I think it does make sense to examine the religion itself. We know in this story that this was a Monk who was acting off-script, according to the story, so we don't have to worry about buddhists in general following this practice. So that's a relief. But what if his entire temple is off-script and shares his belief and other monks from this temple are out there doing this same thing to other young girls. It makes sense to be concerned about the beliefs themselves when those beliefs are the basis of actions that kill little girls.
The monk in question was trying to help the girl. He was wrong to think he could, but he wasn't trying to kill the girl. According to his beliefs he was helping her. His beliefs were the basis for his actions which were the cause of the girl's death. So it makes sense to put some of the blame on the belief and to be worried there might be others out there who share it so that they can be educated as to the danger involved. Its not just that the monk was stupid. The monk held a dangerous belief that he acted upon resulting in an avoidable death.
The reason you don't see this a lot w/atheists (all atheists being blamed when a lone crazy atheist does something stupid) is that atheism is a lack of a belief. All christians, as an example, have in common that they believe in jesus, his divinity, god, the bible, etc... Their belief is what is common to them. Their rituals, their sacraments, often their charity, and some times their less savory actions are often conducted in name of these beliefs. Many of their actions in their lives stem from their beliefs. So we give them a name, christians, categorizing them by their common belief.
But atheists are a group who only have in common 1 thing that they disbelieve. We don't categorize them by what they believe, like we do w/every religion out there, but rather by 1 of the many things they disbelieve. How many of you do not believe in Shiva? How many of you non-Shiva-ists tailor your actions based on this disbelief? How often have you performed a ritual or given charity in the name of your disbelief in Shiva? A non-shiva-ist might give a can of soup to a homeless man, but its likely to be for a reason other than his lack of belief in shiva.
Anyhow, i can see why religious people might feel like their religion is being unfairly painted w/a broad brush due to a lone crazy person who happens to belong to the religion. But when the behavior in question was based upon a religious belief, it makes sense to investigate, to find out how many others share this belief and might also act upon it w/similar results, so as to avoid such an outcome being repeated. This first incident would have been hard for anyone to predict or prevent. But if it were to happen again because we were scared of angering people by questioning their religions beliefs, then the fault would be borne by all of us.
I think it was saint Augustine who said something to the effect that: (paraphrasing because its been over a decade since i read it) -> The christian who stands on the corner preaching that which every learned person knows to be wrong hurts the entire religion by preventing those who would otherwise join the religion from doing so for they will believe the entire religion to be made up of fools. The church should therefore accept new ideas (such as scientific discoveries) or risk alienating the very people the church needs.
