The Kurds are an exception, arguably should have their own state and would be the most sane partner in the middle east, but the US can't get its shit together to stand up to Turkey. Alas, we routinely screw over the Kurds as they get gassed by Saddam Hussein, ethnic cleansed by Turkey, abandoned to destruction by Russia when they were our best anti-ISIS ally.
Oil money and the wealth inequality that came with it certainly don't help things to engineer functioning democratic states, and then as stated elsewhere, neither does the CIA toppling democratic governments because multinational corps find them inconvenient.
America building "democracy" in Iraq was a telling process. All we cared about was oil and maintaining political control. We didn't care about making the lives of the everyday person better, which is the true fundamental path to a functioning democracy (it's why the USA's is gradually apart after all).
Shadi Hamid has been instrumental in helping me understand the distinction between the two things. Here’s a good example: https://mobile.twitter.com/shadihamid/status/144363599537580.... More generally: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/08/shadi-hamid-on-i...
What (most) Muslims want is something like what America was like in the early days. Puritan society was extremely democratic, insofar as the people did make the rules for society. But it was not liberal democracy—the puritans created public schools for the purpose of socializing children into religion. They also made it a criminal offense to celebrate Christmas: https://www.history.com/news/when-massachusetts-banned-chris...
But which rules? While Islam does have certain leeway for certain things to be left to society to decide, not everything is. You will not find any Muslim who will make it an offense to celebrate Eid for example.
Under President Arafat, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority adopted the 2003 Amended Basic Law, which stipulates Islam as the sole official religion in Palestine and the principles of Islamic sharia as a principal source of legislation. The draft Constitution contains the same provisions. The draft Constitution was formulated by a Constitutional Committee, established by Arafat in 1999 and endorsed by the PLO.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organizat...
- Lebanon (as an independent state) has been created in 1920, right after WW1 by the French "colonialists" specifically to draw an enclave of non-muslim minority in the country. It's classic Divide&Conquer strategy.
- The PLO (Palestinian Islamists) did try to set up an Islamic state in the country, but they were aided, or at least encouraged through inaction, by the muslims in the country who felt that the system was unfair.
- Currently the conflict isn't "muslims vs non-muslim". It's much more a conflict between Shia muslims (affiliated to Iran) and Sunni muslims (affiliated to KSA/Gulf). The non-muslims are now a minority and are split more or less evenly across the two camps.
- As of today, there's a lack of national identity, where every region's local lord amasses more power and influence than any "central" government.
It's not as simple as "they were non-muslims, got invaded by muslims and now it's gone bad"
Source: I'm Lebanese. PS: Pedantically, we became independent in 1943.