Most Islamists—people who, in his words, “believe Islam or Islamic law should play a central role in political life”—are not terrorists. But the meaning they find in religion, Hamid said, helps explain their vision of governance, and it’s one that can seem incomprehensible to people who live in liberal democracies.

I spoke with Hamid recently about Islamism, ISIS, and the “patronizing” assumptions Americans sometimes make about Islam. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Emma Green: What’s been the reaction to the book, on both the left and the right?

Shadi Hamid: There are things in the book that may anger the left, and there are things in the book that may anger the right. But that’s also what I’m trying to do: challenge some of the dogmas on both sides of this debate. I want to push people to rethink their assumptions on Islam and its role in politics, and how we even view religion as a social force in general.

I am arguing that Islam is exceptional. I think there’s a general discomfort among American liberals about the idea that people don’t ultimately want the same things, that there isn’t this linear trajectory that all peoples and cultures follow: Reformation, then Enlightenment, then secularization, then liberal democracy.

Where I would very much part ways with those on the far right who are skeptical about Islam is that I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing for Islam to play an outsized role in public life.

Green: Are you endorsing the incorporation of theology into governments of predominantly Muslim nations?

Hamid: For me, the question of whether it’s good or bad is beside the point, and that’s not the question I’m trying to answer. Clearly, some people think it’s good. Certainly in the Middle East there are millions of people who think it’s good. There are many of us here in the U.S. who are skeptical, but ultimately I think it’s up to the people of the region to decide what’s best for themselves through a democratic process that would play out over time.

I see very little reason to think secularism is going to win out in the war of ideas. But the question is: Why would it in the first place? Why would that even be our starting presumption as American observers? It’s presumptuous and patronizing to think a different religion is going to follow the same basic trajectory as Christianity.

Green: How monolithic is “the Islamic world”? Can you make generalizations about Indonesia that extend to the Middle East, etc.?

Hamid: Different countries are very different in how they interpret Islam or Islamic law and how they apply those ideas in everyday public life.

Malaysia and Indonesia are very interesting cases. People don’t pay a lot of attention to them because they’re not very central to U.S. national-security interests. But the more I looked at those cases, the more I was fascinated. Those two countries are often described as models of pluralism, tolerance, and relative democracy. But there are actually more sharia bylaws on the local level in those two countries than you see in much of the Arab world, including Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, and certainly Turkey, in the broader region.