Jordan Peterson’s Attack on Islam Is Not Just Wrong, It’s Intellectually Embarrassing

Jordan Peterson, a man whose rise to prominence has been built on the appearance of rigor and the cadence of conviction, recently offered a critique of Muslim-majority countries that is as shallow as it is smug.

Speaking with his trademark rhetorical squint, he said on Piers Morgan’s show a couple of months ago:

“40 out of 50 Muslim majority countries in the world are authoritarian hell holes, and only three of them are democracies, and that’s Morocco, Indonesia, and Turkey. And you know, they’re not, uh, I wouldn’t put them in the highest echelons of Stellar States. And so, why is that exactly? Is that a deviation from Islamic principles, or is it a consequence of them?”

This is a lazy generalization masquerading as cultural analysis. Peterson casually writes off most Muslim-majority nations as if they’re a monolith. He gestures toward “three democracies” while ignoring the wildly different histories, political systems, economies, and cultural contexts of each.

This is not a critique. It’s a shallow drive-by cloaked in academic language. Imagine someone saying, “Most Christian countries in Latin America suffer from corruption and poverty. Is that a deviation from Christianity or a consequence of it?” It would be rightly dismissed as sloppy thinking. Replace “Christianity” with “Islam,” and Peterson expects applause.

Peterson also seems to be suffering from colonial amnesia and refuses to consider the legacy of colonialism and foreign interference in shaping many of these countries. European empires drew the borders of much of the modern Middle East. Authoritarian regimes were armed, funded, and trained by Western governments for decades.

To blame Islam for the authoritarianism of regimes that were engineered and supported by Western powers is like blaming a building’s architecture for its collapse when you were the one who planted the explosives.

Even his numbers are off when Peterson claims there are only “three” Muslim-majority democracies. Now that I would care as a practicing Muslim,[1] it should be said that countries like Tunisia, Senegal, Albania, Malaysia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bangladesh all hold regular, contested elections. Are these perfect liberal democracies? No. However, neither is the United States, which has its own democratic rot hiding in plain sight.

The U.S. political system is profoundly shaped by lobbyists, corporate donors, and PACs (political action committees). Legislation often reflects the will of the wealthiest backers, not the public. This isn’t a conspiracy; it’s well-documented political science. Princeton researchers have even found that ordinary citizens have near-zero influence on policy outcomes.[2]

Add to this gerrymandering, voter suppression, two-party monopoly, and a Senate that overrepresents rural white voters, and the claim that the U.S. is a “stellar democracy” becomes harder to maintain with a straight face.

Does the presence of authoritarianism in some parts of the Muslim world really make it unique when Latin America is rife with political instability, Sub-Saharan Africa grapples with military coups and warlords, and even Eastern Europe is seeing democratic backsliding? Do we forget that even “stellar democracies” like India, Israel, and the United States are struggling with rising authoritarian tendencies, ethnic and religious oppression, media suppression, and democratic erosion? Let’s not even get started with the actual genocidal crimes some of them are guilty of.

Peterson also can’t help but romanticize Christianity while ignoring its “authoritarian” past. Peterson often speaks of the West as if it inherited its democratic values directly from the Bible. This is not just inaccurate. It’s historically absurd. Democracy in the West emerged not from clerical rule but from long struggles against it. The Enlightenment, secularism, and revolutions in America and France were all rebellions against religious and monarchic tyranny, not products of it.

Christian Europe was home to inquisitions, witch hunts, crusades, and colonial genocide for centuries. By Peterson’s logic, should we ask if those were a deviation from Christian principles or a consequence of them?

Peterson’s line, “Is that a deviation from Islam or a consequence of it?” is not a question. It is a trap. Either Islam is bad in theory, or Muslims are bad in practice. There is no room in his framing for history, nuance, or even basic decency. This rhetorical strategy is cheap. It lets him sound provocative without being accountable for any conclusions. If you apply this kind of framing to any other group, it reveals itself as thinly veiled bigotry.

Peterson also forgets that the Islamic world led the globe in science, philosophy, medicine, and art for centuries. Baghdad, Cordoba, Cairo, and Damascus were global centers of learning, while Christian Europe was gripped by superstition and bloodletting.

How does one explain this? If Islam inherently produces tyranny, how did it once foster a civilization so advanced that its knowledge was translated into Latin and used to spark the European Renaissance? Historical memory matters. And Peterson’s is either broken or highly selective.

Many of the authoritarian regimes Peterson criticizes are long-standing allies of the very Western nations he praises. They receive arms, training, and diplomatic cover from the United States and Europe. Peterson never asks why so many of these regimes continue to enjoy Western support. It’s easier to blame the religion of the people suffering under them than to confront the geopolitical realities behind their persistence.

Peterson presents himself as a defender of order and tradition. But he means a specific kind of order, his own. The traditions he values must look, sound, and pray like his. The rest, to him, are either defective or dangerous.

His statement wasn’t a philosophical inquiry. It was a cultural power play. It wasn’t a question. It was a warning shot. This isn’t about democracy. It’s about cultural superiority.

Peterson’s remark is not a revelation. It is a regression. It recycles tired orientalist tropes. His analysis has no intellectual courage, only rhetorical sleight of hand. He ignores history, manipulates facts, and erases complexity. He does not challenge power. He comforts it. The real tragedy is not that such a statement was made but that so many still mistake it for wisdom.

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[1] See: Islamic Shura, Democracy, and Epistocracy (substack.com)

[2] See: Inequality and Democratic Responsiveness: Who Gets What They Want from Government?