That was not just the West's portrait, but Da'esh' own self-portrait as well. They focused their own recruiting on extremist madmen who were single-mindedly committed to their violent interpretation of Islam - hardly an exercise in peaceful state-building.
Partly because of this conflation the whole narrative (heavily sponsored by oil money of course) have kept blind Western elites for very long time, especially in Europe, where they only start to understand that worship places with heavy foreign aid inflow are not necessarily harmless community centers, and "religious liberties" must have strict bounds to be classified as so.
Wahhabist is not really actually something anyone would refer to themselves as. It seems to refer to really any Muslim group that has some links to Saudi Arabia which is a key player in the geopolitical arena of the Middle East.
Salafi is really anyone that would like to emulate the companions of the Prophet Muhammad and the immediate generation thereafter, Salaf meaning ancestors. This actually would have no more outward political ramifications than what has already been in Islam from the beginning, Islam is meant to encompass governance whether one would agree with that or not, it's part of the religion. Salafi would nearly exclusively refer to the Quran and Hadiths as their source.
I have seen the term thrown around as a label for individuals that have done terrible things but by all accounts were not even remotely close adherents to salafi like doctrine. It's not a political group it's more of a doctrine.
Not every religion is a religion, that is.
My understanding is that Da'esh governance (and recruitment, to some extent) was not dissimilar to early Nazi governance. Yes, they managed their state, but within an ideology based on an imaginary past, on permanent internal violence against real and imaginary enemies of the state, total war against foreign inferiors, and of course genocide (against Yezedi in the case of Daesh).
To add to the parallel, the economy of both states were also, to a large extent, based on plunder, and both nations were born from the ashes of scars of the partial destruction of their country at the hands of foreign powers and a revenge fantasy against said powers and the imaginary conspiracy that caused the fall.
There are also many differences, of course. But my take on it is that there are enough similarities that the world (including myself) not seeing it coming is a failure. Also, yeah, both nazis and da'esh had a mostly working state, but at what cost?
I'm not talking about rallying people to cause but rather ensuring municipal activity is happening regularly and that one is generating enough revenue to sustain these activities. Arguably Nazi Germany never really had the latter though, and instead needed to borrow heavily and go to war.
These points seemed that gone over the heads of most here who defaulted to the "oh look, bogeymen that we are all so superior to"
So, funny joke, but we'd be better off inviting them to the UN and sternly demanding that they codify their random executions into some form of law that they follow consistently.
Do you have a citation for this?
You can act afraid of Mexico or just go there and have a good time and notice the difference. The only bad parts of Mexico is where the recognized government and the local cartel haven't ceded power and are in conflict.
They both like a booming economy and market confidence, just a different strongman to pay from a user experience perspective.
Negotiations can break down very quickly
That kind of crime can be very difficult to deal with. Prosecution, enforcement, all of it is very expensive. Damages to the victim can be severe or minor.
Best defense is to avoid being a victim and or having options should it happen anyway, and or limiting your personal risk exposure.
As another said, remedies are not robust and that is true for many governments / parts of the world.
Scams, and other petty crime work in similar ways.
Maybe the best overall approach is to run the nation well enough to make the risk / reward equation less favorable by reducing the value of the reward. Another option is education delivered in immediate, can't miss it fashion.
Happy, healthy people tend to not need these crimes, and they will happen less. Educated travelers tend to present unfavorable risk / reward scenarios.
As a potential target, your best defense is to also make that risk reward equation less favorable by both increasing risk perception and marginalizing the perception of there being a reward in like kind.
Similar dynamics apply right here in the USA as anyone living in the wrong part of town can tell you.
Just for general interest, my spouse and I got to put all that to work after buying our first home. After experiencing a little of that kind of crime, we lit the place up, got a dog, and began to approach the neighbors.
Some were moving, and other starter families like us moved in.
It took about a year. Everyone cleaning up, lighting up, dogs, other basics, and lots of positive activity on the streets.
Prior to all of us doing that work, minor property and person crime, as well as the occasional shooting nearby were the norms.
Police would respond, take reports and basically could offer nothing but the promise of more frequent patrols. I am not sure that had any impact.
After talking with a friend who does security for a living, we gained insight:
Simply not being a desirable target is by far and away the most effective thing one can do.
Risk / reward thinking is very highly effective! We noticed posotive impact after only a month or two and after a sustained time, it was a different neighborhood. One where kids could play in the street, go from home to home, etc... it also was one where people did not need locking gas caps and lug nuts too.
We enjoyed roughly a decade.
As people moved, it began to break down. The big change was working on jeeps guy right across the street. Unwilling to participate, the area saw more crime return. Just did not take long.
We left, and two years later it was the same warzone we had changed for a decade.
In the case of pick pockets, you being a stranger, doing your best to not look like a mark, not act like one, and blending in, not flashy all add right up.
To the pick pocket, you become elevated into undesirable and will be fine. They want lower risk, easy marks that offer solid to great rewards.
They can be in, do it, and out and may not even be identified before anyone can really understand what has happened and convince authorities to respond.
Some regions post info on this for travellers unaware and who may act on the info to better their chances.
We do it in airports with the often heard, "it is illegal for others to offer you a ride" notices we hear after air travel arrivals, for example.
We do that because poisoning the waters, so to speak, is effective in ways policing cannot easily be.
Heck, a cartel interested in tourism may well do the same thing any local government would with similar outcomes and maybe a bit more harsh penalty for regular offenders.
None of that is a remedy for you directly, but it all can make the equation less favorable, which does help you, and can be considerable help given indirectly.
The rest is on you, hopefully savvy traveler.
Source: regular attendance when the bell at the fine school of hard knocks rang, graduated with honors eventually.
But it is not.
I do not tell them they failed to do enough for me.