Alex,
a) I love the term „snack thinker“. She may well be, but her narrative lends a credibility most people do not have. She’s paying a high price being who she is and as such is probably entitles to being over-the-top at times. And, of course, there’s the Dutch history of pillarisation, which radicalises this debate in my opinion.
b) I don’t think most of the people I mentioned in the email are non-Muslims. But even if, given that almost no secular religious research into Islam is being conducted in countries where it is the predominant or state religion, I don’t think dealing with Islam from this perspective is necessarily wrong. And, despite the fact that he was certainly read to often by the wrong people, Bernard Lewis does still make some important institutional points, in my understanding. If he had not, we would not see this kind of rage on the streets. All this is a complex, and mostly political, issue, much less religious. Still – even though life in the 16th century wasn’t exactly fun for a lot of people, it was the time when European societies were able to be taken to the streets and fields for principles handled solely by their principes in earlier times. If you don’t buy the argument made by some with respect to Germany, that it was “reformation†that later caused the spiritual inspection and took the political out of the public realm when collective action would have been needed to avert a political disaster, ie that reformation is, in some sense, opposed to true democratisation, then reformation is what is needed these days. It would mean the unquestioned individual and social acceptance of a modern version of “cuius regio, eius religio†, and make the Jihad of Dar al-Islam vs Dar-al-Harb a solely personal, and spiritual one, not a “geographical†or national fight. Of course, it looks once again like Europe will be this battlefield, which is even more reason to deal with Islam, and Islamic modernisation even if you’re not a Muslim.