I often hear it said that extreme atheists are just as intolerant as extreme theists. The implication seems to be that extreme views are the problem rather than the exact nature of those views.

I have two basic objections to that way of thinking.

First, I think that there are some views that deserve our extreme support. The idea that we ought to embrace beliefs that are well supported by logic and evidence and reject beliefs that are absurd and refuted by the evidence is one of them. Being a firm promoter and defender of the demonstrable fact that 2 + 2 = 4 is not a character defect; being tolerant of those accountants and engineers and medical technicians who might believe 2 + 2 = 17 is not a praiseworthy example of open-mindedness.

Second, extreme atheism and extreme theism are not equally likely to inspire Very Bad Behavior. I am still waiting to see the first story about an atheist who read Dawkins or Harris and Hitchens and then murdered a priest or firebombed a synagogue. I’m also still waiting to see the first story about the fans of Dawkins battling the fans of Harris in the streets in an attempt to settle their differences.

The situation is much different when it comes to extreme theists. Try as I might, I can’t keep up with the many stories I encounter virtually every day detailing their extreme and often murderously intolerant behavior.
Here are just a few of the stories I’ve come across this month alone:

—– Taliban Blow Up 16 Music Shops In Pakistan (AFP; March 4)

PESHAWAR: Taliban militants blew up 16 shops selling music and DVDs in northwest Pakistan overnight, police said Thursday.

“An improvised explosive device planted in a market selling music and DVDs in Takhtbhai town blew up 16 shops overnight,” local police official Fazal Mabood told AFP, blaming Taliban insurgents.

There were no casualties in the attack in the town, northwest of Peshawar, because the market was closed at the time of explosion, he added.

Islamist militants have bombed scores of entertainment shops across the country’s northwest in recent years, charging that music and films are contrary to the teachings of Islam….

—– Two Buddhists Killed In Thai Muslim South (Gulfnews.com/The Associated Press; March 7)

PATTANI: Suspected separatist militants shot dead two Buddhists and set their bodies ablaze on Saturday in Thailand’s Muslim-majority south, a police officer said.

The two men, brothers aged 40 and 36, were killed as they rode a motorcycle in Pattani province, one of the three southern provinces caught up in a separatist insurgency in which more than 3,000 people have been killed since 2003.

“The victims were shot by an AKA rifle, and the insurgents left a note saying ‘This is a revenge on state officials’,” the police officer said

One of the victims was an assistant village headman, the officer said, adding the identity of the assailants was not known.

Pattani and the neighbouring provinces of Narathiwat and Yala, abutting Malaysia, were a Muslim sultanate until annexed a century ago by predominantly Buddhist Thailand. Around 80 per cent of people there are Muslim and speak a Malay dialect.

—– Two Dalits Killed Over Temple Worship (Thaindian News/The Indo-Asian News Service; March 7)

CHENNAI: In separate incidents, two Dalits ["untouchables"] were killed following a dispute over worshipping in a temple in Tamil Nadu, the police said Saturday.

The victims were identified as K. Paramasivan, 27, and E. Easwaran, 55. The killings took place at Sankarankoil in Tirunelveli district.

Paramasivan was attacked Friday night when he was on his way to his village. Easwaran was attacked while riding a two-wheeler with a friend.

In both cases, the dispute apparently was over worshipping in a temple belonging to the largely pastoral Konar community.

—– Former Muslim Facing Death Threats In Egypt (BosNewsLife.com; March 8)

CAIRO: A former Muslim who converted to Christianity in Egypt was in hiding Sunday, March 8, after Islamic lawyers demanded that he be executed on charges of “apostasy,” Egyptian Christians and rights investigators monitoring the trial said.

Middle East Concern (MEC), an advocacy group with closely follows the case, told BosNewsLife that Maher Ahmad El-Mo’otahssem Bellah El-Gohary has been trying to obtain identification papers with Christianity designated as his religion, despite death threats.

“Maher is involved in a legal battle to officially change his religious registration from Islam to Christianity so that both he and his daughter may be identified as Christians,” MEC said.

However at a trial on February 22 some 20 Islamic lawyers strongly opposed that move, MEC and other sources said.

Egyptian law allows Muslim lawyers to become involved in a court case if they believe the outcome will run counter to Islamic law [and be] “harmful” to society. “These lawyers described Maher as an apostate from Islam and asked that he be sentenced to death,” MEC said….

