Our own brand of thought control

With the latest news of the abduction of the young girls who have been captured and held hostage by Boko Haram in Nigeria, the latest in a long list of violent acts by groups linked to the Muslim faithful we obviously have to reflect on the religion and those who follow it.
We who live outside the Muslim faith, (as I am sure are the majority of Muslims), are incredulous at the way the faith can be interpreted in such a way that young men and women can be worked up to commit murder in the name of a Holy War. To give their own lives in the belief that they will gain Paradise by killing the Infidel.
The definition of an infidel includes the Shi'as interpretation of the Sunni and visa versa, both Muslim, each with a different historical relationship to Mohammed and each hated because of that difference.
Religion has always baffled the none religious person, how the surety of belief can turn the concept of "loving mankind", on its head by fanatics.
Of course one gets fanatics in every turn of life, people who are consumed by their cause, political, environmental who risk everything to promote their concept of the ideal. Most conflicts in history have been disfigured by people who turn on another group because they have been brain washed into seeing what is not there.
After the War the Ukrainians massacred the Poles in Volhynia. People who had been neighbours for generations turned on each other in an attempt to exterminate the weaker group, in this case the Poles. No one was spared, men women and children, people known on first name terms, going to school together were killed in an orgy of revenge.
The term revenge is indeed a terrible one. We see it in the divorce court we see it in the bomb planted outside a particular congregation, aimed to exact revenge for a historical slight that is only alight because someone kept it so. These quasi personal vendettas are usually limited to the tribal situation where the enmity is relatively limited and however horrible, is played out in a relatively constrained area.
The Muslim extremist seems to exist on an altogether broader canvas, world wide in fact. Its a growing problem. In modern times it was limited to largely Al Qaed in Afghanistan but like the mythological Hydra it seems to be growing heads everywhere. Is this a genuine desire to expand  the faith. There have been many historical surges in history by religions to capture the high ground and with our instantaneous news, we are made more aware of their activities. 
We are also governed in our response by the outward manifestation of the brotherhood (manifest in any religion) but particularly in our plural society, by a dress code which has the effect of alienating the local population. If you accentuate the difference rather than try to assimilate people, as we have done progressively in terms of race, gender and sexual difference its difficult to accept that another group who are not indigenous to our way of life should seek to impose their own brand of exclusivity.
The case of the schools in Birmingham where the curricula has been adjusted to suit the faith and adopt the principles of Sharia Law is a bridge too far and we have to ask whether as a nation we should insist on our own brand of thought control ?                     

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