IN BOTH internal and external affairs, every Western democracy is facing tricky questions over Islam. In this delicate area, domestic and foreign-policy questions can never be completely separated, given that nations in Islam’s heartland have an interest in the welfare and orientation, both political and spiritual, of their co-religionists in the West.

And here is a paradox. In the United States and Britain, governments which hew to the political right have shown a spirit of pragmatism in their dealings with the world’s second-largest religion. In France, meanwhile, an administration led by Emmanuel Macron, a radical centrist, sounds a note of ideological zeal as it pledges to refashion Islam and make it fully compatible with the ethos of a secular republic.

In both Britain and America, a touchstone issue has been how to categorise the global Muslim Brotherhood, a loosely articulated movement whose ostensible aim is to promote Islamic forms of governance while making vigorous use of democratic institutions wherever they exist. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in particular, have put strong pressure on their English-speaking friends to proscribe the Brotherhood and hence join the diplomatic front against Qatar which is perceived as the Brotherhood’s best friend in the Gulf region.

Britain’s ruling Conservatives appeared a couple of years ago to be taking steps in that direction, but then they stepped back. A government inquiry into the Brotherhood, published in part in December 2015, concluded that although the Brotherhood was a different phenomenon from out-and-out terror groups like al-Qaeda, it could sometimes serve as a gateway to violence, and its claim to be a useful bulwark against terrorism should be treated sceptically. A year later a British parliamentary committee concluded that the first study had been too sweeping in its condemnation of the Brotherhood; and the government, in its response to that panel, seemed to concede that the critics might have a fair point. For example, the government acknowledged that the parliamentarians were right in their assertion that “the vast majority of political Islamists are not engaged in violence.”

In Washington, DC, meanwhile, the Trump administration now includes several prominent figures with a track record of demanding that the Muslim Brotherhood be designated a terrorist group. Both Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, and John Bolton, the national security adviser, have taken a more hawkish line on that issue than did their immediate predecessors. In May a vociferously Islamo-sceptical figure, Fred Fleitz, was named as chief of staff of the National Security Council. But the terror designation, which could well lead to the banning or even prosecution of American Muslim groups which are perceived as close to the Brotherhood, has not actually happened. One close observer of America’s Islam policy concludes that the “pause button” has been pressed, although nothing has been ruled out.

Compare all that with the seemingly undiminished determination of Mr Macron to reshape Islam in France so as weaken or sever its ties with other countries, and to reorganise the religion in a way that would be completely compatible with French republican ideals. The President’s line is that by “domesticating” the faith, a much happier relationship can be created between Muslim and non-Muslim citizens of France. “France has no reason to have difficulty with Islam,” he insisted in July, while reaffirming his determination to reform the administration of Islam in France by the end of year.

One of the president’s key advisers in this area is a person who straddles several cultural worlds: a former investment banker of partly Muslim heritage called Hakim El-Karoui who last month produced the latest of several reports on the phenomenon of political Islam, and on various other forms of Islamic zealotry, as they operate both around the world and in France. His analysis of the French Islamic scene is both pessimistic and optimistic. He deplores the disproportionate influence of Islamism (broadly, the idea of using the religion as an instrument of political power) and also of back-to-basics Salafist theology. But he is equally adamant that most French citizens of Muslim heritage eschew both these ideologies, and he implies the state should intervene to assert the interests of this relatively silent majority. As a way of generating money to finance Islamic worship and education within France, he has mooted the idea of a tax on halal foods.

Jonathan Laurence, a Boston College professor who has monitored Islam in Europe for many years, believes the Macron administration is still wavering between the president’s declared commitment to an “independent” French Islam and the benefits of ad hoc co-operation with countries that send migrants to France, such as Morocco. In the professor’s view, efforts to formulate a coherent policy towards Islam suffered a setback with the recent resignation as interior minister of Gérard Collomb, a hard-headed figure “who did not deny the reality of French Muslims' ties with religious authorities in their ancestral homelands.” As Mr Laurence notes, both Mr Macron and Mr El-Karoui insist that these ties to the homeland should be terminated, but they have yet to come up with a fully convincing alternative.

Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington, DC, says Mr Macron’s declared aim of refashioning French Islam suggests a deep intervention in the affairs of a religion which would be inconceivable in the United States for constitutional reasons. Mr Hamid believes that Mr El-Karoui deserves credit for making a nuanced analysis of the Islamist phenomenon; but such sophistication was probably rare in elite circles in Paris, and hence there was good reason to fear that any top-down state intervention in French Islam would be a heavy-handed affair.

In the end, certain problems are bound to arise every time a more-or-less secular state finds itself dealing with a religion that is practised by millions of people with widely varying degrees of zeal, and in many different forms. If the secular government finds itself tilting in favour of certain schools of theology or historical interpretation, on the basis that they are “safe” and easy to live with, then in a sense the state has already ceased to be secular. Most modern states (including loosely theocratic ones like England) feel very uncomfortable when delving into religious affairs. But the cohesion and safety of society as a whole requires them to do so. That is a problem both for Anglo-Saxon pragmatists and continental ideologues alike.