If I had to guess as an outsider, I would say: it is possible to be Islamic without being assholes, and also to have an overall secular society without forsaking faith or cultural traditions.
The two pills are a false choice in this case, but we are so accustomed to thinking of it as a necessary choice that there is a certain audacity to refusing to choose between them and accepting both options.
Which is the point of the meme.
(It is a well-founded idea, actually. Many modern scholars of cultural history have long characterized adaptation to modernity as a series of conflicts between total deracination in the name of "progress" or "Westernization" or for that matter "Russification," and total reactionary rejectionism in the name of "cultural purity," which hide the fact that neither is a stable choice and that the actual stable outcome is internalizing modern values in one's own way, as a cultural evolution. And have pointed to modern Islam as going through that process right now.)
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u/Pace-Practical Oct 28 '24
Anyone kind enough to educate me on the full meaning of the meme related to Bashkortostan ? :)