Who the fuck do they think they are kidding?
Religions, the greater majority of them that is, PROMOTE Ethnic Separationistic Attitudes, Racism, Violence towards others who DO NOT follow their belief system, etc, etc.
Recorded history shows plainly, clearly and succinctly that at least 87% of Hostilities between humans have had a root cause somewhere steeped in a religious belief system of kind or another.
Example, AFTER Christianity, actually the Following of the Mythological teaching of the equally Mythological Jesus was NOT known as the 'Christian Faith' until AFTER the Second Council of Nicaea held in circa 327-328 C.E., prior to that date they were simply called either the Jesuites or the Messianic Followers/Messianics, circa 98 - 103 C.E. the then Messianic Followers went on a rampage of Death and Destruction at the behest of the self-elected Bishop Deotheisius of Tyre and destroyed, razed, laid bare 3 cities in the Middle East, raping and slaughtering everyone in them, men, women, children and babes in arms in the NAME of Jesus, the Messiah.
Circa 104 -107 C.E. again at the behest of Bishop Deotheisius of Tyre another horde of Messianics went on a rampage through Jerusalem, attacked the Temple, killed innocents and Priests alike before setting flame to the Temple and almost burning to the ground.
Bishop Deotheisius of Tyre WROTE to Emperor Constantine and apologised for the War that he had sent his Disciples upon BUT stated that he HAD DONE this to APPEASE Rome and the Emperor, not Yahweh or Jesus (quote) " For If he had ordered it to be done in the name of the Messiah ALL Romans, men, women and children WITHIN the WALLS of Jerusalem would have been put to death and burned upon the steps of the Temple as an offering to Yahweh."
Even in more recent/modern history there has ALWAYS been the element present of "We are fighting this battle/war BECAUSE God and Jesus are on OUR side."
The German Nazis even wore belts with their uniforms, that had "Gott mit Uns," God is with Us" emblazoned upon them and we have here someone trying to tell us that there is co-relation between religion/s and violence.
PLEASE get you historically recorded FACT right for a change.

Well......it's really all about power on earth. If sometimes that includes war, then so be it. If it's just the usual propaganda and marketing....so be it.

Religion is the Worship of Man. Gotta get used to it.

There's no myth about it. The Guardian has simply become a propaganda rag which is a systematic apologist for all religion-generated violence because it now makes its money from the kind of enlightened readers who approve of all that bigotry and want to protect democratic freedom by campaigning for these bigots to run everything, just as happened in Afghanistan.

No war was ever started for a single simple reason.

You can therefore put any spin on the origins of collective violence you like, from economics, religion, violent instinct, personal ambition, race, the nature of politics, class conflict or the need to redirect it, and many more including, the exclusion of any of the above. It is messy indeed, and perhaps the best case is to treat each conflict as an individual case, and disentangle its strands from that point. People like simple answers because that is easy, and people are lazy, but understanding is hard.

And it is very true that a lot of what is seen in the West as Islamic imperialist ambition, is actually just a defensive attempt to reverse the attempts by the West to impose western values at gun point. Which never works.

War is never about religious belief.

It’s not about religion. It’s about beliefs. Belief is s different story.
If you can talk them out of logic, let me know. I’ll buy their ammo.

Have you ever heard of Jihad? Meaning holy war in the middle east

. . . I just finished, a very good read :

[goodreads.com]

I don't think it's so much a "myth", as much as it's just another reason why humans engage in warfare.

The RCC popes are the cause of crusades, witch hunting, and heritic persecution.

I disagree. It absolutely is radical Islamic extremism.