I see what you mean, and I am agreeing with Mary Anne on a lot of this
I just point out that this NOT the days of the Holy Roman Empire.
Pat & Jerry are execrable in many ways, but they are not even in the same ball park as an Ayatollah or Mullah Omar.
It is the day of secular liberal democracies in W. Europe and much of the East Europe, with the US something very close to the same, politically.
There are no symmetries for this in Islam today: they are nearly universally under dictatorships of at best a small party elite, if not a despot.
The most liberal, Morrocco and Jordan and Turkey are not terribly far away from something lie a civil society,with Turkey the closest, but they are places few who post here would be comfortable living in as natives.
Ed