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  • During the Soviet-Afghanistan conflicts, the west is supported Islamist groups against the secular government in Afghanistan.

    During the 1970s and sometimes later, Western and pro-Western governments often supported sometimes fledgling Islamists and Islamist groups that later came to be seen as dangerous enemies. Islamists were considered by Western governments bulwarks against—what were thought to be at the time—more dangerous leftist/communist/nationalist insurgents/opposition, which Islamists were correctly seen as opposing. The US spent billions of dollars to aid the mujahideen Muslim Afghanistan enemies of the Soviet Union, and non-Afghan veterans of the war returned home with their prestige, "experience, ideology, and weapons", and had considerable impact.

    Source

  • During the 1980, the military coup in Turkey is supported by the US which turned political Islam in this country a real power. The west also had very good relationship with Islamist Erdogan from the begining.

  • During the Chechenia-Russia conflicts, the west is basically supported Chechenia.

  • The west is supporting Islamist movements in Umrumqi in China.

  • The secular Baath rule in Syria is still the "enemy" of the west, the support for opposition ended up with the power of Islamic State. The west is actually claiming "IS" as enemy as well, but on the second hand, they keep supporting Ismalic militias such as Al Nusra or Al Qaida which they call as "modorate".

  • While Syrian Government was declared as "evil", nobody pay attention against Saudi Arabia, which is an absolute monarchy, effectively a hereditary dictatorship governed along Islamic lines. But Western countries have a deep relationship to Saudi Arabia.

So I wonder, why the western world is still supporting political Islam, directly or indirectly by trading with countries like Saudi Arabia.

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    This question needs at least some prooflinks for statements declared within. Otherwise, you will end up with many answers denying these statements and not answering the question as it is. In general, religious views of certain political groups do not appear to be the key factor for their support by the West.
    – bytebuster
    Dec 16, 2015 at 9:18
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    There is no such thing as "the political islam". Reality is far more complex than that. There are tons of islam-influenced governments and islamist groups with even more splinter-groups and factions within them. Each one has individual political goals and individual methods they use to attain them. You can not just lumb all muslims in the world together and claim that they have anything resembling an unified agenda.
    – Philipp ♦
    Dec 16, 2015 at 11:39
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    I've done the same as Philipp, but there are more problems than the breadth of the question. You've made several obviously incorrect statements such as Western support for Al-Qaeda, and you've also assumed that there's an overarching intention to support Islamism, which is quite frankly ridiculous.
    – PointlessSpike
    Dec 16, 2015 at 14:47
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    2 one-word answers: "realpolitic" and "geopolitics".
    – user4012
    Dec 16, 2015 at 17:38
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    @Noor I think, labeling the terrorist organizations "non-moslem" such as "Daesh", "Al Qaida" is a huge problem in Islamic world. Those guys are really Moslems and what they are doing is in the name of Jihad as they claim. If we would not diagnose this and not critize ourselves (instead of denying it), we cannot find any solution against violence. I think Islam should seperate from the state and it should be free from politics, the states should be secular, Islam shouldn't be in the laws because it is just a religion and not a political tool.
    – cem
    Dec 18, 2015 at 7:41

1 Answer 1

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Supporting Islam against Russia and China? Easy. They're the enemy of our enemy.

For a non-Muslim example, the USA, Australia and (I suspect) Japan are supporting Vietnam in its dispute with China. All three countries have fought or invaded Vietnam last century: the USA and Australia in the Vietnam war, and Japan during WWII.

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    Unfortunately China is not an enemy of the west like you describe. It is a giant child labour reserve that without it our economies would collapse.
    – Bregalad
    Dec 16, 2015 at 19:54
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    China is not an enemy of the west but it is for sure that China has a great industry without any domestic energy resource. Controling Middle East and Afghanistan means controlling China's energy resources.
    – cem
    Dec 17, 2015 at 8:59
  • @Bregalad two countries having close economic ties doesn't necessarily mean they won't go to war with each other, unfortunately.
    – Andrew Grimm
    Dec 17, 2015 at 11:01
  • Better not generalising and speaking about Islam as a whole when you mean Takfiri Terrorist Groups.
    – Noor
    Dec 17, 2015 at 19:46
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    @Noor It's not just Takfiris who engage in terrorism.
    – Andrew Grimm
    Dec 17, 2015 at 21:30

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