It’s interesting to me that the Illiad is really about a few different gods having a fight and then using humans as their pawns. The Trojan War is a relgious war in that sense, but it’s not a religious war in the sense that the Greeks worship the true gods and the Trojans false ones. I wonder if this dynamic of “my deities are stronger than your deities” was a common one in non Judeo-Christian-Muslim cultures. The religions of the book share, in the construction of their monotheism, a fundamental rejection of the validity of other faiths. The idols of others are false idols to false Gods, not weaker ones. In this sense they are fundamentally intolerant religions, at least if you accept the basic axioms.

Lest I get flamed, I want to point out that I’m not claiming that Jews/Christians/Muslims are fundamentally intolerant, nor that they are the only people with intolerant views. It’s just that the rhetoric in this country of Dobson-esque figures makes the GOP out to be Gods Own Party and others as not only wrong, but evil to boot.