To take one simple, and current, example, let us consider the current situation in Al Anbar. In Islam, "wisdom" resides in certain lineages and people within those lineages (loosely the sheiks) and also within a certain non-lineage based class of "teachers" (imams, etc.; actually, this is a case of para-kinship where "students" take on their teachers' "lineage"). The "reality" of this is grounded in centuries (millenia in some cases!) of experience. Take advantage of it by working with it and you prosper. Spreading a totally alien ideology of absolute individual equality, something that is "proven" to be "false", and you will fail. I think that today's example of Al Anbar is a good example of how to succeed, in part because AQ started targeting sheiks while the coalition started supporting them.

Is this "religious"? Yes,it is. Look deeply enough into the culture and you will find that sheiks and Imams have certain "powers" and "abilities" that are sanctioned and interpreted by the religious tradition.
A couple of things to point out here. First, the "office" of shaykh is a purely tribal one with no religious basis. It is based instead on family connections, lineage, and to a certain extent personal charisma/expertise/merit/consensus, however one judges merit in this context. Shaykhs were around before Islam. Some shaykhs are powerful, some are not, and a shaykh's following can change over time as his power waxes or wanes.

Imams, OTOH, are religiously based, but their appeal is similarly based on a consensus judgment of the community, not on any inherent powers granted to them. No one appoints Sunni imams --- they are little different from Protestant preachers. Anyone who can afford a storefront can be a preacher with a church --- the same goes for an imam in Sunni Islam.

The Marines in Anbar always sought to work with both shaykhs and imams --- they just had an enormously difficult time sorting out which ones was powerful enough or trustworthy enough to deal with at any particular time. AQI, representing another foreign body with an appeal based on religion and revenge rather than tribal roots, has had to navigate the same tricky waters.