I really don't think that most do: they really believe that ... stuff.
The leadership? The ones that aren't cockamamie psychopaths like Ché Guevarra (a serial killer who got his jollies murdering prepubescent boys in front of their mothers), are cynical bastards who are in it for themselves or complete looneytunes.
Which leaves 100 million or so useful idiots in this country alone. Those are the ones that inspired Arendt's title
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. The ones "just doing their jobs." The ones
told that claptrap about the theory that holds that if Muslims just "felt good" about themselves, they'd stop trying to conquer the world, with gold stars and brownie points for extra blood, guts and gore. It is absolutely freaking amazing to me what people will believe...if you tell them straight to their face in a firm, but unthreatening manner.
"Apple Computer has started a polar bear breeding program."
"Really?"
"Yep. Turns out that polar bear fur is better than any other product on the planet for antistatic cleaning of their iPhone touchscreens. And apparently there is a market in Japan for the animal byproduct, the meat, to be used in dog food."
And so it goes...the meme is propagated to John and Josie Q. Public, and suddenly, Islam is a "religion" of Peace, rather than a world dominating death cult. There are people noticing some flaws in that particular thesis, however. Like Nicolai Sennels, author of
De Islam – kritische essays over een politieke religie, a book unfortunately unavailable in English, although as luck would have it, whose major conclusions are summarized in an essay available at
Jihad Watch: Nicolai Sennels: Report from the therapy room: Why are Muslims more violent and criminal?Oddly, it turns out Sennels' observations from the therapy room dovetail rather indecently with Pryce-Jones exposistions in
The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs despite CAIR being quite adamant that Pryce-Jones is an obvious racist. And probably a Republican to boot.