—– Bombers Kill Dozens In Iraq As Fears Of New Violence Rise (Alissa J. Rubin and Marc Santora/The New York Times; March 10)

BAGHDAD: Two sophisticated suicide bombings, including one on Tuesday in which 33 people died just outside Baghdad, and other recent violence are raising fears that jihadi militants and hard-line Baathists may be renewing their deadly partnership to threaten the largely calm Iraqi capital.

Iraqi military leaders emphasized that it was too early to draw any firm conclusions but noted similarities in the attacks in which more than 60 people were killed since Sunday. While overall violence in Iraq remains the lowest since the American invasion, both recent attacks were against Iraqi soldiers operating with relatively high security, suggesting much planning and coordination.

The worry among some Iraqi military officials is that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a largely homegrown Islamist militant group, and Sunni insurgents loyal to Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party have put aside their differences to destabilize Iraq as the United States military proceeds with its plans to withdraw.

“We have said before that Qaeda was broken, but it was not finished,” said Hadi al-Ameri, the chairman of the Security Committee in the Iraqi Parliament and the leader of the Badr Organization, the former armed wing of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a Shiite political party.

If in fact the partnership is renewed, Iraqi officials speculate that they may be seeking to exploit several recent vulnerabilities around Baghdad.

There is deep infighting among Sunni tribes that united to help subdue the insurgency over the last two years. Thousands of detainees have been released in recent months from American jails. And relatively inexperienced Iraqi forces have now taken the lead in most of the capital area as American forces withdraw to large bases as a first step towards leaving the country.

In the second major suicide bombing in three days, the attack on Tuesday, in which 46 people were wounded, took aim at a group of Iraqi Army officers on their way to a high-profile reconciliation conference on the western outskirts of the capital….

On Sunday, 28 people were killed when a suicide bomber driving a motorcycle laden with explosives blew up near the police academy in Baghdad.

For several months, tribal leaders and Iraqi military officials have been worrying over signs that Qaeda groups might be renewing their alliance with a burgeoning wing of the hard-line Sunni insurgency, called Al Auda. The group’s name means the Return and advocates a return to power of Mr. Hussein’s outlawed Baath Party.

The hard-line Baathist movement announced on its official Web site Tuesday that it would spurn any reconciliation with the new Iraqi government, which it described as “collaborators, spies and traitors.”

Tribal leaders pointed to a spate of recent assassination attempts. Awad al-Harbousi, one of the leaders of the Awakening movement near Taji, north of Baghdad, said gunmen killed one of his Awakening brethren on Sunday and wounded a second one. Some of the attackers now use bicycle bombers instead of car bombs, he said….

Smaller attacks are more frequent even if they are not lethal. Hardly a day goes by without an assassination attempt using a sticky bomb, a relatively new mode of attack. For the first time in months in Baghdad, there was an attack using a Katyusha rocket. No one was killed but it signaled that insurgents were able again to use the kind of weapon that they had previously relied on to hit distant targets.

American military officials have said recently that they anticipate efforts by Al Qaeda to try to stage high-profile attacks. “We know that Al Qaeda, although greatly reduced in capability and numbers, still is desperate to maintain relevance here in Iraq,” said Maj. Gen. David Perkins, the spokesman for the American military in Baghdad, on Sunday.

Another attack on Tuesday, a suicide car bombing east of Mosul, killed three people and in Kirkuk, a police officer was killed and another officer wounded by an improvised explosive device.

“Guerrilla warfare is about creating chaos,” Mr. Ameri said. “That, itself, is the strategy.”

—– Church Bombed, Pastor Shot In India (Compass Direct News; March 10)

NEW DELHI: In an effort to stop conversions to Christianity in the eastern state of Bihar, a 25-year-old ailing man on Sunday (March 8) exploded a crude bomb in a church and shot the pastor.

Police Inspector Hari Krishna Mandal told Compass that the attacker, Rajesh Singh, had come fully prepared to kill the pastor, Vinod Kumar, in Baraw village in the Nasriganj area of Rohtas district, and then take his own life.

“However,” Mandal said, “believers caught him before he could do more damage or kill himself.”

The 35-year-old pastor was taken to a hospital in nearby Varanasi, in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh and at press time was out of danger of losing his life, according to a leader of Gospel Echoing Missionary Society (GEMS) who requested anonymity.

The church, Prarthana Bhawan (House of Prayer), belongs to GEMS. Around 30 people were in the church when the attack took place. Some women in the church sustained burns in the blast.

“Rajesh Singh threw a crude bomb from the window of the church, and the sound of the explosion created a chaos in the congregation,” said Inspector Mandal. As members of the church began to run out, he added, Singh came into the building and shot the pastor with a handmade pistol from point-blank range.

