@Atlantis
I understand what you're saying, however, we disagree on the why in regards to why the Islamic world has such degrees of extremism and fundamentalism, and why this violence is spreading.
The things that are considered extreme and fundamental today have existed for many centuries in the Islamic world, including during the Abbasid caliphate.
The Wahabi movement is from the Hanbali school of thought which was born at the height of the Islamic civilization.
Those elements have always existed, have always had large support by many groups, and they were always violent; The only difference nowadays is that there is a movement challenging it, i.e the various reformation movement all across, and the old order is simply responding the same way it always had for centuries.
These groups aren't "retreating" to religious fundamentalism, they always were fundamentalists, so what we are seeing today isn't a new development, it's rather a continuation of what was already there.
Even if there are states in the MENA, it doesn't mean there is national identity. With the possible exceptions of Turkey, Iran, etc., in many countries, tribal structures are more important than national structures. During the golden age of Islam, religion served as a unifying force. Today, religion cannot fulfill that function for building a prosperous modern state since there is a clash between secular modernity and religious fundamentalism.
And this a huge point of disagreement.
The tribal structures in the middle east are nations in and of themselves.
Foreign media doesn't go much into exploring and explaining these structures and, as such, you end up with many, if not most, outsiders viewing tribes as these old nomadic barbaric groups in a too simplistic manner.
Tribes in the middle east number in the 100s of thousands and millions each, with governing structures, legal codes, various cultures, traditions, and languages, and a whole array of diplomatic and political arrangements between each other.
I, personally, originate from the Hazzar tribe in northeastern Iran, we're a Turko-Persianic tribe with millions of members, our own laws, constitution, taxes, governing bureaucracy, and even a queen and an army.
(Note: The bloodline I come from moved to Lebanon and merged with the Humaidiyyah tribe of the Beqa' valley a couple of centuries ago, so we're Lebanese.
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Tribes are, also, not all the same; Some are wealthy, others poor, some follow Islamic law, others are secular, some follow socialistic systems and other capitalistic, etc.
If you looked at older maps of the middle east, you'll see dozens of small nations spread all across, empires drew most the current borders, and whenever two or more nations who were placed under the same state reach a high level of disagreement that harms one or more of them you get "civil wars", even if those civil wars are actually fought between two entirely different nations.
That's why in Syria, any civil conflict will usually end up north vs south, because Damascus and Aleppo were both capitals of different nations.
In Iraq, the "sectarian" conflict isn't being fought on sectarian lines but on national lines, because The Sunni tribes in the northwest are part of the Al-Hadid Arabs (Iron desert Arabs) and not the same nation as the mixed south and East.
In Saudi Arabia, any uprising always starts in the west, why? Because the west is called Hijaz and has been its own nation for literally thousands of years, only recently been conquered by Najd (The east) with the help of the British.
Yemen, under the current borders, will always have civil wars, because the north (The Houthis) are an entirely different nation from the south and don't want to be ruled by foreigners.
The same case in Libya today, it was 3 nations that the Italians put under one state, and whatcha know, whenever a civil war breaks out, you get 3 factions fighting each other on the exact same borders that they've had for centuries because none of them wants the other to rule over them.
And in all of these, the tribal structures form the basis of these national identities as, over the centuries of tribes merging, breaking up, and growing, you ended up with a few dozens of umbrella tribes that each has its own national identity, instead of the case of 100s of tribes a couple of thousands of years ago.
These modern conflicts are created by colonial empires primarily because, under the traditional empires of the region, each nation still ruled its self under a pseudo-federal system where many nations, each with its own governments and royalties, acting under the flag of the empire and following the orders of the empire.
When that system was removed, and instead of being replaced by one where each nation has its own state but a system where multiple nations are put under one state, everyone lost their self-governance and were effectively put under the military occupation of whoever runs this state ( which happened to be foreign-backed dictators).
The fact that the European Reformation led to terrible power struggles and wars doesn't mean that the Muslim world has to repeat that to today.
The current map forces that confrontation, and thus those wars.
For example, to take my own country, Lebanon. If we didn't fight against it, we were supposed to be put into a larger state with the Alawites and Jerusalem Palestinians (Gaza was its own nation and not the same one as that of Jerusalem). But either way, we ended up having the Druze in Lebanon and having several Bedouin Arabs in the country.
Why does this matter? Because the Druze are their own nation, with house Arsalan (now they split into two, house Arsalan and house Junblat) as their royalty; Putting them into the same state will always lead to conflict because the Druze wont accept being ruled by either Lebanese Christians or Muslims, nor will the Lebanese Christians and Muslims accept being ruled over by Druze. So, it led to war eventually.
Likewise, if the Palestinians were put under the same state, that'll also lead to war, as it already has since Palestinians who left Palestine escaping from Israeli occupation ended up refusing to follow the laws and customs of Lebanon since the two are very different, and thus they tried to establish their own state inside the country, and the aforementioned Arab Bediouns (primarily from southern Syria of Badiat Al-Sham, i.e formerly with Damascus as its capital and including much of northern Jordan as well) joined them in the fight because they too don't want to live under Lebanese laws and customs.
And for the Alawites, there has been 4 wars in Syria so far, including this one, where the Alawites have been a key faction, because the Alawites will refuse someone else's culture and laws be enforced on them, and when they take rule, others will refuse Alawite culture and laws be enforced on them.
Heck, even I personally would refuse to live under, let's say, a Salafist, or traditionalist Arab, or an Alawite government trying to enforce its beliefs on me, and would probably result to violence if it went too far.
Even if religious fundamentalism "was always there" it isn't that dominant during times of prosperity and success
The Hanbali school of thought, which is where Wahabism and Salafism come from, was born during the height of the Abbasid golden age.
EDIT: I forgot one line.
The reason why this map forces these conflicts is because it forces a confrontation.
If for example, we were discussing religion with a Wahabi conservative, doing it online or on some live forum might lead to results over time, but if either of us has to live under the rules and laws of the other, then we're both forced into a confrontation with each other.
And that's what's happening in the middle east today, not only you have the old religious orders growing in power due to controlling much larger states given to them by the British and the French primarily, but you also have all cultures, ideologies, and structures in the region forced into confrontation against each other.
Najdi Wahabis for example used to rule Najd, now they rule Najd, Hijaz, Qatif, and Shammar, even though none of those are Wahabis, so they're now forced into a confrontation.