When European, at first Christian and then secular colonial powers run rampant over your culture and people for 100+ years, and demonize your local majority religion as barbaric for almost as long, practicing that religion becomes an act of anti-colonial resistance in and of itself. A way of rejecting outsiders' attempts to define "correct" beliefs and morality on their own terms.

Then there's also the element of practicality. At least in Palestine and Lebanon, a lot of the secular leftist anti-colonial movements have been hollowed out, smothered and/or discredited over the past several decades, leaving more religious groups like Hamas and Hezb Allah as really the only resistance-capable game in town.

Also also, there's a social element to it. Class differences can sometimes feel abstract, and religion, like race or narionality, offers a way to cut through that abstraction. A clear way of differentiating colonized in-group from colonizer out-group.

I'm back because liberal twitterati have been annoying me lately and I need to kvetch about it

Boss said I'm fired if I pop off on twitter again

Suddenly flashing back to that one dialogue where a human woman is desperately trying to get her mixed human/asari daughter out of a warzone and the galactic beuracrat she's speaking to initially won't do anything until the woman gives an emotional Sorkin speech that changes the beuracrat's mind.

Very interesting. Are there any works you'd recommend that talk more about this? Besides the one @Wertheimer recommended, that is.

Didn't Hellenistic era Greeks have their own internal ethnic chauvanism going on though? Like Ionians didn't like Dorians who didn't like Magnetes or whatever?

This 10-year-old girl ~~already owns 2 companies~~ is a tax patsy for her rich parents and could ~~retire~~ become a run-of-the-mill failchild at 15 as a multimillionaire

The Civ series is basically Whig History: The Game.

Who are the settlers in Palestine? The poor and dispossessed from Israel and from around the world.

Is this really the case though? I know there are some Israeli Haredi groups (with members living below the poverty line) that sponsor settlers, but I've also known some perfectly comfortable Americans that move out near Bethlehem.

Some of the settlements have pretty comfortable conditions even by U.S. standards, and even as nearby Palestinian neighborhoods still have to ration daily water.