>But they do share one thing besides the oppression of women. Have you guessed it yet?
Yep, they use islam as an excuse to justify their actions, but I am guessing what you want to say is:
Islam is bad. It's the only religion/tradition that actually encourages this sort of behavior.
I like that you admit that other religions/cultures also have bad histories, but then you pull this:
>but the doctrines and traditions surrounding them seem less prone to cause violence and unnecessary suffering than a book endorsed by every group mentioned in the article.
Now I am confused why you are actually believing a group of cruel, illiterate, barbaric militants on what a religion is about and choose to ignore what most other Muslims will tell you.
>no Taoists throwing acid in the faces of women
Do you really think that is a religious practice? Or that a religion would say "If you get angry at your wife, you get should throw acid in her face" ? This is just a social problem like any other (like drug addicts, street crime) that has nothing to do with the religion of the abusers. (I assume you are pointing to "Saving Face" that won the Oscar. Well i don't remember any of the abusers citing religion as a defense in that Documentary).
As for Bomb blasts, Islamic law actually states very clearly that even in the state of war, soldiers may not harm civilians or burn down crops etc. In fact if an enemy soldier surrenders, the law requires that he must be ESCORTED to safety.
As for women oppressing, and being against women education (and driving), that's a load of Bullshit too. Islamic has tons of provisions for women. For example, as far as i understand, western law states that when two people get married, their wealth is legally combined into one, right? And that when they divorce, they split up this total. Now in islamic law, not only does the husband not even get to TOUCH any of the woman's assets (yes she has right of personal wealth) but he may not take back any gift he gave her during their marriage. The law forbids it. Oh and the law obligates the husband to give the woman a wedding gift of her choice (she gets to set the worth as well) before consummating said marriage). And that's just one example. But i do admit that legally, a woman counts as half a witness (but do note, accusing of rape is different than giving testimony of seeing a rape). Oh and if you lie about a woman sleeping with someone, the legal penalty is 90 lashes. And that incident where a woman got flogged because her husband thought she was cheating on him, was actually illegal and legally he has to provide 4 male witnesses (with perfect track records) to get her convicted. And if not proven, the accusers get flogged.
So it's not that Islam is against women or anything, it's just there are a lot of people that use it as a bullshit excuse. For example, in somalia the local militant regime decreed that Islam prohibits wearing of women undergarments as it "conceals her true form". Yeah, they were deriving this from the commandment "thou shall not lie".
So i hope you'd refrain from pointing fingers again. (I know, a fool's hope)