"Christianity has done all this, but has had the great good fortune to be defanged by a secular society, so some distance can be put between politics and theology. Islam is still grappling with this problem."

Islam needs a good, strong critical look, precisely so it can reform. It needs to progress out of ignorance and a Medieval mentality, just as the Judeo-Christian world has, for the most part, through an age of enlightenment, science, secularization, and expansion of personal liberties and stable democratic societies.

Having lived among Muslims, I fully understand that they view the world in a radically different way, and have a fundamentally different view of the role of religion in society. I also understand why personal freedoms, press freedom, tolerance of differing religions, democracy, women's rights, gay rights, etc. are suppressed and in fact incompatible with the current mainstream Islamic culture present in most Muslim countries today, with very, very few exceptions.

You can't draw any valid comparaisons at all between Western religious intolerance and Islamic religious intolerance. To do so is simplistic, and reveals an ignorance of Islam itself. The word 'Religion' at present doesn't mean the same thing in the two worlds. In the West religion functions on an indivual/family/community level within the modern secular context - a vital buffer on religious extremism and insanity. In most Muslim societies, no such buffer exists, and Islam defines all aspects of life (mostly to their detriment), and functions much more at the group level, not the individual.