I can appreciate how the Saudis dominate not just the internet's presentation of Islam but the journalistic impression of the religion, by funding terrorists who used to dominate the news cycle. And I'm aware that most ordinary Muslims aren't fire-breathing medievalists.

The question I'd have is whether the type of Islam that rejects the patriarchal literalism found in a website like IslamQA is sustainable as a religion, as opposed to being a nascent form of liberal secular modernity.

More specifically, the question is whether ordinary Muslims are happy to laugh at their religion. How pious are ordinary Muslims? Are they so offended that when they see a secular cartoon mocking Islam, they support the violent overthrow of the cartoon's publishers?

Another worrying sign is that if ordinary Muslims were more liberal than IslamQA suggests, why is the Muslim world so impervious to democracy and to the protection of individual liberties? Look at what became of Afghanistan and the Arab Spring, for example. The Muslims outside the Middle East aren't really at issue, since those regions are mostly Westernized or modernized.