The thing about mirrors is…

Imagine that the ages of various religions were mapped to human longevity; Islam is in its adolescence while Christianity is middle aged and Judaism, geriatric. Just as with people, different ages don’t mix well, have different priorities, wants and needs.

In reverse order;

Judaism at roughly 3,500 years old has largely internalized its universalist phase and retreated into a kind of reflective, text-obsessed maturity, far less interested in converting the world than in surviving and interpreting itself, notwithstanding the current genocidal insanity; they’ve just included it as part of their survival trope.

Christianity at about 2,000 years old went through its own violent, expansionist adolescence with the Crusades, Inquisition, Wars of Religion before settling down during the Enlightenment and secularism. It has made an uneasy peace with pluralism, mostly.

Islam at about 1,400 years is by this framework still in that expansionist, boundary-testing, identity-asserting, rock and rolling phase that Christianity passed through. The Reformation equivalent arguably hasn’t happened yet, or is happening now, violently and in public.

Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” (1996) argued the post-Cold War world would be defined by conflict between distinct civilizational blocs: Western Christianity, Islam, Confucian China, Orthodox Russia etc. where culture and religion replace ideology as the primary fault line. He also correctly predicted that liberal universalism wouldn’t simply win by default, and that culture would remain a powerful force.

However, the passage of time has shown that the fault line isn’t between civilizations, it’s within them. Today the real conflict is between:

Those who’ve made an accommodation with modernity, pluralism and female autonomy Those who haven’t and are resisting. This polarisation exists inside Islam, inside Christianity, inside the West, inside America. A progressive Muslim woman in Tehran has more in common with a secular feminist in Paris than she does with a Taliban fighter. A MAGA evangelical has more in common with a Salafi hardliner than either would ever admit.

Huntington drew borders around civilizations, but the reality is that the border runs through all of them. While the upside is that no civilization is monolithic, the downside is that conflict is everywhere simultaneously rather than containable at geographic frontiers.

The dissonance is striking:

The Christian far right in America frames itself as defending Western civilization against Islam, while simultaneously:

Sharing nearly identical attitudes toward women, sexuality, and social hierarchy Pursuing theocratic governance goals through democratic institutions Treating scripture as literal political authority Venerating strongman leadership Being deeply hostile to Enlightenment liberalism. The irony is that they fighting a civilizational war against a movement that is essentially their own reflection.

The even greater irony is that secular liberal democracy, that which both movements oppose, is precisely what enables both to exist and express themselves. They’re opposition is biting the hand that feeds them. That’s thanks for you!

Where the analogy gets really interesting is that adolescence isn’t a flaw, it’s a developmental stage. Adolescents aren’t wrong to have intense conviction and energy. But they do tend to clash with systems built around compromise and accommodation. The tension is that Islam is having its adolescence inside a 21st century geopolitical order built by middle-aged Christianity and rationalist secularism, sophisticated institutions, norms, and laws not designed for that energy.

The Taliban/MAGA overlap on gender is real and documented, and both movements share:

Deep suspicion of female autonomy and education Nostalgia for a patriarchal social order framed as natural or divine Hostility to LGBTQ existence Using women’s bodies as the primary battleground for cultural identity However, this is a reactionary rearguard position globally, not an emerging norm. The broader trajectory across Europe and Asia tells a different story:

Asia is actually the more interesting data point. South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and increasingly urban China have produced some of the most assertive feminist movements in the world, Japan’s first female prime minister being a case in point. Younger Asian women are rejecting marriage and childbirth at remarkable rates precisely because patriarchal expectations persist; it’s backlash through withdrawal rather than protest.

In the Islamic world itself the picture is more complex than the Taliban suggests. Iran’s woman-led uprising, Tunisia’s relatively progressive family law, Indonesia’s urban professional women. In this context, the Taliban represents one pole, not the direction of travel.

The deeper irony is that the most aggressive patriarchal reassertion, whether MAGA or Taliban, tends to signal a movement losing the cultural argument, not winning it. Adolescent rage at change rather than confident tradition.

The truly comedic element is that each movement, MAGA or Taliban, in their blind passion can’t see that the image in the mirror is their cultural other.