I'm an atheist, so I have no dog in this fight, except one: I want to live in a peaceful world. To achieve this, in my mind it's a necessity to expose the powers that be, the movers and shakers and what's actually going on in the world. Instead all I hear and read are discussions about Muhammed's women and quotes from scripture of Bronze Age texts preaching violence, as if this has anything to do with anything. People just love to indulge in broad generalizations of others in order to support a perception of moral or intellectual superiority. Broke Wave raised an excellent point about propaganda. It is obvious to me that Western media is doing its best to stoke this fire.
The problem isn't with Islam or any other single belief system. Or any other single belief for that matter. This is about people in power maintaining their power by pushing a topic with broad public support. Usually that support comes from ignorance or gullibility. Look at all the things justified "because terrorists". You don't solve this problem by ranting about Islam or Muslims. You solve it by convincing people that they need to be less gullible. Education and information is important. Iran isn't keeping women out of schools out of misogyny, they're doing it to keep people tractable.
Imperialism, foreign intervention, torturing Muslims in Abu Ghraib - forcing them to masturbate to the videotaped laughs of sadistic American soldiers, drone attacks, puppet governments, financing the Zionist siege of Gaza - this is what the US is doing to Muslims. Then Korans are burned, put in toilets, mocking videos are made just to rub it in. Then Americans get all indignant that their mockeries of an almost-conquered people are not taken in a light-hearted fashion.
The largest military power in the world overthrew the government of a small country. Can anyone imagine the US ambassador in Libya getting blown up if the US hadn't bombed the Libyan government out of existance?
So enough with the religion bashing. It's a red herring, there to distract you from the real problems. I'm not defending corrupt dictorships, religious fanaticism, violent zealotry, or anything of the sort. I only stand for human decency and truth.