Indonesia - the world's most populous Muslim nation, at 235 million, and the third largest democracy, after India and the U.S. - held a free and fair presidential election. It featured three secular-minded candidates, including a woman who does not wear the hijab. 

The incumbent, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, won. He was rewarded for ushering in political and economic stability, controlling crony capitalism and corruption, and rooting out Islamic militancy.

Three months earlier, there had been parliamentary elections. Parties with an Islamic agenda lost to those who wanted to keep state and religion separate, though many may themselves be deeply religious.

Neighbouring Malaysia has begun rolling back a decades-long quota system for the majority Malays, which discriminates against Chinese, Indians and others. Prime Minister Najib Razak is pre-empting the resurgent opposition leader, former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, whose pledge to end the quotas was gaining traction.

Democracy is also working well in Turkey. The government has just proclaimed a law limiting the power of military courts. Civilian courts will try military personnel in peacetime and military courts will be barred from prosecuting civilians.

This complies with the European Union's requirements for Turkey to be eligible for EU membership. But its real significance is that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the popular prime minister, has ended the 80-year-old immunity enjoyed by the army, which used to stage coups and topple governments.

If you include the elected governments in Pakistan and Bangladesh (populations 176 million and 158 million, respectively) and add the Muslims of India (155 million), you realize that about 800 million Muslims enjoy varying degrees of democracy.

The Western view of Muslims living under military or monarchical despots is true mostly of the Middle East. And the worst among them (Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states) are the closest allies of the U.S. - and Canada.

So the idea of America as the harbinger of democracy for Muslims is humbug. The ballyhooed democratization of Iraq and Afghanistan (never the aim of the invasions) has come at a horrendous human cost, widely viewed in the Muslim world as crimes against humanity. 

A parallel notion, that Muslim women are living in the Dark Ages, also applies mostly to the Arab world, especially the nations closest to the U.S. and Canada.

Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey and Bangladesh have had women leaders. Even in Iran, the land of limited democracy and crackdowns, women are in the forefront of civic engagement, including protests.

In Germany, a pregnant hijabi woman was stabbed, 18 times, to death in a courtroom, as her 3-year-old son looked on. Instead of going after the suspect (a man who hated Muslims and was in court for calling her "a terrorist"), police mistakenly shot her husband, one presumes by presuming him to be at fault. He's in critical condition.

Marwa Sheribini was buried in her native Egypt where angry protesters condemned German Islamophobia, as did the Arab League. Elsewhere, Muslims berated the Western media's silence. Among them: Wahida Valiante, the hijab-wearing president of the Canadian Islamic Congress. Its executive director, Zijad Delic, added that if Sheribini's attacker had been a Muslim, "the media would've reported it widely. Then for days afterwards, they would deliberate the case and conclude that Muslims are `brutal and uncivilized.' But when a racist European murders an innocent woman, the silence is deafening."

In France, Ayatollah Nicolas Sarkozy has issued a fatwa against the niqab: It's "not a sign of religion. It's a sign of subservience and debasement." Perhaps. However, the issue is not theological but rather secular: On what legal basis does a democracy ban one person's veil but favour another's bikini?