Extremism

In any religion, extremists arise to serve their own causes by twisting the doctrine of their faith to make it seem that their actions are justified, even backed by their ideology. Islam has the black sheep, Al Qaeda. Judaism had the Gush Emunim. Christianity (I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover) has had about as many religious extremist groups as Islam, the quintessential one being the Ku Klux Klan (abortion clinic bombers being not far behind). Over the past 5k years or so, religion can be easily blamed for more bloodshed than a large World War. Being that the Serbian Black Hand was functionally Nihilist, therefore a religious extremist group, you could say that religion started World War One when they assassinated Prussian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Likewise, while the Nazis may have no direct religious affiliation, most of the steam of Hitler’s European campaign stemmed from his Anti-Semitism and scapegoating the Jews. (Forgive all the Historical allusion; history’s been my best subject since 6^th grade.)

The crusades would not have been any better or worse if Agnostics or Atheists were slaughtering Muslims (and Slavs, Jews, Orthodox Christians, Mongols, Prussians, etc.) instead of Christians. Extremists can be religious, or Anti-religious. If we declared Atheism and started bombing Mosques, Temples, and Churches, we’d be labeled religious extremists. *

The point I suppose I’m trying to make is that while religion is not inherently wrong, it can be taken to extremes with ease and lead to violence and death over trivial details of dissimilar belief systems.

*Note to the government agent stuck reading this because of the word Bomb: This is just an example. None of us are going to start bombing Mosques, Temples, and Churches.