From a blog called The Immanent Frame: "Secularism and the paradoxes of Muslim politics"
"Few books in Islamic studies have been as eagerly awaited or intensely debated prior to publication as Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im’s Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari`a. Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory University, An-Na`im has for more than twenty years been a tireless proponent of a deeply religious but liberal-modernist reformation of Islamic politics and ethics. Published just five years after his flight from the Sudan in April 1985 (after the Numeiri regime executed his Sufi teacher, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha), An-Na`im’s Toward an Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties, Human Rights, and International Law established him as one of our era’s most articulate exponents of the Islamic grounds for constitutionalism and human rights.
....Two things distinguish this new work from An-Na'im’s early writings. The first is his explicit endorsement of a secular state as the best form of government for Muslims and for the flourishing of Islam. ....The second quality that distinguishes this book from his earlier scholarship is its systematic effort to ground arguments in support of freedom, constitutionalism, and secularity on two bodies of research: historical studies of the development of Muslim politics and Shari`a from the early Islamic period to the rise of the Ottoman Empire; and case studies of Shari`a politics in modern India, Turkey, and Indonesia. An-Na`im plumbs the depths of these empirical materials to provide corroborating evidence in support of his larger argument.
Western secular governments can barely deal with Islamist elements. Even Britain, the model of European social stability.
How could a secular Muslim state resist such forces, without engaging in active repression? As have Turkey and Egypt, for example. I don't want to say it's impossible, but it's hard to argue for a uniquely Islamic approach to constitutionality and freedom when the enemies of such things practically require you to begin with a police state.
In Arab nations the only alternatives to Islamic theocracy have been monarchy, Marxism, and Nationalism/Fascism, all of which are fading. Turkey would not be possible without the cultural move towards modernity, which produced attitudes quite hostile to fundamentalist Islam. So you'll not only be fighting the Islamists, you'll also be condemned by the international idiotarianism that spits contempt for "Western-style democracy" and frankly regards the Islamists as revolutionary heroes.
Islamists have a way of wearing out their welcome with Muslims in places where they succeed. An opposed ideology grounded in Islamic thought becomes a useful aspect of what comes next.
In the end, the Islamists' attitude is such that you may have to deal harshly with them, since their ideology is often inherently totalitarian and terrorist. The folks in Anbar had no basic problem with handling that, and a region with long memories can check off that box for some time. The question then becomes, can anything more positive take root in its place?
Which is just one reason having that something matters, along with institutions designed to avoid the Israeli trap that gives too much power to fringe parties, and other components.