The War No One Is Talking About

What looks like geopolitics in the Middle East is actually a much older, deeper civilizational and religious struggle.

photo: Hongbin/Unsplash

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We are told that this war began on February 28th. Or on October 7th. Or in 1979, when the Iranian Revolution gave rise to the Islamic Republic, which made “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” its trademarks. Or in 1948, with the founding of the State of Israel.

All of these dates are convenient. All of them are wrong.

Because the war we are watching today — the confrontation between Israel, the United States, and the Islamic Republic of Iran — is not a new war. It is the latest chapter in something much older and something far more uncomfortable to name.

This is a war whose roots stretch back centuries, to a time when expanding Islamic empires did not merely see themselves as religious communities, but as civilizational forces tasked with ordering the world politically, legally, and spiritually under Islam.

To understand the present, you have to understand a basic truth that is often avoided in modern discourse: Islam has historically functioned not only as a faith, but as a comprehensive sociopolitical system. From the early caliphates onward, religion and governance were intertwined. Law was not separate from theology; it was derived from it. Political authority was justified through religious legitimacy. Expansion was not merely territorial; it was ideological.

Under the Umayyad Caliphate and later the Abbasid Caliphate, vast regions across the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Europe and Asia were brought under Islamic rule. These were not secular empires with a dominant religion. They were Islamic polities, where governance itself was an extension of religious worldview.

This matters, because it shaped a civilizational mindset — one in which the world was often viewed through a binary lens: the realm of Islam and the realm beyond it. Over centuries, that framework evolved, fractured, and adapted. But it never fully disappeared.

Fast forward to the 20th century. The collapse of empires, the rise of nationalism, and the spread of Western political models forced a reckoning across the Muslim world. For some, the answer was modernization and integration. For others, it was a return to Islamic political identity.

In 1928, Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Its purpose was not subtle: It was created in response to what its founders saw as the erosion of Islamic society under Western influence. The solution, they argued, was not partial reform, but total reintegration of Islam into every aspect of life: governance, law, education, and culture.

The Muslim Brotherhood was not simply a religious movement. It was a political project. It sought power. It sought influence. And it sought to reshape societies according to an Islamic framework.

Its ideas spread. They inspired movements, parties, and terror groups across the world. They also helped lay the ideological groundwork for organizations that would later emerge with far more violent expressions of the same core belief: that Islam is not just a personal faith, but a system meant to govern.

The Palestine Liberation Organization, for example, began with strong Islamist influences. Its early leaders talked about “liberation” as a “national and sacred duty,” “a duty rooted in history, identity, and faith.” Followers were told, “Palestine is not merely a land dispute; it is a cause that lives in the heart of the Islamic Ummah (the whole community of Muslims bound together by ties of religion).”

But during the Cold War, it underwent a transformation. Encouraged by the Soviet Union and its ideological allies, the Palestine Liberation Organization shifted its messaging. Islam receded into the background. In its place came the language of anti-colonialism, national liberation, and oppression. This was not necessarily a rejection of underlying beliefs. It was a reframing — one that resonated more effectively with Western audiences and leftist movements.

And it worked. The conflict was increasingly understood not as part of a broader civilizational or religious struggle, but as a discrete political dispute between two national movements. That framing still dominates much of the conversation today.

Hamas is also a direct outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded during the First Intifada in 1987 as its Palestinian branch. Immediately, Hamas framed the conflict with Israel not simply as a territorial dispute, but as a religious obligation. The language was explicitly Islamic. It operates within a worldview shaped by the same core idea that animated the Muslim Brotherhood: that Islam must ultimately define the structure of society and governance.

At first glance, the Islamic Republic of Iran seems distinct. It is Shiite, not Sunni. Its revolution was uniquely Iranian in many ways. But at a deeper level, it represents a parallel expression of a similar idea: that religion should not merely guide society; it should rule it.

The Iranian Revolution replaced a monarchy with a theocratic regime led by clerics beginning in 1979. It fused political power with religious authority in a way that echoed earlier Islamic governance models, albeit through a Shiite lens.

