ABSTRACT
There is much to gain from linking research on religious terrorism to the comments on religious violence coming from new atheists. First, new atheists provide an account of the way in which religion facilitates violence, which calls attention to the links between moderates and extremists, the persistence of religious violence over time and the importance of faith in motivating and justifying attacks. Second, new atheists posit plausible differences between religious ideologies and secular value systems that may also incite conflicts or excuse atrocities. The long history of religious violence is overlooked, and any possibility of characterising religion as inherently violent – as new atheists do – tends to disappear without being investigated. New atheists' accounts of how religion promotes violence challenge the scholarly inattention to the pervasiveness of religious conflict throughout history, as.
