Finally, we have the largest doll in which all others are nested: Islam itself, which, having started simply as a religion, has atrophied into a matrix of diverse, and often conflicting political ideologies. Lacking a hierarchical structure, it has become a generic brand, unable to propose coherent ethical and moral discipline for its followers, who could become mystic Sufis or cold-blooded mass-murderers. Because it has had no living theology for at least 200 years, contemporary Islam is incapable of offering a religious approach to, let alone an analysis of,  the key issues facing the modern world. Khamenei’s “Letter to Western Youth” illustrates that point. Although he is writing as a religious personality, the entire style and substance of his epistolary venture is strictly political, without a hint of spirituality.

Neither Hollande nor any other outsider can tackle the problems of the biggest doll. That is something that Muslim themselves must do, if they so wish. So there is no sense in appointing a committee of scholars to study how to reform Islam. In any case, Islam has been reformed many times, often for the worse. The word reform has been given a positive connotation by all those ostriches looking for a pile of sand to bury their heads in. However, reform means what it means — re-forming something, for better or worse.

Hollande and leaders of other major powers he has canvassed, including the United States, Russia and Britain, can deal with the two smaller dolls. Through new legislation as well as more serious educational efforts, the Muslim communities can be made aware of the danger the violent Islamists it provides a home pose to the nation and ultimately also to the community itself.

The Muslim world could also use the traditional Islamic technique of tabarra (self-exoneration) to assert its separateness from IS and its ideological brethren. Islam has no mechanism for excommunication, but it is incumbent on every Muslim to make it clear he does not share the beliefs and deeds of any other Muslims if those are in conflict with his. There are numerous examples of tabarra in Islamic history. In the days of the “Well Guided Caliphs” (the first four caliphs after the death of Muhammad), a whole chunk of the still small Muslim ummah decided to break away because of the dish that the Caliph Ali and his rival Muawiyah were trying to serve. They became the Kharijites, those who had departed from Islam. Under the Abbasid caliphs, the idea of tabarra reappeared in a theological-philosophical context with the Mutazilah school, which rejected the dominant narrative of Islam and asserted that the Koran was not co-eternal with God. (Mutazilah means “those who have withdrawn to their own corner”.) In the 19th and the early years of the 20th century, tabarra was practised by a number of movements, among them the Jadidis (Renovators), Islah (Reform), the Salafis (Return to Ancestors) and the Nahda (Resurgence).

Muslim communities in the West have the unique chance to live in free societies where they are able to live their faith the way they like and to express their beliefs without fear. The versions of Islam represented by Khomeinism, Talibanism and now IS resent that freedom and should be shunned and combated by all those who claim to be followers of a different version of Islam. One could practise tabarra by writing, preaching, and marching, and by rejecting the kind of analyses that people like Khamenei or Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-styled caliph of IS, try to market.