Muslims on Islam

This provocative articulation, by a prominent Muslim, of problems in Islam was picked up by Tim Blair:

Let us, Muslims, be brutally honest.

We have inherited a culture of denial, of too often refusing to acknowledge our own responsibility for the widespread malaise that has left most of the Arab-Muslim countries in economic, political, and social despair ...

Many of our intellectuals in public life and our religious leaders in mosques remain adept in double-speak, saying contrary things in English or French and then in Arabic or Farsi or Urdu.

And finally:

We have made hypocrisy an art, and have spun for ourselves a web of lies that blinds us to the real world around us. We seethe with grievances and resentment against the West, even as we have prospered in the freedom and security of Western democracies.

Why are Islamic countries so consistently poor, so undemocratic without civil rights and with weak rights for minorities and particularly women? Why is a message of peace so constantly projected but, in reality, acts of war and terrorism pursued and even glorified?

Why the propensity to glorify death? Watching a recently-widowed mother in Lebanon on the TV tonight sobbing with her two war-injured children it was difficult for me to understand the point Hezbollah sought to make by attacking Israel. They know what the response will be.

Is there the need for a radical rethink? The Muslim thinkers cited in the three hyperlinks suggest so. Their views are of interest to Muslims and Non-Muslims alike.