Singh had more bombs to explode and three more bullets in his pistol, but church members caught hold of him and handed him over to police, the inspector said.

“In his statement, Singh said he was personally against Christian conversions and wanted to kill the pastor to stop conversions,” Mandal said. “He wanted to take his own life after killing the pastor, and this is why he had more bullets in his pistol and an overdose of anesthesia in a syringe.”

Asked if Singh had any links with extremist Hindu nationalist groups, the inspector said no such organization was active in the area, though local Christians say Hindu extremist presence has increased recently. The GEMS source said people allegedly linked with a Hindu nationalist group had sent a threatening letter to the pastor, asking him to stop preaching in the area.

The source said the incident could have been fallout from conversions in nearby Mithnipur village, where a Hindu family had received Christ after being healed from a mental illness around six months ago. Singh also lives in Mithnipur.

“Pastor Kumar had not been visiting the village, fearing opposition from the villagers who were not happy with the conversion of this family,” the GEMS source said. “The same church’s cross had also been damaged about a year ago by unidentified people.”

The source said he believes that although Singh’s affiliation or linkage with a Hindu nationalist group has not been established, it is likely that he was instigated to kill the pastor by an extremist group. Pastor Kumar, married with three children, has been working in Rohtas district for the last 12 years.

Local Christians complain that the presence of the Hindu extremist Sangh Parivar (a family of organizations linked with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS, India’s chief Hindu nationalist group) has recently increased in the area. They say the Hindu nationalist conglomerate has been spewing hate against Christians for more than 10 years, accusing them of using monetary incentives and fraudulent means and foreign money to convert Hindus….

—– Violent Intruders Attack Brooklyn Synagogues (Nissan Ratzlav-Katz/Israel National News.com; March 10)

For the second time in less than a week, a packed Brooklyn, New York, synagogue has been the target of threats of violence by intruders.

On Monday, according to Yeshiva World News, an Arab man in his mid-30s entered Boro Park’s “Sephardish Shul” and began making proclamations of jihad. Members of a Jewish volunteer security organization, the Shomrim, apprehended the threatening individual. They held him until police officers arrived at the scene, arresting the suspect. Detectives spoke with the “Middle Eastern man” at a station house near the synagogue….

Just two days earlier, a man wielding a butcher’s knife burst into a Kerestir Chassidic synagogue in Williamsburg. He initially turned up unarmed and began throwing soda cans at the gathered worshipers, which hit one of them, and returned shortly thereafter with the bladed weapon.

The attacker was prevented from using the butcher’s knife on anyone by a young man, described as a “friend” of the knife-wielding intruder, who then fled together with him.

The recent attacks come just over a month after Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn was targeted in a series of English-language jihadist videos posted on the Internet. The videos and accompanying texts singled out “770,” but also intimated that all Orthodox Jewish organizations were equally worthy of attack by Muslims. The threatening material included images of the 770 synagogue and study house, pictures of the police van out front, and indications of which parts of the building are crowded at what times.

The source of the thinly-veiled threats, a group called Revolution Muslim, is domestic to the United States.

—– One Killed, Five Injured As Hindus Clash During Festival (Thaindian News/The Indo-Asian News Service; March 11)

KOLKATA: One person died and five people were injured in clashes among Holi revellers here Wednesday.

At Kashipur in the northern part of the city, one person died and three others sustained injuries when bombs were hurled by a rival group while playing Holi, the police said.

The injured have been admitted to the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital.

In South Kolkata’s Tollygunge, two people were injured in a clash between youths of two neighbouring localities.

“The trouble (in Tollygunge) started after youths of one locality tried to smear colour on a youth from the other locality. This triggered the clashes in which bombs were hurled,” said acting Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) of city police S.K. Gajmer.

Four people have been arrested following the clash.

The situation was under control but tension prevailed in both areas where Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel were deployed, with the police conducting patrols.

—– Book Burning Advocated By Muslim Official (Interfax; March 11)

MOSCOW: Head of the Coordinating Center of the Muslims of the North Caucasus Ismail Berdiyev believes Russia’s federal list of extremist literature is essential.

When asked by Interfax-Religion if it is necessary to create such a list, Berdiyev said, “Sure. Especially here, in the post-Soviet space.”

The Mufti explained that people who lived in Soviet system, today experience “spiritual vacuum.”

Speaking about books kindling interethnic enmity, Berdiyev offered not to ban them, but rather “collect and burn.”

The Mufti laments that today everyone can write “whatever he wishes.” “There’s no need to ask if it is right or not, here’s the trouble,” head of the Coordinating Center of the Muslims of the North Caucasus said.

