Islam; my faith; and other faiths

[Crunchy]

Mister Agenda Wrote:
I'm on the side of facts, justice, and progress

So am I.

I’ll start by addressing the fundamental mistake in everything you’ve written. You conflate people and religion.  You want us to treat all religions the same.. in the way that we treat all people the same. As equals. You want to grant religions equality. But ideologies, whether religious or secular are not equals. They are to be judged on their content not their mere existence.
This conflation error gives rise to the problem of granting religion a special privilege that we don’t grant to secular ideologies. This has been the cause of religion getting a free pass and you want to perpetuate this error. You refuse to hold religion to the same standards of thought and inquiry that we apply to secular ideologies because you think religion = people and that religious words don't matter. 

 It is in fact very important to make sure to separate people from ideology and not to lump them together in this careless fashion. For example, while it is OK to hold a belief that communism, and capitalism and fascism etc. are different from one another and to even conclude that one is better/worse, you want religious ideologies (which can be every bit as different from one another) to be treated as equals, the same way we treat people as equals. You’ve put religious ideologies on an unassailable pedestal. 

 It is also very important for anyone to understand that criticism of a religion and its sacred beliefs is NOT a blanket condemnation of all adherents. If you conflate race and religion as you do, of course you’re going to see it that way. This flawed way of thinking will lead you to see those who see Jainism as less violent than Islam as bigots. You literally think it’s the equivalent to seeing Asian people as less violent than black people since you think “Religions are the people who claim them.” 

No! Religions are not the people who claim them. Religions are a system of worship, they are not the biological worshippers themselves whose equality must be upheld. 
Please understand that when you conflate a religious ideology with people… you are allowing the ideology to escape the critical process that all ideologies must be subject to.
This can only lead you to the mistake of equating differentiation between religious ideologies with bigotry and that’s wrong.   
I am not in any way suggesting that all adherents to any religion will all behave the same just as all adherents to secular ideologies will not all behave the same. People should be treated as individuals while still recognizing that the widespread adoption of an ideology will have consequences concurrent with it’s themes and beliefs. 

I'm on the side of facts, justice, and progress and couldn't give less of a shit if that sometimes puts me on a different side than some fellow atheist. Islam isn't special.

Islam is different from Christianity which is different from Buddhism which is different from Humanism which is different from Jainism and so on. They are not all the same. They are not people. 

 It's another fantasy sanctified by tradition that can be used to justify just about anything. Religions aren't their books, the books will say anything if you torture them enough. Religions are the people who claim them. 

No, they are not people. Religions don’t just pop into people’s heads at birth. They are taught. They are codified into words and words matter. Religions are not all bad in the same way at the same time. 
You’re saying that words have no meaning and that the different scriptures have no essential content or character. That the religions themselves are meaningless and interchangeable.  
However, believers are shaped to different degrees by what religions teach. While there is diversity within religious traditions, that diversity is bounded by the broad parameters of the religion’s core teachings. Religious teachings actually have real content and that content will have real world consequences. There are few if any Polytheist Muslims because of the content of the Quran. This would not be the case if words had no meaning.

Here’s a thought experiment. Let’s say you were an intelligent psychopath who wanted to gather followers and conquer those around you.  You don’t have any religious beliefs but understand that religion can be used to manipulate people. In your possession is the Quran and the Tattvartha Sutra(from Jainism) 
If you are correct, then either could be used to advance your desire for conquest interchangeably. But you’re not correct. One of those texts teaches non-violence and the other teaches much violence. Even if they can each be twisted to some degree, one is clearly more amenable to violent conquest than the other. WORDS MATTER.

The religion changes when the people do, not the other way around, and people (en masse, not as individuals, there are always outliers) change as a result of their geopolitical circumstances.

It is a grave error to think that religion has zero influence and that politics is 100% responsible for human behavior. I’m not one to claim that religion is the cause of all evil, but to claim it has no influence is unsupported by the facts. You are once again giving religious ideology a free pass.

 The geopolitical circumstances in the Middle East and North Africa currently suck

And allot of that has to do with the ideas that have been ingrained into people by both secular and religious ideologies. I don’t blame religion 100% but I don’t exonerate it 100% either as you do.

Religious primitivism and violence are symptoms of other problems; like war, poverty, political polarization, foreign exploitation, and inadequate education.

This is once again giving religion a free pass. In your view, we can blame everything BUT religion for violence that is often overtly stated in the text. Religious violence and war are often caused by religious teachings and not by poverty, political polarization, foreign exploitation, or inadequate education.