Raised in thr West I can say this : many of our eastern-born parents and Islamic school teachers teach Islam through fear - fear of Hell, fear of punishment, fear of God. It is taught to us at young ages from freightening Imams who scream and bang the podiums they preach from.

I remember it was a very displeasurable thing for me when my parents told me we were going to the Mosque. It involved people looking unhappy and discussing how America is against Islam and how we werent allowed to interact with girls, even though I could during grade school. As I grew into adolescence and a post-9/11 world following Islam and being a social teenager were at complete odds with each other. I was told at Mosque that we had a choice as western born Muslims that we could enjoin Islam or enjoin in the sinning Americans. I began to see these foreign born people, who grew up and established themselves in a Muslim country, came to the West and gave birth to us here and made us social pariahs and told us it was not a big deal. It seemed like American teenagers were having significantly better and happier lives than I was....

As I have now grown into young adulthood, I see that my parents philosophy and my own have changed - Islam is and should be taught through love. You cannot force someone to follow a religion because of fear or oblivion. You cannot tell someone to isolate themselves from the world because the world seems to disagree with your beliefs. If anything, the years I have spent befriending and even living with nonMuslims has given me a better faith because through diversity we learn aspects of ourselves we would not nornally see or understand. I learned that living a Muslim life and living a Western life were compatible, unlike what Imams had said to us.

The problem lies larger than the parents "not teaching," it involves the whole way we even teach the religion.