From a non emotional response.
I had a (ex)muslim girlfriend, (who suffered fgm)
I grew up in the UK, in a town with a large muslim population. My school was 35% pakistani.
My life, girlfriends, and experiences dwarfs the majority of peoples interaction with different cultures.
(I'm not saying your own)
....I now have an Asian girlfriend, who is Buddhist.
I am not any 'ist' that I can think of.
Islam is extremely sexist racist and homophobic. (from reading and from the experiences my girlfriend told me about).
What is your opinion on this, btw? - How do you reconcile islam with Islamic law in respect of, say womens rights?
The fundamental problem with islam teaching - as opposed to western christian values (i'm not religious, btw) - is the concept of deception being completely acceptable and encouraged if it means the furthering islam.
And in a state of war (the english town of the rotherham rape cases), the teachings can change any non islamic person - totally subjectively - to a person to being seen as an enemy.
And as an enemy to islam, is automatically demotes other human beings to 'collateral' damage, affording the 'enemy' no respect.
Thanks for your reply.
To answer, let's talk correlation vs causation.
You mention 35% of your school was Pakistani. So any statistics from this have not only the correlation of Islam but also Pakistan, which is a nation with its own culture. They happen to be Islamic, another correlation. You didn't mention whether your school was an all boy school, but if so, there's another correlation to consider.
As any educated person should know, correlation doesn't mean causation, so why do we choose Islam as the blame, or was it even us who decided that?
Africa is a continent where fgm exists in both Christian and Islamic countries. So there isn't necessarily even a correlation between fgm and Islam nevermind a causal relationship. Note that these are developing countries were talking about - all of them - so there's a finer correlation to work from. And as noted by @bitius already, colonialism has had a major impact on development in these countries.
You're talking of one woman's experience of Islam in the country she was raised in. I can easily assume that experience to be very real, and I'm unsurprised if she blames Islam for teaching Pakistani people this sexist way of maintaining power over women. All of these underdeveloped countries where women are violently oppressed are struggling for power. They can take power over their women and this is an easily exploited industry. I call it an industry intentionally. It's almost always about money and this is in places where there are not 101 ways to make money, so control of their women is a symptom of their failed economies. It has nothing to do with religion, religion is just used to justify the cruelty. If they didn't have religion, they would find another excuse. The human mind has a magical way of doing that, and is made easier by cultural norms.
In my own country, Ireland, there was a time before Christianity when pagan Irish worshipped the woman as the symbol of life and death. It was after Ireland got it's independence back that the catholic church gained power over Ireland. Since the great famine took place less than 60 years prior, the population of Ireland was low. Women having children out of wedlock were imprisoned in laundry facilities and their babies taken and "given" away. Contraception was illegal and so was divorce. Those who didn't want to be imprisoned had to marry and were no longer allowed to work for an income. This is less than 100 years ago in catholic Ireland when we were a developing country.