Religion
In reply to the discussion: It would be wrong to expect atheists or antitheists to answer for a murderer who used those labels. [View all]LeftishBrit
(41,237 posts)But the latter usually within the same religion. I don't think that it's usual to blame a Christian for Muslim violence, or a Jew for Christian violence, or a Muslim for Jewish violence just on the basis of shared 'Abrahamic' faith (though if someone is an Islamophobe or an anti-Semite or hates all Christians, then they may blame their un-favoured group for everything).
In any case, people should only be blamed for their own violence, or for violence which they endorse.
I think, however, there is sometimes a confusion between 'every religious person/atheist is responsible for all violence committed by a member of their faith/lack of faith' and 'religion/ the lack of it in society leads to increased violence overall'. The latter does not imply the former. My own view is that exclusionary, group-based ideologies of all sorts lead to increased risk of violence overall: this includes many religions, but also many other ideologies such as nationalism and even sports fandom, and that we are probably not going to get rid of such ideologies, so we have to work on preventing and combatting the violence as such.