7. The future of Islam is heading towards democracy.

If we are speaking about political issues, I would like to remind you, that at the end of the 20th century jihadis had to learn the hard way of being defeated in a whole range of countries like Egypt, Algeria, Bosnia. Violence became a dead-end for the Islamists. It did not lead to power, and it terrified the middle classes. The only possible way out was seen as working within the rules of democracy, making the appropriate compromises and heading towards such values as democracy, liberalism, “modernity” in general, to which many Muslims themselves say they aspire.

7. Islam and democracy are incompatible.

The problem is that democracy is based on the idea that men make laws. Islam contains, in the Koran, a set of God-given laws, dictated directly to Muhammad and therefore not open to revision. That is obviously a formidable complication, which gives a lot of power to anyone who can claim some special authority to “properly understand and provide interpretation”. This opens the way for men to make plenty of rules for themselves.

8. Militant Islam rises from issues of identity rather than any other problems.

Whatever the doctrines say, violence is the last resort. I believe that militant Islam stems from despair when all the Gods and hopes have failed. But this has nothing to do with actual religion and has a closer link to perception of the world.

8. Globalization leads to insecurity in developing countries that further breeds fundamentalism, fear, and ultimately terrorism and violence.

Even if you are right, where does that perception come from? Obviously, it is formed by the circumstances of the globalized and interconnected world we live in. For example, globalization has become the cause for increased communalization of politics in India, as well as heightened tensions be­tween India and Pakistan. Even Gujarat, the land of Gandhi, now most integrated into the global economy, has been transformed into a hotbed of violence. Globalization leads to insecurity in developing countries that further breeds fundamentalism, fear, and ultimately terrorism and violence.

9. Militant Islam’s source is in poverty, not religion.

Many secular Muslims themselves stress that as long as there is poverty, inequality, injustice, and repressive political systems, fundamentalist tendencies will grow in the world. The moment a person is in a good economic position, has a job, and can support his family, all other problems vanish.

9. Open markets translate into terrorism.

I guess you are speaking about globalization again as well as open markets and economy. The thing is, not only does market “openness” for global corporations cannot translate into openness for domestic economies, the destruction of jobs, livelihoods and economic insecurity creates inflammable societies that become vulnerable to terrorism and fundamentalism. Terrorism is a child of exclusion and insecurity. Both are unavoidable outcomes of globalization. I hope you do see what I mean.

To pretend that Islam has nothing to do with the terrorist attacks in the last decade is to willfully ignore the obvious and to forever misinterpret events. Muslim terrorism has its roots in the Koran and other Islamic writings. The Koran is filled with exhortations to fight and kill infidels. The problem for those who want to believe that Islam has nothing to do with Islamic terrorism is not only that the terrorists themselves say otherwise. It is also the existence of a whole body of theory that is called upon to justify this activity, and which has zealous adherents. Admittedly, much of this theory is modern, as political as it is religious, with origins in the late 20th century. It is described variously as “fundamentalism”, “Islamism” or “political Islam”. But some of it also has, or claims to have, connections with some of the fundamental ideas and practices of the religion itself.