As the Middle East became an economically underdeveloped region, its entrepreneurs did not form movements to constrain either rulers or clerics. They did not bring about liberalization through organizational innovations that strengthened them politically. A basic reason is that, until the transplant of modern economic institutions from Europe, the Middle East’s private enterprises remained small and ephemeral. These characteristics precluded sustained coalitions representing business interests. A further consequence was the failure to institute political checks and balances of the type that made European rulers submit to rule of law. Several elements of the Islamic institutional complex contributed to keeping Middle Eastern enterprises structurally stagnant until the 1800s. Most critically, Islam’s partnership rules allowed partners to pull out at will, and its inheritance system hindered capital accumulation. The upshot is that enterprises did not experience operational challenges of the type that would have stimulated organizational innovations. Among the innovations that did not emerge indigenously are banks, chambers of commerce, business publications, stock exchanges, and formal insurance markets. Their long absence contributed to keeping private economic actors politically weak. It also compounded the endemic weaknesses of civil society.

In the Middle East’s secularist regimes, the exclusion of religion from public life sowed discontent, as did the regulation of private religious activity. Defiance of secular mandates became increasingly common. In response, secularist leaders intensified the repression of groups opposed to reforms. But they also made concessions to politically tame groups that wanted to lead openly religious lives. The resurfacing of public religiosity induced adjustments in the public persona of secular elites themselves. Politicians, entertainers, and journalists started pandering to the pious by feigning religiosity. Reversing direction, religious preference falsification now exaggerated not genuine irreligiosity but, rather, genuine piety. Regimes that were once assertively secularist turned into religiously hybrid regimes drawing some legitimacy from Islam. This softening of secularism set the stage for regimes dedicated, in one form or another, to homogenizing society according to a religious blueprint. Under assertively Islamist regimes, longstanding Islamic instruments of repression have transformed religious freedoms, with some groups becoming freer and others less so. Secularists and heterodox believers have been among the losers. The breadth and severity of the ensuing religious repression hides diverse strands of discontent. Public religious discourses and performances disguise rising irreligiosity, deism, and atheism.