Muslim prayer during the day takes less than 5 minutes and only 2 or 3 are performed during the working hours. It's not an issue. And they are pretty practical. All they need is a prayer mat and a direction to Mecca. Here you see people pray on the side of a busy street.

I don't think Qur'an ever says 'woman, your role is to be barefeet and pregnant'. I suspect a lot of practices that happens in Muslim communities about women's restriction is more a reflection of a local culture than a mandate of Islam.

For example, the issue marriage. Ok, it's clear you are not allowed to fornicate before marriage. But here in Egypt, even after you are married under the religion (like going to church-married), it is a social taboo to bang your hottie wife straight away until you have the wedding party, which can be two weeks or 6 months away. In other places, if you are OK under Islam, it's green light.

I think Islam is introduced at the young age to children and those are mostly extra-curricular activity and also taught at home. School would have subjects about Islam, but those subjects are minorities compared other subjects.

The word Madrassa simply means school in Arabic - without a conotation whether it is a religious school or not. So if you are going to religious school and trying to become a cleric, then you'll study Islam all the time. But religious text study won't help you to build bridge, so universities teach science, etc, etc, etc. Normal stuff.

In all the situation about education is simple. Just like you don't want to have everybody goes to Seminaries to be a priest, you don't want everybody going to Islamic religious school. Somebody has to be productive.

So when you hear stories about majority of kids in Western Pakistan learn nothing but the Qur'an, then it's simply plain stupidity.

About Saudi Arabia, they are the Hugo-Chavez-Venezuelan of the Islamic world. 'nuff said.

The crass lifestyle they lead is well known throughout the Middle East and it is not admired.

The term "Islamic Cleric's follower" in Islam is actually wrong. There is no intermediary in the religion between a Muslim and God. That's why the religion is Islam, not "follower of Muhammed".

From what I'm observing, the religion itself is pretty libertarian in nature - but somehow the practice of Islam over the decades in some place includes plenty of extras such as religious police, etc, etc. Fatwa is never obligatory for example unless it is enforced by the state.

Islam itself is a mosaic - not a mono culture. The fact that is it not a mono culture is an evidence of practice in intellectual freedom.

What gets Muslims communities in trouble I think is lazy Islam - when individual Muslim stop exploring and discovering their own religion and delegating that to some Clerics.