I agree one can never judge religions by the people following them... I did in my past and now I regret it totally...

I have friends from almost all the major religions as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and even Agnostics and Atheists like I am.
They are all nice to me and I am nice to them, once in school, no one cares about which religion the other person belongs too, I am an atheist but I usually help other people to defend their religion if some other guy insults someones religion. Like that day this christian guy Clyde (although I never saw him in the church) was giving a hard time to this Muslim junior in our school, I got angry and at once tried to stop the fight, and when that Clyde was out of control, I beat the crap out of him although I was punished by my principle after that but I think my action was right as that guy didn't have any right to bully the other junior just because he was a Muslim.
Although some people do discriminate on me as I am an atheist, they look down on me but I don't even care, although they are like that but my friends accept my atheism and everybody I talk with except some elders in my country including my parents don't look down on me, everyday my parents scold me for some silly reason and say that I don't believe in God just because the Devil has taken control of my mind, it kinda sucks when my parents are the ones who don't support me, but still thats life I guess...

I know first even I did the same mistake of looking down at Islam because of Osama and some other terrorists, but once I saw a Muslimg wearing a t-shirt with a finger against the potrait of Bush and Osama both and I was touched at that moment, then I realized in my schools, Muslims are one of the most peaceful people, I never saw them engaging into any kind of fights, same with Christians and all others... Although sometimes Hindu's don't mix up with Christians and Muslims as for them non-veg food is a taboo but still other than that, everyone mixes up with everybody so perfectly...

I agree that many Christians force people to convert and I have seen this happening in front of my eyes in my village but guess what, some christian priest saw this while he was outside the adjacent church and he stopped the person from forcing the poor farmer, and then I stopped judging religions by some people.

Actually, that's not true. The only meat that's offlimits to Hindu (myself being one) is beef because of the whole cow thing. I know many Hindus (not myself) who eat meat because it's so readily available here and the quality is probably better than in India.

But that's true; a religion has no bearing over how someone acts, which is why I still believe it's up to the human to influence their own morals because morals are always going to change in some way. Therefore we shouldn't classify people by their religion.

Well, here majority of the Hindus don't eat any kind of meat and thats why I mentioned it in my post, some people also refrain from eating vegetarian dishes made in same utensils as nonvegetarian foos or by the hands who made nonvegetarian foods. I was a born Hindu myself until I chose to be an atheist, and so this was all I experienced here in India and these things still are there. 2 people from my own group refrain from eating the foodstuffs prepared in the houses of my other friends who cook nonveg at their home.

I agree those days in regard to the small vocal minority which resort to doing extreme things to get their points across. Esp the case with Martin Bryant (who iirc wasnt aligned to a particular religion) down here, he wasnt a terrorist or anything, but still he was a crazed gunman acting alone.

Sad to say that, people DO affect impressions of religion. Come on, a religion teaches someone to be good, but we do otherwise. So first impression, that religion doesn't emphasis on this and that. So yeah, people must POTRAY the teachings of the religion then only one can really find out whether that religion's really ummm, good or something different from another religion.