While the role of the West is important in understanding the rise of political Islam, it is equally necessary to look for "internal" factors, as more than external threats it has been the need to discipline and reform the internal "other" that has led to the growth and spread of fundamentalist and orthodox ideologies and practices. Practices at the margins of orthodox religion actually are more representative of the lived religious life of people, but have had no reigning ideology to defend and project them. This article calls for a cessation of efforts to reform, civilise, normalise and integrate heterodox ideas and practices into orthodox ones, whether religious or secular.
