In Chapter 1 Hitchens describes abandoning religion in his youth, and promoting "cruel revolutionary rubbish" as a Trotskyist activist [REF].
In Chapter 9, Hitchens contends that the claim that religion is a source of conflict is a "cruel factual misunderstanding",[REF] and that a number of conflicts, including The Troubles and the Arab-Israeli conflict, were not motivated by religion but tribal in nature and disputes over territory [REF].