PETER WINSTANLEY (HAS, Jan 25) is right to say that religious people are no more inclined to violence than nonreligious people.

But religion has, and continues, to be used as a justification for violence and brutal atrocities.

This is especially true of those faiths which proclaim its followers have a divine-given duty to impose their beliefs on the rest of the world.

Secular laws use fines and imprisonment as means of punishment, but many religious laws use physical mutilation and execution as a punishment.

Religious tolerance can only begin when people realise that there is no true faith, that what matters isn’t the faith you follow but that you have faith.

CT Riley, Spennymoor.