TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) - Libya's interim rulers have declared the country liberated after an 8-month civil war, launching the oil-rich nation on what is meant to be a two-year transition to democracy. But they laid out plans with an Islamist tone that could rattle their Western backers. (YahooNews)

On Friday, I pointed out that the change in government, from Gadhafi to parties unknown, might not be exactly what the West might have wanted.  So it is not much of a surprise that Libya, like Egypt and other Middle East countries, swept up in the mayhem of the Arab Spring are emerging, not as democracies, but as theocracies, or at the very least a nation that is more focused on the religious than on the secular.  We have seen what the Taliban, in the name of religion can do.  We have seen what the Ayatollahs have done to Iran, in the name of religion.

For all the protestations that Islam is about peace and harmony, these nations tend to highlight the worst of the religion, not the best.  And tends to further damn their religion in the eyes of those outside those countries.