May not like hearing it, but the argument is usually a backhanded slap against (radical?) Islam.
Consider if you give a religious exception to "widespread violation of human rights" at least as we'd describe human rights, or consider ethnic cleansing and purifying the faith as a feature not a bug. You pretty quickly start running out of reasons to consider the country a failed state, so I guess a lack of checked checkboxes means it must not be a member of the group.
The backhanded part is assuming Islamic country = Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia aka failed state. Carefully ignoring Muslim majority, or at least lots of Muslims, such as, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, UAE, France, UK, Indonesia, none of which are paradise on earth but then again not anywhere near societal collapse, at least not right now.
Maybe one way to phrase it is the vast majority of currently failed states are Islamic, but that doesn't necessarily prove anything because the vast majority of Islamic states (and/or states with lots of Muslims) are not currently failed states. Carefully ignoring the previous line is how to get in a backhanded slap against Islam.
In the case of Afghanistan, even if you were a Muslim, it would be pretty self-evident that Afghanistan is fucked.
(I certainly don't consider Kuwait, UAE, Qatar Oman, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, etc. to be failed; I'd say SA, Malaysia and Bahrain have some serious problems but are otherwise fine, etc. Pakistan is dangerously close to failed, and Sudan has some serious issues; Syria is pretty clearly over the line, along with Somalia and Afghanistan.)
Islam didn't have a whole lot to do with why Yemen is or has been a failed state, despite being Islamic. The rise in Islamic violence there is pretty recent; it was mainly a cold war thing combined with a country where everyone is a drug addict (khat).
Congo - not so Islamic. Or Angola during the Cold War. I'd argue that the cold war was a much bigger factor than Islam; Islam and Islamism only became an issue due to the cold war (where Muslim Brotherhood was somewhat Soviet allied in Egypt, and US/Pakistan/ISI funded the Taliban/Muj/etc. in Afghanistan due to the cold war. Before that, we had "Arab Nationalism" which was also co-opted by socialists/communists (mainly because the initial guys were themselves socialists, so it was pretty natural; same thing happened in India until the 1990s)
"Bad leadership" seems like an important factor in countries where neither the Cold War nor Islam were big factors (Haiti seems pretty close to failed...)
As Foreign Policy measures it, it seems like being in Africa is a bigger predictor than being Islamic, actually, too.
Consider if you give a religious exception to "widespread violation of human rights" at least as we'd describe human rights, or consider ethnic cleansing and purifying the faith as a feature not a bug. You pretty quickly start running out of reasons to consider the country a failed state, so I guess a lack of checked checkboxes means it must not be a member of the group.
The backhanded part is assuming Islamic country = Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia aka failed state. Carefully ignoring Muslim majority, or at least lots of Muslims, such as, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, UAE, France, UK, Indonesia, none of which are paradise on earth but then again not anywhere near societal collapse, at least not right now.
Maybe one way to phrase it is the vast majority of currently failed states are Islamic, but that doesn't necessarily prove anything because the vast majority of Islamic states (and/or states with lots of Muslims) are not currently failed states. Carefully ignoring the previous line is how to get in a backhanded slap against Islam.