Islam dropping in the polls

An interesting article on the way Islam is breaking up on the inside.

- On the other hand, it's not as if everyone in the Arab or Muslim worlds is antimodernity. Take the example of Wafa Sultan, who made her displeasure with Mullahocracy known to the mullahs, on Al Jazeera, no less:

Three weeks ago, Dr. Wafa Sultan was a largely unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles, nursing a deep anger and despair about her fellow Muslims.

Today, thanks to an unusually blunt and provocative interview on Al Jazeera television on Feb. 21, she is an international sensation, hailed as a fresh voice of reason by some, and by others as a heretic and infidel who deserves to die.

In the interview, which has been viewed on the Internet more than a million times and has reached the e-mail of hundreds of thousands around the world, Dr. Sultan bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political leaders who she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran for 14 centuries.

She said the world's Muslims, whom she compares unfavorably with the Jews, have descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence.

Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose.

In response, clerics throughout the Muslim world have condemned her, and her telephone answering machine has filled with dark threats. But Islamic reformers have praised her for saying out loud, in Arabic and on the most widely seen television network in the Arab world, what few Muslims dare to say even in private.

She's right. It's a clash between civilization and barbarians. We need to create a world in which the civilized Wafa Sultans are more willing to speak -- and the barbarous mullahs are more afraid. What is going on is often portrayed as a test for the West. But it's a test for the Islamic world, too. And so far it's failing -- unless Wafa Sultan and her like can save it.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3395977/from/RSS/