Is Islam in the same condition Christianity was 500 years ago?

I saw this article last night, and posted a reply:

That's a good overview. I would add in the the US/UK are acting in the Middle East in a similar way the Holy Roman Empire did amongst the Italian states, or like England did amongst the pre-Norman Irish kingdoms. In the latter, Norman mercenaries fought on one side of a squabble between nascent kinglets in Ireland, which eventually drew the Norman kings into a quagmire in Ireland that they've never got out of (1000 years on).

The US/UK been drawn into a conflict between the various (short-lived) states on the basis of dodgy WMD evidence cooked up by Chalabi and his Shia chums. A UK Guardian article yesterday went through the evidence that Iran wants to see Shia supremacy in the region, so 'planted' intelligence so that it could pull in a big ally to destroy its neighbour. The same thing happens in schoolyards where one kid lies to his bigger brother about another kid he doesn't like ('he hit me!'), and then big brother comes along and kicks the other kid.

One thing that's missing from this analysis is that many of these extremists do equate religion with state, and see the struggle for one as the struggle for the other - there is no separation of the two in their minds. It's a bit like Catholicism, which 'officially' equates being a Catholic with being a Christian - if you're not a Catholic, you're not a Christian (I'm a Catholic, by the way!). The al-Saud family are of this persuasion, which is why they went into Riyadh about 100 years ago, killed the ruling group there and created Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is constructed as a state which exists to further Islam. This is where a lot of the present Islamic thinking that drives al-Qaeda and the rest. (we're not bombing them though, are we?)

Anyway, enough ramblings.