During the postwar period, radical secular nationalism was the dominant political philosophy in colonized nations from Indonesia to Algeria. Several Orientalists, ignoring this reality (as we saw in the last chapter), asserted that people in Muslim countries—whom they viewed as being deeply entrenched in their religious beliefs—would reject political ideologies like nationalism and Communism. They were wrong.

XREF: Connects to Orientalist assumptions about religiously entrenched populations being misread — echoes Saïd's broader critique of Western misrepresentation of the East.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 310