A lady whom I like and respect very much asked me (knowing I'm agnostic) if I would like to join her church, one of the more liberal Christian churches. I asked her if the members would expect me to believe in God, and in the divinity of Jesus, or at least to act like I do. She said that, yes, she supposed so. I declined membership on the grounds that religion should not be about lying about my beliefs, and that if I joined for social reasons pretending to be someone I'm not, my new friends would be friends of my image, not of me.

This experience led me to believe that there are many people of subtle and well-trained intelligence who belong to a religion for the fellowship. They may do so with Machiavellian deliberateness, to get the perks associated with the social bonds. Or they may make sure they don't examine their beliefs too closely lest they find themselves in doubt or disbelief, and find themselves estranged from the friendships and support they find essential for good mental health and social fullfillment. The churches I've come in contact with, liberal, conservative, and in between, really don't have much room for doubt except as an obstacle to be overcome, and so tend to reject people who don't look at doubt that way. Being rejected by your group is a scary thing. Being alone is all it's cracked up to be, and more.

I can only speculate that it's the same in Islam, squared.

Honestly, I think that members of the group that doesn't look too hard are more likely to be the highly-educated zealots. They don't want to see anyone present a credible alternative which might inspire doubt in them, or infect their families, and so loudly shout down anything that even begins to smack of unorthodoxy.

I know some very religious people who are also well-educated and tolerant. They tend to accept doubt as part of the pattern of the divine, often in defiance of their church's official teachings on the subject. They also are usually less literalist in their approach to their own faith. They seem to have more faith overall, that it will all get sorted out in the end and our jobs now are to behave in a way that reflects divine love. They are the ones who make me regret my doubt, because I would like to join them if they would not expect of me a behavior that I don't believe.