So I think we can agree however that some religions such as Islam that condone and require nonbelievers to be persecuted, is flat out wrong. We should not however say that ALL religion is bad because Islam needs to be reformed. The problem with Islam was with its creator (a human who took guidance from an angel in a cave).
You do realize of course that a populist atheist could put forth a plan to rid the world of religion. He could get other atheists so enthralled that they become more concerned with the ends (no more religion) then they are concerned with the means (many religious followers would have to be killed). Now would that make the atheism itself evil ?
I would agree that some religions are more likely than others to manifest their irrationality in ways which cause harm to people who don't subscribe to that faith. I'd also agree that a segment of Islam is currently experiencing this effect. However, it is ludicrous to assert that this is a problem unique to Islam. One would have to be laughingly oblivious to the history of Christianity -- with its pogroms, Inquisitions, Holocaust and crusades -- to suggest that this a problem solely of Islam.
Further, even if Islam is more prone to experiencing these problems, there is nothing about Islam that prevents a Muslim from living a peaceable life, as the many hundreds of millions, if not billions, of Muslim who are not terrorists attests.
What it does share with every religion, however, is a basic irrationality, which causes religious adherents to accept irrational propositions and, as a consequence, to take irrational actions. And sometimes those actions are not only irrational, but evil. (And no, neither Christians nor Christianity is excepted from this...)
You do realize of course that a populist atheist could put forth a plan to rid the world of religion. He could get other atheists so enthralled that they become more concerned with the ends (no more religion) then they are concerned with the means (many religious followers would have to be killed). Now would that make the atheism itself evil ?
Well, no, if such a thing were to occur, then the actions taken in the name of atheism would be evil, but atheism itself would not.
But, moreover, the possibility of this actually occurring is so vanishingly small as to be nearly indistinguishable from zero. The hallmark of atheism is a reliance on rationality over irrationality. There would be nothing rational in killing religious followers in the manner you describe. It could come about by another irrational event, idea or ideology hijacking atheism, as was the case with the communists, but not through atheism itself. Such a thing would be stupendously irrational. (And, in fact, the group psychosis you describe -- whereby people are so enthralled with an end that they fail to examine the ethics of the means to bring about that end -- is just such an irrational event.)