By now we are all familiar with the simplistic, uncritical, but very common and widespread view – both East and West – of Islam as some kind of unique, ubiquitous, and almost omniscient and omnipotent determining and moving force for Muslims, dictating everything they do, including their economics, politics, daily life, goals, strategies, tactics, and much more.

We are all well aware, as well, of the no less simplistic and uncritical defense of and apology for Islam as a static ideal of eternally valid principles and system of beliefs – known as True Islam – that is so lofty, so high minded, so superior and so sublime that, first, it becomes a religion fit only for angels, saints, and walis, and not for ordinary human beings and, second, that it becomes necessarily the subject of constant distortion, corruption, misrepresentation and vilification by the actual human beings it is supposed to save, both Muslim and otherwise.

It should be evident that these two sublimated conceptions of Islam actually act to serve the vital interests of Mullahs, Sheikhs, Ayatollahs, and Muftis, i.e., of the clerico-political power structures and religious establishments in practically every country in the Middle East and beyond. This is why these establishments guard, propagate, and manipulate these two conceptions of Islam so vigorously and so jealously. We know also that in the West these two same conceptions: