Islam, as it is practiced by a majority of muslims in the world, is a regressive force.

[DetlefK]

106. Islam needs a Renaissance.

Christianity has had the Renaissance: An age of great intellectual curiosity, an age of inter-mixing between Christianity and pagan ideas and influences, an age of massive artistic productivity, the age that laid the philosophic groundwork for what would eventually become "science" 100 years later, and so so much more... Powerful cultural memes that echo in western society to this day.
(That isn't to say that everything was great: Such scholars threaded a thin line between being a celebrated revolutionary thinker and being a heretic who should be put to death.)

The christian Renaissance was triggered by an intellectual hunger for the wisdom of the past, for babylonian, egyptian and greek sources. (Especially egyptian and greek.) And by the 15th century, such old books became available to european scholars by way of trading-routes with the Byzantine Empire.
And after some re-interpretation (and mis-interpretation due to dating-errors) it was found that this wisdom was complementary to christian wisdom.





What Islam needs is such a trigger, such a desire for new ideas, for ideas outside of the realm of what's considered acceptable, an age of cultural and intellectual experimentation and curiosity.
There have been islamic Renaissances in this or that country, but they were small and isolated and without wider significance.