Religion is the MAIN relevance in this thread or it should be. They are murdering people for religious ideals.
As has been said before, religion can do lots of good but it was introduced in a formal way as a method of controlling the great unwashed. How better to control a mass than to warn them of eternal damnation if they didn't bow down and worship (plus chuck a few quid in every week) this weeks God of choice?
Sure before organised religion there were Gods. Gods of thunder, of the sea, of rain, of alcohol, of anything you can thing of. And then...organise it, make lots of lovely money, do the odd bit for the poor and control the masses. Get the King or Government onside and it's coming at you from all sides. Rome saw this coming, sticking to it's 'old' Gods for years until sensing a massive change in the populous converted to Christianity. They needed a book and so Constantine the Great and a few others compiled one out of teachings and readings they had knocking about. Obviously, being nearly 300 years since a bloke was nailed to a cross for saying how nice everyone should be too each other (sorry DNA), the book became a great work of fiction. Over the years since it has been added to, re-written and made more relevant but still, underneath all of the stories about magical fish, Gourds and giant boats there still lives the original message...
Do unto others as you would be done by except if you don't support our version of a one true God in which case you will burn in hell after we have tortured, beheaded, buggered and generally gone to war against you for having a completely different view/ belief.
It is no surprise that in a more enlightened world, what with our internets and so called freedoms we can choose what we damn well want to choose. Most of us now don't go to church unless it's one of the big three (Birth, Death and Manacle). Most of us take his name in vain. On an hourly basis. Most of us wonder why such a land rich organisation has to beg and borrow to fix it's empty places of worship.
And yet still, after all this control, mass murder and dominance by men in frocks what one place do the great now washed masses go to in times of need? The men in frocks.
We are a weird lot, humans.