Via Little Green Footballs, I found a very thoughtful article by Theodore Dalrymple: When Islam Breaks Down.

An excerpt:

My historicist optimism has waned. After all, I soon enough learned that the Shah’s revolution from above was reversible—at least in the short term, that is to say the term in which we all live, and certainly long enough to ruin the only lives that contemporary Iranians have. Moreover, even if there were no relevant differences between Christianity and Islam as doctrines and civilizations in their ability to accommodate modernity, a vital difference in the historical situations of the two religions also tempers my historicist optimism. Devout Muslims can see (as Luther, Calvin, and others could not) the long-term consequences of the Reformation and its consequent secularism: a marginalization of the Word of God, except as an increasingly distant cultural echo—as the “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” of the once full “Sea of faith,” in Matthew Arnold’s precisely diagnostic words.

And there is enough truth in the devout Muslim’s criticism of the less attractive aspects of Western secular culture to lend plausibility to his call for a return to purity as the answer to the Muslim world’s woes. He sees in the West’s freedom nothing but promiscuity and license, which is certainly there; but he does not see in freedom, especially freedom of inquiry, a spiritual virtue as well as an ultimate source of strength. This narrow, beleaguered consciousness no doubt accounts for the strand of reactionary revolt in contemporary Islam. The devout Muslim fears, and not without good reason, that to give an inch is sooner or later to concede the whole territory.

......Is there an essential element that condemns the Dar al-Islam to permanent backwardness with regard to the Dar al-Harb, a backwardness that is felt as a deep humiliation, and is exemplified, though not proved, by the fact that the whole of the Arab world, minus its oil, matters less to the rest of the world economically than the Nokia telephone company of Finland?

I think the answer is yes, and that the problem begins with Islam’s failure to make a distinction between church and state. Unlike Christianity, which had to spend its first centuries developing institutions clandestinely and so from the outset clearly had to separate church from state, Islam was from its inception both church and state, one and indivisible, with no possible distinction between temporal and religious authority. Muhammad’s power was seamlessly spiritual and secular (although the latter grew ultimately out of the former), and he bequeathed this model to his followers. Since he was, by Islamic definition, the last prophet of God upon earth, his was a political model whose perfection could not be challenged or questioned without the total abandonment of the pretensions of the entire religion.

There's much more, and I can't do justice to the entire piece, but I want to add a few words about the Reformation. The freedom that we tend to take for granted in the West did not flow naturally from any of the doctrines of Luther, Calvin, or their nemesis Loyola; it was an unintended consequence of the ferocious religious warfare during the Reformation. Not only do people tire of religious war, but scientists and artists can avail themselves of the freedom created by the power vacuum which always occurs when those who would rule must instead battle it out. The result -- religious pluralism -- was intended neither by the proponents or opponents of the Reformation, but it became permanent, and paved the way for the modern realization (eventually articulated by philosophers of the Enlightenment as an "idea") that religion is one thing and government another, and that freedom means the right to be left alone in matters of conscience.

Islamist scholars in my opinion made a major mistake when they attributed Western success to "The Reformation" and then posited that Islam needs a Reformation. The essence of Wahhabism does precisely that; it is an Islamic Puritan Reformation -- right down to the stark, bleak, white buildings and the stripping of ornamentation. They are having their bloody "Reformation" right now.

In Islamic terms, a "reformation" can only be imposed from the top down, and could never countenance dissent or liberalization. I suppose that in the event of a prolonged struggle between Sayeed Qutb-style puritans and more moderate ("corrupt") Muslims, a sort of war-weariness could result in more freedom. But another stage in the modern struggle has already been set -- and it's between the forces of sex and rock 'n roll and traditional Islam. Thus the modern Islamic "Reformation" is happening on two fronts -- whether they know it or not.

Ask any Iranian kid with a modem!

(And let's not forget the cherished values of "DEMOCRACY, WHISKEY, SEXY!")

Dalrymple concludes on a surprisingly optimistic note,

Islam in the modern world is weak and brittle, not strong: that accounts for its so frequent shrillness. The Shah will, sooner or later, triumph over the Ayatollah in Iran, because human nature decrees it, though meanwhile millions of lives will have been ruined and impoverished. The Iranian refugees who have flooded into the West are fleeing Islam, not seeking to extend its dominion, as I know from speaking to many in my city. To be sure, fundamentalist Islam will be very dangerous for some time to come, and all of us, after all, live only in the short term; but ultimately the fate of the Church of England awaits it. Its melancholy, withdrawing roar may well (unlike that of the Church of England) be not just long but bloody, but withdraw it will. The fanatics and the bombers do not represent a resurgence of unreformed, fundamentalist Islam, but its death rattle.

Just don't expect them to believe that freedom comes from God.

Their god doesn't believe in such things.