I have been reading what seems to me an important book, Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation by Tariq Ramadan. He talks about how 'Popular demonstrations, so excessive in the Muslim world, against the Danish cartoons or Pope Benedict XVI's speech in Germany, reveal far more about societies where critical debate is lacking, where civil society is muzzled (and sometimes cunningly instrumentalized to vent its anger on the outside world, the West), where hypocritical formalism is institutionalized, than they do about the specific object of the anger. The same is true of mobilizations against the war in Iraq or of opposition to the Israeli government's repressive policy towards the Palestinians. From the top leaders to the grass roots of Muslim societies and communities, one can observe emotional mobilizations determined by the timing and the intensity of media coverage. There is no in-depth debate between trends of thought, no critical dialogue, no long-term strategy ... and always the same lack of vision and co-ordination' ( p 305).