> Challenging the Catholic Church and the divine right of kings was unthinkable too, and was a "full stack" social control model.

It also took hundreds of years, and numerous very bloody wars.

> Ideology doesn't do anything. People do things.

What people believe definitely affects what people do. I don't see how you can seriously argue otherwise.

People who believe that killing is wrong engage in bloody wars. People call themselves pro-life but support the death penalty. Countries that claim to promote peace invade other countries. People say they believe in freedom and democracy and push a police state.

People go through contortions to square the dissonance between their ideology and their actions. Ideology serves people, not the other way around. At best ideology is a hint at what people are like. There are always gross contradictions between what people believe and how people act.

Ideology does not arise from pure reason, it does not spring from the void. Ideology does not exist on its own, only in conjunction with power structures; ideology is completely subordinate to physical power. Ideology does not create power, it rationalizes it.

I agree that there can be contradictions, but those contradictions don't stand in complete separation from the ideology like you say. Ideology can serve people in power, but for the average citizen it forms the way they think and conduct themselves, and that is where the problem is.

Yes, exactly. The debacle in the Middle East has far more to do with imperialism and neoliberalism than religion. Trying to fix a religion-dominated society by viewing it primarily through the lens of religion misses the larger picture, which unfortunately I see as (and am complicit with) being willing to turn a blind eye to the abuses of our past and present leaders so that I don't have to spend too much on gas.

The motivations are tied to the ideology. You simply cannot protect the ideology from the people and say its not the way that is wrong but the people who follow it when there are so many of the people follow the so called "wrong way". The Catholic Church ruled in a period where opposing it was difficult not only because of societal norms but also the peoples understanding of the world was limited and so opposing views were hard to justify. That is no longer the case, and as can be seen, secular nations have arisen in the west.

> The Catholic Church ruled in a period where opposing it was difficult not only because of societal norms but also the peoples understanding of the world was limited and so opposing views were hard to justify.

That's your claim. I say that the catholic church ruled because it had a stranglehold on material power. It behaved as a cartel for monarchic control. The ideology of the catholic church never prevented challenges to its power that were heterodox, like the multiple antipopes that arose through the years. The ideology of a celibate clergy never stopped popes from siring children and placing them in power.

The catholic church declined because technology and economic activity developed into a system that could not be controlled by an entity like the church. Monarchies and the church became obsolete for material reasons, not the appearance of competing ideologies. The ideologies that came about were filling in the vacuum left by the church. A new social order had to be explained. Ideology is post-hoc.

That's my claim.

Ideology is not post-hoc but tied in with the process that creates it. Look at stat ups. The culture of a start up is its ideology and gives direction to the company which reciprocates by cementing that culture as a definite if it causes that startup to be successful.

Ideology and social order go hand in hand, and even more so in Political situations and you have to be very oblivious to say that Islam is not an political religious ideology for most of the Middle East.

The culture of a startup is a reflection of its economic context: A startup receives VC funding, has few employees to start with and must optimize growth in order to be successful. It's also a reflection of the power relationship of the founders and the other employees: the culture of a startup optimizes the values and preferred organizational structure of the founders. Startup culture does not cause these things, it is the reification of these relationships. It is symbolic.

It is an important characteristic of ideology that it is symbolic: it means that multiple people can interpret it in different ways. Which interpretations are "correct"? The ones that conform to the underlying power structure. The power structure punishes "misinterpretations" and rewards "correct" interpretations.

Just as different start-ups have different ideologies because they have different power structures and economic relations, Islam in the Middle East is not a coherent political ideology. The Islam of Iran reflects the organization of its government, not the other way around. The Islam of Saudi Arabia reflects the organization of its government, not the other way around.

The Islam of Da'esh, which is considered heterodox by literally every other sect of Islam, is a reflection of its power structures.

The same signs and ideas reflect different physical realities. What drives the development of signs and ideas? The physical reality. Only the material can propagate ideology, and only the material that propagates itself succeeds in the long-run.

What use is it to say that "Islam is a political religious ideology for most of the Middle East"? What analytic and predictive power does this statement have?

I agree with what you are saying but not to the degree that the ideology is purely influenced by the governmental structure. Islam existed far before either Iran or Saudi existed. Their formation was influenced by the type of ideas Islam enforces as much as Islam was influenced by the power structure that eventually formed as all the pieces fell into place by the formation of those nations. Islam enables interpretations that lead to the formation of these oppressive regimes and then these regimes and then the power structure continues to enforce that interpretation.

> Islam enables interpretations that lead to the formation of these oppressive regimes and then these regimes and then the power structure continues to enforce that interpretation.

Ok, sure. I can agree with that, but in my opinion it's a low-power assertion. Liberalism as an ideology allows imperialism and coups, too. Like the one that ousted the democratically elected prime minister of Iran and replaced him with the autocratic Shah.

There is nothing especially poisonous about Islam. The politics of the Middle East are largely driven by global capitalism, imperialism, and war. What has more political force? A cruise missile or a copy of the Quran?