Too often, people seem to assume that there is only one answer to any given question. Taking the first message in this thread, it IS true that for perhaps ten percent of Muslim children in the UK, their parents may have a problem allowing their children to have music education in school.
That is true - but there are a number of other truths that apply to the other ninety percent of Muslim children in the UK, and still other truths that apply in other places in the world. The problem the original message describes is not an either-or situation. It covers a wide spectrum, as does almost any situation that occurs in a religious context.

It IS absolutely true that child abuse and molestation occurred with horrible frequency in many parishes in the Catholic Church, and a large number of Catholic bishops made an equally distressing attempt to cover up those crimes. But it is also true that in a far larger number of parishes, absolutely no abuse or molestation occurred. For those who did not know the criminals or the victims, the crimes are distant and unreal - but in places like Boston and Ireland where these crimes were particularly widespread, entire dioceses were poisoned by the priests and bishops who betrayed parishioners and their children with these horrible crimes. And WHY did these crimes of molestation and abuse and coverup occur? - there is no one answer.
But in the parishes and Catholic institutions I have been affiliated with, these things did not happen, and I had a very good experience of church - and that is also truth, a truth with the equal truth that the Catholic Church has served as a haven for child molesters.

And it's absolutely true that churches have served as very effective ways of control and oppression and bigotry and other tyrannies and atrocities. But conflicting with that truth is the truth that churches have served as centers of compassion and education and heroism and refuge.

There is no one, absolute truth about religious faith. It can be profoundly wise or mindlessly bigoted. It can be amazingly compassionate, or horribly oppressive and cruel. It can be a pinnacle of goodness and love, or a bottomless pit of hatred and evil. It can open minds to limitless possibilities, or betray intelligence with ironclad doctrinalism. Sometimes, religious denominations will have some consistency ands lean one way or another, toward "good" or "bad" - but oftentimes, these contradictions coexist in equal strength within one denomination, and even within one local religious community.

So, if you make either a broad condemnation or a broad commendation of religion as a whole, or even of a particular denomination - you're probably wrong. Religion is far too complex to be explained away in twenty-five words or less. Yup - even worse than defining what is folk....

-Joe-