So, let’s try and nail the problem and ask: what is Islam? For there’s no point pretending that the likes of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-styled Caliph of ISIS, are not Muslims—and not inspired by a strain of Islam which derives its legitimacy from the same Islamic sources that inspire the rest of the mostly peace-loving global ummah. Both “good” and “bad” Muslims draw on the same Islamic fundamentals—the Quran and Hadith. The difference is of interpretation; the roots of the problem lie in the ambiguity of its sacred texts.

To quote Kristof, while “some read the Quran and blow up girls’ schools, others read the Quran and build girls’ schools”. If the Taliban represent one face of Islam, Malala Yousafzai does the “polar opposite”.

The Quran is a potential minefield for a lay person with seemingly equivocal and often contradictory injunctions on the same subject appearing in different places. This allows people to cherry-pick what suits them in a particular situation. Thus jehad, one of the most contested terms, is mentioned both in the sense of a “holy war” or an armed struggle against infidels and wrongdoers, and as a peaceful inner spiritual struggle or resistance.

So, jehadis are not literally wrong when they claim they are doing what Islam allows them to do. And those who insist on using it in its spiritual sense are also right. But both are also guilty of selective interpretation, missing the context in which the Quran offers two divergent definitions. The claim that Islam extends equal courtesy to followers of all faiths doesn’t quite gel with, for instance, what is said in Sura (chapter) Al-Baqarah which makes a clear distinction bet­ween believers and non-believers and the latter are repeatedly admonished that great punishment awaits them on the Day of Judgement. But it also says god alone has the power to decide who or who not to punish, it’s not for ordinary mortals to judge others. This allows both sides in the deb­ate—the literalist extremists and moderates who take a more nuanced approach—to interpret it to suit their argument.

Likewise, regarding the status of women in Islam, there are verses in Sura Al-Nisa that lay great stress on treating women with “fairness” but then, interspersed with all that, are injunctions that clearly cast women as subordinate to men. They get the lesser share of inheritance, the weight assigned to a woman’s testimony is less compared to a man’s and harsher punishment is prescribed for women who commit adultery than for men.

Actually, the problem lies in the way the Quranic verses are arranged—sans context and without relation to other verses in the same chapter. So, when read in isolation, as they routinely are, they allow room for contradictory interpretations.

“The truth of the matter is that the Quran was not revealed in the complete form in which it exists today. It was revealed from time to time, according to the circumstances, over a time-span of 23 years,” explains Maulana Wahi­duddin Khan, one of India’s foremost liberal Islamic thinkers, in the introduction to his English translation of the Quran (Goodword Books, 2009).

The Quran, he acknowledges, “does not follow the pattern of the traditional didactic book” and appears on the face of it to be a “collection of fragmentary statements”. But he justifies this arrangement of the Quran on grounds that it was meant to retain its original form “in order to fulfil its purpose of conveying the message of truth to the readers who may, in his forays into the scriptures, read only one page, one verse or one line at a time”.

There is the same problem with the other main source of Islamic beliefs—the Hadith, the sayings of the Prophet. They are too numerous, were pronounced in wholly different contexts and compiled many years after his death. Their precise meaning was frequently lost in translation. Yet, they are glibly quoted out of context to back contentious claims. There are also a number of “inauthentic” Hadith attributed to the Prophet.

The short point is that once we leave aside their motives, the extremists cannot be accused of inventing a new brand of Islam which they then invoke to justify their actions. Elements of their brand of Islam already existed. All they have done is to select the bits that suit their agenda and present it as the “real” Islam. Just as the other side insists that their interpretation constitutes real Islam.