Sixth step - Main challenges and fears to watch for: negative trends
Fear of misrepresentation: A common claim among Muslims is that Islam is misrepresented by media and therefore suffers from a much worse reputation than it truly deserves.
Such a fear, while obviously not completely unfounded, is problematic. It is very difficult to evidence both for and against, and very little can be done to solve it, regardless of how much real justification there may exist or fail to exist to it in any given set of circunstances.
It should be noted that this fear is not restricted to dealings with non-Muslims, either. Various Muslim sects and movements often accuse each other of misrepresenting Islam in several ways, often to their continuous mutual aggravation. It is arguably a major characteristic of Muslim culture, even.
Political considerations:: There is a considerable degree of mixing of political considerations when Islam proper is being discussed.
Even among Muslims themselves, the division between Shias and Sunnis is very ancient and consequential and has both political and religious aspects. Many Muslims deeply regret it, but there is no clear, practical path for solving it.
Historically, much of the hardships in interacting with the Muslim world come from a lack of respect and wisdom from non-Muslims. Non-Muslim (often called somewhat innacurately "Western") governments and groups have time and again shown extreme disregard and prejudice towards Muslim groups and governments, earning considerable (and well justified) ill will and lack of trust. Particularly noteworthy are the disastrous interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria in recent years, as well as the shameful
The aftermath of the Arab Revolt of 1916 is also noteworthy, and curiously ill remembered among non-Muslims and/or non-Arabs. While the exact influence of the British and other non-Muslim people on the end results is somewhat controversial, there is no doubt that their role is seen with mistrust.
A related matter is the end of the Caliphate. Islam is a religion and not properly a political movement. Despite that or perhaps because of that, naturally enough many Muslims hope for political unity, somewhat personified in a Caliph. Whether it is even reasonable to ever expect such union is highly questionable, but the dream lives on anyway.
It is important to note that the Muslim world is by no means politically homogeneous. Quite on the contrary, one would be hard pressed to find general political agreement among Muslims, except perhaps locally in specific communities or countries. There is a general climate of appreciation of tradition, sometimes manifesting itself as admiration of the Prophet Muhammad or of his earliest successors, perhaps more often as mistrust of "Western" trends and ideas, but in practice Muslims are simply not politically united and not likely to reach such union anytime soon, if ever.
If Muslims are at all different from other people when it comes to politics, it may well be simply on two, albeit often consequential, traits: Muslims will not ever claim that God, the Quran and the Prophet are not meaningful, and they tend to take for granted that all virtue and all worthwhile pursuits are automatically in harmony with the ideas expressed by Muhammad and the word of God as expressed in the Quran.
That by no means implies actual practical agreement in most matters. If anything, it might result in mistrust of those who disagree, perhaps out of suspicion of ill will or purposeful misrepresentation of those references.
A more practical consequence is that Muslim society is often refractary to cultural change, for good or worse. Purposeful deviation from what is perceived as being typical or representative of the ways of Mohammad and his earliest followers will often be unconfortable at best, at least at first.
