https://x.com/DanBurmawy/status/2008550652759207939?s=20
When I first came to the U.S. to finish school, a professor told us to take an exam at home and simply said, “Don’t use Google or open your books.”
As someone who grew up in the Middle East, I couldn’t believe it. What kind of society trusts people like that?
But over time, I began to understand what I was witnessing. This wasn’t naivety. This was a high-trust society, something so rare in the world that most people born outside the West have never even seen it.
After the Catholic Church banned cousin marriage, people in the West started marrying outside the family. That forced individuals to move out, build broader social networks, and rely on strangers for daily life.
Trust wasn’t just a virtue, it became a survival mechanism. You couldn’t build a working society unless you believed, at some basic level, that others would do the right thing.
That trust was reinforced by Judeo-Christian values. Add to that the stability of wealth, people didn’t need to cheat or steal to get by. So trust flourished.
That’s why in the West, you can check out at a grocery store with no cashier. That’s why the government lets you self-report your taxes. That’s why a professor can hand you an exam and trust that you’ll take it honestly.
Because here, truth is assumed, until proven otherwise.
But Westerners, sadly, think the rest of the world works this way. It doesn’t, and especially not Islamic societies.
Islamic cultures are low-trust by design, the result of centuries of tribalism, aggressive theological systems, and economic instability.
Islam doesn’t nurture trust. It nurtures surveillance, control, and suspicion.
In many Muslim-majority societies, you’re not even trusted to be alone in a room with your cousin or sister-in-law, because the assumption is you can’t be trusted.
Allah doesn’t trust you. That’s why every move you make must be regulated.
In those societies, deception isn’t condemned, it’s excused, even celebrated, especially when used against non-Muslims.
Lying is seen as a tool for survival and advantage. That’s the mindset many immigrants bring with them.
When they arrive in high-trust Western nations, they don’t see a system to protect, they see a system to exploit.
They take advantage of your honesty, your openness, your kindness. They know your society was built on the idea that love believes all things, and they weaponize that belief against you.
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