“Why don’t moderate Muslims demonstrate against Islamists?”

People in the West often ask, “Why don’t moderate Muslims march in huge numbers against Islamists?”

But this misunderstands how political mobilization usually works.

Supporters of free markets in relatively capitalist countries almost never hold giant pro-free-market demonstrations. Why? Because they’re broadly living inside the status quo they already prefer. They are not dissidents trying to overturn the system. They’re mostly ordinary people quietly living their lives inside an equilibrium they find acceptable.

And similarly, many Muslims living in relatively secular societies — whether in Muslim-majority countries or in the West — are already living in the kind of society they broadly want: economically functional, relatively free, socially normal, and not ruled by Islamists or clerics. They are not generally revolutionary factions seeking to overthrow the social order. The Islamists are.

Iran actually helps illustrate the rule perfectly. In Iran, the status quo is Islamist rule. And as a result, you do see large anti-Islamist mobilization — including from former Muslims, secular Iranians, and many Muslims who reject theocracy and clerical domination. The demonstrations emerge precisely because many Iranians feel trapped inside a system they fundamentally do not want.

So the absence of constant anti-Islamist demonstrations elsewhere is not necessarily evidence of sympathy for Islamism. Often it simply means that people who are broadly satisfied with their society rarely behave like revolutionaries.

Revolutionary movements are loud. Content populations are usually quiet.