Religion kills again. A mother has beaten her son to death because he failed to learn the Koran by heart.

In a video recording of her interview with police, Mrs Ege told them: “I was trying to teach him the Koran.

Yaseen was originally thought to have died in the house fire. But a post-mortem examination showed Mrs Ege had been beating and abusing her little boy in the months leading up to his murder.

The beatings were so brutal that the boy died from his injuries, and his mother tried to burn the body to destroy the evidence, Cardiff Crown Court was told.

“I was getting more and more frustrated. If he didn’t read it properly I would be very angry — I would hit him.

Religion doesn’t make anybody better, but it can take our concern for our loved ones and twist it into madness. It can also amplify the worst of us until there is no humanity left.

Sure, people can become good because they believe god is watching. But once you open the door to believing things for bad reasons, who but the most faith-drenched of people could possibly believe that people only do good things for bad reasons? One of the things you will always hear from the religious people is how their faith changed their lives. I’m just unwilling to be selective. Untrue beliefs can change peoples lives – it’s just the belief, not god at work. And when those beliefs are awash with unreason, they can make bigots and murderers out of people.

The atheist activist just elects to criticize irrational beliefs before they become irrational actions, not afterward. This boy should have been out playing, not learning a book of outdated rules and horrors. This boy did not have to die.