you are making the classic relativistic mistake.

Women will not make real progress in Islam as long as Muslims believe that beating women and locking them in the house is part of the absolute Word of God that cannot be questioned in any context.

Similarly slavery, which Muslims still practice, albeit less aggressively than before (and less publicly).

Muslims themselves have started questioning the Q'uran, but clueless Western intellectuals like you insist on clouding the issue. I can't for the life of me figure out why.

As as been written about, but not nearly often enough, the concentration on keeping up strict Islamic practices exacts a heavy economic price on Muslims, especially when they emigrate but even in their home countries. In other words, Muslims are often backwards because of Islam. Nobody likes to hear this. But it's true.

The lack of emphasis on education, the absence of women from any economic sphere, the inability to own credit cards or invest in anything that will earn any equity (because of restrictions on taking/charging interest), the inability in the West to take better paying jobs that don't accomodate the rigorous prayer schedule (that's why so many Muslim cab drivers, including many who are qualified for other jobs).....

Being a truly observant Muslim keeps you down. It's easy to blame it on the Man, but this blame is misdirected.

BTW all the things I have wrote above for the West are also true for India, where Muslims are making slower gains in education and the work force than low caste Hindus--again the high illiteracy rate among women plays a role.

But all right, you sit on your Auckland high horse and tell Muslims what they need. Tell them they need to think a book written in seventh century Arabia is the unquestioned final word of Allah, and call anybody who disagrees with you with a bunch of outdated Victorian names. Orientalist my ass.

Your approach is about two hundred years out of date, and too academic and theoretical to matter. I live in the real world. In the real world, maybe a factory job pays better than driving cab, for example (and although I know that cab driving often pays well, it does sort of depend)---but you cannot expect a whole assembly line to shut down at prayer time. You cannot leave a restaurant during the supper rush to make Iftar prayers. You cannot buy a house for your family without paying some kind of interest.

You can learn to bend, or you can break. Muslims are strained about to that point right now. Their religion DOES NOT WORK in the modern world, not with modern financial realities, not in the work force, not with our understanding of human rights (polar opposite of Sharia), not with secualr law, not with new technology (there's a discussion over on a Muslim blog about whether ringtones on cell phones are allowed in Islam. I'm not joking), none of it.

Piss on the West for making the playing rules if you want. It's not going to change anything. Muslims are at a fork in the road. Their religion is going to change, the only question is how.