Indeed. Iran got worse,. Women moved backwards.
Good article in today's Times on these issues:
"Britain is right to cut out the Islamist cancer
Published at 12:01AM, July 22 2015
Muslims deserve protection if they reject the justifications for violence found in the Koran
Islamic extremism is a cancer that is spreading around the world, claiming innocent lives from Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria, to Chattanooga, Tennessee, here in the US. With every passing year, an increasing share of armed conflict and terrorism around the world is attributable to the pernicious influence of militant Islam.
Yet for more than a decade western leaders — conservatives and liberals alike — have united in insisting that “Islam is a religion of peace” and buying the absurd notion that Islamophobia is the threat we should worry more about. Until this week. On Monday, at long last, the British prime minister stood up and said what urgently needed to be said.
He condemned what he called “Islamist extremism” as a doctrine“hostile to basic liberal values such as democracy, freedom and sexual equality” and based on the conspiracy theory that the West is out to destroy Islam. And he boldly rejected what he called “the grievance justification” for extremism and the violence it spawns.
I could not agree more. All over the world today Islamists infiltrate Muslim communities and tell them: “The infidel is at war with your religion.” Every time we in the West wring our hands about a largely imagined Islamophobia, or call Muslim communities in the West “disenfranchised”, which they are not, we are empowering Islamic extremists by unwittingly endorsing their message.
The reality in the world today is that the biggest persecutors of Muslims are the Islamists themselves. If you are a boy, as Mr Cameron said, Isis sees you as cannon fodder, and if you are a girl you are sexually abused to satisfy the lust of rulers of the so-called Caliphate.
A manifesto released by the Isis women brigade in Raqqa insists that girls can be married as young as nine. Young boys are being taught to behead dolls as part of their education. Recently, a boy was filmed beheading a Syrian soldier near the city of Palmyra.
The prime minister’s question is a good one: why on earth could such a barbaric movement be attractive to young British Muslims, who have grown up with all the opportunities of a free society? No, it is not because they are somehow disenfranchised or impoverished. No, it is not somehow the fault of the security services. It is above all because young people are exposed to extremist ideas in mosques and Muslim centres as well as on the internet, while those in Muslim communities who argue for religious reform are intimidated into silence.
The speech drew the now familiar distinction between Islamist extremism and Islam as a religion. But the reality, as he made clear, is that the former is derived from the latter. Koranic verses such as 9:5 and 9:29, which call for armed jihad, are deemed even by mainstream Islamic jurists to supersede more peaceful verses. Sahih Muslim, one of the six major authoritative hadith collections, claims that Muhammad undertook no fewer than 19 military expeditions, personally fighting in eight of them.
This is precisely why Isis and other jihadist outfits across the world can endow their violence with moral righteousness. The harsh reality is that what Isis is putting into practice is Islam unreformed and literally applied.
So the key question is whether or not these lethal elements of Islam can be reformed. I believe that if you are a Muslim and feel disgusted by practices such as the beheading of infidels, the enslavement of women, and the defenestration of gays, then by definition you must reject the theology that sanctions it. But I also know from my own experience that, if you do so, you risk death at the hands of the extremists.
It is not up to the West to reform Islam, of course. It is up to Muslims to do that. But it is in the interests of the West to help and protect those Muslims seeking to throw out the theological justifications for violence.
In defending with confidence an inclusive British identity based on democracy, the rule of law, the freedom of expression and worship, and equality regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation or faith, the prime minister has made it clear why a literal application of unreformed Islam is incompatible with British values.
And in proposing a much tougher counter-extremism strategy — directed not just against terrorism but also against female genital mutilation, sharia courts, forced marriages, child sex abuse, segregation in schools and Islamist political corruption — he is boldly going where no other European leader has dared to venture.
Mr Cameron has stretched out his hand to those Muslims who want to repudiate the religious justifications for violence. And he has declared ideological war on the Islamist extremists, including those who preach violence without themselves practising it. For this he is bound to be vilified by the apologists for Islam unreformed. But from those of us who see the Islamist cancer for what it is, we welcome his principled leadership.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the author of Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now"