Reddit mentions of Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil

Well, it shouldn't be surprising that fundamentalist interpretations of Islam have won out over progressive ones. Recognize that the United States has historically supported and funded Islamic theocracies. From Carbon Democracy:

>As a rule, the most secular regimes in the Middle East have been those most independent of the United States. The more closely a government is allied with Washington, the more Islamic its politics. Egypt under Nasser, republican Iraq, the Palestine national movement, post-independence Algeria, the Republic of South Yemen, Ba’thist Syria–all charted courses independent of the United States. None of them declared themselves an Islamic state, and many of them repressed local Islamic movements. In contrast, those governments dependent on the United States typically claimed an Islamic authority, whether ruled by a monarch who claimed descent from the Prophet, as in Jordan, North Yemen and Morocco, or asserting a special role as protector of the faith, as in the case of Saudi Arabia.

There used to be plenty of secular left movements in the Middle East and Africa during the Cold War, situated in the Islamic culture that dominated these areas. But they got crushed by superior funding from the USA and its Islamic allies. Small wonder, then, that reactionary Islam continued to fill this ideological vacuum.