Back in the old days, religion and which gods you believed in was a matter of practicality and utility, in that whichever seemed more powerful and victorious had the higher claim to legitimacy. The main forces behind the proselytisation of the two dominant religions of the world (Christianity and Islam), were the political and commercial victorious forces; for Christianity, first that of the Roman Empire, then after a period of decline and losing believers to Islam in North Africa and middle-east, came the Spanish Empire and the Portuguese in Latin America, North Italian polities and their influence on Jesuit learning leading to proselytisation in East Asia, then the British Empire and the French both in Africa and other parts of the world. Same thing for forces of Islam in West Asia, North and East Africa, South Asia and East Asia, as a lot of conversion was based on joining the victor mindset and giving in to the destined manifestation of god's will.
The humiliation that the Muslim world has experienced at the hands of the superior Western powers again and again has led to many social upheavals and experiments with political systems. The recent wave of Islamism was partially a reponse to the perceived inadequacies of Arab nationalism after the defeats in Palestine.
But what this recent wave of humiliation will bring is not certain. What it will not bring, however, is a calculated approach, since that takes very specific conditions. I assume another emotional reaction will follow; it will probably lead to another wave of Arab nationalism in places where people think they've had their bout with Islamism, but since calculated response is out of the window (as that requires a highly educated body politic), I think the monarchies and military dictatorships will have another decade of upheaval generally based on neo-Salafism and nostalgia for when the house of Islam was not divided.