Okay, I admit my post was playing 'devil's advocate' to some degree, but I do believe in the just of what I was trying to point out. I have to go back and comment on one or two things here. This jumped out at me the second time I read your post:

"Do you really think that women are so much better off in non-islamic cultures?"

Gee, lemme think? YES! Let's give you tits and a hoo-hoo and send you to Afghanistsan aged 12 and then you get back to me whether or not the injustices suffered there are truly any worse than the injustices suffered by the female in other cultures, including our own. I'm sorry, but that is ridiculous. I know that we are far from treating women with complete equality here in the West (despite some people thinking the contrary) but to say that women don't have it any better off in Western society than in any number of fundamentalist dominated Islamic countries is not only ridiculous and absurd it is also offensive to all the women who have suffered horrible indignities (including the loss of their lives) in these countries. "We're sorry you are dead and that you lost your head but if you'd been born an American you'd be making 75 cents less an hour than your male counterparts at your job at Costco, so really, you're better off." And if you didn't mean to imply that 'non-islamic' meant Western than maybe you should stop being so vague, yourself.

Secondly, two wrongs do not make a right. BUT people who are proponents of the typical fundamentalist lifestyle in Islamic countries make gross generalizations about people in the West all the time. Their lives are centered around these generalizations and the single-minded hatred that comes with them. I didn't hear you mention this at all. I find it ironic that while you argue in their defense they would really just like to see your head lopped off. Yes, yes, you do not have to tell me that that is a generalization but it is a generalization that is based in fact. We (the people of the West) are universally hated by Islamic fundamentalists and no distinction is drawn between the 'good' and the 'bad' here: all people born in the Godless, evil West are enemies of Islam and should be destroyed. The point I make is that while I see your points and have heard countless others make similar points as yours I have rarely heard anyone criticize the generalizations and racist view's of the people you defend. It's okay to criticize the viewpoints of the people of your own culture for their ill-defined arguments and vagaries but in doing so without acknowledgment that the same and worse occurs in the cultures you defend you risk coming off as an apologist for the tyranny and abuses that DO exist in these Muslim cultures. Or at the very least as someone who can't see the forest for the trees.
Just some food for thought.