Don't get me wrong.


I'm not prejudiced against any religion, nor do I condemn anybody for adopting a particular faith. But I'm confused as to why certain religions don't practice what their holy books preach. Reading Carmen bin Laden's autobiography and the impact that Saudi life and Islam has on her life and her children makes me question the direction in which religious people interpret their holy books, be it the Bible or the Koran. 


Are women really that undesirable, sinful and worthless as the Koran says? Does the Koran truly want their women to be trapped and silenced by their dowdy abayas, forced into submission by their husbands and religious police. Does the Koran want men to chain their women and control them like lap dogs?


Again, I'm not against Islam. I just cannot comprehend why such incidents are occurring in the Middle East, especially when I read about girls as young as 8 being forced to be young virgin wives of men as old as 50, women with faces splashed with acid by their husbands because they received daughters instead of sons. 


Perhaps this found be confirmation bias at play. Every book I read about the Middle East seems to document the miserable lives and fate of Muslim women in the Middle East. But the very fact that such incidents occur is proof that women are being abused. Both physically and psychologically. 


Are we that undesirable in the eyes of religious men who interpret the Koran in ways they deem permissible? Of course, subjugation of women occurs in all religions. Even the Bible contains verses that talk of male dominion over women, all because of that one forbidden apple that Eve plucked. 


Are women doomed to endure the punishment set upon Eve because of a single fruit? 


Religion confuses me. But the fate of Muslim women in the Middle East pains me even more.