Having lived for several years in a (non-arab) Muslim country I have to agree with your assessment of the Islamic religion as, on balance, an impediment to social and political progress and overall societal development. Particularly galling is the status and (mis)treatment of women in Islamic countries, with polygamy not all that uncommon, cases of rape victims blamed for the crime and then murdered, by male family members, to reclaim the 'honor' of the family in some twisted sense, and the reality of many women who are in fact reduced to nearly the equivalent of slaves of their husbands and other male relatives. And I'm not exaggerating.

Several years ago a business associate of mine went on a vacation tourist trip to Egypt, to visit some very interesting historic sites in the city of Luxor. Had he scheduled his trip exactly two weeks later, he might have paid with his life. As described below, a group of Islamic terrorists (actually 'savages' and 'barbarians' would be a more apt description) attacked and murdered scores of tourists and Egyptians at the sites. In attacks similar in motive to the Afgan Taliban's insane destruction of the giant and priceless Bouhdda statues, this Islamic group in Egypt routinely attacks 'un-Islamic' (more precisely pre-Islamic) historical sites, and the tourists who visit them.

Luxor 1997

I agree that Islam desparately needs a 'reformation', but there is one very big impediment. Whereas the European reformation came from within, any attempt by Muslim reformers (see Iran, for example) to move out of the Medieval Ages into the Modern Age are always met with the accusation of being Western stooges. This challenge has always hamstrung modern thinkers in the Muslim world.