The True Believers

Even though the Old World religions were never officially banned, the general public is carefully educated about their shortcomings and dangers to the society. The idea of following such a religion is frowned upon publicly, but somehow, even today, after so many centuries, followers still exist.
Ancient scripts tell stories about many wars led in the name of this or that god, one religion or another, which usually brings the reader to a logical conclusion - these religions are mutually conflicting. While that might be true, the followers of those religions call themselves "True Believers". Ironically, the ridiculously strong "us against them" mentality of human beings united religious followers that would otherwise gladly see each other wiped from existence.
Leaders of these groups usually meet their followers at private homes. They study the holy books in secrecy. Preachers discuss and interpret the teachings of these scripts, even though they have been taken out of the original context many millenniums ago. "The beauty of a mystical teaching, said Horabi Mutni in his last debate with Pon Osni, is that it's timeless. It has enough flexibility to be applied to any place and time, and any obstacle humans may encounter. It is everlasting in it's wisdom." Pon stretched his face into a sardonic grin "Or, what you call flexibility is actually intentional vagueness that lets demagogues like you interpret it as they see fit. All for the sake of cheap moral, division and personal gain." Horabi pressed his precious book on his chest and said: "Minds polluted with pride and this-worldly material manifestations will never grasp the higher concepts of godly love." "I'll show you a proper material manifestation right now!" yelled Pon while his fist flew into the preacher's face. He was heavily penalized for such behavior by the Skygazers and was banned from entering Karai for half a year.
In his later years he looked back at this incident with an excuse of being a foolish, idealist youngster. But his aggressive and passionate prosecution of the True Believers stopped not because of the wisdom gained with age, but because of one sentence said by his wife. "You silly, hot headed fool. You can't fight an idea based on martyrdom by creating more martyrs."