The Struggle for Pakistan

The election of Imran Khan in Pakistan was greeted by Western media with the vitriol usually reserved only for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the government in Tehran, in sharp contrast to the way the “reforms” of Mohammed bin Salman have been praised. Perhaps one way to understand this reaction is to see it as a glimpse into a post-Western future in which three substantive Muslim polities in West Asia have governments that are no longer embarrassed by their Islamicate identity. Not since the heyday of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals has this been the case.