"You have not lived in all of them, I believe."

No, but I've spoken with enough Muslims from enough different countries to perceive more than a few common threads to their thinking.

"Criticism from the outside is a valid activity, informed as it is by a different point of view. Reform can only be effective from the inside. I can be forced to appear to give up a way of acting and a way of thinking, but inside I will seethe. If I am forced to give up a system that gives meaning to my life, the system which will ostensibly replace it will be vacant of meaning for me, except as the not-what-I-was, and will create a vacuum in my heart and in the society in which I live. If, however, I reassess a system, find it wanting, and look for new ways to make it work, this is a useful and effective reform with a chance at success."

I totally agree that reform must be from within.

"Does all of Islam need reform? Really?"

Yes, nearly all of it. Precisely because nearly all of the Muslim nations lack modern freedoms and democratic practices - Islam inhibits their development. Note that this isn't at all a situation, as you described it, of wanting them "to be just like us". There is nothing Western about freedom and democracy. It's simply the more modern state of a civilization which has moved beyond, or has evolved in an almost scientific sense if you will, from a more primitive state of barbarism and repression. There is nothing Western about science, either, by the way.

"You can't draw any valid comparaisons at all between Western religious intolerance and Islamic religious intolerance. Actually, you yourself did, very effectively, when you used the word "medieval". The Islam you witnessed apparently bears a close resemblance to the Christianity practiced in Europe in the 13th and 14th Centuries."

Im referring broadly to the meaning of the term 'religion', and the evolution from the more primitive to the more modern - I didn't mean medieval in a more specific way, in terms of specific 13th century Christian practices, as barbaric as they may have been.

"Spiritual reform only comes from some incentive, some perceived spiritual need. The need to stop the bombing is not a spiritual need, but a question of worldly power. Worldly power brought to bear on a religious objective fails. Ask Caesar how he destroyed Christianity."

I don't see it as a spiritual issue, actually. Since the 14th century Christians alter their interpretation of the Bible on spiritual grounds or intellectual/political ones? Not sure. I think it's more an issue of information conquoring ignorance, and worshiping Allah in a more enlightened manner.