Five things people get wrong about Steve Bannon

2. Bannon despises Islam

In fact, Bannon appeared during our conversations to be quite knowledgeable about Islam and said he respected it as a religion. “Islam as a faith” is not a problem, he said. It is a legitimate “path to God.” What he believes is that Islam, unlike Christianity, has not had its reckoning with the modern world, and that too often its adherents are fundamentalists and literalists, and that this can pose a danger. “It is very evident when you look at Islam, it has not had its meeting with the Enlightenment. It has not had that transition to modernity,” he said. Reformers within the religion may yet prevail, he suggested. “I think you’re seeing the civil war in Islam, between Shiite and Sunni, but most importantly, I think, between the radical adherents of an austere, puritanical aspect of it, against the more moderate Islam, that’s kind of going through a realignment.”