Islam inherently contains basic and clear principles that are violent and oppressive to women. I’m not attacking Muslims when I say that, I’m attacking Islamic beliefs/ideals that are seen in the Qur’an.
IMO most religions can seem downright psychotic if you read their religious text and assume a completely literal interpretation. You may need to meet some Muslims who don’t take the Qur’an literally (may be hard to do where you live, but I’ve probably met hundreds in my travels in Muslim countries–and zero who take it completely literally). You may find the religion they actually practice (as opposed to the one you’ve read about) is no more violent and oppressive than that of Christians and Jews who also don’t take their religious texts completely literally.
The three largest Muslim countries have all elected female leaders. Now, this obviously doesn’t mean they are a wonderland of perfect gender equality (any more than it would mean it if the US someday managed to elect a woman), but it does point to the fact that the “wearing a burkha five steps behind her husband” idea of women in Islam is a gross stereotype, a conflation of an extreme minority with the whole. Women may have to work twice as hard to get half the recognition of men, sure–but that can happen in Muslim countries too, not just the US 😉
That said, there are lots of violent and oppressive people out there, no doubt. Did they learn this behavior from their religion, or did they seek out/create an interpretation of their religion that justified their already-existing behavior? I’m very much inclined to think the latter. In a similar vein, Fox News doesn’t mean the entire concept of news outlets is bad. It means people who are inclined to seek out or invent news to suit their existing worldview will create a bad news outlet.