Let's first accept that morality is not a product of religion but rather of culture, and that just because something is considered immoral in Egypt does not mean that it is necessarily wrong in Syria or Iraq—despite the fact that all three countries are predominantly Muslim—muslim.
In light of this, Islam is similar to other religions in that it may be exploited by corrupt leaders as a potent instrument for maintaining their subjects' subjugation and ignorance because religion, by its very nature, does not stimulate much thought, at least not in the minds of the uneducated and unexposed.
It took the European Christians a very long time to come to that realization, and it was only after they weakened the church's influence that Europe attained tremendous civilisation. Galileo's fate following his assertion that the earth wasn't the center of the cosmos is well known to us all, after all.
Because early Muslim leaders genuinely believed in Islam and its pursuit of scientific growth, Muslims were in charge of a strong country at that time. It was the Christian church all over again when the natural order began to take hold and crooked leaders began using religion for their personal advantage.
Due to the fact that Islam is the most recent of all Abrahamic religions, we are currently experiencing conditions similar to those that Europe experienced during the Dark Ages. While some nations, such as Lebanon, have already managed to escape the "power of the mosque," others, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and most recently Iraq, are still largely under the control of Islamic royal families or, in the case of Iraq, Islamic "democratic" parties. To avoid "lagging behind," one can only hope for a "awakening" akin to that in Europe.
