In light of the recently accelerated rise of ISIS and Islamic fundamentalism, I was wondering how that part of the world (and the broader Muslim community) was different when the Soviet Union was still a super power. Were there more or less instances of religiously-motivated terror attacks? Did Muslims and citizens in Arab countries have preferences toward the US or USSR? How did the collapse affect the trajectory of history?
(thanks historians -- your services are invaluable to our democracy)
It depends on which country you look at. Following the establishment of Israel as a state, in 1948, the U.S. lent its support to them. Jordan, Syria, and Egypt all 'banded together' (and I use that phrase loosely) against the 'Zionist Regime'. The PLO wasn't as much of a factor until the 60's. While there may have been sporadic cases of terrorism here and there, most quarrels were solved with the use of conventional war.
The USSR, of course, was interested to see US influence in the region decline, and had therefore stationed KGB listening posts near Israeli borders. They often times lent their intelligence to Egypt, and even incited conflict when they once proclaimed the Israel was preparing to strike against Egypt. However, the US still supported Nasser and Egypt and was often times the middle-man between Egypt and Israel, and has several times arranged meetings in which peace could be discussed.
Another interesting viewpoint is in regards to oil. OPEC was created in 1960. Their embargo to the US for the Americans involvement during the Yom Kippur War (in which they supplied arms to Israel) certainly sent anti-American vibes that reverberated throughout much of the middle east. Arms imports from the USSR increased, and as such, long standing import-deals between Syria and Russia flourished.
There is a really great PBS documentary on YouTube that covers much of the conflict and tensions from the late 40's to present day in the Israeli region.
The conservative Muslims were really opposed to "godless communism" and so tended to view the U.S. as the lesser evil. This is actually partly how Saudi Arabia became such a strong U.S. ally.
Gamal Abdel Nasser, leader of Egypt during the Suez Crisis and a secular Arab nationalist, cleverly played the U.S. and U.S.S.R. against each other before ultimately siding with the Soviets. Thus, the lines were drawn between the conservative Muslim regimes (supported by the U.S.) and Arab nationalist regimes (supported by the U.S.S.R.).
There was also Israel. The Israeli-Arab conflict was then partly a Cold War proxy conflict, with the U.S. supporting Israel and the U.S.S.R. supporting the Arabs.
But Arab nationalism died in the 1970s and Muslim conservatism was triumphant. In the late 1970s, Iran's conservative, pro-U.S. government was overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini, a hardcore Islamist opposed to both the United States and the Soviet Union. This is really when the U.S. first began to regard Islamic extremists as a threat and Iran became a U.S. enemy despite wholly lacking any ties to the Soviets. In fact, when Iran and Iraq went to war in the 1980s, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. both supported Iraq (except for those people involved with Iran-Contra, of course).
However, the U.S. was still happy to support Muslim conservatives fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan and... that pretty much brings us to the end of the Cold War. Basically, it was a standard Cold War battlefield up until Ayatollah Khomeini introduced Islamic extremism and it supplanted communism as America's big enemy in the region. For their part, the Soviets tended to conflate Islamic extremism with western capitalism due to its conservative, anti-communist stance.