For decades, and especially since the Iranian revolution, there has been a tremendous battle for the soul of Islam among adherents of that religion holding very differing views. Radicals raised new interpretations that they claimed to be in accord with true Islam as it was originally meant to be. In fact, though, their worldview – which was at odds with how Muslims had practiced and thought about their faith for a thousand years – constituted an attempt to transform that religion. While the Islamists face an uphill battle – and arc more likely to make trouble than they are to make successful revolutions – they certainly have a better chance to succeed in revising Islam than do the far weaker liberal Islamic forces.

Many Arab governments hoped, however, to use the movement for their own purposes, channeling its anger against others. The regimes and their media told the West that the Islamists were not against “us” because of our mismanagement, incompetence, corruption, and repression, but against “you” because of your foreign policy. The regimes wanted to transform the Islamists from being a revolutionary movement to being an effective lobbying tool vis-á-vis the West. Moreover, a radical Islamist movement that put the emphasis on hating the West and Israel was much more useful for Arab regimes than a revolutionary Islamist movement that was firing machine-gun bullets at its officials. The solution, then, was not to change the system or quality of government in the Arab world, but for the West to give the rulers more respect, money, and concessions.