just about who has the most tanks; it is about whose version of the faith is seen as legitimate by the average person on the street.
And this is where the West often gets it wrong. We tend to support the top-down stability because it is predictable. We like kings and strongmen because they return our phone calls. But that stability is often brittle. We saw that in the Arab Spring, and we are seeing the aftershocks of that even now in two thousand twenty-six. When you suppress those bottom-up movements, they do not go away. They either go underground and radicalize, or they wait for the state to weaken and then they explode.
I am looking at the time and realizing we have covered a lot of ground, but I want to go deeper on the second-order effects of this state-militia symbiosis. You mentioned it in Lebanon, but it is spreading, right? Look at Iraq. Look at Libya. It seems like the "Lebanonization" of the region is the real trend.
It is the new normal. In Libya, you have two competing governments and dozens of militias, each backed by different foreign powers. Turkey is backing one side, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt are backing the other. Russia is in there with the Africa Corps—the successor to the Wagner Group. This is the Muslim world as a playground for great power competition. The religious identity of the fighters is almost irrelevant compared to who is paying their salaries and providing their drones. The state has become a shell that different groups fight over to gain international legitimacy.
So, if the map is just a suggestion and the states are polite fictions, what does that mean for things like energy markets or trade routes? If a group like the Houthis can effectively shut down the Red Sea with cheap drones, that is a global problem, not just a regional one.
That is the big takeaway. The fragmentation of the Muslim world means that small, ideologically driven groups can have a disproportionate impact on the global economy. We are moving away from a world where you could just call the leader in Riyadh or Cairo and solve a problem. Now, you have to negotiate with a dozen different players, some of whom do not even want to be at the table because they benefit from the chaos. It is a much more volatile, multi-polar system where the old rules of diplomacy do not apply.
It sounds like the era of the big, unified geopolitical bloc is over, if it ever really existed. Instead, we have this shifting kaleidoscope of interests.
I think that is the best way to describe it. And if you are trying to track this in real-time, you have to look at the non-Arab players. Watch what Turkey does in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Watch how Pakistan navigates its relationship with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Watch how Indonesia handles the rise of China in the South China Sea. These are the places where the next decade of history will be written, far away from the traditional centers of the Arab world.
Let us talk about the takeaways for our listeners. If someone is reading a headline tomorrow about a conflict in the Middle East or a summit of Muslim nations, what are the three things they should keep in mind to avoid falling into the monolith trap?
First, always ask yourself: is this about religion or is this about power? Nine times out of ten, the religion is the justification or the branding, but the power, the territory, and the resources are the goal. Second, look at the non-Arab actors. If Turkey or Iran is involved, it is probably a move for regional hegemony, not just a local dispute. And third, look for the tribe or the militia behind the state. If the national army is not the one doing the fighting, you are looking at a Tribe-State situation, and the old rules of Westphalian diplomacy are useless.
That is a great framework. I think people also need to realize that the decline of non-Muslim minorities has actually made these states more unstable, not less. When you lose that pluralism, you lose the social buffers that often prevent total societal collapse. You lose the middle-class professionals and the international connectors who act as a bridge between different factions.
That is a very astute point, Corn. The loss of the Christian and Jewish communities in these lands has removed a layer of stability and international connectivity. Now, the internal divisions have nothing to mediate them. It is just sect against sect, tribe against tribe, with no one left to play the role of the neutral arbiter.
We saw that in the Druze episode, episode twelve fifty-nine. They are a bridge group, but when the bridges are burned, everyone is stuck on their own island.
And that is why the Druze strategy of survival is so fascinating. They do not try to build a state; they try to be indispensable to whoever is running the state. In a world of failing states and polite fictions, that might be the smartest move on the board.
Before we wrap up, I want to touch on the future. As we look toward the end of the decade, do you see a return to some kind of imperial-style spheres of influence? Like a Turkish sphere, an Iranian sphere, and a Saudi sphere?
I think we are already there. The borders drawn after World War One by the British and the French—the Sykes-Picot lines—are effectively gone. They exist on Google Maps and in UN seating charts, but they do not exist on the ground. We are seeing a return to older, more organic patterns of influence that look a lot like the sixteenth century. The question for the next five years is whether these spheres can coexist without a major regional war, or if the friction between them is going to keep the region in a state of permanent, low-level conflict that drains everyone’s resources.
And that has huge implications for the United States and the rest of the West. If we keep trying to "fix" the borders or restore the old state system, we are fighting a losing battle against history. We have to learn to deal with the spheres of influence as they actually are, which means talking to people we do not like and recognizing that our influence is limited.
Which requires a level of diplomatic nuance and historical knowledge that we have not always been great at. But hey, that is why we do this show, right? To try and unpack these things so we can see the world as it is, not as we wish it was or as it appears on a simplified map.
Well, I think we have definitely given the people some meat to chew on today. Daniel, thanks for the prompt. It really forced us to look at the big picture and move past the headlines.
Yeah, it was a good one. It is easy to get lost in the daily updates of who bombed whom, but the structural shifts are what really matter. And to our listeners, if you found this deep dive helpful, we would really appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your podcast app or on Spotify. It genuinely helps other people find the show and join the conversation.
