Religion out of context

With the news from France of the attack on a satirical magazine which had upset the militant fringe element of the Muslim religion by lampooning Muhammad, the militants arrived at the headquarters of the magazine and killed up to 12 people. It's interesting that the front page of the magazines current issue has an unsavoury story of something to do with Virgin Mary and the Christian story.
One has to ask the question is Religion a thing for good or evil.
Does the undoubted 'cruelty' to people of other faiths, including non religious people, in the name of God mean anything other than religious belief seems to screw up.
The Catholic faith has to its name a repugnant period when the 'Inquisition' was practised to drive out heresy. The Crusaders were a group bent on religious score settling against the Muslim and had no mercy when dealing with people outside their own faith.
Faith is not the only driver of mayhem. Long periods when the tribes ran amok killing and raping, the ideological crusades of Pol Pot in Cambodia Mao Zedong, Stalin or Hitler, although these latter were driven by individuals not a collective faith movement.
Mankind has always had its fears and the need to explain the unknown.
From the superstitions of the cave dwellers and their fear of Spirits to the ancient religions of India through to Judaism and the interlinking faiths of Christianity and Islamism. The belief in a 'Father' figure to protect us is as relevant today as it was then but it's methodology has divided the faiths in a way their founders would abhor.
The teaching of Christianity has become largely benign with a reliance on the 'individuals' link to their faith and one in which one constantly relays on forgiveness through the act of contrition.
Judaism relays on a very tight tribal knit where belonging is not individual but a collective issue and where the members keep an eye on each other.
The Muslim faith is based on the conversations Muhammad had with Allah and the bloody struggle Muhammad had to entrench his teaching.
Christianity is pacifist, Islam is much more aggressive in the directives to its adherents and has as it's base a collective identity with a period and a traditional culture long gone. A period when it's survival was a matter of life and death a sinister echo of what we saw early today.
Then There is over-weaning entrenched position of the male and the inherent subservience of many of the females sheltering in Muslim families. A fact that societies such as ours and across Europe generally have chosen to ignore in the blind hope that education and the proximity to other cultures would over time change for a more lenient view.
We all have parroted the phrases "the Muslims I know are good people and wouldn't condone what the extremists do". This of course is true but lying behind our relationship with our Muslim friend is the fact that really do we get to hear or see the wives of these friends. In my own experience the wives are kept at home and if one had need to call on a Muslim friends home the women were kept in the background hidden away as it were from our eyes.
This isn't right but yet for the sake of cultural harmony we acquiesce, we turn a blind eye to the strange goings on in the Muslim household.
This is not to say the European way is correct but at least it 'conforms rights' across the continent and has a pretty solid basis in law. Yet the rights of man and women and many other entrenched values are disregarded by a swelling group of people within our midst. From this flows the separatism that is showing its ugly head on both sides. It could be argued that under the guise of Religion a culture that is alien to the values of Europe is growing up and that the attacks from so called extremist groups are secretly, both feared but also emotionally supported by the rank and file of the group who see themselves alienated.
If the religious group can not modify, as the Christians have learnt to do then perhaps there is no place for the Muslim religion in the West ?