His Journey Toward Islamoawareness
Excellent piece echoing my increasing awareness about Islam by Lawrence Meyers on Big Peace (reporting the words of a good friend who can't publicly state his views):

I learned about "The Verse of the Sword" (9:5) that says "slay infidels wherever you find them", the verse condoning wife-beating (4:34), the hundreds of other violent, intolerant verses, and the all-important distinction between Meccan verses and the Medinan verses in the Qu'ran. (The more violent ones are considered "more true" to Islamic theologians.)

I learned about the countries where Islam rules, and saw that they almost always are places where freedoms are denied, economies stagnate, ideas are repressed and human rights violated.

I learned about the barbaric system known as Sharia law and its death penalty for homosexuality, adultery, and apostasy, and how it codifies second-class status for non-Muslim and all women. Iran actually executes gays routinely, simply because they are gay!

I learned about Muhammad; how he is held as an "excellent example of conduct" (33:21) for Muslims to follow even today, but then I learned the historical record (in the hadith; the collections of his doings and sayings, and in biographies written by pious Muslims) shows that he owned slaves, raped the female ones (in a couple of cases shortly after having their husbands killed), robbed caravans, tortured a man to find out where he hid his treasure-by building a fire on his chest, married a 6 year-old, and had sex with her when she was 9-and he struck her, too. He had all the men of an entire tribe slaughtered, and had his critics assassinated. And these are excellent examples of conduct?

...Not every thing I learned reflected poorly on Islam, but the more I looked into the doctrine and history of Islam the more "aware" I became of the existence of serious totalitarian, xenophobic, supremacist, expansionist elements of Islamic ideology and theology.

More: Why saying "But what about Christianity?!" doesn't cut it -- at the above link.