The Islamic religion has its many defects – as do all religions. I am not religious but spiritual – mainly because all religions hold onto some antiquated perceptions I find offensive. The Christian faith (I was raised Roman-Catholic/Christian) has its out of date views that women are not the equal of men and cannot lead the church. This fatal flaw is irreconcilable with reality and pretty much was the core reason I took from Christianity all that was good in this modern era and walked away from it.

Islam’s intolerance is much, much worse. It’s views towards women and leaving the faith demonstrate and unreal insecurity complex. The wrapping of women and hiding them from men is a sign (a) men cannot control themselves around the biological cues women send out just be being female, and (b) the need for men to feel like they can do anything and women must be constricted. It is a truly stunning admission that men cannot control themselves and feel insecure around the female of our species.

Islam also demonstrates and insecurity by making it a death sentence to leave the fold. Any strong religion doesn’t need to be mandated by threats of death. One would think finding the ultimate religious awakening would be enough incentive to keep human beings on the right path.

Why do I bring this up? Too many Muslims are having a very tough time living in America and the West and are actually attacking their own children because they do not hone to the Islam as much as or the same way they did. Here is one tragic story that ended in death because a young 16 girl tried to make her own decisions for her own life:

Friends of the teenager, a Grade 11 student at nearby Applewood Heights high school, identified her as Aqsa Parvez and said they were shocked by the attack on the outgoing, likeable girl, but said she had been threatened by her strictly religious family before.

“She got threatened by her father and her brother,” said Dominiquia Holmes-Thompson, who had known Aqsa since they both started high school together. “He said that if she leaves, he would kill her.”

Ebonie Mitchell, 16, another friend of the victim, said the conflict with her father over wearing Islamic dress came to a head at the beginning of this school year. “She just wanted to dress like we do,” she said.

“Last year she wore like the Islamic stuff and everything, the hijab, and this year she’s all Western. She just wanted to look like everyone else. And I guess her dad had a problem with that.”

Ebonie said her friend had left home once before, in September, for about two weeks. She returned home, but the fights with her family over what she wore just got worse.

We experienced something very similar in my own neighborhood a few weeks ago. I was startled by the screams of a young women and rushed outside the house to find a girl being grabbed and dragged into a house, while her boyfriend screamed at the ones holding the girl.

It turns out the ones dragging the girl into the house were her parents. The girl in this case was 18 years old. The police received a ton of calls that night and showed up. But before then the mother, father and older sister tried to tell the girl she could not see the boy. The father was the most ludicrous – claiming he owned his daughter and was going to make his house her jail. Needless to say that doesn’t fly in America and the police settled things down. But from what we learned the family had planned to trick the girl into stopping by so they could kidnap her and hold her by force.

This kind of extreme paranoia that children will experiment and not return to the fold is pathetic. And in the end it shuts off any hope of a face-saving return to the fold. Coercion only creates resistance, not true acceptance. Islam has a lot more to deal with than the mindless bloodlust of al-Qaeda. It (and many religions) need to get over their antiquated views that certain people are second class beings or – worse – property. It is these views that end up sanctioning the death and destruction. Because death and destruction towards second class beings or property is not a sin against humanity.