Writing Challenge – What if WE were the third world country with religious extremists?

First off, I know that someone is going to be a smart Alec and say something along the lines of ‘we are, hurr, hurr, hurr.’ So, now we’ve got that out of the way, let’s look at the writing challenge

What if the UK was not the power it is now. What if religious dogma continued to dominate society, if our technology was years if not decades behind that of the East (our West)? What if we were the ones with the suicide bombers, terrorists (I point people to the first paragraph before they decide to be ‘witty’) and, what if we were the ones that had been invaded by a technologically superior, secular alliance of Middle Eastern countries?

What would England be like if every household bar the very rich was on a par with households in Afghanistan, for example? What challenges would the soldiers of the Middle Eastern peacekeeping forces face? What sort of society would England have if it hadn’t been able to move on? What was the reason that it never progressed? Is it still Catholic and was there a Reformation? Who would our leaders be? What role would women play in society? What would our towns look like, especially as I’m thinking that world war two never happened, so much of our older architecture would still remain, especially if the Victorian era had not seen the great leap forward that it did.

This is something that could be a very  hard challenge to write about indeed, as there would have to be rather a lot of world building. Get cracking eh?