For centuries, elites have used religious identity as a means of establishing or increasing political power. However, if the regime that preceded the coming to power of new elites was one characterized by norms of religious tolerance, then those new elites will need to justify their use of religious identity in terms of threats posed by earlier-tolerated minority religious groups. Conversely, if counter-elites propose to increase religious tolerance, then adherents of the status quo will need to argue against those changes by framing certain majority religious groups as being threatened. This hypothesized asymmetry in the use of threat – between a focus on threatening minority religious groups in a context of moves away from tolerance, and a focus on threatened majority religious groups in a context of moves toward tolerance – is explored in this paper. Specifically, taking a computer-assisted Cognitive Mapping Approach (CMA), I construct cognitive maps of selected parliamentary debates from Ireland and India, tracing the cognitive processes involved in the proponents of religious intolerance in both sets of cases, and demonstrate the differential use of threat.