—– Shiite Clashes In Medina Foreboding (The Middle East Times/UPI; March 13)

Clashes between Shiite pilgrims and the Saudi religious police may be a sign of a growing frustration with the dogged policies in Riyadh, an analysis said.

Saudi authorities with the Committee for the Preservation of Virtue and the Prohibition of Vice responded to a Shiite gathering at the holy city of Medina in February, injuring hundreds and killing three.

In March, Saudi officials released several prisoners held in the wake of the skirmish in response to Shiite complaints, but the clashes themselves could have a lasting impact on the monarchy and its domestic relations, according to a report by Mai Yamani, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon. The center is part of the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The report said that the Saudi elite view the Shiite community as a security threat, seeing the population there as a representation of Iranian influence in the region.

The Shura council in Saudi Arabia recently called on the Arab community to stand firm in containing Iran, calling special attention to its controversial nuclear program.

“Suppression of the Shiite is thus a part of the kingdom’s strategy to counter Iran’s bid for regional hegemony,” the Carnegie report said.

Saudi Arabia should move away from its exclusive Wahhabi identity to court minorities or face a political backlash from minority religious communities in the region, the report said.

“In light of widened regional and political cleavages, confrontations such as occurred in the holy mosque of the prophet could increase in frequency, size and violence,” the report warns.

—– Religious Procession Sparks Violence In India (BigNewsNetwork.com/ANI; March 14)

A religious procession turned violent when two communities clashed with each other in Nanded in Maharashtra [India] on Friday.

Violence broke out when members of a community taking out a procession of a deity and chanting religious hymns and songs reached a mosque. They were suddenly caught in a flurry of stones pelted by a mob of another community from inside the mosque.

Soon the situation turned out of hand when both the community members started pelting stones each other. It spilled over to roads. Indulging in arson, the agitated members of both communities vented their fury on vehicles and shops in the area.

Police had to resort to baton charging and tear gassing to disperse the agitated mob and arrested around 30 people in connection with the incident.

“The incident took place within 100 meters from the police station. There was violence and stone pelting between people. Although no cars were burnt but the people tried to set two motorcycles to fire. We have so far arrested around 30 people in connection with the violence,” said Satyanarayan Chaudhry, Superintendent of Police (SP), Nanded.

The incident prompted the authorities to impose curfew in the region to avoid further trouble.

—– Sectarian Violence Returns To Northern Ireland (CNN; March 14)

Rioting has flared near Belfast on Saturday after the arrests of three men in the killings of two soldiers in Northern Ireland last week, police said.

Petrol bombs have been hurled at police in Lurgan, a town in County Armagh, 20 miles west of Belfast, police in Northern Ireland said. There are gangs of youths on the streets, authorities said, but there have been no arrests or injuries.

Police announced the arrests on Saturday and said the three men have been taken to the police service’s Serious Crime Suite in County Antrim. One of them, a dissident republican named Colin Duffy, is from Lurgan.

They are the first arrests in connection with the March 7 shootings, which were the first fatal attack on British troops in the province for more than 12 years.

The two British soldiers were shot dead at a base in Massereene, in Antrim, as they were preparing to ship out for duty in Afghanistan.

The soldiers, Cengiz “Pat” Azimkar, 21, and Mark Quinsey, 23, had already packed their bags and changed into desert uniforms, authorities said.

Two masked gunmen with automatic rifles shot them as the soldiers picked up a pizza delivery at the barracks, authorities said. Two other soldiers and the two pizza delivery men were seriously wounded.

The shooting has sparked fears of a return to the sectarian violence that Northern Ireland suffered until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, a period known as The Troubles.

A militant splinter group, the Real IRA, reportedly claimed it had carried out the attack on the soldiers.

Two days after the soldiers were killed, a police officer was killed in a shooting southwest of Belfast. Constable Stephen Carroll was one of four officers who were responding to call in Craigavon when his vehicle came under fire and he was killed. Three people have been arrested in connection with the police officer’s death.

The Continuity IRA, a republican splinter group that does not accept the Good Friday Agreement, said it had killed Carroll, Britain’s Press Association reported….

That’s a lot of pretty harsh intolerance in a very brief period of time – and I don’t see atheists being responsible for any of it (or for anything like it elsewhere).
Just one more thing you might mention to those friends and relatives who think so-called extreme atheists are just as bad as if not worse than all-too-real extreme theists.

(For more about the relationship between religion and intolerance, see the entry I posted on March 10.)