The Muslims are right

"The Muslims are right," you never expected to see such a title from me. But, in one respect the Muslims are right, they are fighting what amounts to a rearguard action to preserve their religious culture.
It may be correct that since the 8th century Islam has not changed. There has been no reformation as occured in Christianity, no renaissance as occured in European culture, no secularism as occured in the West. Rationality and science, that the Arabs initiated (for example algebra is an Arabic word) they left behind, they left for the West to take up and extend and exploit. Now their culture is way behind, in general they repress women, they allow extreme capital punishement (cutting off hands for theft, execution for apostasy, death for adultery). In many countries they allow female genital circumscision. In general their political systems are based on violence and not democratic norms.
Once upon a time Christianity was also fundmentalist, there were certain ways of doing things, and woe betide anyone who did not conform. Jews, the ultimate nonconformists, were burned at the stake (for example the auto-da-fe in the Spanish inquisition until the 1700's), and murdered, just for being Jews (the Holocaust). But, over time the Christian world morphed, became civilized enough to accept the rights of minorities, and then human rights for all. The Muslim world has not come to terms with these modern concepts yet, and that is why they, and especially their clerics, abjure Western civilization. Not only do they see it as Christian, but they fear the secular, the freedom of people to choose, the right to do whatever they like (within the civil law).
As examples of the limits imposed by Islam, in Gaza during the recent chaos, Hamas gangs went around burning and destroying cinemas and music stores, since under strict Islam there is no showing images of people or animals and no music for enjoyment. In Iran and Saudi Arabia there are the Morality Police, that can arrest anyone who exceeds the norms of Islamic behavior; in a recent case in Tehran a young couple were arrested and beaten for holding hands in a park. An Indian friend of mine was arrested many years ago in Saudi Arabia for "looking" at a woman (who was covered). Men have been executed for selling alcohol there. Of course, the Taliban took this to the limit, beating and executing women in public, but the same norms apply in many Muslim countries. In a famous case in Pakistan a few years ago a girl (I think she was 15) was raped by order of a court by four members of a family whose "honor" she had injured. This case, not exceptional in itself, was taken by her parents to the Supreme court in Pakistan that upheld the verdict and it took the intervention of Pres. Musharraf himself to reverse the verdict and cause the rapists to pay financial damages (the money was used to build a school for girls).
If they lose this battle against modernity and Westernization, the Islamic clerics and regimes will lose their control over their populations, who must "submit" to Islam (that's what Islam means). So in that respect they are right, they are fighting a battle to defeat the West before it overtakes them.