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I never said religions can be ‘boiled down to a essence derived from their scriptural writings’. I did claim that their canonical scriptures have a significant relevance to how their followers behave, so that a religion that enjoins its followers to act violently and subjugate the world to it will elicit a significantly different pattern of behaviour from one that implores them to ‘turn the other cheek’ and to love their enemies.

Hence there is a strong pacifist tradition in Christianity that is completely absent from Islam. I am not precluding other factors from shaping the actions of religious followers, or that those with other motivations will construct tenuous religious justifications for their behaviour.

David seems to want to discount the significance of creedal differences. They are not everything, but they are highly significant, particularly at a time when we see a global resurgence of hardline Salafist interpretations of Islam even in former bastions of moderate Islam like Indonesia.