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and what I'm fairly certain M is wrong about, is that Islamic states have a natural or inherent tendency to be evil, totalitarian, or fascistic.
And I'm even more certain that even
if they are, that it's not due to anything regarding the nature of Islam.
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I'd be interested in the reasons for your certainty here DVaut. That is, why there would be no causal relation between Islam and Islamic states tending to be totalitarian (if they do have that tendency). Thus, what other reasons would there be? And obviously if there are other such reasons, then many other non-Islamic totalitarian states should be the result of the same causes.
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Here's one that immediately popped into my head, and one that I suspect might have some normativity (although I certainly haven't done a vigorous study, if a vigorous study were even possible):
Rejection of modernity (or more broadly, fear of change); Peter Gay's book
The Outsider as Insider is a fantastic book that chronicles the culture of the Weimar Republic, and how the rapid modernization of German society led to an immense backlash that spurred the rise of the Third Reich.
Little Man, What Now? is closely related and equally important in the study of what led to the rise of the Third Reich...included in Fallada's work (
Little Man...)is a rather vivid picture of how fascists rely on using overtly masculine rhetoric (and enacting policies meant to appeal to rectify 'male anxiety') can lead a state to fall prey to leaders who advocate totalitarianism.
Speaking of male anxiety, adherence to an overly-masculine ethic is another theory as to why states that have a foundation of religious fundamentalism (be they Islamic, Christian, or otherwise) will frequently turn to totalitarian or oppressive means of governance. Ducat details in the recently released
The Wimp Factor how Holy Wars of all kind are frequently waged to placate mass male hysteria.
So there's two (although I'm sure I could speculate as I have here, and come up with many more) reasons as to why I'm fairly certain that there's not a particularly causal relationship between Islam and totalitarianism, even
if there's a correlation between Islam and totalitarianism (and I don't think has ever been successfully demonstrated, either).