https://www.the-american-interest.com/2007/05/01/what-do-muslims-think/
The American Interest
Unprecedented intellectual ferment in the Muslim world is likely to have a happier ending than many Westerners suppose.
What do Muslims think? Do most Muslims reject the radical fundamentalist interpretation of their faith peddled by Osama bin Laden and his associates, or do they increasingly embrace it? As simple and even empirical as the question is, Western observers do not agree on the answer. Several efforts by Western polling organizations to answer this and related questions have clarified little and raised serious arguments over the reliability of their methodologies.
Most do agree, however, that the question is important, for the answer ought to tell us how to fashion the political aspects of the global War on Terror—the struggle for “hearts and minds”, as it is commonly and more softly called. If most of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims oppose radical views, then U.S. (and Western) policy could usefully help organize, mobilize and in other ways support majority moderate Muslim views against minority radical ones. There would be a robust future for public diplomacy and little worry about a clash of civilizations. The short-term risks of destabilizing authoritarian Arab allies in an effort to open up political spaces within their borders, too, could be borne confidently. On the other hand, to the extent that Muslim societies have become radicalized in recent years and if still further radicalization is to be expected, then public diplomacy will not be able to accomplish much, a civilizational clash looms, and cooperation with less-than-democratic regional allies becomes a more attractive tactic.