SEVEN OUT OF TEN of the least-free countries in the world have Islamic majorities. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, and Turkmenistan join Burma, Cuba, and North Korea in the dubious distinction of achieving the lowest possible ratings in the latest global survey of political rights and civil liberties put out by Freedom House.

The “democracy gap” between the Islamic world and the rest of the globe is the headline news in this year’s survey, published yesterday–not because it’s anything novel, but because people post-September 11 are paying attention. The pattern that has a non-Islamic state “more than three times more likely to be democratic than an Islamic state” can no longer be ignored.