See, the thing about religion, that no religious person wants to come to terms with, is that no religion is a monolith. What does that mean?

Even if you claim to be a fully practicing Christian, Muslim, Hindi, etc, there will always be descrepencies. Furthermore, no one believes exactly the same thing as someone else. The nature and limitations of the human mind does not permit it, so thinking that if you identify with a religion that suddenly your behaviour is dictated by dogma is nonsensical.

This also means that Christians today are not responsible for the crusades or the persecution as well as eradication of European pagans, and that Islam is not to blame for what's going on in Iran, largely because they were irrelevant to the actual goals, which was for certain people to gain more power and wealth.

The Iranian government doesn't give a shit about the 5 columns of Islam. Not even close. But they absolutely love having morals police, executions and an authoritarian system that seeks to subjugate and suppress any kind of democratic movement.

The Iranian regime knows the Iranian people, and if they could they would turn liberal democracy in a heartbeat, and they are still mostly Muslim. That's why the boot has to stomp and fists have to bang on doors, like all the time.

I think people easily forget how fucked you can be if the state has so much power they can effectively curb any dissent. At that point the religion used just becomes a nice decorative mask to put on, both to keep power, but also to keep using fear via "us vs them". This is also signified by the secular Muslim empires.

Just a little bit of history is enough to dispell all fears about religion and to squarely focus on corruption and authoritarianism instead, which is where our focus should be - and that's coming from an atheist.