Ali,

          How much of Islam's current crisis do you attribute to the fact that billions of dollars in black gold happened to lie under the sands of Arabia, which starting in the 1930s, began filling the coffers of Islam's most puritanical and retrograde sect?   Its my understanding that the Islamic tradition that was prevalent in South Asia relied on the Hanafi school jurisprudence and was far more open to incorporating the insights of modernity into Islamic law and society.  Perhaps in a true free-market system, the ideas of Iqbal and others would have prevailed.  But the Wahhabis were able to spend billions to build their madrassas, export their imams and spread their rejectionist vision of Islam.  As a result, the more tolerant forms of Islam that had been dominant in Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia are being crowded out.  Can anything be done to reverse this trend?  Does the American Muslim community have the resources to at least stem it on this continent?