I take it that violent territorial and political conflicts are as old as the world; they are there with and without religious beliefs. Yet strongly held ideas and beliefs do have behavioral consequences, for better or worse. Skillful propaganda can sell any type of idiotic nonsense or toxic vitriol creating imaginary friends.. and imaginary enemies. When these ideas and beliefs become strong enough and gain momentum propagating socially, culturally and politically, they are a strong force that shapes reality. Islam as such, seems to be in a serious crisis. How do Islamic beliefs interact and operate within the Islamic world, and in relation to the wider non-Islamic world? One can't escape the impression of diffraction, dissolution, disintegration.
Some claim that the problem with Islam is that it has no central authority, no head-of-state like the RCC with a pope. There are as many Imams with different ideas as there are opinions in a Western parliament, so who do you talk to? The only common denominator is that they all say that God is Great, that Muhammad their leading prophet and the Quran the holy book in which God gave his final message to mankind.
But is all they are missing a central authority, or is there a reason why they have no central authority? I start to think the problem is systemic and originating from within the Quran itself. Once you deem the Quran as the word of God, word by word written down by humans without alteration.. then it is obvious why no central authority can arise from it nor a scholarly consensus interpretation; the Quran does not speak with one voice and has no coherent persistent moral message throughout the texts. Allah and its Prophet talk and behave like a Patriarch with mood swings, from a loving tolerant Father who raves poetically about not making religion compulsive and be tolerant and open to other people, to a merciless psychopath warlord foaming around the mouth with hate speech about enemies like heretics, Jews, Christians, polytheists who all need to either convert, surrender or die at gun point. Imagine Jesus or Buddha to have these mood swings and consider all they say in those different contradictory modes to still be the one voice of God. It would be impossible to create an internally harmonious culture and theology, and a head-of-state like a Pope is unlikely to be formed.
The evolution of Allah and his Prophet, the changes of voice, have historical roots. I found this scholarly work of John Medows Rodwell:
http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Rodwell_Koran.html
The contrast between the earlier, middle, and later Suras is very striking and interesting, and will be at once apparent from the arrangement here adopted. In the Suras as far as the 54th, p. 76, we cannot but notice the entire predominance of the poetical element, a deep appreciation (as in Sura xci.) of the beauty of natural objects, brief fragmentary and impassioned utterances, denunciations of woe and punishment, expressed for the most part in lines of extreme brevity. With a change, however, in the position of Muhammad when he openly assumes the office of “public warner,” the Suras begin to assume a more prosaic and didactic tone, though the poetical ornament of rhyme is preserved throughout. We gradually lose the Poet in the missionary aiming to convert, the warm asserter of dogmatic truths; the descriptions of natural objects, of the judgment, of Heaven and Hell, make way for gradually increasing historical statements, first from Jewish, and subsequently from Christian histories; while, in the 29 Suras revealed at Medina, we no longer listen to vague words, often as it would seem without positive aim, but to the earnest disputant with the enemies of his faith, the Apostle pleading the cause of what he believes to be the Truth of God. He who at Mecca is the admonisher and persuader, at Medina is the legislator and the warrior, who dictates obedience, and uses other weapons than the pen of the Poet and the Scribe.