Since then, Iran has not confined its ambitions to its own borders. It has exported its ideology. Through proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and the Houthis in Yemen, the Iranian regime has built a network of aligned actors who share a commitment to armed struggle framed in both political and religious terms.

But here is where the story becomes even more complex — and more revealing. If this were simply a unified Islamic struggle against the West or Israel, the Muslim world would act as one. But it does not. In fact, many Muslim-majority countries actively resist the very movements that claim to represent Islamic political revival.

The Muslim Brotherhood is banned in multiple Muslim countries. So too is Al Jazeera, an Islamist media outlet run by Qatar. Governments across the Middle East and North Africa have cracked down on Islamist groups, not because they oppose Islam, but because they fear what political Islam can become.

And history shows us that political Islam is dangerous. Dissent is suppressed, pluralism is rejected, and violence is justified in the name of a higher cause. What begins as a call for moral order often ends as a system that leaves little room for freedom, difference, or opposition.

Political Islam is also directly at odds with liberal democracy. Countries that operate with some form of liberal democracy or another tend to collaborate and build interdependent systems that raise the cost of conflict, thus increasing peace and stability.

When political movements like Islamism reject that premise, cooperation becomes more difficult and tensions can lead to military conflicts. You see this divide not only between the West and certain regimes, but within the Muslim world itself. Moderate Muslim countries are making a different calculation. They are choosing stability over ideology, integration over confrontation, and economic growth over perpetual conflict.

Saudi Arabia just opened itself to foreign investment, allowing international buyers into its real estate market. The United Arab Emirates has spent years positioning itself as a global hub for business, tourism, and finance. These are not the actions of societies preparing for civilizational war; they are the actions of societies trying to move beyond it.

This is why the Saudis, the Emiratis, and many other leaders in the region have been rooting for the U.S. and Israel in this war. The Emirati president went on record recently, calling Iran the enemy. A report this week from the New York Times claimed that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia has been advising U.S. President Donald Trump to “keep hitting the Iranians hard.” The Iranian regime knows this, which is why it has fired more than 2,000 missiles and drones toward Gulf states since the war broke out.

These attacks are not just because the U.S. has military targets in Gulf countries, or because the U.S. and Israel are using their airspace to attack the Iranian regime. They signal something far more significant: The Islamic Republic of Iran wants to promote Islamism in the Middle East and elsewhere, while moderate Muslim countries absolutely do not.

Even the Iranian regime has made this abundantly clear. Since the war began, its leaders have called for “broader unity across the Muslim world.” This week, before he was assassinated by Israel, Iran’s secretary of the Supreme National Security Council said: “The unity of the Islamic Ummah with all its might can ensure and guarantee the security, excellence, and independence of countries for all.” And Iran’s president claimed that the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a “declaration of war against Muslims.”

When leaders describe attacks on the Iranian regime in religious and civilizational terms, they are defining the conflict itself — expanding it beyond states, beyond armies, into something much broader, something that resonates far beyond the battlefield.

This helps explain much of Europe’s reluctance to seriously engage in this war, even though it is easy to make the case for European assistance or collaboration.

European leaders are not blind to the nature of the Iranian regime. They understand its impact on regional stability, global trade, and security. But they are also managing increasingly complex domestic realities.

Large Muslim populations are now part of the social fabric of many European countries. Any conflict perceived in religious or civilizational terms carries the risk of internal tension and social unrest. When European leaders say “this is not our war,” what they are really saying is: This is a conflict whose fault lines run straight through our own societies, and stepping into it abroad may ignite major problems at home.

Hence, what we are witnessing today is not just a military conflict between countries with national disputes. It is not just a geopolitical struggle between states. It is the latest iteration of a much older tension, one that has taken different forms across centuries, adapted to different contexts, and expressed itself through different actors: empires, revolutions, proxies, resistance movements.

The terms change, the language evolves, the strategies shift, but the underlying question remains: What is the role of Islam?

Until that question is confronted honestly, the world will continue to misunderstand the nature of this conflict. And as long as it is misunderstood, it will be misdiagnosed. And as long as it is misdiagnosed, it will never truly end.

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