William T Cavanaugh

The myth of religious violence tries to establish as timeless, universal, and natural a very contingent set of categories—religious and secular—that are in fact constructions of the modern West. Those who do not accept these categories as timeless, universal, and natural are subject to coercion.

Society is structured in such a way as to make the categories through which the myth operates seem given and inevitable.

The point is not simply that secular violence should be given equal attention to religious violence. The point is that the very distinction between secular and religious violence is unhelpful, misleading, and mystifying