Islamic Scripture Is Not the Problem
As with the Protestant Reformation, there is a conservative reform movement in Islam today that competes with the liberal reformers. Foremost among the conservatives are the ultraconservative Salafists—Islam’s Puritans. They want to scrape off all the foreign accretions, such as Greek philosophy, that have attached themselves to Islam over the centuries and go back to a supposedly pure version of the faith. One big reason the conservative reformers have won the day so far is that some governments, especially the wealthy states of the Persian Gulf, have sponsored the ultraconservatives. Because rich Muslim governments have put their thumbs on the conservative side of the scale, Hirsi Ali wants the United States and other Western countries to do the same on the liberal side.
.. Still, imagine the U.S. government managed to navigate a thicket of laws and find its Muslim Martin Luther. His or her cause is going to suffer greatly in the arena of Muslim public opinion if it is revealed that the wildly unpopular United States is bankrolling it—a secret that will not last long in the era of WikiLeaks.
.. Westerners often fail to understand how all this blithe government meddling in other people’s religions comes off or why it’s so flawed, so it’s helpful to conduct the following thought experiment. Suppose Saudi Arabia felt threatened by evangelical Christianity because of its anti-Islamic tone, its influence over Republican politicians, and its pro-Israel slant. Rather than promote more positive images of Islam, ingratiate themselves with Republican politicians, and compete with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Saudis decide to fund evangelicals who are working to reform Christianity in ways that fit the Saudis’ agenda. Because that agenda goes against the grain of contemporary evangelical culture, the Saudis will probably not find a reformer who is popular among evangelicals. And because most Saudis don’t know a thing about American evangelical culture, they will have a tough time figuring out who can get the job done. Still, Saudi Arabia has plenty of money, so they assume it’s just a matter of spending enough on books, events, television shows, and so forth. Would they succeed?
..Al Qaeda hasn’t polled well ever since it started killing its coreligionists—in Jordan, after the head of al Qaeda’s branch in Iraq ordered the bombing of hotels in Amman, support for the group fell, from 56 percent in 2003 to 11 percent in 2011—and the Islamic State is even less popular.