The American Interest had a blog post today, responding to a Christianity Today article discussing an evangelical Christian congregation in Germany that has welcomed and converted hundreds of Muslim migrants.  Writing about how the conversions indicate not a vote for Christianity, but a vote against the crises in the Middle East today:

That points to a danger for Islam: The pressures of intellectual and social modernization colliding with sectarian radicalism—and all in a region characterized by repeated economic and political failures—can create a civilizational crisis of confidence. Some respond by radical fundamentalism, trying to drown out the disturbing and critical voices in their own heads. Others say nothing but quietly distance themselves from the ideologies and practices of a world they see as failing. Some struggle to develop a concept of their faith that is resilient and open enough to coexist with modernity. And still others look for alternatives in other belief systems, religious and non-religious.

The American Interest is describing a particular phenomenon that has been in evidence in the Islamic world since the modern era. Clifford Geertz, described the phenomenon in Islam Observed.  He describes a social psychological condition where modernity brought a lack of certainty in religious truth. You have the average believer sandwiched between secularism and scripturalists who are taking a leap back to construct a more pure form of religion.

Geertz discussed a particular difference between the “scripturalist interlude” in the West and the one in Islam. In the West, it was the Protestant Reformation, which reached back to the scriptures and laid the foundation for the radical transformation of society, priming society for modernity. In the Islamic world, the great leap back in order to make the great leap forward got stuck in the leap back.

What happened is an ideologization of religion as the response to modernity, rather than the leap forward to modernity. Combine a fundamentalist theology with a totalitarian political institutions to enforce an idealized seventh century life style and you get Daesh.  It is natural for Muslims, caught between the scripturalists and secularists to seek out alternative forms of belief, when they reach a more permissive culture.