There’s your central difference between the philosophies of Osama and the guy you discuss above.

But that’s only one of a million tiny pieces that’s different — Islam has no grand unified theory or exegesis or whatever. It is, like Christianity or America or any other institution built on an idea, what it’s practitioners make of it.

“That is to say that assuming Islam puts a high value on human dignity and freedom (which this blogger believes it does), Muslim clerics have not been pushing these ideas sandbagged by a vapid parochial propriety, to name one particularly annoying instance.”

Perhaps I misunderstand you, but I’m not quite sure I buy this. Check out the NYTimes article on Albania today, or compare and contrast Morrocan practices with Indonesian. Religion reflects and changes the society it’s a part of just as geography does. Values change, but in ways that usually make sense with an historical perspective. I’d offer the Saudi-Wahabi alliance as an example of how an extreme minority view applied from above can infect a nation, rather than the nation pre-existing as reactionary and leaders doing their best in that environment.

Strong leaders of the type you seem to want tap into what’s best about others — Gandhi’s your example — but also know how to use the organs of power to achieve their goals. Martin Luther, Calvin, Khomeini, … name any other revolutionary.

Finally, the one sentence I had originally intended to type: Based on the history of the views of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, I think shoddy national leadership is to blame for the current problems of Islam as a political force rather than popular political momentum.