In all of the woolly-minded, hand-wringing, bleeding heart nonsense I've read to date about the nature of religion on JU; in all of the if-only-we-could-be-reasonable-about-this-and-and-just-worship-god-in-our-own-way bullshit that goes on in here, never once have I seen the least sign that any of you people understand what religion actually does.
Let me make it simple for you. It divides. It divides the righteous from the unrighteous, the right from the wrong, the saint from the sinner, the holy from the unholy. The righteous, the right, the saint, and the holy are all saved. The unrighteous, the wrong and the unholy, are all damned.
Whatever the approach of any particular religion to morality, salvation, sin, death, hell and heaven; no matter how sophisticated is the teleology, the eschatology, and the apologetics employed by any given religion, that is what they do. They divide. Christ said 'I came not to bring peace but a sword'. Not reconciliation but division.
Since the nature of religion is to divide, and the nature of proselytizing apocalyptic religions (such as both Christianity and Islam) is to make those divisions as clear, as precise, as intelligible as possible, they breed fanatics not in despite of the virtues they teach but because of them. Because in each case, while the virtues preached may be similar in terms of the actions which are meant to express them (give to the poor, don't commit adultery), they are fundamentally opposed in their basic assumptions. One assumes that Allah rules the universe, the other assumes that the God of the Judaeo-Christian tradition does. And both faiths regard the other as a heresy.
Where there are heretics the true believers of either confession will search them out and kill them in order to be true to their God, themselves, and their fellow believers. There is no possibility of reconciliation between confessions of faith whose most ardent confessors regard the other as a heretic. And the only possible outcome of sustained contact between them is bloody conflict, precisely because what they value most, in both cases, teaches them that in order to be true to what they value they must kill each other.
Criticizing a religion, any religion, for teaching the faithful to kill, for encouraging that killing, is (as I've said elsewhere) as useful as complaining that rain is wet, as constructive as complaining because dogs have the capability to bark.
Religions are not evil when they advocate the killing of heretics - whatever the particular religion involved - they are virtuous in that they stamp out a threat to true belief, and promise appropriate rewards for those carrying on the killing.
Any form of thought that cannot include the Other within itself is predisposed toward the violent destruction of any opposing form of thought precisely because it is structured so as not to include the Other.
And whining about it will make no difference, will not prevent those eager for martyrdom because they are good religionists from pursuing that martyrdom. Believe in my God or I'll kill you, Motherfucker.
Don't bitch about religion because it doesn't live up to the values it embodies. Bitch about religion because it does.
