The author, criticising Amin, considers political Islam rather "modern" although not in the frame of the Eurocentric notion of capitalist modernity the tool traditional historic materialism uses. Anyhow, the foot soldiers of militant Islam are the dreadfully poor who have relied on Islam institutions for their very survival. It is time to desist from homogenizing the makeup of entire Muslim-majority societies as reactionary or obscurantist.
The original article was published in Monthly Review March 2009.