Religion - the bane of the world

One of my adoption friends posted link to the following article at the New York Times and yet again I'm finding myself defending Islam.. and not being a Muslim I find it slightly amusing.

The thing is... being married into a Muslim family and being one of the few people I know how have read the Torah, Bible and Quran as Books... please note the emphasise on being books.  I have a come to a simple conclusion that in essence they are all the same part of a trilogy.  They actually follow on from each other so the Torah is book 1, the Bible book 2 and the Quran book 3.

But what I have learnt from the Books is that us gals aint that bad.. we are after all, aside from God (or whatever you call him/her) the only sex that can give life and from what I have learnt from the family is that us women folk is revered, we are not second class citizens.

The thing is, all this crap in the world that is being blamed on religion actually has nothing to do with the religions or the religious teaching of the Books.  They have to do with the traditions of different cultures.

For one - the wearing of the Hijab - Muslim women do not have to wear it unless they want to.  It is the same to them as a Catholic lady wearing a mantilla or a Jewish Orthodox woman wearing a wig, it is their choice.  Fair enough, personally I do not agree with the wearing of the full burka, then again, when I meet people I do like to see their eyes - I like looking into a person's eye when meeting someone, but as long as the person in question is given the choice, who am I to question their choice.

Since a lot of my belief structure is based on stuff I read about 20 years ago, I should really sit down and read the Books again.  However, I know that I'm smart enough to not tarnish a religion with the conduct of some people.

To say that Islam is an evil religion, because what a group of villagers in Bangladesh has done to a young girls, would be the same as me say that all Jews are evil, because I disagree with Israel politics or that all Catholics are child molesters because a few priest has been proven to be child abusers.

So my plea to everyone is please, please educate yourself before you start saying that a religion is evil, bad or oppressing.  What the villagers from Bangladesh needs is for you to educate them and not to condemn them. Once upon a time, it was us "educated"people who had to rely on our priests telling us what was in the Bible because we couldn't read what was in it... it is only now we can pick up the all three Books and question what's in them because we have been educated.