Since the 9/11 attacks, Americans have come to believe that political Islam is a mortal threat to the West, a totalitarian ideology dedicated to destruction and global subjugation. Some Americans have called for an all-out war against it. Disentangling myth from reality about this movement, whose goal is to establish governments based on sharia, is an intellectual challenge fraught with difficulties.

Here are five facts to consider: First, the political Islamist movement is highly complex and diverse. It encompasses a broad spectrum of mainstream and militant forces. Mainstream Islamists represent an overwhelming majority of religiously oriented groups; they accept the rules of the political game, embrace democratic principles, and oppose violence. In the 1940s, 50s, and 60s the Muslim Brotherhood, the most powerfully organised of all Islamists with local branches in the Arab Middle East and Central and South and Southeast Asia, flirted with violence. But since the early 1970s Muslim Brothers have increasingly moved to the political mainstream, and aim to Islamise state and society through peaceful means.

Second, mainstream and enlightened Islamists are playing an active role in expanding political debate in Muslim societies. They have forced existing secular dictatorships such as those in Egypt to respond to their challenge to open up the closed political system and reform government institutions. Historic opponents of Western-style democracy, Islamists have become unwitting harbingers of democratic transformation. They formed alliances with their former sworn political opponents, including secularists and Marxists, in calling upon governments to respect human rights and the rule of law. Traditional Islamists are deeply patriarchal, seeing themselves as the guardians of faith, tradition, and authenticity. Nonetheless, many Islamists are gradually becoming initiated into the culture of political realism and the art of the possible. They are learning to make compromises with secular groups and rethink some of their absolutist positions.

Third, there is a tendency among Western observers to stress the “Islamic” factor in Muslim politics. Most Muslim governments are secular and hostile to political Islam and Islamists.

Fourth, mainstream Islamists may serve as a counterweight to ultramilitants like Al Qaeda. Immediately after September 11, leading mainstream Islamists — such as Hassan al-Turabi, formerly head of the Islamic National Front and now of People’s Congress in Sudan who, in the early 1990s, hosted Osama bin Laden — condemned September 11 attacks as harmful to Islam and Muslims, not just to Americans.

Lastly, like their secular counterparts, Islamists are deeply divided over tactics and strategy. They do not see eye to eye on the pressing issues facing their communities and societies. Lumping all Islamists together is not only simplistic

but also false. The depth and intensity of internal fault lines within the Islamist and jihadist movements are very real. — The Christian Science Monitor