I have no idea what this person's positions are. But I think the problem with your take is to simply counterpose secular to religious as opposites. For instance, it seems to be the case that a significant number of the Shia ayatollahs in Iraq, while Islamist, are not in favour of direct involvement in politics and government and instead tend towards a broadly 'secular' government which would yet be Islamic, i.e. imbued with what they take to be Islamic values on which there's also probably a range of views. Amongst them, some appear to want a kind of veto role, others not, at least not as long as their own freedom of speech and activity is not infringed. The latter group might then be cast as 'secular'.
It is, I think, important to distinguish between Islamist positions, although they will all likely appear to the non-Muslim as arcane (but in that, it would be little different from figuring out the various positions of the many sects of "marxists"). For better and for worse, this is going to be what's on offer from Muslim societies -- largely a consequence of the history of the last fifty years and, in particular, the last thirty, with the perceived failure of secular regimes and of the left. The only other option would be foreign occupation and rule with a 'secular' more-or-less iron fist.
One is shocked that it is possible for someone to position himself as more Islamist than the Saudi regime only because one takes it that the Saudi regime is religiosity itself. But some of that religiously inspired criticism derives from the perceived opulence, corrupt lifestyles and hypocrisy of the Saudi elite, the repression, the dependency and the backwardness. And they say, that is not Islam. That does not necessarily make them more restrictive than the present regime. In fact, in the actual range of Muslim societies across the globe, it's hard to find one that's more religiously restrictive than the Saudi (the Taliban might qualify, but don't forget even the al-Q Arabs thought of them as a bunch of hicks and country bumpkins). So it cannot be assumed that a religiously inspired criticism of the Saudi regime requires a more religiously restrictive position. However, it is true that over the past thirty years of so, with encouragement from Washington, the Saudi's have funded and encouraged the rise of views that tend towards their religious restrictiveness. al-Q is just one -- but do note that they are not so much more religiously restrictive (I don't think they have a problem with Saudi religious restrictions and if they were to come to power I don't see much difference from existing Saudi restrictions) as that they are opposed to the line-up with Washington.
The problem, I think, is that the counterposition of those two terms derive from a particular European historical experience, although the actual history of it even in Europe was perhaps not as simple as all that. At least that's my recall of Owen Chadwick's book published thirty years ago. I think we need other terms, at least those of us who live in Muslim societies do -- because those old terms have become overdetermined empty categories laden with emotion and little understanding (no, not you, Michael; I'm referring to the societies around me) such that secularism means subservience to the West, pornography, and so on, while religious means independence, uprightness, etc.
kj