There is no religion. God is not religion and religion is not god. Religion is merely rules of ritualism for the brain dead zombies.
Abrahamic religions has a history of oppression and brutality and the tradition continues in form or the other.
Abrahamic religions are ~2,000 years old, and there were great societies 8,000 years prior to that and one great contribution of Abrahamic religions is wiping them out in the name of God and their religion. Start from the founding of the new world and go backwards in history, if you care to find out (doubt you would do it). It is easy to shout louder, and louder repeating the same nonsense.
then why is it that the most religious societies are the most oppressive ones?
islamo-nazi regimes are the exception to that.
in which case, the intelligent observation would not be a wholesale condemnation of "religion" per se, but rather the specific regimes about which we would both agree.
I'm sure Frank Gaffney appreciates you picking up his talking points, but you might want to review the actual meaning of the term.
Yes, an intelligent observation would be a wholesale condemnation of all religion. Certainly, the monotheistic ones. To deny otherwise, shows your own bias to your own delusions.
Evangelicals are all up in arms right now over the treatment of nitwit Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell. They say the issues are what matter and leave her religious faith out of it. OK fine, but many of these same evangelicals will not even consider supporting Mitt Romney in 2012 because he is a Mormon. Some of them have personally told me this, so it is not speculation.
the people making the contradictory statements.
Not "religion" in general.
No more than an atheist found to be a murderer is prima facia evidence of the murderous nature of atheism.
This is a common mistake.