Christopher Hitchens argument that all religions are equidistant from peace and tolerance is making it easy for himself and is a bit lazy on his part I would say.
A religion is an ideology and world view. At the core of any ideology is a big idea that is believed to be true and self evident. For religions it is the belief in the idea of God, in spirituality, in the possibility that thought can comprehend aspects of this world that are beyond the falsifiability of the scientific method. This big idea is not inherently evil. What leads to evil is to motivate humans, believers, to take away the rights of others to not believe in that idea. This is where the Koran and the accompanying Islamic texts stand alone amongst religions as having the most aggressive teachings for removing and limiting the rights of non-believers.
Socialism and communism also have a big idea as their foundation. This big idea has lead to as much misery as religions. Communism built a wall around its captives to force them to live their big idea and has 100 million deaths to its name.
So the distinction Hitchens makes between religions and other ideologies is really not based on reason but preference.
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