In other words, just because their muslims does not mean that the muslim faith buthcers and degrades women.

Just a few points:

The sharia and other assorted beliefs that oppress women in islamic countries has less to do with Islam and more to do with the inherited badly adapted 'civilization' of migrating goat herders of a few hundred years ago. Not everything in 'islamic' countries is a result of the religion.

Now, having said that, I assure you I afford the same respect for islam that I afford for all major religions: precisely not very much. Its a bunch of moaning nonsense made up around campfires over thousands of years. Its mumbo-jumbo. Its a cobled together contradictory metaphors and myths that might have helped folks survive the brutal world of early civilization, but its about as relevant and useful today as a copper axe.

So when I hear avowed Christians here babbling on about the religion of peace and how it degrades women- I think them hypocrites. Last time I read the bible, it instructed me on how I could rape slave girls (oh, on the lap of my wife, nonetheless) and beat my wife with a rod of such-and-such size, and all sorts of nutty stories (including unicorns, floods-and-arcs, and etc).

Go read that damn thing [the bible]. I mean more than follow along when your parson regurgitates a few key phrases at church on sunday and then tells you what they mean. Then go read a quaran. I promise you that you won't find much difference in how women are evaluated: chattel and prostitutes, unless you happen to be lucky enough to be a blood relative of a prophet or a son of god- and then their okay.

Do islamic-arab societies treat women horribly- YES.

But until recently, so did western CHRISTIAN society.

In some places in the midwest (extreme christian enclaves, parts of Utah, etc) women are expected to veil up on sunday and are treated not much better than women in Iran. Does this mean that all christians are woman abusers, or that one can't be a christian and escape misogeny?

Are all christians doomed to be murderers of witches? By the same logic...

Its a false conclusion from a correlation. Look to a fundamentally broken society- a society unable to escape extreme and radical traditionalism and conservatism as a reaction to social chaos and rapid change. There you will find the seeds of most of the illnesses you attribute to their religion. A society trying to confront the 21st century by reverting to the 14th.

We have the same fundamentalist ancestor worshippers in our society. Folks who think we had it all fugured out a few hundred years ago, mix those values in with religion and create a thick rich bullshit stew. No doubt you can divine (haha) who I think they are and what party they run.

Davin L.