And if you want to catch up on any of the episodes we mentioned—like episode thirteen twelve on the Tribe-State, episode nine hundred fifty-four on Lebanon, or episode twelve fifty-nine on the Druze—you can find the whole archive at myweirdprompts dot com. We have an RSS feed there so you can subscribe however you like.
And if you are on Telegram, just search for My Weird Prompts. We post there every time a new episode drops, and it is a great place to stay updated on the research we are doing.
Alright, Herman. I think that is a wrap for episode thirteen thirty-six.
It has been a pleasure, Corn. Until next time.
Thanks for listening to My Weird Prompts. We will see you in the next one.
Take care, everyone.
You know, Herman, I was thinking about what you said regarding Indonesia. It is wild that the most populous Muslim nation is also one of the most successful democracies in that part of the world. It really breaks the stereotype of what a "Muslim state" looks like.
It does, but even there, you see the tension. You see the struggle between the secular Pancasila ideology of the state and the rising influence of religious hardliners. It is a universal struggle within this geopolitical bloc. No one is immune to the tension between tradition and modernity.
It is the defining struggle of our era, really. How do you integrate a traditional faith into a modern, globalized political and economic system without losing your soul or your stability?
And the answer is going to be different in Jakarta than it is in Riyadh or Tehran. That diversity is exactly why the monolith idea is so dangerous. It blinds us to the real solutions and the real threats.
Well, I think we have hammered that point home.
Hopefully.
Alright, let us go see what Daniel is cooking for lunch. I smell something good coming from the kitchen.
I hope it is that lamb stew he was talking about yesterday.
One can only hope. Bye everyone!
Goodbye!
Actually, before we go, I just remembered something from the prompt. Daniel mentioned the impact of these divisions on energy markets. We should probably spend another minute on that because it is so central to why the rest of the world cares about this region.
You are right. Think about the Strait of Hormuz. Twenty percent of the world's liquefied natural gas and oil passes through that one narrow point. If the rivalry between Iran and the Gulf states boils over, the global economy does not just slow down; it hits a brick wall. We saw a taste of that in twenty twenty-four.
And the rise of non-state actors like the Houthis means you do not even need a full-scale war between nations to cause that kind of disruption. A few well-placed drones or sea mines from a militia can do the job of an entire navy.
Which is why the security architecture of the Muslim world is a global security concern. It is not just a regional issue for the people living there. When the internal divisions of the Ummah manifest as attacks on shipping, every person in America or Europe feels it at the gas pump or in the price of their groceries.
It is all connected. The theology, the tribes, the drones, and the global economy. It is one big, messy system.
It is a complex system, and we are all living in it, whether we realize it or not.
Well, now I am definitely hungry. All this talk of global collapse is making me famished.
Me too. Let us go.
Thanks again for listening, everyone. This has been My Weird Prompts.
See you next time!
One last thing, Herman. We talked about the decline of Christians, but we should also mention that there are still vibrant communities in places like Egypt. The Coptic Church is massive and has a huge influence on Egyptian identity.
That is true. They are the largest Christian community in the Middle East, and their relationship with the state is a key indicator of Egypt's stability. The government in Cairo makes a big show of protecting them to project an image of tolerance to the West, but the underlying sectarian tensions in the rural areas are still very much there.
It is another example of a state trying to maintain a pluralistic image while the society underneath is under immense pressure. It is all about the image versus the reality.
It is the polite fiction again.
Okay, now for real, let us go eat.
Lead the way, Corn Poppleberry.
Talk to you soon, everyone.
Bye!
You know, I was just thinking about the Turkish drones in the Ukraine conflict. That was a huge moment where a non-Arab Muslim power used its technology to influence a European war. It really flipped the script.
That is a perfect example of what I was talking about. Turkey is not just a regional player; they are a global arms exporter now. Their drones have changed the battlefield in Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Ukraine. They are selling a "war in a box" solution to anyone who wants it.
It shows that the "Muslim world" is not just a consumer of technology or a source of raw materials. They are becoming producers of high-end strategic assets.
And that gives them a seat at the table that they did not have thirty years ago. It is a different world, Corn. The old hierarchies are melting away.
It really is. Alright, I am shutting the mic off now.
See ya.
Wait, did we mention the Saudi modernization project? Vision twenty thirty? We are only four years away from that deadline.
We touched on it with the status-quo pole, but it is worth noting that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is trying to fundamentally rewire the Saudi social contract. He is moving away from the old alliance with the Wahhabi religious establishment toward a more nationalist, economically focused identity.
If he succeeds, it would be the most significant shift in the Sunni world in a century. It would be the end of the era where Saudi Arabia exported its specific brand of ultra-conservative Islam.
And if he fails, the consequences would be catastrophic for the global economy. It is a high-stakes gamble with no safety net.
Everything in this region is high-stakes. There are no low-stakes games in Jerusalem or Riyadh.
True that. Okay, lunch time. For real this time.
Lunch time. Bye!
Bye everyone!
I wonder if Daniel knows how much we end up talking about his prompts after we stop recording.
He probably hears us through the wall. He is probably taking notes for his next prompt right now.
Fair point. Jerusalem houses are not known for their soundproofing.
Especially when you are shouting about neo-Ottomanism at two in the afternoon.
I was not shouting, I was being passionate! There is a difference!
Same thing. Let's go.
Alright, alright. This has been My Weird Prompts, episode thirteen thirty-six.
Check out the website for more!
See you!
