Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.

This remark reflects Christopher Hitchens’s late-career polemics against organized religion, especially in the period when he was a prominent public advocate of “New Atheism” (mid‑2000s onward). Hitchens frequently argued that modern religious institutions present themselves as benign providers of comfort, community, and moral uplift in pluralistic societies where they must compete for adherents. He contrasted this with what he saw as religion’s historical record when allied with state power—persecution, coercion, censorship, and violence—insisting that contemporary “soft” marketing should not erase memory of earlier dominance. The bazaar/merchant imagery is characteristic of his rhetorical style: vivid, satirical, and aimed at puncturing pious self-presentation.

Hitchens frames religion as a seller in a marketplace: persuasive, flattering, and transactional. The “ingratiating smirks” and “outspread hands” suggest not sincere moral authority but salesmanship adapted to modern conditions where belief is optional. The second half supplies the moral argument: people are entitled to judge religions not only by their current public relations but by their behavior when they possessed coercive power. The phrase “an offer that people could not refuse” invokes the logic of extortion—implying that historical religious “conversion” or conformity often relied on threat rather than persuasion. The quote thus warns against amnesia and urges skepticism toward institutions that became gentle only after losing the ability to compel.