I have to say that by now you have insulted me, decent conversation, and reason by many things in your reply. You have great talent for making arrogance and ad hominems sound polite and subtle, which is something I can strangely appreciate in a twisted sense. Well played.

I will respond to some things you have asked from me. I do not expect a response, but will leave them here for others to read.

> But again, to be fair, I do not think there is some rational method, in a scientific sense, that proves one element of any religion right or wrong.

There are many with that capability. The quintessential one is Kantian ethics. One other method I will mention simply because I happen to have read it recently, is outlined in "The Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris.

> How, if you want to pretend the whole of Muslim society (and that is a lot of people, even the parts of it in the US) want to "live under early medieval law because their religion says so", I would love for you to show me where it says so.

I did not claim that the whole of Muslim society wants this, and I find it insulting that you put those words in my mouth.
I was pointing out that opinions on upturning society are an important opinion in Muslim (sub)societies, as evidenced by opinion polls [1].

> Islam has problems. So do other religions. But if Islam has special religion status and special problems that proclude it from issues other religions avoided, I would love to hear them. Try to explain them rationally. You will see how bleak that looks.

I'll just leave the general argument as to why Islam does a particular bad job as a reference frame from which to perform critical thinking.

First up: do not interpret what I'm saying next as any sort of defence of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism or Hinduism. Religion is a bad place to start building a society from in the first place. I'll limit my commentary to mainstream religions as they tend not to affect geopolitics.

Islam does a worse job of building an effective critical-thinking society than other mainstream religions. Some things that are uniquely combined Islam are the following:

- Islam has a text that is the literal word of God; not "words inspired" by God as is the case in many others. Since the word is taken to be literal, it is easier to commit apostasy as it is more difficult to hide behind interpretation.

- The penalty for deviating thought is death in all schools of Islam. Other holy texts also claim this, but certainly not all schools of other religions claim the same.

- No school of Islam has emerged that takes back on these opinions. The best of enlightenment you get is people claiming that people should get a second chance, but thought crime still leads to death.

Because of these issues, mainstream Islamic thinking is less open to deviating opinion, critical thinking, sensitivities, or at least the open discussion of topics. These issues make it easier to justify totalitarianism or elements thereof in an Islamic context. There is no "Reformed Judaism" version of Islam that is openly and widely practiced. And that appears to be a burden for every Muslim who wants to be a critical thinker and wants to build a society on freedom and progress.

[1]: A link directory that admittedly is focused on making a point (but that by itself does not make the point invalid): http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/opinion-polls.htm