Should we tolerate Hitler, Ms Bunting?

Having a discussion over The Guardian on the RDRFS fora, another forum member presented us with the article dedicated to Madeleine Bunting on Wikipedia - and I have to say that I was appalled by the statement that "atheists' antipathy to religion makes it impossible for them to criticise religion effectively.[1]"

It's not difficult to see how religious people can feel attacked or prosecuted by people like Hitchens, and I can see how people can shut what Dawkins says out in a manner oddly reminiscent of children blabbing while keeping their ears shut so that they don't hear what one tells them, but that hardly is evidence of the "impossibility for atheists to criticise religion effectively."

What is very important to draw our attention to is that Bunting is making an appeal to emotion while still turning to the fallacy of the middle ground: not only is she suggesting that these polemics somehow make atheists incapable of critical thinking, something that somehow seems non-applicable to religious people for some reason, it also asserts that moderation is better. I beg to differ: that in itself is illogical anyway, but it becomes patently absurd when put in sharp contrast to what atheists criticise, including delusional beliefs, nonsensical demands, oppression of all shapes and colours, intolerance, and unnecessary violence, to name just a few.

And yet this is just the tip of the iceberg, for what truly makes Bunting's claim either ignorant, idiotic, crazy, dishonest, or any combination of these, is that, according to her statement, a Christian cannot criticise Islam for inciting murder; a Buddhist cannot demand some respect from the Chinese government; a rape victim must feel no resentment for her predicament; in essence, what she posits is that we must be tolerant in order to be capable of criticising anything - otherwise, we must either partake of that wrong, be complacent to it, or just have too much antipathy to criticise anything "effectively."

While I don't think I need to point out how that makes no sense, I will still provide yet another instance of Godwin's Law (though this is not, in fact, as you can plainly see, a reductio ad Hitlerum but a reductio ad absurdum): if we are not tolerant of what the Nazi did, but show a strong aversion to it instead, then it's impossible for us to criticise the Nazi effectively; this is, obviously, wrong, so the very idea is also wrong.