I didn't say that. I said the things fanatics do, have mostly nothing to do with their religion.
By "them", I was exactly refering to their religion.
For example the suicide bombings you mention. In fact they are a pure contradiction to the koran. Killing innocent people is condemned by it's writings and no one will get rewarded for that.
Is it? Remember that religious texts are often self-contradictive. Pointing out one verse to say "this is a book of peace, and anyone who doesn't agree has nothing to do with the religion" doesn't really work, because holy books aren't always that consistent, so the other side can pretty much do the exact same, but simply to the opposite point of view.
Let me point out three small lists of not so peaceful/tolerant verses which have been found within the Quran:
CrueltyIntoleranceInjusticeIt doesn't surprise me, with this amount of garbage in them, that holy books have been used to do insane things for thousands of years, and that this still happens today. I don't see any reason to distinguish between holy books or any other books when judging them.
But "to be a religious fanatic" exactly means "to abuse religion".
I'm pretty sure that this is not the definition. These all define it as a sort of irrational, unquestionable, extreme devotion to a cause:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanaticismhttp://www.thefreedictionary.com/fanaticismhttp://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fanaticismhttp://www.yourdictionary.com/fanaticismI have not seen it being defined as "abusing religion" anywhere. But if "abusing religion" is the same as "following it unquestionably and excessively according to your understanding of it", then you're probably right.
This is just the point where I don't see it as abuse any more than following it casually (in fact I think the moderates are actually further from following the religions than the fanatics are).
Anyway, religion itself is not the problem but how it is conveyed.
Since it is so often conveyed wrongly, might it not be a sign that there's something wrong with what's being conveyed? I mean, if anyone writing the Bible, if there were any good god who could see into the future, surely that god would had told the followers "leave out Leviticus and forget all about this nonsense", rather than including it, resulting in the death of millions of innocent people and totalitarian regimes lasting a millennia.
My passport says I'm catholic, but I'm not religious at all. Why not? Cause it was conveyed to me as not important but still something positive, as long as it's peaceful.
I think the only way to make Christianity peaceful is by deliberately cherry picking the peaceful parts and ignoring all the bad things, or saying you get a good message out of the cherry picked good parts. Even Jesus said no one who did not hate his (and her?) mother, farther and if I remember correctly, whole family, could not be his disciple, and said no rich people could enter heaven (ha, forget everything about neo-Conservative Jesus now, Sarah Palin!), or at least that it was harder than getting camels through the eye of a needle, so I guess it's just time to make liquid camel or mass-produce some very big needles.
But thinking it is not important for the world doesn't give me the right to condemn any religion in its entirety.
With free speech, I think we have the right to condemn religions as we like?
I didn't hear about that, but after googling a bit it seems that's more something mainly political mixed up with a little bit of horribly conveyed beliefs.
I think this is a perfect example of the pointless defense some non-religious people make for religion. Why not protect the politics and say mainly mainly religious instead?
Certainly, it is mainly religious. The history:
Long ago, Africa was a place where gays were not killed.
Then Europe colonized Africa, made everyone slaves, stole their resources and all that. During this time, the colonial powers forbade homosexuality.
Then the west officially stopped colonizing Africa.
Then the west became more tolerant of gays. Africa has also been infected by Christianity.
Now some people in Africa say "the Bible says homosexuality is unnatural, gays are abominations who should be killed, it is an evil culture from the west".
And guess what happened in Uganda a few years ago... An American church went over there to preach hate, and since then Uganda has gone from the insane ban on "homosexuality" to the worse than insane threat of death penalty and totalitarian penalties for not reporting if you know a gay within x amount of time.
I recommend a video called "Vanguard: Missionaries of Hate". I found it on YouTube, but now it's apparently private. But it does well in showing the problems, without being afraid of mentioning religion in a bad light.
Probably a lot of that behavior has to do with the general mentality a people shows.
Well, today, thanks to Christianity, homophobia has been spread from a small culture (homophobia is cultural, not homosexuality) to all around the world, and it is true that today many people, who are not even religious, are still homophobic. I've even heard someone call Christian boy scout groups "gay scout groups".
The US kinda tends to be a little extreme in nearly every part of society, and they kinda always have been quite puritanical, so I don't really know what you mean with "[...]USA, which wasn't always as religious as it is now".
I meant that, at least when it was less religious, this nonsense could not be used as justification for insane opinions. Now it can. My point is that we may think "religion has evolved into a peaceful, moderate version in the west", but with this example, I'm trying to show that religions which contain absurdities like Christianity will always threaten us to jump back into the radical state, where it is "abused".
Huh? Which wars did we, the EU, start? I agree that a lot of the policies are only beneficial for one side, but going from there to starting wars is quite a big step.
I meant USA here, mostly. Well, NATO led by USA, because most of EU happily jumps after USA wherever it goes.
All arguments in defense of our wars in Libya and Iraq would end up being based solely on how we disagree with their dictators. I think our reasons to disagree with them are perfectly valid.
Btw, I don't know if I always choose the right words to express my thoughts since I'm talking/writing quite a lot at the moment and I'm not a native speaker, but I hope my phrases are well comprehensible 
I didn't have any problems understanding them at all. I'm not native English either.
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