Egypt’s Fundamentalist Summer:
“Once the discussion turns to religion and the [religious] text, it’s a discussion that the Salafis are well-positioned to win. So that’s the danger—that even though Salafis don’t represent many Egyptians, they have a disproportionate effect because of their ability to frame the contours of the debate,” Hamid added. Their influence is especially likely to be felt on issues such as women’s rights and laws governing the sale and consumption of alcohol. “People are going to be afraid of being called bad Muslims.”
Aside from a tiny minority of religious liberals the “problem” from a non-Muslim perspective seems to be that the “moderate Muslims” just don’t feel as “authentic” as weirdos like the Salafists. They’ve given up the game before it even started. This is where full-throated anti-religious intellectuals can play a role, calling “bullshit” on the bizarre assertions of the pious and righteous religious extremists. But it doesn’t seem that this group exists in public in much of the Islamic world. I have seen in my personal life normal Muslims repeatedly cede ground to neo-medieval freaks. It seems that they actually believe that their religion in the ideal is represented accurately by the fantasies of religious “conservatives” of what 7th century Arabia was like.