You seem to see no difference between people justifying/harmonising their ethical behaviour with their religious doctrine, and the actual religious doctrine. IOW, to you there is no difference between an Orthodox Jew who is a vegetarian and who has reasoned that position from the scriptures, and an Orthodox Jew who doesn’t eat pork.
To most people these are fundamentally different. Religious people adopt all sorts of optional behaviour because they think they are most harmonious with their religion. That’s vastly different from something that the religion actually mandates…
No. It’s a bit more than thinking that behaviour X is “harmonious” with my religious beliefs. Eating meat is harmonious with my religious beliefs, but I don’t believe that eating meat is the practice of my religion. Whereas helping those less fortunate than myself is required by my religious beliefs, so being generous with my time and/or money is the practice of my religion. The fact that others are similarly generous (or more generous) for different motives doesn’t change my motivation.
If my religious beliefs are such that I feel that, in these circumstances, I am obliged to do X, then doing X is an aspect of the practice of my religion. The fact that someone else who adopts the same label as myself (Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, whatever) might not feel obliged to do X doesn’t change matters. Why should his view of what my religion requires of me be normative, and mine not?
The Quakers in antebellum America believed their religion mandated opposing slavery. The nuns who hid Jewish kids during the Holocaust believed that their religion mandated protecting Jews. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference believed that their religion mandated fighting for Civil Rights. Father Berrigan believed that his religion mandated burning draft cards and damaging missile silos. Eric Rudolph believed that his religion mandated blowing up abortion clinics and gay bars.
So how is that fundamentally different than Jews believing their religion mandates not eating pork?
While this does not involve lawbreaking, it did involve nearly making the ultimate sacrifice (with one exception, and he did). How about the American missionaries who got Ebola last year, and one of them died? For that matter, the reporter who got sick is a practicing Buddhist (with a VERY interesting provenance), and felt that his faith commanded him to do what he could to make the world a better place. IDK what the religious beliefs are, or if they have any, of the MSF or WHO workers who also got it, but they too were very dedicated to what they believed in as well.
In parts of Balkans, but Montenegro especially, there is a long tradition of holy bandits who would attack and loot outposts and supply caravans of the Ottoman Empire and/or the shipments of Muslim merchants. They viewed their acts as that of pious Christians fighting a holy war against an invading enemy faith, essentially guerilla warfare, rather than robbery. They did not similarly attack and rob those they perceived as fellow Christians.