The answers to such questions must ultimately reside both inside and outside the texts. Despite the interminable debates among both theologians and literary theorists, meaning lies somewhere between literalism and strict contextualisation.

In People Like Us: How arrogance is dividing Islam and the West, Waleed Aly examines some of the misreadings that prevail on both sides of the widening gulf between Muslims and the West. Aly, who lectures in politics at Monash University, does not shy away from self-criticism or from decrying bigotry and small-mindedness wherever he sees it, whether practised by Muslim clerics such as Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilali, or by political and Christian leaders such as Bronwyn Bishop or Fred Nile.

Aly wants to reclaim Islam from its association, for many in the West, with violence and primitivism. Such tenets are, he says, perversions of Islamic thought and practice; they are supported by a small minority of Muslims whose radical views often stem more from political turmoil than from engagement with Islamic tradition. And they are, incorrectly, perceived as endemic to Islam by some in the West who are too lazy or incurious to venture across cultural borders. Aly, however, insists that his critique of Islam comes from within. He does not want to cede ground to the arrogance of either side. He does not want Muslims to think he is an apologist, or non-Muslims to think that one must necessarily step outside the Muslim community to understand the faults of some of its members.

Aly insists that he should not be referred to as a moderate, a term which he finds objectionable on two grounds. First, it is used to patronisingly excuse the person’s religiosity; second, it frequently has political rather than religious overtones.

I cringe every time the ‘moderate’ label is applied to me … It implies, condescendingly, that it is socially acceptable to be a Muslim, as long as you are not too Muslim. But, my own sensitivities aside, the greater problem is that ‘moderate’ is an explicitly political term, and not a religious one … The fact remains that you are far more likely to be a moderate Muslim if you are not anti-American and if you support – or are muted in your opposition to – the war in Iraq or US support for Israel.

Aly says that Christians are generally not described as moderates because they are regarded as belonging to a religious entity, and that the use of the term to describe Muslims has transformed Islam from a ‘faith community’ into a political entity. The term ‘moderate’ necessarily manipulates the public perception of Muslims, for it implies that those Muslims who do not support violent jihad are exceptional and in need of their own descriptor.

In any case, the more useful term to apply to Aly’s brand of religious and political tolerance is liberalism, in the classical sense. Aly explains why relativism is not the opposite of fundamentalism, and why it is possible to believe in an absolute moral religious or political truth without believing that one has the monopoly on that truth: ‘One is not required to stand for nothing, but merely to recognise the presence of subjectivity in one’s own worldview, and to accept, therefore, the possibility of error.’ This sounds more like the pluralism of modern liberal philosophers such as John Stuart Mill or Isaiah Berlin than religious scripture or its interpretation.

Aly does not comment on liberalism, but he is intensely suspicious of secularism. He does not think the separation between church and state is a concept that applies to traditional Islam, which posits a hybrid government somewhere between theocracy and secular government. He sees Western secularism as an historical reaction to the authoritarian and corruption-ridden, church-run state, and thinks that Islamic states are more likely to make an opposite move from corrupt, secular rule to a government anchored in Islamic values. I am not sure that the secularist bent of democracies in states such as Indonesia and Bangladesh bears this out, or that the structural and doctrinal differences between Islam and Christianity would defeat most of the arguments in favour of secularism.

In some of the strongest parts of People Like Us, Aly, who spent several years on the board of the Islamic Council of Victoria, describes the mindset of disaffected Western Muslims. Muslim hostility to the West is not an inevitable by-product of Western colonialism, but a ‘psychological malaise’ based on humiliation, victimhood and a lack of self-confidence.

As Aly points out, many Muslim suicide bombers and radicals, including the ‘shoe bomber’ Richard Reid and the Jordanian-born former head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, have converted to fanaticism either from other religions or from irreligious pasts; many gave up former lives of crime or drug abuse. The conversion to radicalism, Aly says, frequently owes more to modern identity politics than to the demands of traditional piety. So, for instance, when Melbourne’s Sheikh Mohammed Omran says on Australian television that Muslims were not responsible for the 9/11 attacks, his delusion does not stem from his religious authority but from his ‘emotive confusion’: it is not his religion speaking, but his religious identity. He cannot confront the reality that Muslims are criminals because he is so determined to protect the dignity of his tribe. Yet, as Aly points out, unequivocal condemnations of terrorism by Western Muslim leaders would not display weakness, but strength.

Likewise, when Wassim Dourehi, a spokesman for the Muslim group Hizb ut-Tahrir, goes through an exhausting series of verbal contortions on ABC Radio in order to avoid repudiating an anti-Semitic rant on the group’s British website, this is seen by Aly as an example of wasted Muslim pride. ‘At least he didn’t kowtow,’ says Aly, sardonically, as he describes the characteristics of what he calls ‘humiliated arrogance’:

We would rather err on the side of aggression and pride than be apologetic. If that means we come across as equivocating on even the most obvious of moral judgments, then so be it. If that only leads to greater social tension and misunderstanding, then that is not our problem. At least we were not appeasing anyone.

As Muslim and non-Muslim elements of Western societies try to come to terms with the presence of homegrown Muslim radicals, they will have to understand the sources and causes of such troubled responses to problems of identity. Clearly, modern distortions of Islamic teachings prey on old-fashioned tribalism. Aly spends much time showing how the Islamic scriptures have been misread, though most of his readers, I suspect, would have realised this already.

Those who believe that violence is endemic to Islam are – like their deluded Muslim brethren – unlikely to benefit from returning to the text. They would be better served by trying to come to terms with their own forms of ‘emotional confusion’, a task that Aly’s book, if they read it, may help them to perform.